Looking for concise list WIDEBEAM pinch points when in the south

[frangar]

13 minutes ago, David Schweizer said:

 

That is a bit of a misnomer. The K&A is more like a narrow canal with wide locks, built to accomodate the Honey Street barges, which had Barrel shaped hulls. The canal profile is also barrel shaped in many places, which restricts the operational width for flat sided hulls. When I moored near Dundas, I witnessed quite a few widebeams run hard aground whilst still some six feet away from the offside bank.

 

 

The trouble is that modern thinking seems to be that if a boat fits through a lock it fits the navigation regardless of profile both above & below water…the constant gouging of the puddle layer can do as much damage as the cabin hitting the bridges. 

[David Mack]

15 minutes ago, David Schweizer said:

The K&A is more like a narrow canal with wide locks, built to accomodate the Honey Street barges, which had Barrel shaped hulls.

Were there any wide canal boats built with the square hull cross section of narrowboats in the time when canals were bring built, and boats were wooden? I suspect not, due to the difficulty of finding sufficient planks long enough to go across the boat width, and the lack of stiffness that would result.  

I reckon flat bottomed wide boats only became a practical proposition on later larger canals, where the canal construction was more mechanised and the boats were built of iron or steel.

[Captain Pegg]

2 hours ago, David Mack said:

Were there any wide canal boats built with the square hull cross section of narrowboats in the time when canals were bring built, and boats were wooden? I suspect not, due to the difficulty of finding sufficient planks long enough to go across the boat width, and the lack of stiffness that would result.  

I reckon flat bottomed wide boats only became a practical proposition on later larger canals, where the canal construction was more mechanised and the boats were built of iron or steel.

 

That's probably true but whether a fully loaded proper naval shaped wide beam carrying boat was less wide at any point below water than a modern box like wide beam with generally a very shallow water draft is debatable. And then there were likely very deep square hulled carrying narrow boats that routinely occupied spaces below water that neither of the above does or did.

 

ETA - Perhaps any difference would be that wide beam carrying boats weren't necessarily built to maximum dimensions. But what about the lighters that worked the Regents and up from Brentford?

Edited July 5, 2022 by Captain Pegg

[Bargebuilder]

I've seen it from both sides, as before we got our narrow beam, previously we had a replica Dutch barge.

 

Some 15 years ago we navigated between Bristol and the Thames along the K&A and found the entire trip to be very stressful. Firstly, at 12'6" the barge was just too beamy to comfortably cruise, never knowing if there'll be enough waterway width to allow passing around the next bend. Moored boats weren't such a problem then and wide beams to my memory were very rare, but we still struggled to squeeze through. 

 

Even at tickover, the volume of water displaced made moored boats move a little and there are some very angry folks on the K&A!

 

We got stuck in two lock entrances because poor maintenance prevented the gates from opening fully and we were halted by a low slung pipe that was under a foot bridge and wasn't documented.

 

The trip wasn't fun and we never ventured onto another canal with our barge.

 

In our narrow beam we do 4-500 miles each summer and we rarely meet a cruising widebeam, although we pass many dozens of them. They may on paper fit a canal, but in my opinion they are no fun to cruise and understandably are unpopular with narrow vessels.

 

As a static floating home they may be okay (if rather ugly) but in practice, having bought one, the owner is probably unlikely to want to cruise anywhere.