davidg

Beware anything deep with a glass lid if it is going back against the hullside.

Were one to put scumble on top of that I shudder to think of how it would look; it's aluminium wood primer.

How about RAL5012?

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.......................

The bridge which the boat couldn't get through isn't the Blue Lias bridge, it's the one below Shop Lock and this is also the bridge Tranquil Rose couldn't pass through. It was possible to get a pair of boats through the Lias bridge provided that either 1) One of them didn't have a cabin on it and you put it on the outside or 2) One of them had a cabin you wished to remove and were prepared to go into the bridgehole hard enough The 12ft dimension which has been quoted for the Lias bridge is pretty meaningless as it is the arch which is the issue there. Wide beam boats often have to resort to dropping the pound to get through, causing damage to boats moored in that pound and up Kayes Arm. Bickley's bridge has also proved problematic for boats built at Delta Marine in the past: a former Bascote lock keeper had to prevent a hammer and chisel being taken to the arch with the words "Oh no you're ****ing not" when told what was about to happen. I'm told this isn't the first time Tranquil Rose has stuck in New Bridge (not a name in common usage for it, in many years of going over or under it this may be the first time I've used it), they got stuck last year too.

Read Pete Harrison’s comments: it never was.

<cough>Mandy Rice-Davies<cough>

Word on the cut is that they did an underwater survey yesterday. It's Higton by the way.

Because an “engineer” came, took a look and instructed CRT operatives to do so. I put engineer in quotes as that is who one of the CRT operatives involved told me was coming. Of course the quotes could be taken to imply another meaning.

I would refer m'learned friend to post no 590. As of 6pm this evening.

Yes, one wonders if m'learned friends are being consulted. And the owner could just be caught in the crossfire.

Still there and nobody knows what happens next, including the boat owner. If CRT do they're not telling anyone; probably still considering the options. .

So this is OK if you have a historic boat? And if you have a modern boat apparently Unless you have a fairly elastic definition of how much old boat you need to include in a new build to make it historic.

Still there this morning. As to craning out, it might be cheaper than some other solutions I’ve heard were being proposed which involved dewatering and alterations to the walls below water level. Who’s paying? Let’s take a wild guess...

What happened before? Have boats built to similar dimensions passed through this bridge unimpeded? And what are the engineering tolerances on the dimensions? Based on the width reported by the owner - 4m - and the Fraenkel Report* quoted dimensions from Napton to the top of Bordesley - 3.8m - we would appear to have a negative proximity coefficient here. Now the Fraenkel Report dimensions have to be treated with a degree of circumspection, from memory it gives Hillmorton as maximum length 70ft when 71'6" GUCCCo boats had been using the locks for years, but they were presumably based on some sort of survey of pinch points. I'll say it again: The structure of the bridge you can see might be wider than the boat but below water level it's not that the channel isn't maintained, it's the structure of the bridge itself which is narrow because of the batter on the retaining walls. (I've just had a look at some notes on civil engineering structures, 1:8 is typical for brick retaining walls) We were sat down at teatime yesterday with someone who was on the boats when the cement traffic was running from Southam to Sampon Road and asked him if they ever ran through this bridge breasted up,"no it's too narrow" was the reply which would suggest the bridge has been less than 14ft wide since at least the early 60s. *Someone fished it out, also at teatime yesterday - we drink a lot of tea.