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How much extra storage space do you really get WB -v- NB


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9 minutes ago, Robbo said:

I wouldn't say it's significantly greater at all, it's a small part in doing a lock.  I find mooring up to open/close the gates is the biggest significant thing when single handing over a couple or more doing a lock.

 

That's fine then 

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Some help - perhaps and a quick plug.

Have a look at Cain narrowboats here - http://www.cainnarrowboats.com/cain_narrowboats_7_039.htm (a sample of one of their boats). I've posted this before here, but a couple of years ago they sold a boat to a forum member (new user, wanted a NB) and I was mightily impressed with the quality and fitout of what she got in the end.

They're very nice folks and could help direct you as they've got no axe to grind. Their boats scale well, so don't look as ugly as you'd imagine. Hurry though, as they seem to be booked up until the end of time....

 

 

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I have never owned a narrow or a broad beam but have steered both regularly and seen a lot at Crick and elsewhere. One of the things I notice about some (but not all) of the wide beams is that the cabin is so high relative to the stern deck that the visibility from the steering position is very poor, (even though I am 6ft tall) my comment to the OP would therefore be that if you intend to use a wide beam for CCing make sure you are happy with the steering position and the visibility.  

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3 hours ago, NickF said:

I have never owned a narrow or a broad beam but have steered both regularly and seen a lot at Crick and elsewhere. One of the things I notice about some (but not all) of the wide beams is that the cabin is so high relative to the stern deck that the visibility from the steering position is very poor, (even though I am 6ft tall) my comment to the OP would therefore be that if you intend to use a wide beam for CCing make sure you are happy with the steering position and the visibility.  

On the plus side you do get a lot of exercise running from side to side.

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Just now, Neil2 said:

On the plus side you do get a lot of exercise running from side to side.

Exercise is overrated. If you're fit you don't need it and if you're not you shouldn't be doing it ;)

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4 hours ago, NickF said:

Not that debate again!

 

What is there to argue about?

(Except that Mr Oss has it slightly wrong. The widebeam is heavier so will push the water out of a lock quicker going downhill, but going uphill the locks will fill slower. So swings and roundabouts really... )

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3 hours ago, Mike the Boilerman said:

 

What is there to argue about?

(Except that Mr Oss has it slightly wrong. The widebeam is heavier so will push the water out of a lock quicker going downhill, but going uphill the locks will fill slower. So swings and roundabouts really... )

That depends on how much you open the sluices.

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The minute you realise the reality of not being able to do the best bits of the system will be the minute you realise you do not need anything bigger than 58' by 6'10. 

Llangollen out, Oxford out, Coventry out, Leicester out,Huddersfield narrow.  Trent and Mersey out, There is no point coming from here ( Oz) to uk and then being stuck on canals with immovable wide boats. Unless Europe is your ultimate destination.

buy a narrowboat, go play, if you still want a fat boat then buy secondhand, when the reality and the fees start to bite there will be loads about. They depreciate faster than a pile of scrap over a cliff as well

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1 hour ago, roland elsdon said:

The minute you realise the reality of not being able to do the best bits of the system will be the minute you realise you do not need anything bigger than 58' by 6'10. 

Llangollen out, Oxford out, Coventry out, Leicester out,Huddersfield narrow.  Trent and Mersey out, There is no point coming from here ( Oz) to uk and then being stuck on canals with immovable wide boats. Unless Europe is your ultimate destination.

buy a narrowboat, go play, if you still want a fat boat then buy secondhand, when the reality and the fees start to bite there will be loads about. They depreciate faster than a pile of scrap over a cliff as well

Pardon? None of the canals you list are inaccessible to a 70 footer, though not much point doing the HNC as you'll have to wind and come straight back.

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Err I deliberately missed out the wide northern canals that he may legitimately wish to access with a wide beam boat, I'd Calder and hebble and Leeds and Liverpool, as I assumed that why he set out looking at 58 ft. My point being that after 30 years of full length boats 71'6"" I changed to 55 ft to increase my own range.

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I think I'd approach this as buying the best boat for the job. If you wanted to run away to sea, you'd probably look at second hand yachts. If you thought you'd like to cruise the European waterways and/or limited coastal waters, a Dutch barge (or UK replica) are tried and tested and the right scale. If you're interested in luxuriating on rivers and a limited selection of wide canals, a widebeam might be just the ticket. Or maybe one of those small 'shallow' Dutch barges -- about 40-50 feet long with a 2.5-foot draft, low air draft and fold-down or no wheelhouse . As many here have said, if you really like the idea of cruising a good chunk of the UK system, a narrowboat is the only home to have.

As to size, when we were looking for a second-hand boat to live on we came across an 8-foot wide widebeam. A sort of 'wide-ish-beam'. It did seem noticably larger inside, but seemed like a narrowboat on the outside. Of course, in the South, with this or any widebeam you'd be restricted to the GUC short of Birmingham, the Thames, and the Kennet & Avon Canal. That might be enough for you, or it might not.

My personal taste in boats are ones that look 'boaty'. Hard to define, but I know them when I see them. Inside lots of solid fittings and varnished hardwood and nicely proportioned cabins making clever use of limited, intimate space. Brass or chrome seem to regularly feature. Outside I suppose they look solid with nicely crafted steelwork and curves clearly designed for easy handling and cruising. These things are something I see in a good number of narrowboats and Dutch barges, but less so in widebeams. I'm not really sure why. Maybe I should get out and see more. Is it because the raison d'etre of most widebeam designs are to GIVE LOTS OF SPACE (in a UK canal-scaled boat)? And maximising space will naturally compromise some of those traditional 'boaty' features I'm vaguely pointing to?

Anyway, a couple of thoughts.

BTW, two of us and our cat have happily lived aboard our 53-foot narrowboat for over seven years now. I suspect a 58-foot narrowbeam would be more than enough to live solo on.

 

 

 

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1 hour ago, Jim Batty said:

I think I'd approach this as buying the best boat for the job. If you wanted to run away to sea, you'd probably look at second hand yachts. If you thought you'd like to cruise the European waterways and/or limited coastal waters, a Dutch barge (or UK replica) are tried and tested and the right scale. If you're interested in luxuriating on rivers and a limited selection of wide canals, a widebeam might be just the ticket. Or maybe one of those small 'shallow' Dutch barges -- about 40-50 feet long with a 2.5-foot draft, low air draft and fold-down or no wheelhouse . As many here have said, if you really like the idea of cruising a good chunk of the UK system, a narrowboat is the only home to have.

As to size, when we were looking for a second-hand boat to live on we came across an 8-foot wide widebeam. A sort of 'wide-ish-beam'. It did seem noticably larger inside, but seemed like a narrowboat on the outside. Of course, in the South, with this or any widebeam you'd be restricted to the GUC short of Birmingham, the Thames, and the Kennet & Avon Canal. That might be enough for you, or it might not.

My personal taste in boats are ones that look 'boaty'. Hard to define, but I know them when I see them. Inside lots of solid fittings and varnished hardwood and nicely proportioned cabins making clever use of limited, intimate space. Brass or chrome seem to regularly feature. Outside I suppose they look solid with nicely crafted steelwork and curves clearly designed for easy handling and cruising. These things are something I see in a good number of narrowboats and Dutch barges, but less so in widebeams. I'm not really sure why. Maybe I should get out and see more. Is it because the raison d'etre of most widebeam designs are to GIVE LOTS OF SPACE (in a UK canal-scaled boat)? And maximising space will naturally compromise some of those traditional 'boaty' features I'm vaguely pointing to?

Anyway, a couple of thoughts.

BTW, two of us and our cat have happily lived aboard our 53-foot narrowboat for over seven years now. I suspect a 58-foot narrowbeam would be more than enough to live solo on.

 

 

 

I think you're right about "wide beam narrow boats" and, in my opinion, they are the only things that fall outside J D Culler's observation that  "Boats, like whisky, all are good",  because they throw pretty much all boating considerations out of the window.  In fact I think it's better to consider them more like static houseboats, which most of them are.  

Witness any "skipper" of a flat bottom narrowbeam trying to navigate a canal and you immediately see they are not fit for purpose.    

But a lot of builders have realised they can make more money by welding two narrowboats together and seemingly there are lots of eager buyers.

I agree a nicely proportioned luxemotor or tjalk is a thing of beauty and designed for sailing though I fear we'll be seeing less and less of all wide beams on the network in future as the gap between the bottom and the top decreases every year. 

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On 21/03/2017 at 23:27, F DRAYKE said:

That depends on how much you open the sluices.

Which doesn't affect the total volume of water passing through at all - just the rate at which it does so.

If I had two full buckets of water, one with a 25mm hole at the bottom, the other with a 1mm hole at the bottom, the second would take much longer to become empty but the final result would still be two useless empty buckets. 

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On 21/03/2017 at 18:26, Mike the Boilerman said:

 

What is there to argue about?

(Except that Mr Oss has it slightly wrong. The widebeam is heavier so will push the water out of a lock quicker going downhill, but going uphill the locks will fill slower. So swings and roundabouts really... )

Sorry, Mike, the boat and the amount of water it displaces weigh exactly the same regardless of the size of the boat.

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11 minutes ago, Machpoint005 said:

Which doesn't affect the total volume of water passing through at all - just the rate at which it does so.

If I had two full buckets of water, one with a 25mm hole at the bottom, the other with a 1mm hole at the bottom, the second would take much longer to become empty but the final result would still be two useless empty buckets. 

He was been sarcastic.  Well hopefully. 

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The larger the boat the less water remains in the lock when the gates are closed.  Therefore less water needs to be drained from the lock to lower the boat to the exit level.  Try and imagine a boat that totally fills a perfectly cubic lock with only enough clearance to move in and out.  It would only take a few gallons to float the boat.  Conversely, a canoe will require almost 100% of the lock's water volume to transit.

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27 minutes ago, mross said:

The larger the boat the less water remains in the lock when the gates are closed.  Therefore less water needs to be drained from the lock to lower the boat to the exit level.  Try and imagine a boat that totally fills a perfectly cubic lock with only enough clearance to move in and out.  It would only take a few gallons to float the boat.  Conversely, a canoe will require almost 100% of the lock's water volume to transit.

It's a well known fact that boats are made of liquid and can also transverse via the sluices as well!

Doesn't matter if lock has no boats or the heaviest boat you can find (as long as it still floats in the lock) the water used to turn a lock is the same.

Edited by Robbo
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1 minute ago, Alan de Enfield said:

Are you suggesting that a boat that weighs 30 tonnes. displaces the same amount of water as a boat weighing 10 tonnes ?

No, Re read it, he said displaces the same weight of water as the weight of the boat.

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On 23/03/2017 at 16:41, Robbo said:

He was been sarcastic.  Well hopefully. 

 

Of COURSE I was. 

Only the other day on here I wrote (something along the lines of) "No matter how humourously ludicrous the thing I write, there is usually someone who takes my my facetious comment at face value and sets about correcting me! "

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