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March of the Widebeams


cuthound

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21 hours ago, dmr said:

I can't remember, how long and wide is your lovely boat? would you get through a 57 foot lock? You really would fit in up in this part of the world.

 

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

She is 58ft long by 10 ft wide, here is a photo so you don't forget what she looks like. We would love to head further north, our time will come once work is out the way! Are you heading south at all in the near future?  ?

20180705_113638.jpg

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13 minutes ago, Meanderingviking said:

She is 58ft long by 10 ft wide, here is a photo so you don't forget what she looks like. We would love to head further north, our time will come once work is out the way! Are you heading south at all in the near future?  ?

20180705_113638.jpg

But that photo doesn't show the dragon creature thingy on the side that is the most distinctive and memorable feature. We are spending the winter up here on the Rochdale, the canal between Littleborough and Hebden Bridge is truly wonderful (if you like locks) but we will head down to the K&A for a visit sometime next year. I am not sure that you could do this canal even if you moved the boat North. Getting up through Manchester is not pleasant and would be even worse in a wide boat. The approach from the Calder and Hebble end is better but I think the locks are short at 57 or 57 and a half, some of the shortest anywhere. There are a couple of widebeams up here but I suspect they are of the "house rather than boat" category that I mentioned.☺️

 

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

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18 minutes ago, dmr said:

But that photo doesn't show the dragon creature thingy on the side that is the most distinctive and memorable feature. We are spending the winter up here on the Rochdale, the canal between Littleborough and Hebden Bridge is truly wonderful (if you like locks) but we will head down to the K&A for a visit sometime next year. I am not sure that you could do this canal even if you moved the boat North. Getting up through Manchester is not pleasant and would be even worse in a wide boat. The approach from the Calder and Hebble end is better but I think the locks are short at 57 or 57 and a half, some of the shortest anywhere. There are a couple of widebeams up here but I suspect they are of the "house rather than boat" category that I mentioned.☺️

 

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

We bought our wide beam From oop there. It was fifty by ten foot six. It was fab. We did look at some fifty seven or so footers but discounted them as all they had extra was an extra bedroom and with five kids and nine grandkids we wanted to ensure there was no were for them to stop over if they visited.

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That is amazing.

It looks as if someone measured from the shaft to the uxter, decided that was the radius and chose a propeller to fit that diameter.

Then having offered it up discovered the shaft wasn't central.

 

So, instead of forming a new skeg to be welded across from the base plate with a healthy couple of feet lead in, they chopped the original off, dropped it in line with the base plate and moved it a few inches forward packing it out with "any old scrap"

That'll be when problem number 4 arose as the cap in the skeg to support the rudder pivot was now out of line and a sledgehammer was employed.

skeg.png

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Yes Ray.

Anyhow, as promised, here's what the last one should have looked like,  and here's the bow thruster tube. The hull looked like the forklift drivers didn't realise they had to get the forks UNDER the baseplate there were so many dings to the side of the hull.

Oh,  and lovely curves to the baseplate.

20180919_071850.jpg

20180919_071935.jpg

20180919_072630.jpg

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12 hours ago, peterboat said:

the GU was modernised to make it right for wide boats!

Actually if you are talking about the Birmingham main line, no it wasn't.......

The modernisation program stalled after the locks were converted from narrow to broad, and in general any plan to widen the channel between the locks was never followed through.

This is why attempts to run experimental wide boats on it were a failure and quickly abandoned, and why narrow boat motor/butty pairs continued to be the only commercial vessels until regular trade ended.

It is not suitable for wide beam boats, even modern ones.

South of Braunston only Brentford to Berkhamsted was ever considered really suitable for passage by boats of over 7 feet beam.  A few barges sometimes ventured further North, but I think the evidence is that the numbers involved were very small.

Had these canals actually been suitable for barges, I have no doubt things would quickly have gone that way.  It never did, and there are good reasons why.

5 hours ago, TheBiscuits said:

And that is a very distinctive stern shape (or at least it was until it got dropped!)

Blimey!  They managed to drop the boat as well?

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1 hour ago, zenataomm said:

That is amazing.

It looks as if someone measured from the shaft to the uxter, decided that was the radius and chose a propeller to fit that diameter.

Then having offered it up discovered the shaft wasn't central.

 

So, instead of forming a new skeg to be welded across from the base plate with a healthy couple of feet lead in, they chopped the original off, dropped it in line with the base plate and moved it a few inches forward packing it out with "any old scrap"

That'll be when problem number 4 arose as the cap in the skeg to support the rudder pivot was now out of line and a sledgehammer was employed.

skeg.png


Are you suggesting they didn't use modern CAD technology so everything is cut and assembled to a precision of fractions of millimetres? ?

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22 minutes ago, alan_fincher said:

Actually if you are talking about the Birmingham main line, no it wasn't.......

The modernisation program stalled after the locks were converted from narrow to broad, and in general any plan to widen the channel between the locks was never followed through.

This is why attempts to run experimental wide boats on it were a failure and quickly abandoned, and why narrow boat motor/butty pairs continued to be the only commercial vessels until regular trade ended.

It is not suitable for wide beam boats, even modern ones.

South of Braunston only Brentford to Berkhamsted was ever considered really suitable for passage by boats of over 7 feet beam.  A few barges sometimes ventured further North, but I think the evidence is that the numbers involved were very small.

Had these canals actually been suitable for barges, I have no doubt things would quickly have gone that way.  It never did, and there are good reasons why.

Blimey!  They managed to drop the boat as well?

I posted earlier on David Johns' vlog several references to support that conclusion (before you wrote your piece!)

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27 minutes ago, alan_fincher said:

Are you suggesting they didn't use modern CAD technology so everything is cut and assembled to a precision of fractions of millimetres? ?

 

Surely that skeg with the 3" drop spacer is a perfect example of CAD design by someone who knows everything about CAD and nothing about boats....

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13 hours ago, TheBiscuits said:

How do you name that song in 3?  You either know or you don't.

 

And that is a very distinctive stern shape (or at least it was until it got dropped!)

A good point. I do take an interest in the shapes of boats built by various makers, but less so in widebeams because, of course, they are never seen on the S. Oxford. 

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8 hours ago, alan_fincher said:

Actually if you are talking about the Birmingham main line, no it wasn't.......

It is not suitable for wide beam boats, ESPECIALLY modern ones.

 

Modern wide beams like the ones pictured are basically hoppers with a pointy end. They are slab sided with no curves therefore 12 feet wide is the same at the waterline and also the baseplate. 

As the  navigable channel is only 10 feet on the GU ( when newly dredged- source....CRT dredging teams this summer), a wide beam will always be dragging one or both sides through silt. Both compromising steering and fuel economy along with giving other passing boats little water to work with.

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48 minutes ago, matty40s said:

As the  navigable channel is only 10 feet on the GU ( when newly dredged- source....CRT dredging teams this summer), a wide beam will always be dragging one or both sides through silt. Both compromising steering and fuel economy along with giving other passing boats little water to work with.

And, to their credit, widening the channel - albeit making it shallower by depositing the mud of the channel sides back into the channel.

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9 hours ago, alan_fincher said:

Actually if you are talking about the Birmingham main line, no it wasn't.......

The modernisation program stalled after the locks were converted from narrow to broad, and in general any plan to widen the channel between the locks was never followed through.

This is why attempts to run experimental wide boats on it were a failure and quickly abandoned, and why narrow boat motor/butty pairs continued to be the only commercial vessels until regular trade ended.

It is not suitable for wide beam boats, even modern ones.

South of Braunston only Brentford to Berkhamsted was ever considered really suitable for passage by boats of over 7 feet beam.  A few barges sometimes ventured further North, but I think the evidence is that the numbers involved were very small.

Had these canals actually been suitable for barges, I have no doubt things would quickly have gone that way.  It never did, and there are good reasons why.

Blimey!  They managed to drop the boat as well?

The boats used were motor Progress and butty Eagle. In addition to Alan's sucinct explanation, when traversing the locks Eagle had to be bow hauled through the locks as a narrow butty would have been.

 

Comparison of Progress and a narrow boat.

Progress.JPG

 

 

Edited by Ray T
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7 minutes ago, Ray T said:

The boats used were motor Progress and butty Eagle. In addition to Alan's sucinct explanation, when traversing the locks Eagle had to be bow hauled through the locks as a narrow butty would have been.

 

Comparison of Progress and a narrow boat.

Progress.JPG

 

 

Nothing changes - Fat boats moored on the corners and blocked the navigation even in those days ………………………………….

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23 hours ago, Athy said:

How can you tell the make of boat from that small portion of it?

Athy I would love to pretend that I have an encyclopaedic knowledge and experience of boats but sadly the truth is that there is something in the photograph that gave the game away. ?

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4 minutes ago, Dartagnan said:

Athy I would love to pretend that I have an encyclopaedic knowledge and experience of boats but sadly the truth is that there is something in the photograph that gave the game away. ?

Er, I thought that I was both intelligent and observant, but not today apparently. What's more, our last boat had a Liverpool shell (but a narrow one obviously) and it looked nothing like that.

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8 hours ago, Ray T said:

The boats used were motor Progress and butty Eagle. In addition to Alan's sucinct explanation, when traversing the locks Eagle had to be bow hauled through the locks as a narrow butty would have been.

 

Comparison of Progress and a narrow boat.

Progress.JPG

 

 

 

8 hours ago, Alan de Enfield said:

Nothing changes - Fat boats moored on the corners and blocked the navigation even in those days ………………………………….

 

Not sure about it blocking the navigation.  I think the picture is probably taken from the end of the Aylesbury ARm, so nothing wider than a narrow boat has any need to be passing through that gap, I think.

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16 minutes ago, Athy said:

Er, I thought that I was both intelligent and observant, but not today apparently. What's more, our last boat had a Liverpool shell (but a narrow one obviously) and it looked nothing like that.

I would never doubt your intelligence it’s just that in this particular instance I was purely lucky.

12 minutes ago, TheBiscuits said:

You do know that MAG-GUARD don't make boats don't you? :giggles:

VERY close but no cigar on this occasion  ?

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23 hours ago, dmr said:

But that photo doesn't show the dragon creature thingy on the side that is the most distinctive and memorable feature. We are spending the winter up here on the Rochdale, the canal between Littleborough and Hebden Bridge is truly wonderful (if you like locks) but we will head down to the K&A for a visit sometime next year. I am not sure that you could do this canal even if you moved the boat North. Getting up through Manchester is not pleasant and would be even worse in a wide boat. The approach from the Calder and Hebble end is better but I think the locks are short at 57 or 57 and a half, some of the shortest anywhere. There are a couple of widebeams up here but I suspect they are of the "house rather than boat" category that I mentioned.☺️

 

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

Dragon thingy below! If you pass us on the GU do stop for a catch up ?

20180714_133307.jpg

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Here is the new marina at North Kilworth this afternoon. You will see what might be the first ever widebeam on the GU Leicester Line Summit. It's been there for a couple of weeks. I assume it will live in the marina permanently and be someone's home, although the rather ambiguous wording on their website implies (incorrectly of course) that you can launch your widebeam there and access the whole canal system.

 

Should be a right laugh if it decides to pop along to Watford or Foxton. Or even Welford....

 

311726386_Widebeam_at_North_Kilworth_Marina_21st_September_20181.JPG.bdf45be08b269d3445c1bf4e523d0dc9.JPG

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6 hours ago, Joe the plumber said:

Here is the new marina at North Kilworth this afternoon. You will see what might be the first ever widebeam on the GU Leicester Line Summit. It's been there for a couple of weeks. I assume it will live in the marina permanently and be someone's home, although the rather ambiguous wording on their website implies (incorrectly of course) that you can launch your widebeam there and access the whole canal system.

 

Should be a right laugh if it decides to pop along to Watford or Foxton. Or even Welford....

 

311726386_Widebeam_at_North_Kilworth_Marina_21st_September_20181.JPG.bdf45be08b269d3445c1bf4e523d0dc9.JPG

I thought the inclined plane at Foxton would take two narrowboats or one widebeam per caisson, so possibly not the first, although probably the first in recent times.

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