Dry suit for unfouling the prop

[Thomas C King]

The weed hatch is rusted shut, and I'm too fat to get to it easily anyway. Does anyone have some suggested gear for keeping dry and warm enough whilst going into the canal? I see mixed reviews for dry suits on Amazon, would like to hear personal experiences.

 

It doesn't need to be expensive/top of the range, but if that's all there is then that's fine.

Edited November 29, 2021 by Thomas C King

[Alan de Enfield]

Just now, Thomas C King said:

The weed hatch is rusted shut, and I'm too fat to get to it easily anyway. Does anyone have some suggested gear for keeping dry and warm enough whilst going into the canal? I see mixed reviews for dry suits on Amazon, would like to hear personal experiences.

 

It doesn't need to be expensive/top of the range, but if that's all there is then that's fine.

 

A dry-suit will keep your body dry (but not your head or hands) but it will not keep you warm - your body will be at water temperature unnless you wear plenty of clothes - divers will generally wear a huggy-bear suit (a thick thermal onesie).

 

A good quality dry suit will be between £700 and £1400, if you are a bit 'chubbier than the norm' you may need one custom made. My No1 Son is currently having one made to fit, he is 6' 4" and a 54" chest (ex rugby Prop)

 

A secondhand £100 ish ebay one may well do for what you need, but be prepared to have to replace the seals on the neck, ankles and wrists (probably another £100) as they only last a year or two and then only if talcum powdered and stored correctly.

[Thomas C King]

5 minutes ago, Alan de Enfield said:

 

A dry-suit will keep your body dry (but not your head or hands) but it will not keep you warm - your body will be at water temperature unnless you wear plenty of clothes - divers will generally wear a huggy-bear suit (a thick thermal onesie).

 

A good quality dry suit will be between £700 and £1400, if you are a bit 'chubbier than the norm' you may need one custom made. My No1 Son is currently having one made to fit, he is 6' 4" and a 54" chest (ex rugby Prop)

 

A secondhand £100 ish ebay one may well do for what you need, but be prepared to have to replace the seals on the neck, ankles and wrists (probably another £100) as they only last a year or two and then only if talcum powdered and stored correctly.

 

Ah thanks, that pointed me in the right direction. Looks like I need an undersuit + drysuit. It seems a bit silly/expensive given I'll use it very rarely. Will try and come up with other options, maybe it's not even as cold as I think it is.

Edited November 29, 2021 by Thomas C King

[BEngo]

The easiest thing to do is to learn how to rake out a bladeful with a shaft from the bank. 

 

You want about an 8 ft shaft with a really well fastened end and  a  nice sharp pointed hook and a good point on the spear bit too.  I find it easiest to have either a low edge (full lock)  or to stop in a bridgehole.  A bit of ferkling with the shaft when there is nowt on the bats  will give you an idea of where the shaft and prop are, and what it should all feel like.  Then away you go when you have a bladeful. Rake, twist and ppull till it's clear.

 

OK, it doesn't work on spring mattresses.  Nothing short of getting in is likely to. The art there is to wait until September in a hot summer before picking up a mattress.  The canal will then  be as warm as it is going to get🤣

 

N

[Mike Adams]

Many of us have survived without a weed hatch for a long time. You need a decent long (12ft+) and strong boathook with a fairly sharp hook in it, a method of rotating the propshaft (large stilsons) and large set of bolt cutters. It is much easier to get to the propeller from the bank on a canal or most rivers. Unwinding the shaft can usually sort it. A plank resting on the rudder and bank can be used to lie on and use long  bolt cutters if it is something like a spring mattress. If you get fouled up on deep water a dry suit won't help and many canals can be surprisingly deep close to the bank. There are a few things that I have not managed to remove including a tyre around the prop and a log jammed between the counter and propeller without resorting to more severe action like drawing a pound off but these situations are extremely rare. I wouldn't have anything that is rusted up on a boat and in the case of a weed hatch I would sort it out even if I couldn't personally use it. I don't know the details but severe rust can cause bolts to give way suddenly and you could sink the boat! Another tip- if you have been going for a long distance, say on tidal waters don't suddenly go astern because rubbish builds up on the rudder and when you do reverse the prop gets it all. Just go in to neutral until the boat stops and let the rubbish come off before going astern.

[David Mack]

I'm with BEngo. Almost 30 years boating on boats without a weedhatch and I have been in less than half a dozen times. Short shaft with a hook does it most times, and is fairly easy once you have worked out the underwater layout and developed the technique.

Last time I went for full immersion was in 2018, to release a piece of netting with a 2 inch mesh and made of unbreakable polyester cord. And that was on just about the warmest day of the year!

[Alan de Enfield]

57 minutes ago, Thomas C King said:

maybe it's not even as cold as I think it is.

 

Correct - it is even colder !

[NB Alnwick]

We have a weed hatch but it is so awkward to get to that many years ago we just sealed it up with mastic and it has been blacked over ever since.

For the last fifteen years I have always used the boat hook to remove anything from the prop and this has usually worked - I have only had to get in and under a couple of times and a hot shower is a lot cheaper than a wetsuit!

[Thomas C King]

How are you guys seeing what's under there when using the boat hook, or are you just feeling for it? I am now thinking some kind of periscope (or endoscope?). I can't see a thing.

[Paul Evans]

I think the idea is to "feel" for the rubbish. It was suggested that you should have a "feel" when all is clear to find out what that means so that when you come to "feel" in earnest you will know if something is there or not.

Edited November 29, 2021 by Paul Evans

[David Mack]

Yup. All done by feel, except on the one occasion I got a bicycle inner tube around the prop shaft I could pull it enough that it just broke the surface alongside the counter. Wedged the pole in place then leaned over the side and cut through the rubber with a knife, and it pinged off under the boat, never to be seen again.

[Thomas C King]

Great thanks for all of the advice, saved me from a stupid purchase and hopefully I'll learn how to do it.

[NB Alnwick]

57 minutes ago, Thomas C King said:

Great thanks for all of the advice, saved me from a stupid purchase and hopefully I'll learn how to do it.

 

We all can learn from the ways and habits of generations of professional boaters. If we do, those years of experience will not be in vain.

And, they would not have known a 'weed hatch' even if they had one!

[Iain_S]

I have used an immersion suit a couple of times. The suit was salvaged from a ship going to the scrappers, and it did a good job of insulation from the water. Once was a car tyre round the prop and once for a log jammed between prop and counter. I don't think either could have been shifted from the bank, and certainly not from the weedhatch.

 

Similar suits seem to be £60 to £200 on eBay, or £75 HERE .

[magnetman]

Another thing is to sharpen the inside of the hook with a grinder to give it a blade edge. Some of the old boathooks I had with the magnet had received this treatment (probably forged like that and sharpened with file not an angle grinder though!)

 

 

Another approach I have used was to disconnect the proshaft from the gearbox and slide shaft back to loosen the entangled rope which prop had picked up from the canal bed. 

 

It's a bit risky doing that but makes it much easier to hoick out the rubbish with the cabin shaft. 

 

 

[blackrose]

On 29/11/2021 at 18:37, NB Alnwick said:

 

We all can learn from the ways and habits of generations of professional boaters. If we do, those years of experience will not be in vain.

And, they would not have known a 'weed hatch' even if they had one!

 

No one can know for sure, but I'd wager if they'd had one they'd probably have used it in preference to standing on the bank with a long handled contraption trying to hook stuff out that was wrapped around the prop. Why wouldn't you?

 

There's this myth perpetuated by some that all the old ways were always the best. That may be true in some cases but certainly not all. There was a time when we sent unfortunate kids up chimneys...

 

 

[NB Alnwick]

I very much doubt that they would have bothered themselves with undoing a weed hatch when a couple of minutes (at most) with the boat hook would have solved the problem.

Of course, our predecessors would have had more skill in these matters than most 21st Century leisure boaters.

[BEngo]

Another disadvantage of a weed hatch to a working boat family would be the loss of cool food storage space on the motor counter plate. 

 

N

[magpie patrick]

On 29/11/2021 at 13:55, Thomas C King said:

How are you guys seeing what's under there when using the boat hook, or are you just feeling for it? I am now thinking some kind of periscope (or endoscope?). I can't see a thing.

 Half the time you can't see it through the weedhatch either! 

I am pondering waders to get at Juno's outboard's delicate bits without having to take the outboard off - would they work for you?

[David Mack]

3 hours ago, BEngo said:

Another disadvantage of a weed hatch to a working boat family would be the loss of cool food storage space on the motor counter plate. 

 

N

And the fact that access to get in there and to be able to reach down to the prop is pretty awful. On a lot of working boats the distance between the counter plate and the deck is a lot less than on modern narrowboats, due to the correspondingly greater depth below the counter, to accommodate a larger prop.

[Mad Harold]

1 hour ago, magpie patrick said:

 Half the time you can't see it through the weedhatch either! 

I am pondering waders to get at Juno's outboard's delicate bits without having to take the outboard off - would they work for you?

I simply tilt the outboard up and find as the engine bits are in the outboard well, I can get at all the parts necessary.

I can only think that waders would be required only to replace the impeller,providing the outboard leg will come up far enough,if not then the engine has to come off.

I have not done it,but I have been told that if you don't have access to a ramp,a rope around the outboard and two gorillas can hoist it into the cockpit.

[Squires]

I recently had the weed hatch open twice in one week. First time was a length of wire that had also managed to gather in a ball of aquatic vegetation. The second was a mass of chicken wire with a couple of small pieces of wood, I'm guessing at one time it was a chicken or rabbit run. Both times I tried in vain to clear the mess from the comfort  of towpath rather than putting my hands into the cold water. I am so glad for the weed hatch, even in the summer some canals feel rather chilly, in mid December on the shroppie the water was cold enough to numb my fingers after about 10 mins. Working by feel with a pair of cable cutters in one hand, not feeling what you're cutting is not good. So I found myself warming my hands back to life before completing the job. Any thoughts of doing away with the weed hatch needs careful consideration about your cruising especially if you cruise 12 months of the year.

[Mad Harold]

A tip I got from another boater was to pour a kettle of boiling water into the weed hatch before putting your hand in.

[cheesegas]

We helped the owners of a new-ish 40' NB shaped like a Dutch barge last winter...they literally bumped into us having lost propulsion out of a lock. It was built without a weed hatch, they'd picked up what looked like a mains extension lead in the prop and it had bound it up. It could probably have been resolved with a small saw through the weed hatch - we helped them bolt a sharpened hook and then a saw to the end of a piece of scaffold, but after a day of fumbling it they gave up. Ended up getting towed to get craned out the water. I have no idea why you'd choose to have a boat built for the canals without one...

[Mad Harold]

55 minutes ago, cheesegas said:

We helped the owners of a new-ish 40' NB shaped like a Dutch barge last winter...they literally bumped into us having lost propulsion out of a lock. It was built without a weed hatch, they'd picked up what looked like a mains extension lead in the prop and it had bound it up. It could probably have been resolved with a small saw through the weed hatch - we helped them bolt a sharpened hook and then a saw to the end of a piece of scaffold, but after a day of fumbling it they gave up. Ended up getting towed to get craned out the water. I have no idea why you'd choose to have a boat built for the canals without one...

I knew someone with a Dutch Barge without a weed hatch and a overhanging stern,with a duvet around the prop.

After many failed attempts to clear it,in desperation he drained a pound and spent a couple of hours in the mud pulling bits of duvet off his prop.

He got a major rollocking from CRT!