All Activity

I really dont envy you- especially getting through the sludge around the second liftbridge from the top lock..

However adding the extra weight also makes the boat sink as a whole. I looked into this when we were trying to get the ballasting correct; adding 400kg (400l of water) to the bow pulled the bow down by 2" and raised the stern by 1". So long as the uxter plate stays underwater and the boat is not nose-down, stopping and steering shouldn't be degraded-- in fact if the boat is ballasted level instead of nose-up you should find it swims better, especially when water levels are low.

Even if the marina has a fiber link to the network (I have 500Mbps at home) this soon gets eaten up if shared between lots of boaters trying to access the Internet, especially for streaming. I get 5G -- usually at >100Mbps -- at Great Haywood on EE (4x4 MIMO router with external antenna), even at peak times this doesn't drop below 50Mbps. But then there is an EE mast right next door... 😉

agreed, never had a good experience with marina wifi to date..... not tried Aston marina wifi yet, but as we get 250mbps on EE we wont need to!!

That is the reason we don't use Three on the boat. The Three network slowdown at around school chucking out time was very noticeable in pretty much every location we visited, no doubt because the network was overloaded with cheap unlimited contracts. This was admittedly a few years ago now. EE doesn't seem to suffer so much from this.

I followed one of those much of the way towards Braunston the Saturday of the rally recently. It was so slow I had to keep dropping into neutral and it was all over the place including frequently being on the wrong side. When we walked from Wolfamcote to the turn it was moored before Puddlebanks. Later on, as we walked back from the marina to the turn, they were heading towards the marina with parade boats coming the other way. If I'd had the time I'd have stayed to watch what I assumed would be chaos. I felt a bit sorry for them at that point.

Not sure if all marina wifis use wired (cabled?) broadband to drive them. They could, today, just as well use a mobile option (after all, BT, now EE, offer a mobile backup option for a few which supposedly will keep you going if someone cuts the cable. I have tried quite a few marina wifis and generally concluded that the installation is a tick box item, just so they can say that they offer the connection whilst only a few moorers rely on it. I have yet to find one that I would want to depend on for a good streaming service.

Whilst the term case derives historically from the separate trays (cases) that held the different type characters, it is quite widely used now to indicate the style of mixing fonts eg this text is all in lower case whilst THIS IS UPPER CASE. I had not come across the specific term Title Case before or Sentence Case, but they are sometimes options used in DTP software to enforce one or other set of rules. Like spell checker, it may or may not do what you want.

At certain tunnels, such as Standedge, this is routinely advised by the staff to ensure that boats make it under the height check. But they are not so concerned if you drop down in the water a bit as that is less of an issue (usually)

Thanks both. Good to know my thinking was right, fill up the water tank and I may be able to move more easily but not necessarily stop (or steer) 😁

I'm a bit confused here. Are we talking about the Wifi service provided by the marina (which doesn't require 4G coverage, router, SIM card etc) or the 4G service (where the only Wifi element is onboard the boat, eg between your router and laptop)? If you're planning to use the marina Wifi, it should be relatively easy to test the speed and signal strength by wandering around the site with a laptop. The marina will probably give you a choice of berths, from which you can hopefully pick one with a good Wifi signal; you can also get various repeaters that use an external antenna on the outside of the boat to give you a stronger Wifi signal inside your metal box of a boat than you'd get directly from the marina signal through the windows.

I think that usually the manual on needs to be held to operate whilst the other two stay where you put them.

I am not sure if that would give me much confidence unless it was backed up with considerable narrowboat experience. It is a bit like asking a proper marine engineer (say off an oil tanker) to sort out a narrowboat mechanical or electrical problem. I am sure they would do it eventually, but a what cost to you. A bit like watching the boat handling ability of many of those on the Navy boats at Calcutt..

ANA Both Three and Vodafone same the same but they do not state anything about bandwidth - ie ratio of demand to supply. You may get a very good signal but if too many users also want a share at the same time, service will inevitably take a hit which will be more noticeable when streaming or other high traffic tasks.

EE's coverage map says they have excellent 4G coverage at Cropredy

Best read the stoppage notices carefully before you commit to a medium term (eg next 4 months) plan - it seems quite possible that, even with rain now, the stoppage will last at least a month or two to replenish reservoirs. Before much gets to them the ground needs to soak up quite a bit. I would not surprised, albeit very, very disappointed, if we do not get significant cruising availability (including access to Cropredy) until well into the autumn, But who knows, weather prediction is not at its most reliable right now! On the limited occasions we actually stay aboard in the marina, we now generally rely on our mobiles for streaming etc and have not yet invested in any special antenna. (We keep each phone on a different network although neither is EE) I am not sure I would want to put myself in a position where my employment/income depended on a 24/7 good signal, but that is an issue right across the canal network. Just have to factor into the daily schedule time to relocate as needed. As I am sure you already know, the ability to get adequate service is not just a matter of signal strength but also bandwidth relative to the number of logged in users (whether marina wifi or mobile) Hence, the responsiveness varies considerably with the time of day. This would be the case even if you sat right under the mast!