Jump to content

Braunston to Oxford


Darrenroberts

Featured Posts

Hi there, Iam currently moored in braunston marina and it's a question of left or right. Id like to go left to Cropready and on to Oxford but Iam in a old working boat and my largest point (at the rear chine) is 7ft 1" the rest o the boat is 7ft she's a wobbly old thing. Now the canal and river trust dimensions say the locks at napton are 7ft wide. But has any working boat owners managed to get down them. Any help will be greatly apreshiated. Thanks. Darren 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Large Woolwiches and large Northwiches are not uncommon down the Oxford. Lock number 9 (the second lock which you will encounter on the Napton flight) is the pinch point. If you can get through that, then the rest should be ok I believe. If not, it will be a quarter mile reverse to the winding hole to get back to where you belong.

Edited by billS
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Seen an old working boat down there, past the deep lock a few weeks ago... No idea of the size though.

 

As Bill says, lock 2 is marked up as being tighter than the rest in the flight, there was one gate further down, past banbury i recall that would not open all the way when i went through, sorry cant remember which one, also one of the top gates has a sign saying the arm stocks into the lock when open, again i cant remember which lock.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Quite a few ex Grand Union boats do fail the test at Napton it seems, though I believe more get through than fail.

We have not tried either Sickle (probably OK) or Flamingo (probably NOT OK) down the Southern Oxford yet, so I have no recent practical experience.

I do know that Pisces failed a couple of years back, having managed it in the past.  They didn't know whether the lock had narrowed or Pisces had spread, (or both!).

I think Fade to Scarlet of this Forum did recently bring Willow up Napton locks, but that's a Severner, and I'm not sure of its quoted or known width.

It might help if you told us what boat you have.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

32 minutes ago, alan_fincher said:

Quite a few ex Grand Union boats do fail the test at Napton it seems, though I believe more get through than fail.

We have not tried either Sickle (probably OK) or Flamingo (probably NOT OK) down the Southern Oxford yet, so I have no recent practical experience.

I do know that Pisces failed a couple of years back, having managed it in the past.  They didn't know whether the lock had narrowed or Pisces had spread, (or both!).

I think Fade to Scarlet of this Forum did recently bring Willow up Napton locks, but that's a Severner, and I'm not sure of its quoted or known width.

It might help if you told us what boat you have.

Thanks for the response Alan, I've got priston the front half of a converted bantock 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...

The problems are usually on the way down. The lock has a slight banana which was worked on 2 years ago. I've been behind a boat called sycamore twice that gets stuck....there is a way to flush it out using a wave sent down to the next lock gates and as it comes back,  opening the top paddles. After a few goes it pops out. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 7/21/2017 at 16:42, Darrenroberts said:

Thanks for the response Alan, I've got priston the front half of a converted bantock 

 

I think Alan meant tell us the boat name. The members here are quite likely to know if your boat has passed through the Napton flight at any point in the past, i.e. before you bought it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 7/21/2017 at 16:42, Darrenroberts said:

Thanks for the response Alan, I've got priston the front half of a converted bantock 

 

4 minutes ago, Mike the Boilerman said:

I think Alan meant tell us the boat name. The members here are quite likely to know if your boat has passed through the Napton flight at any point in the past, i.e. before you bought it.

 

But "Priston" is the boat name!

 

There is 1 record that matches your query


Priston Built by Bantock - Length : 13.716 metres ( 45 feet ) - Beam : 2.083 metres ( 6 feet 10 inches ) - Draft : 0.01 metres ( 0 feet ). Metal hull N/A power of 999 HP. Registered with Canal & River Trust number 70524 as a Powered Motor Boat.  ( Last updated on Wednesday 22nd May 2013 )

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 minute ago, alan_fincher said:

 

 

But "Priston" is the boat name!

 

There is 1 record that matches your query


Priston Built by Bantock - Length : 13.716 metres ( 45 feet ) - Beam : 2.083 metres ( 6 feet 10 inches ) - Draft : 0.01 metres ( 0 feet ). Metal hull N/A power of 999 HP. Registered with Canal & River Trust number 70524 as a Powered Motor Boat.  ( Last updated on Wednesday 22nd May 2013 )

Well with 999 hp it ought to be able to push its way into and out of the lock!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Unfortunately it seems that boats you would not expect to get stuck in the Napton flight now are>

If reports on Facebook are correct then the shortened "Carnaby" got inextricably stuck in Lock 9 yesterday, and I have not heard an update that suggests that it still isn't.

EDIT:

Correction: Apparently Carnaby has now been freed by lowering the pound - not clear from posts though if she is now the right side of the lock, or the wrong one

Edited by alan_fincher
Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 minutes ago, Mike the Boilerman said:

 

Lol, I thought it was a typo I was being too dense to decipher! 

I might have thought owners of shortened & converted BCN day boats might have recognised the names of some of the others!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

9 minutes ago, alan_fincher said:

I might have thought owners of shortened & converted BCN day boats might have recognised the names of some of the others!

 

I thought Bantocks were a different thing... are you saying you think one of mine is a converted Bantock too?

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 minute ago, Mike the Boilerman said:

 

I thought Bantocks were a different thing... are you saying you think one of mine is a converted Bantock too?

 

????

Thought yours was a "Hotholer", (but only because I thought that was what you had said).

In my vocabulary both "Bantocks" and "Hotholers" are BCN day boats.

(I'll carefully avoid the use of "Joey", as I know it is a much disputed term as to what qualifies as a true "Joey"!)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I thought Bantock was a specific builder rather than a style of hull. 

Yes I have been told it is an 'ot 'oler', and curiously I was told this again the other day as it had an iron bottom. Pete Harrison said it was built by someone other than Bantock though. Or is that missing the point?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I boat that is not full length stands a far better chance getting through a pinch hole than one that is.

As you can move the boat up and down the lock to avoid the restriction, however if the gates are sitting back in their recess then it's all pointless.

I've taken boats in excess of 7ft beam up and down without problem, but things can change on a yearly basis.  It's amazing to think that in the 80s John & Sue Yates were regularly charging up and down there with Barnham and Angel fully loaded to sell coal on The Thames.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

How about a new section on the forum "Pinch Points" with maybe a separate topic for each canal/river. This could become a valuable source of information rather than just the usual hot air that makes up a lot of forum content.:D

If all of us with big boats tried to asses various locks etc as we passed through them then we could build a good database. I appreciate this will only ever be approximate as shape is also a factor.

This is a hot topic for me at present as we are on the Avon and are right on the length limit, getting through some locks with less than an inch to spare, reversing others. We helped a hire boat stuck in Smethwick recently so it is relevant to a lot of boaters. Spend winters on the K&A which is a bit short, and have been stuck in Hurlston as we are a bit wide too.

..............Dave

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, alan_fincher said:

Unfortunately it seems that boats you would not expect to get stuck in the Napton flight now are>

If reports on Facebook are correct then the shortened "Carnaby" got inextricably stuck in Lock 9 yesterday, and I have not heard an update that suggests that it still isn't.

EDIT:

Correction: Apparently Carnaby has now been freed by lowering the pound - not clear from posts though if she is now the right side of the lock, or the wrong one

Carnaby is now moored at Napton Junction if that answers the question. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

We saw her 2 weekends ago moored round the corner from the Folly. I thought her an odd-looking thing; a BW workboat with the standard blue toolshed on top, but with bows which looked as if they came from an old working boat. Did they?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 minutes ago, Athy said:

We saw her 2 weekends ago moored round the corner from the Folly. I thought her an odd-looking thing; a BW workboat with the standard blue toolshed on top, but with bows which looked as if they came from an old working boat. Did they?

The whole hull came from an old working boat.  Before being modified as a shortended maintenance tug, Carnaby was a full length "Town" Class Harland and Wolff "Large Woolwich".

What makes her unusual is....

1) When doing the conversion, BW reduced the hull height for part of the boat

2) The owners decided they would leave it as BW converted it, (including the modern "spaceship" cabin, and would not attempt to restore it back to a former appearance, (a great decision in my view, as many boats got modern cabins, but few have been preseved that way).

She is a lovely thing to me, but perhaps not to the tastes of everybody.

(I can't find who to credit this image to)

8408246489_db380af3d4_b.jpg
 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 minutes ago, cuthound said:

Obviously the inspiration for the lowered gunwales and large windows that some hire boats display. :D

Well even more so when they decided to do this.....

The modifications to the "Slough's" hull shown here were made by BW when they turned it into a kind of directors' floating saloon or inspection launch.....

IMG_6793.JPG

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, alan_fincher said:

The whole hull came from an old working boat.  Before being modified as a shortended maintenance tug, Carnaby was a full length "Town" Class Harland and Wolff "Large Woolwich".

What makes her unusual is....

1) When doing the conversion, BW reduced the hull height for part of the boat

2) The owners decided they would leave it as BW converted it, (including the modern "spaceship" cabin, and would not attempt to restore it back to a former appearance, (a great decision in my view, as many boats got modern cabins, but few have been preseved that way).

She is a lovely thing to me, but perhaps not to the tastes of everybody.

(I can't find who to credit this image to)

8408246489_db380af3d4_b.jpg
 

Thank you, Alan, for that information. I won't go as far as "lovely", but will reach "distinctive", "authentic" (of the era which she represents) and even "unique".

I think I have seen 'Slough' and assumed that she was an ex-hire boat; was it the Concoform "Weed Boats" which had that trip-you-over cut-out in the gunwales?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.