but boats aren't supposed to be on wheels?

The two previous posts were assembled this morning while waiting to be craned out at Uxbridge; both of course overdue, but I catch up eventually. I'm sitting in the Uxbridge Wetherspoons using their wifi - the fact that they sell beer is completely coincidental.



This was the scene early this afternoon - after being hoiked out of the water, she sat in the yard for a bit while I attacked the slime with a pressure washer - messy fun, you could say. After that I got shunted into the shed, where we'll spend most of the next week together, me tending to her nether regions, as it were.

Spent the latter part of this afternoon with a wire brush fitting on the angle grinder taking off a very fine layer of rust from the (v-) bottom; interestingly no evidence of bitumen on there at all, and I'd expect at least a little. Fairly tedious work as I'm holding the angle grinder up and pushing upwards - I hope my arms don't ache too much tomorrow, as I've got to do the other side of the boat in the morning. ;-) If all goes to plan (and this is a boat, remember) I'll get a coat of bitumen on later tomorrow, then coats on Tues & Thurs, to be dry before going back in to the water next Sat.

The boat really is a long way up - standing on the back deck I'm pretty much in the roof of the shed you can see in the background of the picture. It's odd - there's a little bit of movement within the boat, but being on pneumatic tyres is very different to being on water. I may or may not get used too it, and I just hope I don't have a dream where the wooden chocks propping up the boat fall away...

Vicarious Boating

last weekend, in between socialising with a friend/ex lodger, I had a bit of a boating holiday from home. Neil & Kath were out for a short trip on Herbie, so managed to join them in the Fox in Hanwell on Sunday, then in O Briens on Tues (music session) and Weds (pub quiz- I'm still sure that wasn't JK Rowling). Weds night turned into about 3am Thurs morning before I wandered home across Brentford. ;-) Also on Weds I had lunch at work with Adam of NB Debdale, who as I type will be shortly heading along the Ashby and bemoaning the lack of locks. Poor lad barely got a word in edgeways, but thankfully his professional training in getting the basic facts into two sentences served him well. ;-)



I often carry around an old SLR (Pentax MX) with a fast (f1.4) standard lens, and get away with photos in fairly low light situations. I did on Weds night, I've included a few here.



(top pic - Jerry from NB Roanaoke playing excellent fiddle on the right, there. Also met the lovely couple from NB Barnaby, who's names I have, dreafully, forgotten).

Snow flashback

I've just got hold of a couple of pictures that Catherine (thank you!) took when we had the heavy snow a while back. Being relatively local to work, almost by definition I end up in work rather than getting to be out playing, so didn't make it to the moorings in the those few days. Anyway, here's Tortoise looking snowy, and with Benbulben, Catherine's boat.

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.

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