Ice

[Breals]

Cars share roads with bicycles, walkers share pavements with joggers, narrowboats share waterways with grp boats.... whats the big deal?

 

I have no problem with that, as long as GRP boat owners are aware they share the canals with liveaboards who cannot always avoid the need to cruise during prolonged icy weather, and choose appropriate off-line winter moorings or accept the small risk of damage.

 

Despite this I think we do have a responsibility to minimise the chance of this happening by passing extremely slowly and carefully.

Edited February 16, 2006 by Breals

[Richard Bustens]

I dont think it will matter how slowley you push a slab of ice 1 inch thick towards a plastic boat the outcome will be the same.

[Breals]

Doh! yes that's probably true.

 

I don't know how folk can cope with the anxiety of leaving a GRP boat moored out on the cut over winter. It would do my head in. I'd probably have to put protective boards round the sides of the hull or something.

[dor]

I'd probably have to put protective boards round the sides of the hull or something.

 

 

There is a wooden-hulled boat moored near Barbridge that does just that over the winter: i.e. fix boards round the hull on the waterline.

[GRPCruiserman]

Read the book again....... Quiet Waters By, David Blagrove (chapter 6 page 119)

 

The term Noddy Boater was was coined to label those owners of large, immaculately kept boats, "betraying a somewhat querulous, over protective attitude to their craft" ..........

 

With few exceptions the vast majority of canal based GRP cruisers are to my mind the antithesis of this.

 

Noddy boater is a good title, and here on The Lancaster there are certainly many many owners, mainly of Freeman cruisers who fall in to this catagory.

 

I must state that I most certainly do not, a boat is to be used, and it is necessary to accept a number of scratches etc ancilliary to cruising, but it is not necessary to accept holes in the hull!!

 

However, on The Lancaster, it has become a trend in recent years for adament Freeman owners to 'upgrade' to narrow boats. These boats are treated in the same way as the owners treated their Freemans, and we now have two, distinct, catagories of narrow boat owners as well, to use your term, 'Noddy' narrow boaters, and what we have actually termed 'Real' narrow boaters.

 

Our term for the 'Noddy' cruiser owners was 'Salad Boats', ie the cooker had never been lit due to fear of it becoming dirty. I know of a few Freeman owners who had two sets of fenders, a mucky set for locks, and another set that were left on the rest of the time. They even washed their ropes regularly in the maching machine in a pillow case!!

 

My boat gets a wash in the spring to get rid of the green stuff, and that generally does it for the year. The fenders dangle on their strings until they break off unnoticed in a lock, after which they are replaced by another fender for my bag of old ones built up over the years.

 

Don't lump us all in the same boat (pardon!!), there are us 'Real' cruiser owners as well.

 

[Breals]

My boat gets a wash in the spring to get rid of the green stuff

 

That's more than a lot of GRP boats round my way!

 

I have decided that I won't do any more cruising through ice, for fear of causing damage to other boats. But mainly because of the damage to my own blacking!

[Hairy-Neil]

Noddy boater is a good title, and here on The Lancaster there are certainly many many owners, mainly of Freeman cruisers who fall in to this catagory.

 

I must state that I most certainly do not, a boat is to be used, and it is necessary to accept a number of scratches etc ancilliary to cruising.......

 

 

.........however, the term spread to the canal system where to the working boat fraternity there are historic boats and Noddy boats.........

[DHutch]

... They even washed their ropes regularly in the maching machine in a pillow case!!

Haha, thats a good one!!

 

 

We have two sets of warps, the "summer" get taken off and put in the boat when we "put it to bed" for winter, and then we have a grotty old set to moor it over winter. So that the summer warps stay decent and last longer. Bu there still by now means clean, just not top UV knacked.

 

 

Daniel