Busy doing not much

Last day out in this all too short boating break and we celebrated by doing er, not much.  We stayed put at Napton and I sat in the sun and thought about doing jobs.  It was the best day of the cruise.  Well I did do one little DiY task but I won't bore you with that.  Mainly I just thought about the other jobs that need doing, like replacing the wood on the side hatch doors.  Now I have a plan for that, but more of that another time.

After Grace left for home we needed to eat up what food she didn't eat so for a change we had a burger this week, and some sausages.  To assuage our consciences we had plenty of nice veg to add to our trusty Cobb barbecue thingy and ended up with something like this

Onions, peppers,  courgettes, tenderstem broccoli and later some sparrowgrass (asparagus  to you I suppose) all nicely chargrilled. Yum.  I doubt a traditional BBQ would do them without burning, but the Cobb does.  The sausages cook through without burning too.  All on one big handful of charcoal.

As promised I strolled down to take a picture of the new mega pavilion in the Folly garden.

Coo, what a big one!  I expect landlord Mark has done his sums and reckons it will be profitable.  Since taking  over the pub some years back he hasn't put a foot wrong yet.  It should make for a long garden season at any rate.

This cruise has been to short, I'm only just getting the hang of it.  Hopefully we'll be back for more very soon.

 

May in June

 It's official - Chris Packham says spring is up to a month late this year.  Of course when it arrives all depends on where you live. Down home in the (ahem) Royal County, the may blossom has virtually all been and gone, but up here in what you might call the midlands (well Northants / Warwickshire anyway) it's still well out, although just on the turn I fancy.  

The yellow flags are also out, but that would be for us of course. 

Kath has taken on the role of cruise photographer this trip as her new handmedown iphone from grand daughter Grace takes nice pictures. 

Speaking of Grace, she crewed for us from Wigrams Turn to the bottom of Hillmorton locks and back and did the bulk of the steering.  Still only thirteen she is really competent at the tiller and took us round Braunston turn among heavy traffic from every direction without batting an eyelid.  Those who know that bit know how hairy it can get.  Of course she has had a wonderful teacher (whom modestly forbids me to mention) over the years since she first grabbed the tiller at about three years old.

Also impressive this week has been the accuracy with which the local pigeons aim their deposits.  Last night one hit the target on Kath's dinner plate as we sat round the barbie.  Luckily she only lost a little piece of her lamb steak.

Impressive eh? I was highly amused until the same bird successfully hit my phone ten minutes later. 

I would say we've been lucky with the weather, but the truth is we put off coming boating until the weather got better.  Sunsets have been good too.  Here's another of Kath's pictures, taken close to bridge 100  on the Oxford /GU bit (the one without a parapet if you know the area).

Currently we're moored up near the Folly pub.  I must pop along tomorrow and take a picture of the edifice landlord Mark has had built in the garden.  It's not quite finished, but imagine a large glass fronted timber framed cricked pavilion and you won't be far off.  We lunched there today in their big marquee with Rick and Marilyn who drove out specially to meet us.  As we were walking to the pub (even for pubs I don't run these days) we passed fellow boat bloggers Lisa and David on What a Lark.  Always nice to meet other bloggers and they did not disappoint, especially when they said they enjoyed my books!  Well I can't be responsible for their literary tastes.

One more day then we're back home, then off again to stay with our son Peter in Cambridge.  I fear he has a full itinerary of events for us, so we'll no doubt be knackered when we get home again.  And we'll have missed the fledging of the young Robins nested in the ivy on our garden fence.  You can't have it all I suppose.

Boxing again

 When I made a box to keep windlasses, mooring chains and stakes etc last time, I should have learned the lesson from my first roof box - don't use plywood.  No matter how many coats of paint or varnish you give it, the outdoor life will eventually cause the plys to delaminate.  So it was with the windlass box, so I've had to make a new one, and this time, just like I did with the last roof box, which is standing up well, I've used solid wood.

This time I even attempted crude corner joints - about the limit of my woodworking skills.  The box is shallow because it sits on top of the deck lockers at the back of the boat and the idea is that it can be sat upon without being so high your feet don't touch the floor.  'Where's the bottom of the box?' I hear you ask.  I have a bit of hardboard to do that. It just drops in and will no doubt need replacing every couple of years at best.  No big deal.  The box needs to be light as possible so I can lift it out of the way to get at the lockers beneath.  A few windlasses, chain, stakes and a lump hammer are quite heavy enough without the box being heavy.  And the lid?  That survives from the previous box, being made of a nice bit of 100 year old solid oak.  As you can see, I've whacked on a good few coats of Sadolin to keep the weather out of the wood.  As usual, the timber I bought from Wickes was somewhat lacking in the old straightness compartment, One piece being quite dishy across it's face, making a couple of the corner joints less than perfect.  I think it'll do the job though.

Now that the better weather seem to be on the horizon, we'll be off on our next boat trip next week.  I hope I can remember how to steer!

Yee Haah!

 Quite a number of my readers will have met my (very) old pal Rick and some of them know that he is officially a brilliant engineer.  What that's what his boss said at his retirement do anyway. Not only that but he can mend clocks, build walls, make a Stirling engine, make seedy cake and jam, and a host of other intantorium things I haven't got time to mention tonight.   However today he excelled himself.  I invited him over to Herbie to see if we could start her recalcitrant BMC engine.  All it was doing was coughing and spluttering and giving the starter battery too much stick.

"What shall we try then " said Rick.  "Are the glow plugs working?"  "I very much hope so" quoth I, remembering what a pig they were to install when I fitted new ones.  A glance at the voltmeter showed it drop when I turned the key, which is always the sign that the plugs are taking plenty of current.  I pronounced them fit and healthy.

"I reckon she's not getting the fuel through", I suggested, and reached for the little ring pull on the fuel lift pump giving it a dozen or so tugs.  A tiny bit of diesel wept out of the top joint of the fuel filter.  "Well there's some there now, let's try her again"

The engine coughed and spluttered, hiccuped , coughed some more then hey presto she burst into song.  Ta daa!  So I suppose it was some air in the fuel line, probably caused by a weeping leak somewhere.  BMC engines, just like old British motorbike engines are not the best at keeping fluids securely inside.

I'm convinced that it was Rick's mere presence at the scene that made the engine decide to co-operate.  He didn't even lay hands upon her, but she knew she was in the presence of engineering genius.  Mind over matter.

Earlier in the day I had a miraculous result in fixing a water tap.  We have a little tap that dispenses filtered water and after a long winter's lack of use it had stuck open.  What a potential disaster that was.  As soon as I switched on Herbie's electric water pump, the little tap let forth a stream of  the precious fluid but the pesky thing wouldn't turn off.  You can hardly go boating with a water tap on all day can you?

I removed the knob from the top of the tap and set about trying to loosen the nut which gives access to the washer.  Would it move?  No. Hmmm. I supposed I would have to remove the tap and take it home to have a better go at it, or else buy a new tap.  Dejectedly I replaced the tap knob and gave it a twist and suddenly it worked. In fact it worked rather more smoothly than it has done for a year or two. Ours not to reason why, dear reader, but it's fixed anyway.  Job's a good 'un.

So a good result all in all.  Herbie is now reasonably fit to go cruising.  As soon as we get some half decent weather, we'll be off.

Slowing down to speed up

It was fun watching that ship stuck in the Suez canal wasn't it?  I expect that other canal boaters were like me and Kath shouting "Stand on the back or on the floating side and rock the boat." We could teach 'em a thing or two.  I don't suppose they had a shaft or pole long enough to give her a push.  

Anyhow I watched an interesting video about how she got stuck and it was interesting to see how the physics of it applies equally to our little boats and that great monster. In a narrow or shallow canal , the water has a job getting out of the way of the boat.  We've all been there, or anybody who has been down the Slough Arm or bits of the South Oxford has at any rate.  In order to get out of the way of the boat, the water has to speed up and when the bottom or side of the boat is near to the bottom or edge of the canal, that speeding up of the water reduces the pressure (something to do with a Mr Bernoulli if I recall correctly , but as it's been over fifty years since I was an engineering student, I may well not) and the boat get sucked down or into the bank accordingly, thus making matters worse.  So if you feel it starting to happen the best thing to do is to slow down and the suction lessens.  In the end you'll make better progress.

Boating is often counter intuitive ain't it?  Push the tiller right to go left and all that.  How often have we seen novice boaters (bless 'em - we were all novices once) come too fast round a corner, see another boat coming and slam on the (practically non- existing) brakes, thus losing all steering.  It took me a while to have the confidence to slam on the power to get more steering to avoid a fast approaching obstacle, but it works.

In other news, I came across this somewhat dilapidated gate last Friday:

In need of a bit of TLC, but it won't get it.  I don't suppose it's been closed for many a long year.  This is what all our lock gates might be like if the canals weren't rescued by volunteers up to their necks in mud in the middle of the last century. (In my mind I hear people saying it looks no worse than some of the locks on the Oxford).  Actually this one isn't on a canal, it's at the exit of a fen drain into the Great Ouse. See below, you can see a tupperware boat on the Ouse in the distance).

The drain cuts through the RSPB reserve at Fen Drayton near Cambridge.  The reserve is worth a look if you're out that way.  Lots of water fowl to look at and some good walks. Oyster catchers, egrets (of which Edith Piaf nearly had none) and wotnot all easy to see.  A pair of bino's helps of course.

I must get back out to Herbie soon and find out why the engine wouldn't start last week.  I don't suppose I could have turned off the diesel cock when we left her last autumn could I?  I think I might be grasping at straws there.

Toodle pip.

Old Herbie's Almanac 2021

Looking into Herbie's crystal ball, what do I see for the coming season?

Yay verily, I see hordes of stay-cation boaters merrily chugging along our beloved waterways, using lots of lock water, and I see said water getting very short.

Yesterday, en route by car from Wigram's turn to Cambridge we did a short detour to have a butchers at Welford Reservoir that feeds the Leicester line.  Here's how it looks.

Not ideal for the start of a busy season is it?  The lower photo shows the overspill slipway.  I foresee some lock restrictions before the summer is out.

Luckily our vague cruising plans for the summer include hardly any locks as were thinking about the North Oxford to Coventry and then up the Ashby, only three proper locks and one little stop lock each way.

That's always assuming we get going.  Yesterday we popped in to say hello to Herbie and were pleased to see that she was looking ok and  inside, she was just as we left her apart from a very fine rust coating on the lower part of the stove flue, probably from condensation.  That'll rub off easily, then we'll black it.  Otherwise no sign of frost damage or pest infestation or damp.  Domestic batteries 100% charged.

Now the down side.  I tried to start the engine, and for the first time in 15 years, failed.  The starter battery (which doesn't get charged by the solar panels) was low, but turned over the engine quite a few times before it gave up. Had we got the dreaded diesel bug?  I dipped the tank and it looked fine.  We didn't have time to investigate further, so we'll have to sort it out when we next visit.  Maybe the fuel in the lines had dissipated over the long lay off.  Re bleeding (I hate doing it) will be the first thing to do I guess.  An overnight charge from the land line charger should get the battery back enough to turn her over again.  If none of that works, at least there are 'engineers' on site, so help is at hand.  I doubt very much it is anything serious.

As ever,  there is a bit of  roof paint repair to see to, but I'm beginning to realise that's just normal, and I can deal with it.

Otherwise, all systems go.  I'm not sure where to hope for a warm dry summer fro pleasant cruising, or some decent rain to fill the reservoirs.

Fear and trepidation

 Tomorrow we take our first look at Herbie since November.  Will the engine 'ole be full of rainwater? Will the stern gland have leaked?  Have we had an infestation of mice or flies? Have any pipes burst? Will  it be damp and mouldy? Well, we'll soon find out wont we? Having a boat is a bit like having kids -always something to worry about.  It's always like this after a long break but this time the break is much longer.

It'll only be a fleeting visit en route to our Peter's place in Cambridge.  I'm imagining we'll come away from the boat with a list of things "that need doing" before we go aboard proper for our first cruise since September.  Maybe it'll be OK and we'll come away elated and eager to plan our first outing.

Tune in soon and I'll let you know.

Duckett's discoveries

If you're quick and take a look at the bottom of  today's BBC News site, there's an interesting set of photos of CRT volunteers clearing out the Hertford Union canal aka Duckett's Cut in east London.  The canal is currently drained, presumably for lock work and so they're taking the opportunity to clear out all the junk that's been chucked or dropped in over the years.  Unsurprisingly there's plenty of evidence of criminal activity, old safes, car number plates etc as well as some interesting curios.  Worth a look.

Our marina informs us that we can now visit our boat, but not yet stay on it.  Presumably we'll be able to go out on it from April 12th.  That's if she's still floating after all this time and the diesel hasn't turned to jelly etc. (ever the optimist, that's me).  We've decided to keep our mooring at Wigram's for the next six months, and then decide whether to move after that.  It should make for  an easy summer with long cruises up the north Oxford and perhaps to Coventry and/or up the Ashby with hardly any locks.  In previous times we would have scorned that, but I'm still not in the best of health so it makes sense and anyway I like that stretch and we haven't done it too many times.  Let's hope the sun shines.

Light at the end of the tunnel?

 We boaters know all about light at the end of tunnels.  It's often further away than it looks.  However CRT's latest update talks non specifically about the reopening of navigation in the not too distant future.  My guess is mid April.

The CRT update also has a large piece on composting toilets, or the disposal of the contents thereof.  There must be quite a few boats out there now with these toilets (we love ours), and so the question of disposal of the solid contents is becoming an issue.  To keep a long story short, CRT doesn't want our poo and is instructing us not to put the bagged compost into their waste bins.  Now for us, that's not a problem because we bag ours up and keep it in the gas locker until we go home, then take it home with us where it completes its composting safely and odorlessly in a corner of the garden.  Sometimes in warm weather it hardly needs it, having already broken down in situ ( or should that be in sit on?).  Liveaboards however are going to be scratching their heads.  I don't know what the answer is, but it's a pity that a home can't be found for this chemical free waste.  Ironically, we are still allowed to put used nappies in the waste bins, so perhaps liveaboard boaters will take to wearing  adult size nappies.  Maybe not. As it happens, we do keep a few nappies on board because they're brilliant for soaking up rainwater in the bilge.

I see Crick Boat Show is going virtual this year.  Tickets are free and there will be videos and talks and such like on line, and I suppose a large amount of advertising.  Will Adam be doing virtual boat reviews I wonder?

In other news, our patio gazebo fell prey to the gales this week.  I have a pile of canvas, poles and broken plastic joints to sort out in calmer weather.   Meanwhile . . 

Were you a fan of the Fast Show? I was, and I particularly liked the bit where Mark Williams would emerge from his shed and announce what he would be mostly wearing or eating this week. "This week I'll be mostly eating Yoggut."  You may or may not know that Mark (lately starring in Father Brown) was once a member of Mikron Theatre and travelled the canals as they do each year.  Anyway I digress.  It's just a way of introducing what I'm up to lately.

This week I have mostly been inventing a P Pod, or it might be a Pi Pod.  Anyhow I've made a little prototype  gubbins that plays abc tunes.  Abc is a format for notating simple tunes in text format, and is widely used by folk musicians in particular.  On the web you can find more than 160,000 such tunes,(!) looking a bit like this.

X: 1
T: Drowsy Maggie
R: reel

M: 4/4
L: 1/8
K: Edor
|:E2BE dEBE|E2BE AFDF|E2BE dEBE|BABc dAFD:|
d2fd c2ec|defg afge|d2fd c2ec|BABc dAFA|
d2fd c2ec|defg afge|afge fdec|BABc dAFD|

You need a bit of software to translate and play it but it works really well.  I thought it would be fun to write my own player software and make a little IPod type device that could hold a collection of these tunes and play them, and it was a chance to make use of the amazing little Raspberry Pi Pico device (price £3.80) that was released a few weeks back.  So a mixture of electronics and coding for me to wrestle with.  Well it passes the time. 

I haven't yet mastered the playing of some of the more complex tune features, but simple ones like that one above I've got nailed and two little buttons  let you scroll through the tune list and select and play the tunes . The little Pico holds all the code and potentially hundreds of tunes and could run off three AA batteries.  Total cost about two cups of Costa Coffee plus whatever box  I can make to put it in.  I reckon I could fit it all into a Cooks Matches box. Ok I admit it, I'm an anorak, but it keeps me off the streets.

Next week I shall mostly be trying to work out why my code can't play triplets properly.  I'll get there.

Might see you soon on the canal.  Wouldn't that be nice?

Two boats on cardboard and in felt

 How are you off for cardboard boxes?  We've been collecting them at an alarming rate since lockdown has driven us to buying loads of stuff on line.  Our son Peter who seems to alight upon all sorts of weird things on You Tube led us to some mad person building a full size 3d replica of a Ferrari F1 car out of cardboard (that one has had 8 million views!), and another bloke making a working coin operated bubble gum dispenser out of cardboard.  Inspiring stuff.  So I looked at all our cardboard and decided to start simple, and I had the perfect project.

I'm a big fan of the Cornish artist, the late Alfred Wallis (put him into Google and select Images and you might see why). Dear old Alfred was a simple and humble man.  After a working life on fishing boats (many of them sailing boats) he spend his retirement in his little cottage in St Ives painting what he knew, boats, and harbours.  Alfred couldn't afford posh oil paints and canvases so he used what he had, tins of old household paint and bits of carboard.

Ah, you say, Neil's going to do a painting on cardboard with leftover boat paint.  Oh no I'm not, well not yet anyway. You see I already have a Wallis picture, or rather a super copy made not with paint but with felted wool courtesy of our Peter who is dab had at making objects and pictures from handfuls of wool which he jabs and punches with a barbed needle.  He's brilliant at it.  for Christmas he made me a computer  -  a good old Sinclair Spectrum

and for my birthday he made me this fab Wallis copy for which today I have made a frame, most appropriately for a Wallis, from several layers of carboard.

Here below is a picture of the Alfred Wallis original, it's called Two Ships.

Peter didn't do a bad job did he?  That's my boy!

My frame is alright as well - cardboard just like it ought to be.

Lockdown reading

 "Hauling by horses is still the system most used on the general body of the inland waterways, and in it must be including hauling by mules, which is rare, and by pairs of donkeys, or, as they are termed, 'animals.'"

So begins the section on Haulage in the 1904  Bradshaw's Canals and Navigable Rivers of England and Wales.

On talking about towing along river banks, it goes on to complain about the use of stiles rather than farm gates along the Bedford Level"

". . . some of them as high as 2ft 7in, over which horses towing have to jump, giving themselves frequently nasty knocks in so doing."

This Bradshaw's publication, of which I have written before, is not of the Michael Portillo type, having no descriptions of local scenery or architecture, but I love it. This is not a history book, but a historical document, a snapshot in time and all the more vivid for it. As a handbook mainly for commercial canal fleet operators it contains nigh on 500 pages of detailed information on boats, locks, tunnels, distances, depth of canal and much else, all frozen in time in 1904.  What use it was to the actual boatmen is a matter for speculation, but as they knew the canal like the back of their hand and a lot of them couldn't read anyway, I don't suppose they valued it much. Whilst I have no inside knowledge, it seems highly probable that that is where the brilliant Nick Atty started compiling his data for the number one canal website Canalplan, the clue being that it gives distances in miles and furlongs as Canalplan does..

Interestingly, the book makes no mention (that I can find) of diesel or semi diesel engines, except to say "Oil engines have been tried but have never passed much beyond the experimental stage." So the section on mechanical propulsion focuses on steamers although in a somewhat derogatory fashion.

"The ordinary 'narrow' or 'monkey' boat with a capacity of about 30 tons . . .  is quite small enough already without further deduction on account of engine room space".

It's the window on how things looked to people at the time that I like in addition to the little details, such as:

"A lock of water may cost anything from nothing upwards.   . . a lock of water pumped from the Artesian Well to the Tring summit of the Canal cost £1 4s 8d and a lock from the Cowroast Well 13s 7d. "

On the Birmingham canals where the locks are of the narrow type, the cost of water per lock was 2s 4d.

More sections describe bridges, tunnels, aqueducts and tides, before going on to set out the design,  dimensions  and carrying capacities of the many different types of boats in use, from sailing wherries to monkey boats.  And then we get into the main meat of the book which gives descriptions of every navigable waterway in the country, -Proprietors, distance table, locks and their dimensions, towing path, types of vessels in use and tidal information where appropriate.  What I like is that although this information is well over a hundred years old, the bulk of it is still accurate for today.  There are a couple of things that sadly don't translate so well, one being the listing of quite a number of waterways that have since been lost, and the information on maximum draught.  I doubt whether a boat with a draught of 4ft would make it down the Slough Arm today, but that's the depth Bradshaw quotes.

Here's a bit hat caught my eye:

"The ordinary traffic through both Braunston and Blisworth tunnels is worked by the Canal Company's tugs.  Gunpowder boats have to 'leg' through."

I bet they did! Gunpowder and boilers don't sit well together. I even wonder at the thought of sparks from the legger's hobnails against the bricks. And there would have been quite a few gunpowder boats through Blisworth en-route to the Royal Ordnance depot at Weedon. The entry of Blisworth goes on to give the Company Steamer daily timetable showing 8 steamer tug passages in each direction each day starting from alternate ends every hour from 5am to 8pm.  I suppose the gunpowder boats might slot in between or go outside of steamer hours.

And so it all goes on.  Fascinating stuff and even useful today.  Had I been able to consult it before towing a masted tender under Ludham Bridge on the River Ant many years ago, we might not have broken the mast and lost our damage deposit. While you can't go boating yet, it would make a super browse to fill in the time. You could even plan your cruises with it. It exists in a modern "exact facsimile" copy easily available today.  Amazon sells it for approx £12 (other suppliers are available).

Looking Up

 A bit more cheery this week don't you think?  For a start, Kath and I have had our first jabs now.   Less than five minutes from home is the Waitrose HQ where they have kindly donated use of their staff sports hall for a vaccination centre.  We did have to sit in a big room full of people for an hour though waiting our turn.  To be fair, the hall was very large and well ventilated, the seats widely spaced and disinfected every time people moved on and of course everyone was masked and checked and temperature measured on the way in. We got the Astra Zenica jab.  Wouldn't it be a fun idea to have the letters after your name now e.g.Jojhn Smith (AZ) or Freda Jones (Pf)?

Over in the churchyard behind our hedge, spring is springing and a carpet of woodland crocuses (croci?) has appeared.

The daffodils over there look like they'll be in bloom in a day or two as well and we have a primrose out in our garden while we wait for the hellebores to do their stuff any time soon.

After many years of absence, a couple of collared doves have shown up in the garden.  Years ago we had loads of them, then they suddenly vanished.  I think they seem more refined than our usual woodpigeons.

On a more boaty note, some of you might care to have a listen to a long interview with CRT boss Richard Parry on the Waterways World podcast page.  It's interesting to hear his take on things, but don't expect any startling revelations.  Other interviewees there include Andy Tidy (aka Cap'n Ahab), Tim Coghlan of Braunston fame, and David Suchet.  All worth a listen.