pubs & relays

A mini boater's banter (TM Bones) last night in the Fox in Hanwell - Kath & Neil had got that far on Herbie, and we were also joined by Geoff & Rose (and Parsley the lion dog) who have just bought Peggoty from VC Marine - I'd actually seen them on Saturday at Iver as they pottered past. They're taking the boat back to Newbury, so are awaiting tides & bookings for Thames lock in Brentford. Embarrassingly (or understandably) after fifteen years in Brentford I hadn't been up to the Fox before - but then again with so many good pubs in Brentford, why would I need to?

Speaking of pubs, anyone on the canal in Mile End could do worse than a Saturday night in the Palm Tree, off Grove Road - a nice old pub, improved further by live jazz & crooning - they even played 'my funny valentine' for me, despite my lack of anyone to dedicate it too - brought a tear to my eye, indeed, nearly as good as the Freiwilligeselbscontrolle Peel session version.

Anyway, work on the boat continues – I now have a working automatic split charge relay system (you don’t want to know what I did before this), although the extra load from that & the fridge relay means the engine needs a fairly high rev before it kicks in. The usual recommended solution is putting in a bigger bulb, but I’m tempted to add a resistance in parallel with it instead, which also means the alternator will still run if the bulb blows. Other ongoing progress on my new back door, and also (controversially) some outdoor speakers to go under the gunwhales on my back deck.

Blacking next week; watch this space…

Tortoise nearly has two stoves...

Blogs are marvellous things, and a little cheek can get you a long way - a comment left on Geoff's blog about forthcoming work on Lady Elgar has resulted in a new home for the Epping stove from their boatman's cabin, a tiny range, which I'm looking forward greatly to trying to cook on - expect reports on Fud at some point in the future, although with a new flue needed and BSC to work towards, installation (or should I say replacement - I don't need two heaters in an 18' long cabin) may not happen until the summer or autumn. Geoff is a very kind man, and I hope to be able to repay him in some way.

By the way, 'Fud' is a collaborative blog about cooking good, simple, ethical food, suited to boats or even gathered from the countryside nearby - if anyone wants to contribute, please get in touch.

neater electrics

Space being tight, the domestic electricity distribution is squeezed in under the gunwhale behind the back door. I'd been looking out for a suitable blank box to mount everything in, when using standard double gang surface boxes occured to me - ready made to the right width, modular, and easily replaceable.

The upper blank panel will hold a current/voltage metering, although it may be easier to put the switch panel as the upper one.

The switches themselves are 12v illuminated rocker switches, rated at 20A. Previously I'd discovered these are actually SPDT changeover switches, as when 'off' they short the output to ground - if ground is connected to illuminate the switch. I'll be using this for the fridge circuit, to switch it between a direct connection, or via a relay connected across the charge warning light, along with the split charge relay. The breakers are small thermal types, all 10A bar the lighting circuit which is 5A. Small boat, simple needs, thankfully - the circuits are water, aux (cig lighter sockets & radio/telly), fridge, lights, and charger.

Note the plastic tank connector acting as a bush as the cables pass through the bulkhead into the engine space. On the other side (actually under the back door step) there's a sheet of ply, holding the other electrical services - master switches, relays etc.

Meanwhile I've just bought myself big crimpers (not huge, biggest size of wire they'll take is 16mm2, but that should be enough for the split charge relay) and crimp terminals to sort out various outstanding bits. A colleague pointed out I didn't have enough hair to crimp...

wheelchair sighting!

After all the stuff we've had about removal of the motorbike gates for disabled access, and the resultant kids on motorbikes (and postcards for BW) - it made a refreshing change to see someone in a wheelchair on the towpath - certainly the first time I've seen one.

I'm not sure if he was with the cyclists visible ahead or whether they'd all just passed him - but they would all have had fun getting through the fishing compeition also going on, visible far right.

a post of many parts

Firstly, Halfie asks how I'm doing with my time lapse camera; to be honest, haven't done anything much, apart from wish I'd had it last summer. ;-) The aim is to mount it in a relatively secure & weatherproof box, with access to a 12v supply, so basically it can be started every morning on a cruise and left all day. It's more or less in one small box what I've been meaning to build for myself for years.

Poking around blogs (via Lucky Duck, I think, this one), I found Robin of NB Uisce posting videos made up from webcam images recorded by a laptop, assembled into a video file afterwards. A more complicated setup, but notable from the fundamental point that the viewpoint is from the back fo the boat, the way the steerer sees the world anyway. I'd been working on a clear view of the canal, from the bow (what I suspect the Waterway Routes videos do), although I did quite like the test run on NB Alnwick, that had a little of the prow in shot. So food for thought, there. Also noting that Uisce and Waterway Routes are both boats with electric propulsion - yes, back to that again... ;-)

I also wanted to note that I got to have dinner with Keith & Tim from NB Floss, who I met properly at Calcutt locks, but we seem to have more or less followed the same route around the country at more or less the same time, and being more observant than me must have spotted a daft little red boat here and there. No link, as they keep some kind of 'log' on 'paper' - who knew that was possible? ;-) I still maintain this blog is mainly for me, I'll lose a notebook easily enough, more easily than I'm likely to break the entire internet. Next time I'll blag a look around FLoss, and their famous gardner engine. Actually, if I did go electric I could have great fun recording various old engines, and playing them in through the boat back deck sound system (yet to be properly installed) when passing impressible boaters. It's a thought, albeit a daft one.

Tortoise deserves a paragraph, at least; I'm finally replacing the original fuse distribution with a neat circuit breaker & switch systen, mounted into a double gang electrical socket pattress plate; a second one will hold metering - more to come, and pictures, in another post. Plan for first half of the year is blacking in March, then getting ready for an initial BSC inspection at the start of May, giving me two months to get things right before I expire in July. Thankfully High Line do the second inspection for free, unlike whoever Carrie is using... ;-( Also I'm booked in for Little Venice again on May Day bank holiday, hopefully sheperding along Catherine & Will on Benbulben, along with the rest of the High Line convoy; PMR radios, chaps?

And finally, I've even splashed out on doing some work on the house - insulating under the front room floor, which has made a huge difference to the temperature (and temperature gradient) of the room. The newish woodstove is doing sterling service on evenings in, burning slowly on larger pices of wood and pumping out the heat with thinner pieces of wood. There's three loft conversions going on locally at the moment, yielding lovely old roof supports & joists, and in one case some strips of oak that will come in very useful on Tortoise. I've got enough Kingspan left to do the rest of the ground floor, currently sitting under a tarp (and snow, at the moment) in the garden. I just need to make the time to pull up the floor in the hallway & back room...

electrickery

One of the 'I can do that properly later' jobs waiting for me to do this spring is the domestic electric distribution. It's more or less in, and fused, and safe, but just not - erm - finished elegantly, and I'm going to replace the fuse board with a proper switch/distribution unit. I'm also going to add a sneaky permanent connection to the domestic batteries for a solar panel (before the master switch, which is off when I'm not around), and a fridge power feed (switched from the charge warning light, like a split charge relay, so whilst bypassable, normally the fridge is only running when the alternator is). I should also jot down that I've used 15mm pipe clips to hold the cabling, which largely runs under the starboard gunwhale. In theory they work really well when adding/removing cables, in practice not ideal as getting at the clip to open them isn't easy when hidden behind the lining. I've yet to find anything better, though.

Jack Giles does most of the electrical work at High Line; I haven't used him myself, but he's a nice chap, and plays bass & guitar, and has even found himself playing through my bike PA system. Anyway, I bumped into him at Christmas and was reminded of his very useful Black Museum pages of electrical installations he's found and wished he hadn't. Well worth a look through if you're doing any electrical work - he points out a few things that aren't immediately obvious to the layman, and has certainly made me think about a few things.

Don't read this blog...

...read this one:

http://talestotell.wordpress.com/

Christmas on the cut

New residents at High Line - Catherine (who's boat I'm moored alongside) and Will (who has Floss as his non-residential attachee) invited me to join them this year, so I did. The weather wasn't too bad, so it seemed only reasonable to take Tortoise out, and why not go somewhere I hadn't taken her before, even if it was the end of the Slough Arm?



tech note: the batteries (of unknown history) only lasted until we turned. This was a temporary lash up of the time lapse unit and a g-clamp, but any more solid version would also allow for an external power supply. The position of the camera was at the front of the roof - the artist in me wants the horizon to sit at the upper third of the image, so camera position/angle to be played with. This was a frame taken at every 5 seconds; the resulting avi file has a 10fps rate, I've no idea what youtube does to frame rate after that... Also apologies for the few frames of me staring into it to make sure it's working - that may well be a feature of such videos until I sort out some editing software. ;-)

As we went along I thought a slight yaw motion would show up badly on the time lapse video, but what it does show is how much a little boat needs course correcting, especially when driven with a glass of champagne in my hand and a dodgy soundtrack (link only really of interest to those who know Catherine and/work the work of Lynryrd Skynryd), not to mention texting, waving at people and generally bringing canal users into disrepute (about time, if you ask me).

In amongst the visiting, drinking and mediocre telly, I did manage a walk in the woodlands opposite, and found a 10" length of rail, presumably cast aside from the nearby railway line. I often need something solid to hammer things against, so I carried all 14kg of it (that's two stone to you) home. Another reminder of the serious work that the navvies who built the railways, and the canals before that, put in.

These couple of days were typical of something that sums up a great year of faffing about on the canals; the people. Whether I'm passing the time of day at a lock, chatting to Jim & Mary (previous owners of Tortoise) in the local supermarket, meeting other boating bloggers (Pav, Neil C, Andrew Denny, Carrie, Ali & Richard and of course the Bones & Maffi posse) or waffling at people on the towpath at Iver - it's all interesting, and dare I say it, a peer group I mostly seem to fit in to. To misquote one Marx, other people may not want to be members of a club that will have me, but to quote the other one:

The human being is in the most literal sense a political animal, not merely a gregarious animal, but an animal which can individuate itself only in the midst of society.

I'm used to my own company, but, by & large, people make it worth while. Thank you, one & all.

It's here!

My lovely little Windy Smithy stove has arrived this morning, and is sitting very happily in the hearth in my front room. It's small, but in a very temporary installation (CO alarm brought home from the boat, just in case) it's giving a lovely gentle heat. The kettle sitting on top in the picture is a cheap camping one with a lip around the base (designed for a gas stove), one with a flat bottom would pick up a lot more heat. Anyway, a gorgeous little stove, small enough to be flexible, and woudl work well on a boat, of course. I had a look at a few others around - there's a lot in forums etc on the web - for the same price as a chinese one, say, I've got a hand made one from Devon. Very happy with it.

Question for boaters - recommendations for a pub to go to on a day trip from Iver morrings, in winter (so short day)? I'm guessing Uxbridge or West Drayton, I wasn't over-impressed with the pub by the marina, but it might do...

Of Stoves & Stuff

Time to get some more work done on the boat; a tedious bus to Uxbridge, a trip to the Uxbridge Boat Centre chandlery and then a trip on the useful 58 bus back to Langley (goes from the top of Waterloo Road in Uxbridge to the strangely placed bus stop just by the top entrance to the moorings, albeit for a steep £3.90 and no they don't take 6 zone travelcards). After a certain amount with faffing with other people's boats and drinking tea, a few pieces were cut to fit the stove surround. This needs gluing & screwing in, then of course tiling, but it's a job that's been hanging around for ages, and will improve things markedly. It's anoying how flash photography makes everything look so much muckier... ;-( The hearth is to be extended forward, too, as the stove ended up further forward than I'd hoped, it's all fine really.

Still a few jobs to be done to be even vaguely ready for the BSC next summer; I've made a list, and that's a start.

Around this time of year I indulge myself and buy something that isn't entirely useful or beautiful (which is why my house doesn't look like William Morris'); this year it may just break those rules, as I've bought myself a small woodburner from Jon at Windy Smithy in Devon. Hopefully arriving Monday; to be used in the front room, but I like the idea it may end up anywhere, as may I, in the future.

Ironically I a share a pay-as-you-go electricity point with Herbie - only you pay a £5 at a time, so it's hardly easy to share. Neil - I've left a note in there with how much was left when I plugged in. I'll pay you back what I owe, possibly in beer...?

Finally I've been told, by the way, that there's heightened sun spot activity at the moment, which means that aurora borealis may be visible in the UK this weekend, a suitable natural celebration of the winter solstice if there ever was one. I'm in London and unlikely to be best placed to see anything, but watch the skies...