nicknorman

Clearly it isn’t feasible that traversing locks single handed could be as fast or faster than a reasonably competent double crewed boat. It is true that some boat crews are incredibly inefficient, but the fact remains that Jeff and I have NEVER had a single hander come up behind us (unless we are held up by the boat in front) and we have OFTEN been slowed down by single handers in front despite helping by eg closing up behind them. Anything else is wishful thinking.

Or engine could fail. But probably if a prop shaft coupling is going to fail surely it’s more likely to happen when hitting reverse at higher rpm, not just dropping into tickover reverse. Telemachus being deep drafted there is already quite a bit of deceleration caused by water displaced in the lock having to find its way past the hull, and the “uphill” water thus created. TBH if reverse did fail it wouldn’t be catastrophic, just embarrassing (bow rides up on gate, as bow slopes relatively gently, it’s a long way from vertical). But as ways to crash go, I think it’s pretty unlikely. There would be time if the boat was in tickover. But our way, the boat is at higher rpm to exit the lock more quickly which more than compensates for the 3 seconds to cross the gate. Not hurrying, just walking. It’s 7 feet and my pace is about 3 feet so that’s 3 steps. If you found that way didn’t work for you, that’s fine. But it works for us. Possibly being a lot heavier and with correspondingly stronger (and testosterone-enhanced) leg and bum muscles makes the difference. Yes. But pushing the gate open with the boat is rather frowned upon by the powers. As the gate opens, the force makes the bow fender rub along the gate and pushes the bow sideways into the lock wall to scrape off more of your blacking. I’m not saying you shouldn’t do it, but it is slightly inelegant.

This is a concern. What we do on entering a narrow lock to go down, is that I go in fairly fast and slip into tickover reverse just as I step off to close the top gate. The boat slows down avoiding hitting the bottom gate as I close the top gate and Jeff is opening the bottom paddle just before the gate is closed. I then hop on and click into neutral. I don’t think the getting off is problematic because if I fell in then, the boat is still moving away quite quickly. But getting on again with the boat barely moving is more so. I am careful, just as I am when stepping across double bottom gates.

Yes you could do that. We should bear in mind that we might be talking about solo ops vs 2 people ops as you haven’t mentioned how the gate is opened or gate side paddle closed. But even if Jeff has gone ahead I would still do it the same - wait for the lock to be virtually ready on the offside, close the paddle, cross over and open the gate and close the paddle, then walk to the boat. Virtually no time wasted, just the time to walk across the gate which is perhaps 3 seconds? One could leave the boat in gear to open the gate by lots of rubbing of hemp against wood, and general scrapery, but that is a rather un-gentlemanly way of doing it.

I have long arms but still can’t close paddles whilst steering. I could close the paddle whilst the boat is steering itself, but why bother? Our technique, which I have been doing since the 1960s (before you were born) works fine for us. You should try it sometime.

No doubt there is the odd very leaky lock where it doesn’t work, but that can be identified by observing the leakage from the bottom. It does work for 99% of locks. It’s what we do all the time and virtually never has opening the top gate been problematic. We don’t like to rub the fender on the gate and Telemachus is a lively boy with an enormous … propeller. So there wouldn’t be time to do that without fender to gate contact. But as I said to Brian, what we do works flawlessly and expeditiously for us. I can’t remember the last time we had to re-open the offside paddle. You should try it sometime!

Travelling between 10pm and 4 am always makes for a peaceful trip! Anyway, you should see it on the CMer’s “Swap Around Tuesday!”.

We don’t have any ladies on our boat! (Other than guests, of course). We find closing the offside paddle, then crossing over and opening the gate, perfectly satisfactory with no desperate pushing, provided it’s timed correctly. Otherwise the steerer has to walk back from the paddle to the helm and then start the boat moving, by which point the gate operator is thinking “why didn’t he get the boat moving when he could see that the gate was being opened?”. I was mildly amused by a couple of fairly beefy chaps on the twin bottom gates yesterday at Stockton Brook, who had foolishly closed both paddles and then struggled to open the bottom gates. Lots of sweating and grunting ensued. I forbore to point out their error (must have been in a good mood!)

Have you ever thought of getting a job working with the Samaritans? Ideally suited, I’d say.

I think it was an opposite direction passing.

They were probably angry that you didn’t give them anything to be angry about.

Keep going in gear at normal speed* and move over quite late, to avoid a prolonged period in the shallows. Only move over enough to avoid contact. It is better to be 6” from the other boat and 6’ from the bank, than the other way round. Some people love to criticise others and look down on people not in their little clique of boat type ownership. They are bad people! My pet hate is selfish and inconsiderate people, which it seems you are not. Everyone has to learn and it takes a bit of time. In fact I’ve been canal boating for over 50 years and I’m still learning! Maybe I’m a slow learner😞 * cruisers don’t displace much water so no need to slow down. In a deeper narrowboat you might want to slow down to avoid sucking away too much water and getting nearer the bottom. You might also want to adjust speed so that your passing of the other boat coincides with a slightly wider (or less narrow) bit,

The connection between the mains earth and the hull is there for safety reasons. Having that connection introduces the possibility of earth currents causing corrosion, and that is why a GI is inserted. So not having the hull connected to mains earth presents no issues with corrosion, only electrical safety. There could of course be another wire from the mains earth to the hull, eg from within the consumer unit. You should be able to check for continuity between an unpainted/uncorroded part of the hull, and the mains earth, using a multimeter set to resistance. The resistance should be very close to zero of course. Bonding the (GI boat side of the) mains earth to the engine is not a good idea as many engines are on rubber mounts, and so any continuity to the hull is by rather dodgy paths such as the exhaust, prop shaft, control cables etc. There should be a dedicated wire from the boat side mains earth to the hull, terminating in a stud or bolt (not drilled through the hull obviously!) to ensure proper electrical safety.

Barrus recommends API CD/SF. Which is very old school. We have a Beta 43 (Kubota engine) with about 5000 hrs and I use API CC/SF oil, which is even older school. Our engine doesn’t give even the hint of smoking and the oil level doesn’t move on the dipstick between 250 hr oil changes. The engine spends quite a lot of time at idle, and at normal canal speeds is probably at about 10% of max power, although heavy electrical generation and rivers can increase this. Since experimenting with oil can be a one way trip, I wouldn’t propose any change and would advise other people to stick with “low grade” mineral oils. You have talked a lot about your experience with engines, but you haven’t mentioned any personal experience with narrowboat diesel engines. Do you own a narrowboat, and if so which engine and how many hours have you put on it?

I did quote your reply and that was because I was responding to it. This is normal practice on a forum. I was not accusing you of giving bad advice because I don’t think you were giving advice. You did however comment on issues the detail of which were not relevant to narrowboat engines, just as you have done in your latest post about high performance motorbike engines. And of course I totally agree with your point about running in motorcycle engines “not too gently”. I disagree with your point about using a semi-synthetic oil in a narrowboat engine that spends a huge amount of time at idle or very low power. And I disagree not from knowledge acquired personally, but from reading the various manufacturer’s advice, which for example recommends a rating no greater than API CF. which is pretty old fashioned low spec. Perhaps you are better informed than the engine manufacturers, but I find that a bit difficult to believe. As a further aside I am familiar with aircraft piston engines, we recently fitted a new Lycoming 6 litre 4 cylinder engine. It’s a 1950s design really (though still being made) and the manufacturer refers to “breaking in” not “running in”, and with straight mineral oil and, from new after a brief period of warming the oil, going straight to full power or at least 75% of full power and holding that for 2 hours. Only after 50 hrs of use is it permitted to change the oil for multigrade. Anyway, all waffle aside, narrowboat engines are run with old fashioned low spec mineral oil. Which can be quite hard to get. That’s it.

Where did I say you did? One of premises of your post seemed to be that with modern synthetic or semisynthetic oils, sludge build up didn't happen. Which is of course true. However as I mentioned, 95% of boat engines owned by people on here run on mineral oil. Therefore your post might be misleading to people who didn’t fully understand the significance, including the OP. My aim therefore was to add clarity and hopefully prevent misunderstanding.

Narrowboat engines including relatively modern ones like our Beta 43, aren’t and shouldn’t be run on synthetic or semi-synthetic oil, they are run on mineral oil.

Nasty. Hopefully you reported the accident to CRT?

Fuel filter because a new boat may well have swarf and other debris in the tank and pipework. If it’s a new engine in an old boat, I wouldn’t bother. We have limited clearance under the gearbox so for that, I pump out via the dipstick as much as possible, then insert a shallow tray (not big enough to hold all the oil) and undo the drain plug. The engine has a built in pump which sucks via a modified sump plug so using that is as effective as removing the sump plug.

With a modern battery charger left on, powered by the inverter or shore power, once the BT battery is fully charged and the charger goes to float, the power drain will be minimal. So I don’t see it as an issue when out cruising, nor when on shore power. If you were going to leave the boat on the towpath for an extended period, one would switch the inverter off and then no power drain. Unless that happened a lot and you switched the power off very shortly after mooring (which is unlikely because most people wander around doing stuff for a while before leaving the boat for an extended period of time on the towpath) I can’t see it as a problem, and no worse a problem than charging at 12v DC over long fat cables via a VSR. We don’t have a BT but if we did, I would want it charged by a local mains charger.

Assuming the boat has a weed hatch, the trivially easy way to measure static draft is to hook a tape measure under the skeg via the weed hatch, and note the water line on the tape measure.

I would say the depth quoted relates to clearance over the lock cills. The actual river is going to be very variable, but I would be confident that most of it is a lot more than 3’7”

Oh yes sorry, I didn’t read it properly! As you say it’s a 24v system so multiply the numbers I gave by 2 if measuring across both batteries, or measure one battery at a time and use the figures I gave.

Using a multimeter across the battery terminals is definitely the best way to check. You should expect over 14v if the charger is working and the batteries are not unduly flat. 13v or less means the charger is not working (or the batteries are very flat).

I had noticed, but with the standard of spelling and grammar on here being far below that to which we are accustomed on TB, I didn’t bother to mention it.