In praise of tillers

The lovely Adam and Adrian, whom many of you will know, pick up their beautiful brand new boat from Braidbar today, and watching a video tour of it I was amused to see that in spite of the boat being really really really high spec, they had decided not to have a bow thruster (or as Sue No Problem used to call it ' a girly button').  Apparently Adam had said something like (don't quote me) we're proper boaters and don't need one.

That got me thinking about how brilliant a tiller is.  You can go from full lock one way to full lock the other in a blink of an eye as well as making fine adjustments with a slight movement of your arm.  Not only that, you can feel the water force on the rudder and most of all, you feel 'at one' with the boat.  It's also of course an incredibly simple device in which there is hardly anything to go wrong.

I'm the first to admit that there are times when a bow thruster would be handy, but it shouldn't be used as a substitute for knowing how to handle a tiller.  Years ago we were walking down the snaking flight of locks at Marsworth when a very posh new boat came past with the 'helmsman' steering entirely with the bow thruster, even on the straight bits of the canal.  Every few seconds that familiar roar came from his bow as he adjusted the boat's direction.  His wife was on the towpath and when I questioned her why, she said "Oh he can't get on with the tiller so he only steers with the thruster" .  I thought to myself that he must only cruise in the mornings because his battery would be flat by lunchtime.

Some boats have steering wheels, which you might have thought would be easy. Well that's not my experience.

In 2014 I had to get my Inland Helmsman's Certificate in order to act as a volunteer boat mover for CRT, and a group of us were instructed and tested by the redoubtable Andrew Phasey- at that time Commodore of the St Pancras Cruising Club. 

Having been a boater for nearly ten years at that point I was quietly confident - until that is they asked us to do complicated manoeuvres on a CRT work boat with a steering wheel.

Dear reader I can't begin to tell you how hard it was. For a start the wheel had half a dozen full rotations lock to lock with nothing to tell you where the middle setting was. and being a hydraulic drive you got no feed back at all through the wheel. I'm embarrassed to tell you that even going straight along the middle of the canal I was doing a slalom. I suppose it didn't help that the boat had no rudder, but instead the Archimedes screw propeller swung right and left as you rurned the steering wheel amking coming into the bank a right nightmare. Talk about prop walk! Give me a tiller any day.  The ever patient Andrew didn't seem very impressed at all with any of us but as we knew all the other stuff about safety and using ropes and using locks etc, he passed all of us. In the succeeding weeks I drove this kind of boat on a number of occasions and although I improved a bit I never got the hang of coming neatly into the bank.

Shortly after qualifying,  I was also asked to drive CRT's whopping great exhibition boat Jena on a number of occasions. Here she is tied up on the narrow Slough arm after having turned round.

You might get a better idea of her size by seeing the inside:

Jena is 12ft wide and 60+ ft long and one time with several dignitaries on board I had to turn her round in a spot where the canal was only a couple of inches over 60ft wide, but with a good old tiller I managed it without much problem.  Would a bow thruster have helped?  Maybe, but I'm sure a pesky steering wheel wouldn't.

Now I'm just remembering an adventure on even bigger boat with a tiller. She was called Olive and she was a humber keel 14ft wide. Here she is at her berth in Cowley on the GU.

Olive was owned by a friend of a friend and they asked me to helm her down the GU to Brentford and onto the Thames. It was all very exciting because she only just fitted under the bridges and huge tiller arm, about eight feet long meant you had to walk from side to side to swing it through it's great arc. Boats coming the other way tended to panic and head for the bushes when they saw her coming.  In the end the whole trip was a failure because when we got into Norwood Top Lock she got wedged against the sides and it took over an hour to get her unstuck. Dave, her owner lost his nerve at that point and issued orders to abandon the trip so we backed her up to Adelaide yard where we turned her round and headed back home where we turned again and fitted her snugly back into her berth with only a few inches space fore and aft.  Despite all the problems we had that day, the tiller steering wasn't one of them and she steered really easily.

Sometimes the simplest device is the best.

Canal open!! plus the report of the commission looking into boat licencing and mooring

 I was quite surprised to receive the notice that the long term water shortage closures on the South Oxford have now been lifted. Some recent photos still showed the reservoir levels on the summit to be very low, although another report said that the reservoirs at Calcutt were now full. Anyhow that's all good news for the time being.

I've just finished reading all 82 pages of the independent commission reviewing CRT's licencing framework. I was one of the many boaters who respoded to their survey questionnaire. It certainly makes interesting reading and will no doubt be the subject of much debate and give CRT a lot to think about.  It's a complex problem and those who want a quick simple solution will be disappointed.  I don't yet have any clear opinions on the recommendations, but some interesting facts came to light and raised our eyebrows.  In no particular order, here are some:

CRT issues a cheaper "Rivers Only" licence -well we knew that, but hadn't realised it is available to all the boats on the Lee navigation. Some 800 boats(mainly residential) on the lower Lee in London in places like Hackney and Tottenham are getting their licence at a 40% reduction.  The reports recommends scrapping that type of licence.  There'll be uproar!

The number of unlicenced boats at the time of writing report was about 3500, costing the Trust around    £4 million in lost revenue

The number of ongoing enforcement cases was 5725 -that's an astonishing average of one boat in every six although some boaters have multiple cases.!!  The vast majority of which are due to unpaid licences

If a boat is removed from the water by CRT due to being abandoned or in some way non compliant, it takes an average of 257 days to complete all the necessary processes.

The total cost of enforcement over the last year was £4.31 million, which works out at a cost of £120 on everyone that does pay their licence.

If a licenced is revoked for any reason such as non payment or failure to comply with the rules or even abuse or threatening behaviour, CRT has no powers with refuse a re-application for a licence.

CRT has in effect one hand behind its back in trying to enforce anything. Its powers are limited and the legislation is unclear.

Sort that lot out!  That's just a sample of the problems with the current arrangements. The report also goes into congestion in urban areas, the unclear rules on 'continuous cruising', the 14 day rule and so on.

It makers recommendations on all these things and I need to re read them before taking a view, but I thought you might like to hear some of the findings early on.

Should you want to read the report, start here

https://canalrivertrust.org.uk/boating/boating-news-and-views/boating-news/commission-to-review-future-framework-for-boat-licensing

Making a meal of a "quick" job

Here's another entry into my "DiY how not to do stuff " annals. Read on only if you've got a strong stomach for details of technical incompetence. I'm just writing this to get it off my chest.

Our grandson Jacob stayed on Herbie recently for a weekend break and reported that the lock on the front doors had jammed.  I wasn't unduly surprised in that it had been a bit sticky for a while, so I thought I'd better install a new one pronto.

Ideally I wanted to replace it like for like to save having to drill new holes and cut new recesses in the doors, so I found one that was pretty much the same at good old Toolstation. Error numbro uno. In retrospect I'm not sure that was a good idea because the latch looks pretty cheap and nasty.  Should it fail when we're outside the boat, we probably wouldn't be able to get back in without damaging the doors

Anyhow, even though the new lock was near identical to the old one it still had a common problem. 

Most night latch locks are designed for doors that open inwards, but on Herbie (and most other boats I suspect) the doors open outwards. So when you get your new latch you have to dismantle it and turn the latch bolt (the brass thingy that sticks in and out as you operate the lock) the other way round.

Of course I had no idea how these things worked so when I took it to bits I was nervous of not being able to reassemble it. Error number 2 - always take a photo of  how it looks before you dismantle it. Of course I didn't. Fortunately I was able to practice on the old lock first so that helped a bit. Sometime later after pinching my fingers several. times and grovelling on the floor to retrieve a little spring, I managed it. So feeling pleased with myself I offered the new latch mechanism up to the door and was pleased when all the old screw holes were indeed in the right place.  

One thing you do have to do is to cut to length the tongue that pokes through from the actual lock on the outside of the door. (see that long sticky out thing in the picture above) Could I find my junior hacksaw? Of course not. It's probably hidden in plain sight like the pen that you put down which immediately disappears. So using two pairs of pliers I snapped off the excess length, and slid the new latch over it and screwed everything into place.  Job's a good'un. Well it should have been!  Now the b*&$y thing wouldn't turn.  Error number three -check you have trimmed the lock tongue short enough.

After taking it all off again and dropping little screws and wasting time looking for them, I deduced that the tongue was still a tad too long and was jamming against the latch cover. It looked like it just need a couple of millimetres trimming off. Well you can't do that with two pairs of pliers and I still could find the hacksaw so I resorted to my recent new friend the Mr Anglegrinder. Laying him on his back and wearing protective gloves I gingerly ground off the requisite 2 mil and set off back to the doors and screwed the latch back in place for the nth time. It worked! All I had to do now was to fit the thingy on the other side that the bolt slides into.  I screwed in on and tried the doors.  

Aah. If only it was that simple. You see, when you turn the latch bolt over, the flat side is now too close to the door surface to locate into the thingy on the other side. 

Doh! Now I could chisel a rebate to sink the thingy lower, or I could use a gasket to raise the latch a bit further from the door surface. Hmm. Of course my chisels are all back at our house.  So I called it a day for now. 

The latch does stop the door from opening - just -so it'll do while I contemplate getting a better quality lock - one I can trust. Of course that almost certainly will require reversing its bolt and drilling new holes in the door.  let's hope it goes better when I do it.  The cost of the lock and latch this time was only £14 so I can write that off to experience.