Blogger fails maths test

Rick emailed me to say my sums are wrong (see post below). 10.7 million gallons would weigh 47000 tons!! Rick is usually right on these things and I automatically defer without checking.

That's a hell of a lot of water to go missing. Enough to float the QEII in fact. It must be true, Wikipedia says so :-) Now we'll never see the QEII on the Grand Union.

I'm pretty sure the level has dropped because all the way along the canal you can see the damp tide mark of the previous level. I blame the Met Office. The weather has been worse since they left Bracknell and moved to Exeter.

Can we have our water back please?

I noticed last weekend that the canal was about 3 inches lower than normal. Where we are there is a total of 26 miles of level water (Slough Arm plus GU from Cowley to Norwood plus Paddington Arm). If you use a guestimate of an average width of 50 feet, that all comes to 26 miles x 5280 feet (per mile) x 50feet (wide) x 0.25feet (missing) x 6.25 (gals per cubic foot) = 10.7 million gallons missing! I think thats over 4700 tons if my sums are right.

Has it all evaporated off in the warm weather or have BW drawn some off for nefarious purposes? Either way, we'd like some back because the down the Slough Arm, the bottom is too near the top. I wouldn't want to take a deep draughted boat down there at present. Herbie draws only 2 feet and even we have to go quite slowly to get the water past the boat.

Obstacles

It seems the worst of the weed has passed on the Slough Arm. It is still very weedy at the edges, but there is a narrow channel in the middle where you can get through without too much problem. Woe betide you if you stray towards the edge though. Despite that, it all looks very pretty at the moment as you can see in this rare picture of a boat coming the other way.

However we had another obstacle yesterday when we went down to the winding hole. A boat adrift across the canal. Not tied up properly and surprise, surprise, it was an unlicenced one. Happily another boater from our moorings managed to shove it out of the way for us.

Later, on our way out of the arm we encountered another obstacle. This poor cormorant desperately swam in front of us, diving then re emerging to see us still bearing down on him. This went on for some time until at last he had the sense to just move aside. Then, ten minutes later I at last managed to photograph a kingfisher. Usually they fly off before I get the camera set.

We had a smooth run down to Bulls Bridge where we did a spring clean of the boat ready for Claire and family to take over Herbie while we went home by car to be dog sitters for the weekend. Here we are outside Tesco at sunset, all spruced up and ready for the handover. We even turned the boat round so all they had to do in the morning was turn through the bridge and follow their noses to London.

Weed plough anyone?

Tomorrow we take Herbie for the short cruise to Bulls Bridge where we will hand over to Claire and family who are taking the boat to London for the weekend. So if you are crashed into by Herbie on Saturday, don't blame me!

To be frank, the canal between Cowley Peachey and Bulls Bridge is unspectacular. The best we can hope for is to see some interesting boats and to smell the coffee roasting at the Nescafe factory. Although there is one spectacular sight come the think of it. A new block of (I think) flats being built near Bulls Bridge. Its huge. I've never seen so much scaffolding and safety netting in my life. Also they have quite a number of temporary lifts running up the outside to lift men and machines and materials up to the higher floors. They should stop now and keep it like it is. Far more interesting than the finished building I expect.

I'm not looking forward to the trip down to the winding hole to turn the boat first. No doubt the blanket weed is still there waiting for the propellor to wrap it up. We are developing techniques to deal with it but they aren't that effective. We really need a weed plough on the front of the boat.

Art conkers nature?

Here are another few pics to add to the blog's catalogue of canalside sculpture. These can be seen alongside the Wey navigation at Guildford. What I particularly like about them is than they are carved in situ from standing trees.

I think this one is brilliant , although it took us a while to see what it was. Can you make it out?

I don't think the trees would be so keen of course. I suppose they might be horse chestnuts although I think not. The disease which is currently killing a lot of them off was well in evidence in this area when we passed through. What the future is for conkers I dread to think. It looks as though horse chestnuts may be going the way of elms. If so, better to be made into a sculpture than into firewood.

The long and short of lock gubbins

One day I mean to compile a photo directory of lock gears and related gubbinses. One of the delights of boating is the variety of designs you come across.

Take a look at these three windlasses.

The short one is my "regular" windlass for use on canals. Kath likes to use the middle one, which being a bit longer gives better leverage but can bring your knuckles a bit close to the balance beam of the lock.

The big red one is what they lend you to use on the river Wey. Its nearly twice as long as mine. You get plenty of leverage but your arms have to describe a huge circle when you turn it, and often you are leaning out over the water at the time so it makes it feel very precarious, especially when the little plank you are standing on is wobbling beneath your feet. And why do they paint the windlasses dull red? It makes it quite hard to see them when you lay them on the grass to have hands free to catch a rope. I like my bright yellow one, but as you can see it needs a lick of paint now.

The paddle gear on Wey locks is very neat though. They only seem to have gate paddles, so the current in the locks can be pretty fierce, but the mechanisms are super. The horizontal shafts have universal joints in them, which presumably allows for less than accurate alignment of the end bearings,but the rachet gear is the really good bit. I don't know how it works because it is all enclosed in a box. It stops the paddle falling when wound up, but somehow it lets you wind down without having to manually release the rachet. Clever. No sudden clattering drops of the paddle, and no greasy fingers.

What ever the designs of rachet gear, they're all better than the ghastly hydraulic things which BW went through a phase of some years back. I hate them with a passion. They are just as hard to wind down as up, they take ages, they can't be quickly closed in an emergency and worst of all they don't make a nice clackety clack noise.

Backing up to the pub

Last week I mentioned the inn sign at the New Inn at Send. Now you can see it for yourself. I'll leave you to judge whether the boat is actually meant to be going full speed astern or whether the artist hadn't got a clue about boats. As for the position of the chimney, I suppose its possible to have a stove in the bow, or is it meant to be the engine exhaust?

Anyway its only a pub sign, Musn't get too anoraky about such things, and the pub itself was quite nice with moorings right outside.

Picture catch up

I've now had chance to retrieve and sort the photos from our trip, so over the next few days I'll share with you some of the more interesting ones.

First a shot of the chaos at the start of the Guildford raft race

Then the amazing Thomas the Tank Engine narrowboat that came only 3rd in the boat gathering pageant. I think they were a bit miffed. It was easily the best model but they lost points by having no music or antics I guess. Mind you, the wheels actually went round!

And then this boat seen at the gathering.

I thought the only paddle driven narrowboat was Savernake up at Uxbridge (featured on Waterworld on TV), but this one which moors at Guildford is also the genuine article and seems to motor along quite efficiently.

More soon.

Mystery solved

I received a comment from Eddy, a former owner of Barka Dio, the unusual boat I featured in my post on June 17th.

He writes "Barka dio was our previous 2th boat in Holland, boat 1 is named Misty too, this is the one we live on in the Med. We kept it as a pied a terre. when we sold it, it is transported to the UK and it looks like they renovated the interior totaly. The boat is a "Westlander" build in 1935 as a sailing farmer Barge. in about 1970 it was turned in to a "cruiser" on our site you wil find pictures from a trip we made tru the dutch canals, including pictures from a trip to Turkey with Misty Too, look at www.spaces.msn.com/sy-misty-too/ under foto's you will find "Barka Dio" wich is greek for "Boat 2"

Thanks Eddy for solving the mystery of this smart little boat.

Reviewing the trip

Herbie now rests at her moorings while we plan our next trip. We really enjoyed the last couple of weeks and can thoroughly recommend the Wey navigation. It was an easy trip too compared with our more usual rigours up the Grand Union to the Tring summit. This time we did 94 miles and 64 locks, although 10 of the locks were done for us by lock keepers.

In summary our new experiences taught us that:

1. The Wey navigation carries predominantly narrowboats - a surprise to me - and quite a few hire boats
2. The tidal Thames (upstream of Brentford) is not at all scary in reasonable conditions (a surprise to Kath)
3. There are more water fowl, especially coots and herons, on the canals than on the Wey - a surprise to us both. Maybe coots thrive on human detritus.
4. The Wey seems to have no unlicenced boats, no continuous moorers, and hardly any old wrecks - quite different from the GU.

Foxed at the Fox

We left Teddington lock at high water this morning and had a very gentle run down to Brentford with the river as flat as a mill pond. Once safely in Brentford basin we used the BW showers to freshen up and then set off up the GU towards home. Being back on the canal felt a bit like being back on dry land. At least the water stood still. We enjoyed the Thames though and Kath, who was a bit scared of the tidal river is already talking about going all the way up to Oxford next time.

On approaching Hanwell I felt a tiny spot of rain so insisted we moor up by the Fox until it cleared. In fact, overnight just to be sure. So we endured a night of eating and drinking at the Fox, and took part in their pub quiz, which Foxed us a lot of the time. Still, we failed to come last so salvaged a bit of pride.

Tomorrow is the last day of the trip. Back past Bull's Bridge, on to Cowley then down the Slough Arm where no doubt Herbie's propellor will be pleased to cosset itself in the abundant blanket weed.

The maelstrom

The rain arrived on cue and we left the Wey at 9am this morning full of trepidation about having to cross the maelstrom that is Shepperton weir pool. Last evening we walked over to survey it and it looked a bit scary. A lot of the sluices were open to get rid of all the water coming down the Thames after recent rains and there was a really strong torrent flowing right across the pool and then into a big back eddy.

I asked the Wey lock keeper what would be the best technique to cross the pool and he said “ Aim at the eye of it and give the boat full welly”. So that’s what we did. We pushed the engine up to 2200 revs (our normal cruising maximum is about 1800) and went for it. Herbie rocked as the torrent slammed into her side and then again as it hit the stern. We held straight and in a few seconds we were through. All rather exciting really, but soon over. A good job we weren’t two minutes later, because a little tug type boat pushing a bit flat pallet carrying big bags of sand (I think) came across the other way. Avoiding a collision might have been nigh on impossible.

After that it was all plain sailing, well cruising anyway. Very few boats were moving on the Thames, not surprising since the rain was increasing. We ploughed on past Hampton Court where long queues of punters under umbrellas were filing into the garden festival. Lots of boats were busy earning a crust by ferrying people to and from the site.

We reached Teddington at midday, very wet and glad to be moored up before the heavier rain hit although very big boats keep going past us too fast and their wash slams Herbie against the quayside. We go down on the tide at 08.30 tomorrow.