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Only because after Terry Darlington made it sound dangerous in his book (it wasn't), no-one would insure narrowboats crossing the Channel any more. We did take Snail out to sea in Europe a few times where she behaved very well, even in chop. Unlike Chris Coburn who has achieved all kinds of exploits in his very ordinary nb, we had ours especially made with a 15mm bottom plate, ballast cut to fit so they couldn't slide, 67hp engine, PRM260 gear box, large prop (22x22), double sized skin tanks, all portholes, trad stern, tender that was always available for use if needed, easy to tow along behind on the big European waterways. Snail easily makes 10 kts, (we tested this on the Gent-Terneuzen Canal,built in 1823 which is 200m wide and capable of accomodating ships up to 125,000 tons, with a draught of up to 12.5 m) not a lot of use now we've come back to the UK canals. My blog and book illustrates what's achievable.

The Tunnel leading up to Tuel Lane Deep Lock (Sowerby Bridge, Rochdale Canal) had some sort of comms system so the Lock keepers could signal to waiting boats (as boats should not enter the tunnel while the lock is emptying). It broke. Now the lock keepers have a whistle, they bend down towards the tunnel and blow the whistle and the sound travels through the tunnel quite well.

Water was so low at the T&M summit last week that I couldn't get into one of the Stoke locks, and it has rained a bit lately. The CRT bloke who came to sort it out blamed vandals for opening paddles overnight - I did point out that the gates on the flight leaked so much that a lock someone had just emptied (and mistakenly shut the gates on me as I approached it), was half full again by the time I'd walked up to it. Others on the flight, filled by someone going up just before me, were almost empty by the time I reached them. It really doesn't bode well for the summer. Until a few years ago there were anti vandal locks on the top couple, too, presumably taken off because vandalism isn't really a problem.

I didn't carefully avoid your question I meticulously ignored it.

its 1 year ago today we laid the baseplate and whilst the first 6 months produced quick results, the last half of the year have been thwarted by rain, wind, floods and generally pretty poor weather. So what to report..... Well, we found her original stern dollies and rudder. Sadly they're on a bota on the K and A, made from the stern of the GUCCCo butty Satellite, called Adrastea, so they won't be reunited, and the unique Anderton profiling on the rudder top has been reprofiled to a more standard semicircle. So, we have machined an unmatched pair of dollies as they originally were, and also made a new T stud as the location of that is also unknown. We've also fabricated the majority of the deck beam on the bench, to weld into the deck beam frame which is where the first large wooden knees would have been under the deck board. The other job we squeezed in between rain clouds is starting to make the templates for sections of the hull we can't achieve with parallel planking. We can but hope the weather will somewhat improve over the coming weeks....... we're not holding our breath. Photos showing progress as of today

On that, I was idly looking around a car lot flogging VW campers. I looked at a particularly nice one with £7,995 on the screen and I thought blimey that looks good value. Then I looked again and it was actually £79,995, lol!

Ah, almost every sensible contribution to a debate needs a bit of racism to spice it up, doesn't it?

I looked into hiring a boat for the end of May for a long weekend, just me and my wife, far too expensive, so we're driving to Bruges and staying on a hotel boat instead, half the price, all in, including the tunnel. Unless we go with another couple, my (narrow) boating days are over.

Cotswolds Archeology are working on route of the A66 upgrade and have come across evidence of early communities and water channels. In relation to the time line for canals this must rank as early.

It doesn't require net energy to make it. The production of biofuels such as HVO is still energy positive. If carbon neutral energy is used to make it, then it is indeed carbon neutral. Let's say a factory produces 1000 kJ of biofuel, and it uses 100 kJ of dirty energy to make it. The factory produced 900 kJ of net energy, 90% carbon neutral. If the factory uses 100 kJ of that biofuel's energy to make the next batch of 1000 kJ of biofuel, it has now made carbon-neutral biofuel. (If you want to be extremely technical, you can say it's now 99% carbon neutral, and the next batch will be 99.9%... so you can mathematically say it tends towards carbon neutrality. But, I think, this is pedantry rather than a helpful classification of the fuel by carbon impact). I'm feeling confused by how you think my use of the term carbon neutral would be used to describe batteries. Would you be willing to explain what you mean so that my need to understand can be met? I can understand this point of view, and there's definitely a practical aspect to this as we make the necessary changes - for now, most lorries use dirty diesel, and so transporting biodiesel by lorry means the practical usage of biodiesel isn't really carbon neutral. However, it is more helpful and more accurate to point out that while the biodiesel itself is in fact carbon neutral, it's the transportation that is the problem in this case. All the carbon sequestered in it was captured from the atmosphere, not extracted from the ground - and releasing it back to the atmosphere should not be considered a failure or a tragedy. The releasing of carbon captured recently should be considered a neutral activity. There are lots of reasons why biodiesel isn't the complete answer (land use change, expense, local pollution) but carbon emissions aren't one of them. The carbon emitted during production and transportation applies to dinodiesel too.

Dave Cottle 07729 129493 but don't say the number came from me. Their engines are usually installed by Chris Jones 07887 565531

Given the innovation was noted in 1795, and a lot of canals were built after that, it would appear sloping paddles didn't offer enough of an advantage to outweigh any disadvantage. I can't think of any other UK canal that has two paddles on the same side, although the original configuration at the lower end of each lock at Marple did. I've seen a USA waterway with three paddles on the same side, operating a valve in the floor.

I guess you can call it this. I would call it fossil fuel companies promoting a misleading use of the term. Perhaps you'll find it more agreeable if I talk about carbon that's part of the carbon cycle, and carbon that's not (mineral carbon). I'm trying to shift a perspective that is common and unhelpful. No, because a forest is part of the carbon cycle and always will be, the mine is not and never will be. We should stop entertaining the idea of "offsetting" ancient carbon with carbon that's part of the carbon cycle, because it's just not realistic. The quantities are just too great and the land required is just too huge. Plus it involves trusting that the forest will remain in perpetuity. Cutting a forest down is not a neutral activity, but I would call that land use change. Burning the wood (or letting it decompose) is part of the carbon cycle. If you replant the wood continuously to replace the chopped down wood, there is no land use change, and this is a carbon neutral activity. As it shouldn't be, because we're just releasing the same carbon that we removed from the atmosphere by growing our biofuel (food). It's carbon cycle carbon. Of course if you count the agricultural machinery, the transport, etc, then no it wasn't carbon neutral, but it's unhelpful to call food carbon emitting when it's not the food's "fault", but the fossil fuel's "fault". You're pointing the finger at the wrong things. Food itself can't be anything other than carbon neutral because humans are fueled by the very same energy chemical carbon bonds that were created by the sun converting carbon dioxide into food. It does, but in theory, if you were to fuel the ships with those wood chips, then it would be carbon neutral. In the context of an extremely integrated carbon based energy economy, I guess not, but the point of the term (for me at least) is to separate out those things that would be carbon neutral if not supported by a whole bunch of peripheral carbon releasing activities. Otherwise the term isn't helpful. If I grow a broccoli in my garden, eat it, then breathe out carbon dioxide, this is a carbon neutral activity. You could of course argue that because I drove to the shop in my ICE car to get the seeds, that it isn't, and while you're technically correct, it's not helpful because it's the DRIVING THE ICE CAR that's the issue, not the growing of the broccoli. Fossil fuel companies know that conflating the two helps their case, if you can't even grow a broccoli without carbon, then what's the point in even trying to reduce carbon emissions. Heck we even breathe out carbon (!) I couldn't agree more, but that's beyond the scope of what we can do personally.

What about the River Cherwell? What's that like? Is that an option?

Given that the HNC was reopened on the cheap and it's now 25 years old and hasn't been properly maintained due to lack of money -- like the rest of the system -- how do you think any heavyweights could have done any better? Especially given the tiny number of boats who use it, so it's well down any "fix it first" priority list compared to canals with 20x more traffic? The Rochdale has pretty much the same problem for the same reasons, which is why both canals keep having so many closures... 😞

What I do know is under this shower i.e. lightweights who created the current system and who don't maintain the paddles, very few boats can get to the tunnel to use any comms system.

My heaviest internet use is posting rubbish on here.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-68880171 Downing Street says spending would increase gradually over the next six years, reaching £87.1bn by 2030 - £7bn higher than if spending stayed at its current level of 2.3% of GDP. That 0.2% of GDP increase -- not the total! -- is about 30x higher than CART's annual budget. If they'd increased it by 0.197% instead of 0.2%, that would have paid for a 50% increase in the total CART budget, probably enough to make all their maintainance/funding problems disappear... 😞

As one of those young whippersnapper new liveaboards people love to moan about, I'd say we've done pretty OK over the last 90 days...