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Narrowboat at sea adventure


rgreg

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27 minutes ago, blackrose said:

I just get popups and warnings when I click on that link.

Oh sorry,  photobucket must have changed their settings. I have posted it on here successfully a few years ago. I'll leave it to see if it's visible to anybody but will delete if not working. It works for me but probably because it's my account. 

Edit- just seen Wotever's reply so I'll leave it.

Edited by rgreg
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1 hour ago, rgreg said:

Oh sorry,  photobucket must have changed their settings. I have posted it on here successfully a few years ago. I'll leave it to see if it's visible to anybody but will delete if not working. It works for me but probably because it's my account. 

Edit- just seen Wotever's reply so I'll leave it.

I get to the photobucket site but only see a few stills of canals and someone trying to flog me a sofa or 3.....but then I am a muppet and not very clever.

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Ouch! The pitching motion looks much worse than the rolling.

I think the point about stability is that as a narrowboat rolls, the centre of the upthrust moves sideways, towards the side that is deepest in the water. (Archimedes principle etc) and this causes the boat to level out. This is not the case with eg a sailing boat which is basically closer to a cylinder shape, and the weighted keel is the only thing that keeps it upright. 

To put it another way, in this over-simplified view of the world:

  • when a NB rolls to the right, the upthrust moves, to the right of the centre of gravity of the boat, on the centre line. The moving upthrust  tips it back up
  • when a sailing boat rolls to the right, the upthrust remains through the centre line of the boat, but the centre of gravity moves to the left (due to the movement of the heavy keel), and that stops the boat tipping over too far. 

 

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23 hours ago, Fender151 said:

The services used to operate a Landing Craft Logistic (LCT) between North Uist and St Kilda, which is 52 nautical miles NW of Stornoway heading out to Iceland. An LCT is a flat-bottomed boat, i believe around 200 tons. The cruise takes around 8 hours. they use an LCT because the ship has to beach land, no jetty on the Island.

 

On many occasions the seas are too high which means the LCT can beach and has to either standoff, so this is a flat bottom boat, in the Irish Sea, in storms, or return to Uist, You'd think that having jettisoned the contents of gut on outbound trip the return trip couldn't really get any worse, you would, in fact, be so very wrong, stuff of nightmares.  

So to conclude, based on my previous experience, would I take my NB on a journey on lumpy waters, not all the time I have a hole in my arse.

 

Couldnt agree more after my 15 hours on the tidal trent in full flood ... as for the stability of landing craft, when we arrived in the south atlantic our first casualty was a guy who shot himself in the foot as the LC's were bouncing up and down by 4 to 6 feet! 

Rick 

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I dont know how well this relates to narrowboats but - 

A very narrow racing canoe handles much netter in choppy water than a wide touring canoe. The wide boat has to follow the shape of every wave, causing it to roll and pitch heavily. A thin racing boat largely ignores side waves, it just lifts up and down but does not roll. And with waves from front and back, the relative lack of buoyancy means it cuts through the wave rather than climbing and falling. This often catches out less experienced paddlers, they buy a boat that feels solid on a canal and then they head out onto a river or lake and they can't handle it. 

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1 hour ago, Murflynn said:

C&RT's fault - they omitted to put warning signs on the downstream side of that weir.  Can't blame the driver for trying.  Mind you he must have been planing to get that far up the steps.

No, you always go down a weir backwards so if the boat gets stuck you have a chance of the prop being in the water to help get it off.

They just went down when there wasn't enough fresh on the river. 

The L&L boatmen used to do this down the weir at Leeds Lock with empty shortboats on a Monday morning to avoid the queues for the lock, but only if there was enough water!

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Which reminds me:

Alan, who told me about the weir running, has some hair raising tales about crossing the Mersey on a fully laden shortboat with waves breaking over the tops of the cloths and the gunwales 3" under water.  As he couldn't swim it made for an exciting first crossing! 

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4 hours ago, TheBiscuits said:

No, you always go down a weir backwards so if the boat gets stuck you have a chance of the prop being in the water to help get it off.

They just went down when there wasn't enough fresh on the river. 

The L&L boatmen used to do this down the weir at Leeds Lock with empty shortboats on a Monday morning to avoid the queues for the lock, but only if there was enough water!

When there was enough fresh and the right conditions Cromwell lock was sometimes  by passed and boats went downhill over the weir back in the 30s anyway as my Father used to live/work out of Goole down to Nottingham from 1934 till the war, they did however not go over stern first in that location. They used to take various stuff including steel down to the old wharf near the Park yacht club but that's all gone now.

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1 minute ago, mrsmelly said:

When there was enough fresh and the right conditions Cromwell lock was sometimes  by passed and boats went downhill over the weir back in the 30s anyway as my Father used to live/work out of Goole down to Nottingham from 1934 till the war, they did however not go over stern first in that location. They used to take various stuff including steel down to the old wharf near the Park yacht club but that's all gone now.

Alan says that if you have enough fresh to go over Leeds weir forwards you probably don't want to be spinning an empty boat around on the river!  I suspect it's all about the shape of the weir itself though.

Tom Puddings don't seem to like Castleford weir, and they don't even have to worry about the prop!

 

20170820_202711.jpg

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11 hours ago, TheBiscuits said:

Alan says that if you have enough fresh to go over Leeds weir forwards you probably don't want to be spinning an empty boat around on the river!  I suspect it's all about the shape of the weir itself though.

Tom Puddings don't seem to like Castleford weir, and they don't even have to worry about the prop!

 

20170820_202711.jpg

In the seventies there was a barge on Cas weir with prop attached for a surprisingly long time, in fact a few years until one day it disappeared when scrap prices had risen considerably.  I worked in Castleford in 1971 and it was at the rear of the shop were I worked and it was part of my foot beat and was there when I was a bobby there in 79 onwards. The foto you have here is very recent though with the footbridge that's recently been erected. In the fifties and right through to the eighties at that location amongst others you would have been confronted with masses of suds caused by pollution. It used to pile up several feet high all along Aire street. About a mile further downstream from that location is a named bend on the river called " soapsuds corner " because of the problem.

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That's the Thomas, a short boat built by Harkers of Knottingley,for Walter Holden, a Skipton coal merchant.She replaced a steamer, and although there is debate about whether she actually had a steam engine, I am pretty sure I've seen pictures of her bearing the chimney and plumbing of a steam engine. 

imgID50985937.jpg.0f91f8f89d16def5e2904cead574923d.jpg

She had an Armstrong Siddeley diesel engine when she went over the weir.

w04744.jpg.c802be6abb71492d153c17471656d151.jpg

 

She was owned by Bernard Jessop, and carrying scaffolding tubes, when tied up above the weir one night, some dead-heads undid the mooring ropes. The boat drifted on to the weir, and was carried over by floodwater. She was left sitting on the flat concrete run-off.

The owner was able to unload the cargo, and planned to try to get her off, but the river flooded again, and carried her over onto the rocks with the stern under water.

Over the years she has steadily filled with rubbish, and rust has done a pretty good job of destroying her.

The terrible shame is that steps were not taken to recover her when the millennium footbridge was built and all the work was carried out on the weir .What a lost opportunity!

 

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