How do they go so slowly?

[Col_T]

17 hours ago, Rebotco said:

one of the continuous moorers venturing out into unfamiliar territory.

on the western K&A? Contradiction in terms, surely?!

[The Welsh Cruiser]

18 hours ago, Wanderer Vagabond said:

For the second time in a week I've found myself behind a chronically slow boat and I'm getting curious just how people can go so slowly.Now I am in no particular rush and on the first occasion, 10 days ago on the GU near Nether Heyford I just moored up for the day and left them to it. Today I caught up with another boat going at the same speed (slooooow). Now running my boat at the slowest it will go (about 900rpm on the tachometer, less than 2mph on the satnav) I just repeatedly kept catching up with them. The only 'solution' was to run in gear for a bit, then knock into neutral and drift for a bit and keep repeating (which gets a bit tedious). The query is just how do boats go that slowly (less than half my tickover speed)? Do they fit them with tiny propellers? do they have specially low gears in their gearbox they can change to? how do they do it? (and why).

I'd imagine the boat probably had a small engine and was running on tickover. Tickover on my boat is around 1mph. 

 

Small engines are fine on canals. After all, we're navigating narrow mostly fairly sheltered canals with little or no flow. This is not the Roaring Forties with 10 metre waves, 6 knot current and the waters interspersed with jagged reefs. In any case, there's no 'speed buzz' to be obtained from navigating on canals, unless your threshold to 'buzzing' is vanishingly small.    

[Mike Tee]

Part of the problem is that the pillock creeping along looks back and sees a row of boats also creeping along so he feels chuffed to bits because he is doing what everybody else is doing.

We have  all held back hoping the pillock will wave us on, but we are actually encouraging him to carry on. We need to ride right up to his counter and virtually push him out of the way - not polite, not nice, but neither is he.

But I don’t suppose I will!!

[Tracy D'arth]

I just pull in and have a brew, why get wound up because someone else is doing what they want to do?  If your boat is not capable of being controlled at one MPH than its either you or the boat that is defective. Most have rudders that are too small, you should be to steer quite well with the power off as long as it is not windy.

BMC 1.8, 2 to 1 box 18 X 10.5 Crowther wide blade prop 650 rpm tick over.

[Alan de Enfield]

14 minutes ago, Tracy D'arth said:

you should be to steer quite well with the power off

I'd be interested to receive some instruction in how to steer 'quite well' with the 'power off' & no water movement over the rudder.

[Tracy D'arth]

Boat moving forward, slowing down, will still steer if the rudder is sufficient. Ellums worked quite well with no engine chucking water back.

[nicknorman]

5 hours ago, IanD said:

I had a very similar experience (me on a hire boat, him and SOH on a *very* shiny private boat) on the Trent & Mersey this year -- crawling along studiously ignoring me, refusing to let me get past (plenty of spaces) when asked (I had to get somewhere for dinner, last night before boat return), turning round and shouting "It's not a race!" when I got close passing moored boats (even tickover was too fast, kept having to drop out of gear) -- then after a couple of hours he stopped to wind in a marina to go back home, made me wait until he'd completely turned round (when he could have signalled me past while off the main line), then gave me a mouthful of abuse and challenged me to "sort it out" with him on the towpath when I pointed out that what he'd been doing wasn't good boating etiquette, and that the previous day I'd pulled over to let a boat past who obviously had to get somewhere faster than I did and had been catching me up.

 

His view was basically that he was out for a gentle pootle and wasn't in a hurry and everyone else should damn well do the same whether they liked it or not, because he was right and they were wrong, and he certainly wasn't going to be told otherwise by some oik on a hire boat, and would I like my face smashing in to prove it.

 

Muppet.

I think I might have been tempted to forgo dinner to discover where he was moored, then “de-shined” his boat a bit.

[IanD]

Just now, nicknorman said:

I think I might have been tempted to forgo dinner to discover where he was moored, then “de-shined” his boat a bit.

Apart from the fact that I'm not that kind of person and he was big and aggressive, he was going back the other way and I had several miles still to go to a very nice (booked) final night dinner, which already meant a 7:30 start the next morning to get back to the boatyard.

 

Under different circumstances I might have been tempted. I did fantasise that it would have been wonderful if I'd been on a boat with a self-pump-out kit, I could have filled his shiny well deck right to the top... ?

[peterboat]

12 minutes ago, nicknorman said:

I think I might have been tempted to forgo dinner to discover where he was moored, then “de-shined” his boat a bit.

as my mate found out brillo pads do a cracking job de-shining his new Jag! his daughter thought she would help ?

[GUMPY]

I must admit to having parked my bow fender on the stern button of a slow boat before now.

Open water speeds are  850rpm (tickover) 2.5mph, 1000rpm 3mph, 1200rpm 4mph, 1400rpm 5mph. 1600rpm 6mph,1800rpm 7mph and that's about it as hull speed takes over.

Slower on shallow water so tickover is about 2mph. 

Yes its fekin annoying when eejits travel at less than 2mph.

Luckily since I have left the fetid ditches I don't see people travelling that slowly apart from on the middle level.

 

[Alan de Enfield]

23 minutes ago, Tracy D'arth said:

Boat moving forward, slowing down, will still steer if the rudder is sufficient. Ellums worked quite well with no engine chucking water back.

That's not what you said tho' was it !

 

So, you can only actually steer for a 'few yards' with the engine off.

 

[alias]

7 hours ago, Keeping Up said:

(how do you type three-quarters)

¾ is hold down Alt key while typing 0190

[cuthound]

2 hours ago, The Welsh Cruiser said:

I'd imagine the boat probably had a small engine and was running on tickover. Tickover on my boat is around 1mph. 

 

Small engines are fine on canals. After all, we're navigating narrow mostly fairly sheltered canals with little or no flow. This is not the Roaring Forties with 10 metre waves, 6 knot current and the waters interspersed with jagged reefs. In any case, there's no 'speed buzz' to be obtained from navigating on canals, unless your threshold to 'buzzing' is vanishingly small.    

 

You haven't braved Tixall Wide on a windy day then? ????

[robtheplod]

8 hours ago, cuthound said:

Last year I changed the prop fpr an 18" x 12" and it has transformed the ability to stop, without changing the tickover and cruising speeds much.

 

Interesting as we have an 18" prop but the stopping on Water Lily is pretty dire compared to our shareboat......

[Mike Todd]

2 hours ago, Alan de Enfield said:

I'd be interested to receive some instruction in how to steer 'quite well' with the 'power off' & no water movement over the rudder.

Fishtail?

[Alan de Enfield]

8 minutes ago, Mike Todd said:

Fishtail?

 

Vespa or Lambretta ?

 

 

[robtheplod]

39 minutes ago, Mike Todd said:

Fishtail?

ok, going to sound stupid here, whats fishtail?

[Tracy D'arth]

Wagging your stick

[blackrose]

22 hours ago, Wanderer Vagabond said:

 The query is just how do boats go that slowly (less than half my tickover speed)? Do they fit them with tiny propellers? do they have specially low gears in their gearbox they can change to? how do they do it? (and why).

 

I did it by having the prop repitched ostensibly to give me more engine revs as it was overpitched previously. However, as well as giving me more power the repitch has allowed me to go a bit slower in gear at idle, which is often very handy when you're following someone who's travelling far too slowly! ?

 

But seriously it is handy to be able to pass moored boats without being shouted at or approach locks and moorings tentatively.

Edited October 13, 2020 by blackrose

[Steve56]

22 hours ago, Alan de Enfield said:

 

Our Boat was ex-hire from Welton, it had a 3:1 gearbox on the Lister LPWS4 which meant it was rev-ing quite fast (and noisy) at cruising speed.

Gearbox ratio should not make any difference to boat speed as long as the correct propeller is fitted. Sounds like the boat may have had a 3-1 gearbox , but the propeller was to suit a 2-1 gearbox.

[blackrose]

4 hours ago, The Welsh Cruiser said:

 

Small engines are fine on canals. After all, we're navigating narrow mostly fairly sheltered canals with little or no flow. This is not the Roaring Forties with 10 metre waves, 6 knot current and the waters interspersed with jagged reefs. In any case, there's no 'speed buzz' to be obtained from navigating on canals, unless your threshold to 'buzzing' is vanishingly small.    

 

Don't you ever feel like venturing out away from the canals to some more dynamic and interesting waterways?

 

I know it's a canal forum but I'm always amazed at the number of boaters who don't seem to have any experience of navigating rivers. At least that's the impression many give by limiting everything they say to canals. For me, the most enjoyable boating I've done is dealing with tides and currents.

[Wanderer Vagabond]

5 hours ago, The Welsh Cruiser said:

I'd imagine the boat probably had a small engine and was running on tickover. Tickover on my boat is around 1mph. 

 

Small engines are fine on canals. After all, we're navigating narrow mostly fairly sheltered canals with little or no flow. This is not the Roaring Forties with 10 metre waves, 6 knot current and the waters interspersed with jagged reefs. In any case, there's no 'speed buzz' to be obtained from navigating on canals, unless your threshold to 'buzzing' is vanishingly small.    

There wasn't any urge to 'speed buzz' the simple fact is that, whilst in drive, my boat is physically incapable of travelling that slowly, hence having to repeatedly put it into gear and then kick it out of gear again, which was why I asked the question of just how they get their boats to go that slowly.

 

I'm quite content for anyone to travel at whatever speed they wish, but it seems selfish to impose their choice on others. As I said in the OP, the first occasion I was caught behind a slow boat, I just moored up for the day and left them to it. For someone else who may have  paid a shedload to hire a boat and want to get to a pub for the night, or back to their hire base on time, why should they have to sit behind someone who, frankly, makes cruising a boring exercise when you could comfortably walk twice as fast.

 

I spent the summer on the Great Ouse where the speed limit is often 7mph, my boat doesn't have a hope in hell of ever getting to that speed under it's own power, (it's gone a lot faster on a tide but that is a different situation). I made sure I was constantly aware of any faster cruisers coming up behind me and got out of their way and waved all of them past. I even moved over for rowers to come past but without realising that they have no conception of navigation since they want to pass on whatever side they feel like, instead of correctly passing on the port side, so sometimes we got a bit close to collisions (down to their lack of observation).

[Wanderer Vagabond]

5 hours ago, Tracy D'arth said:

I just pull in and have a brew, why get wound up because someone else is doing what they want to do?  If your boat is not capable of being controlled at one MPH than its either you or the boat that is defective. Most have rudders that are too small, you should be to steer quite well with the power off as long as it is not windy.

BMC 1.8, 2 to 1 box 18 X 10.5 Crowther wide blade prop 650 rpm tick over.

 On the one hand you say that if a boat can't be controlled at 1mph it is either the helm or the boat that is at fault, and then state that most rudders are too small, too small for what , to control a drifting boat at 1 mph properly? Other than the traditional boats with hoofing great rudders, pretty much all narrow boats these days have small rudders because steerage is achieved by diverting the thrust of the water coming from the propeller, take that away and steerage becomes minimal on a 60' boat. When you talk of 'fishtailing' the purpose of that is to slow a boat down (as it apparently used to be done with aircraft I understand), 'pumping'  the rudder can move the back across a bit, but it is nothing like steerage.

[The Welsh Cruiser]

12 minutes ago, Wanderer Vagabond said:

why should they have to sit behind someone who, frankly, makes cruising a boring exercise when you could comfortably walk twice as fast.

You dismissed a speed buzz but now it seems going slowly is boring. Why is going 1 or at the most 2 mph faster than a boring activity not boring?

[Wanderer Vagabond]

Just now, The Welsh Cruiser said:

You dismissed a speed buzz but now it seems going slowly is boring. Why is going 1 or at the most 2 mph faster than a boring activity not boring?

Because, rather than appreciating the scenery, watching the wildlife and looking out for interesting architecture, I'm constantly having to put the boat in and out of drive to stop it running into the boat in front, that isn't cruising, that is a PITA.