Butty towing questions

[tonyreptiles]

I'm currently in the process of having a very small butty built. It will be just 20ft long and will be towed by my 50ft narrowboat.

My question is, how should it be towed?

I have twice towed boats with my own 50 footer, which has a 1.5 BMC engine as the 'grunt'. (Stop laughing!)

Each time I have towed boats as big as, or bigger than mine by strapping it ALONGSIDE. While my boat managed the tow just fine, it was very slow going. I'm wondering if anyone has any experience of towing a much smaller boat and whether they were similarly slowed? Will I still be as slowed dragging a 20 footer alongside as I was dragging a 60 footer alongside?

 

On another note, I realise it might be more sensible to tow the new baby butty behind on cross straps. I've never done this before and I'm wondering how easy it is to control the towed boat if there's nobody at its tiller. I've just read an old Waterways World article about towing a 27footer without anyone at the tiller and it was just fine. The tiller on the towed butty was held straight with a piece of rope and so couldn't move. I guess this makes it less of a liability, but is it actually as easy as they made it sound?

And, when towing, should we use as short a rope as possible between the two boats?

Or, is it possible to have fix the boats to each other with steel bars? I'm thinking of linking the two boats together with steel bars to keep then in alignment and stop them articulating. Daft idea or genius?

 

Any help or advice you can give would be most appreciated.

 

Thanks
TR

 

 

[Robbo]

Instead of pulling it what about pushing it?   I've seen small butties with a stern that is the shape of a inversed bow of the main boat.   I'll try and find a piccy 

[Sea Dog]

1 minute ago, Robbo said:

Instead of pulling it what about pushing it?   I've seen small butties with a stern that is the shape of a inversed bow of the main boat.   I'll try and find a piccy 

The 'Jam Butty' is just such an arrangement. She was alongside in Stourport a few days ago. 

[tonyreptiles]

4 minutes ago, Sea Dog said:

The 'Jam Butty' is just such an arrangement. She was alongside in Stourport a few days ago. 

It was Jam Butty in teh feature I read, which said it towed well on cross straps with the tiller fixed in place.

 

 

[Sea Dog]

14 minutes ago, tonyreptiles said:

It was Jam Butty in teh feature I read, which said it towed well on cross straps with the tiller fixed in place.

 

 

Ah yes, I'm mixing my butties up! The Jam Butty was in Stourport, and does have a tiller so is towed. It was ealier, maybe up Stourbridge way, that I'd seen another trader shoving the Butty in the way Robbo described. Might have been a leather worker. 

[ditchcrawler]

35 minutes ago, tonyreptiles said:

I'm currently in the process of having a very small butty built. It will be just 20ft long and will be towed by my 50ft narrowboat.

My question is, how should it be towed?

I have twice towed boats with my own 50 footer, which has a 1.5 BMC engine as the 'grunt'. (Stop laughing!)

Each time I have towed boats as big as, or bigger than mine by strapping it ALONGSIDE. While my boat managed the tow just fine, it was very slow going. I'm wondering if anyone has any experience of towing a much smaller boat and whether they were similarly slowed? Will I still be as slowed dragging a 20 footer alongside as I was dragging a 60 footer alongside?

 

On another note, I realise it might be more sensible to tow the new baby butty behind on cross straps. I've never done this before and I'm wondering how easy it is to control the towed boat if there's nobody at its tiller. I've just read an old Waterways World article about towing a 27footer without anyone at the tiller and it was just fine. The tiller on the towed butty was held straight with a piece of rope and so couldn't move. I guess this makes it less of a liability, but is it actually as easy as they made it sound?

And, when towing, should we use as short a rope as possible between the two boats?

Or, is it possible to have fix the boats to each other with steel bars? I'm thinking of linking the two boats together with steel bars to keep then in alignment and stop them articulating. Daft idea or genius?

 

Any help or advice you can give would be most appreciated.

 

Thanks
TR

 

 

One is a pushed butty and the other on a draw bar

[tonyreptiles]

We did think about having the stern built in a way that might make it easier to push, but budget doesn't stretch to that type of shell, so we have as

 standard shape hull to tow instead.

 

TR

[Guest]

51 minutes ago, tonyreptiles said:

I'm currently in the process of having a very small butty built. It will be just 20ft long and will be towed by my 50ft narrowboat.

My question is, how should it be towed?

I have twice towed boats with my own 50 footer, which has a 1.5 BMC engine as the 'grunt'. (Stop laughing!)

Each time I have towed boats as big as, or bigger than mine by strapping it ALONGSIDE. While my boat managed the tow just fine, it was very slow going. I'm wondering if anyone has any experience of towing a much smaller boat and whether they were similarly slowed? Will I still be as slowed dragging a 20 footer alongside as I was dragging a 60 footer alongside?

 

On another note, I realise it might be more sensible to tow the new baby butty behind on cross straps. I've never done this before and I'm wondering how easy it is to control the towed boat if there's nobody at its tiller. I've just read an old Waterways World article about towing a 27footer without anyone at the tiller and it was just fine. The tiller on the towed butty was held straight with a piece of rope and so couldn't move. I guess this makes it less of a liability, but is it actually as easy as they made it sound?

And, when towing, should we use as short a rope as possible between the two boats?

Or, is it possible to have fix the boats to each other with steel bars? I'm thinking of linking the two boats together with steel bars to keep then in alignment and stop them articulating. Daft idea or genius?

 

Any help or advice you can give would be most appreciated.

 

Thanks
TR

 

 

Never towed a butty, but once read that towing any boat reduces the prop. thrust and it is easier going with the butty breasted up, but others will know better than I.

I am surprised your progress was slow. We breasted up a 57 footer to our 57 footer, and our 1500cc engine (Vetus) did OK. Were you in shallow water? I breasted the boats up so that the power boat was mid stream in deeper water.

[tonyreptiles]

Yeah, I'm not sure why so slow. It was on the L&L from Shipley through Leeds to Thwaites Mill, so not particularly shallow. I'm assuming that the drag caused by two bows and only one engive was the cause, but who knows.

I'd love to hear about people's experiences towing boats behind vs towing abreast.

 

TR

[Peter X]

Towing abreast works best when on wide and/or deep water, because the water you're pushing out of your way has somewhere to go to get past the boat. And because if the navigable part of the water is wide, it's easier for other boats to pass too. I wouldn't expect the length of the butty to make much difference when towing abreast, you're still presenting the same frontage to the water.

When a working boat is towing a butty astern, the normal practice is to use cross straps if the butty is unloaded, because its bow will be high and the wash from the motor's prop will pass under it. But if the butty is loaded, the wash pushes against it which is very inefficient, so a line is used. On a busy canal I would suggest a short line, but otherwise a longer line makes the butty steerer's job easier.

My butty steering experience is only on Brighton, which is as big as they come, so I'm not quite sure how your tiny 20 foot butty would behave, but I suppose the principles are the same. If you use a line, you need a butty steerer or things are sure to go badly wrong. If on cross straps, most of the time the butty will follow the motor nicely, and it was quite common in the old days I gather to tie the tiller in the centre and do without a butty steerer. But I think this approach depended on the motor steerer being careful to follow just the right line around bends and through bridge holes, and that even then someone on the butty would have to leave whatever they were doing to help get through these tricky points. Otherwise you'd end up with the butty stern occasionally banging into bridge holes, banks and moored boats; you wouldn't be popular.

If you fix the butty rigidly, you've created a single longer boat which will behave as longer boats do; fine so long as you fit in the locks!

If you push a butty (something I haven't tried) you don't have the problem of the motor's wash hitting it, but I would imagine it has to be quite rigidly attached or its bow would just wander uncontrollably to one side and pile into something. Either that or the butty would need steering somehow without the motor crashing into its 'ellum.

[Rob-M]

I would use cross straps and tie the tiller straight, the butty will then follow along behind you. Being so short i would think even at a very sharp junction you could just drop one of the straps off and it will pull round. It won't be like towing with a full length motor and butty where you need a butty steerer to help turn the motor.

[Guest]

10 minutes ago, Rob-M said:

I would use cross straps and tie the tiller straight, the butty will then follow along behind you. Being so short i would think even at a very sharp junction you could just drop one of the straps off and it will pull round. It won't be like towing with a full length motor and butty where you need a butty steerer to help turn the motor.

Reading your post reminds me of a guy who used to tow a butty on the L&L selling painted canalware. He had the fairly short butty set up as you describe, no steerer, and it seemed fine.

[Cloudinspector]

We have a 30ft butty towed behind a 62ft motor. I use short cross straps and get them nice and tight. The tiller is tied straight with rope and she follows really well.

 

[alan_fincher]

I guess my main concern in using a leisure boat powered by a BMC to tow a short butty on cross straps would be the relative draught of the rear oif the towing boat versus that of the front of the towed one.

As has been said, to tow effectively on straps you need a boat that is fairly deep draughted at the back towing one that is only shallowly draughted at the front, so the propeller wash from the towing boat is not all obscured by the towed boat, otherwise the towing boat will loose much of its effectiveness simply pushing water at the front of the towed boat, but getting little propulsion.

Looking at  Cloud Inspectors pictures, I am seeing a modern towing boat that is probably going to be 6" deeper or so in the water than your BMC powered one, and probably swinging quite a large blade on a slow revving engine.  With a lightly loaded butty, this will clearly work fine, but if  the motor were shallower, or the butty deeper, it will become a less good arrangement.

Trying to travel  miles and miles of typical broad canals breasted up, on the other hand, is not really practical, and is likely to be slow.  (And of course if lots of people did it, you woiud soon get fed up with tring to pass those coming the other way!)  OK in closely spaced broad lock flights - not really ideal elsewhere.

[X Alan W]

Using cross straps it's an advantage if you can get the stem post of the towed boat tight on the rear fenders of the towing boat if you have one made up strap & then pull the other tight & tiller strings on the butty you should be able to get along well also, if you can get the whole set in the lock at one go you are 3/4's way there

[Peter X]

Unless the butty is just a temporary arrangement or he needs to get the pair through some of those shorter locks up north (e.g. the Calder & Hebble), if I were in the OP's shoes I would just sell the 50 foot boat and buy a 70 footer (or have it stretched if you're very attached to it!?). You get more space for the total length, and it's easier to handle than the pair. Or, if you're going to have a butty that's long enough not to fit in a narrow lock with the motor, you might as well increase its length because I suspect the extra feet in the middle will be good value for money. But in that case remember, you would need someone strong on the crew to bow haul the butty into a lock.

[ditchcrawler]

17 hours ago, Cloudinspector said:

We have a 30ft butty towed behind a 62ft motor. I use short cross straps and get them nice and tight. The tiller is tied straight with rope and she follows really well.

 

You can tow that butty in all sorts of ways 

[Chop!]

We tow our 53ft butty with our 55ft motor, bringing them down to the Nene from Nantwich, we used cross straps and dropped a cross strap for tighter bends or a short line for sharp bends and junctions. The elum was tied off and the butty followed fine even for the three days I single manned them. Normally, I'd shout to our buttyman and he'd free the elum to steer the butty through narrower sections with boats moored etc. This was all with an under-propped BMC 1.8. 

On the river we prefer to breast up but struggled against a strong flow.

We now have fitted the 30hp Sabb and have overplated and re-bottomed her giving her a deeper draft and a new bigger and better pitched prop. Should make easy work of our river in future.

Edited April 27, 2017 by Chop!

[ditchcrawler]

3 hours ago, ditchcrawler said:

You can tow that butty in all sorts of ways 

Here is one of them almost connected the right way round . I'm the bald one in  the other picture

[FadeToScarlet]

As other folk have said, you can tow on cross straps most effectively if the butty is very shallow drafted, so the prop wash from the motor passes under it.

As you can see from the picture, the wash from the motor (3' deep draughted) is still pushing against the bow of the towed boat, which is about a foot deep in the water at the front. The cross straps are very long (because it's a river with more space, and I wanted to get the boats moving at near a normal speed) and the effect is even worse when the butty is closer- which it ought to be on the canals.

You can even tow some pretty big things on cross straps.....

 

Neither of the boats being towed in the pictures above had a steerer, they just had the rudder centered. I later extended the length of the straps on the Dutch barge, to get it even further back and more out of the prop wash.

 

There is a third way of using a butty- stemming. This is to push a (normal boat-shaped) boat in front of the motor. In working times, they were loosely chained together, making a 140' articulated unit with the engine at the back! Used on the BCN.

 

A variant could be used today. You create a socket- e.g. a piece of steel channel- on your butty stern that fits over the stem bar of your motor, and then use winches, chains and turnbuckles, or solid bars to solidly lock the pair together into one 70' unit. I suspect this would be much easier to handle, and more efficient hydrodynamically, than trying to tow on cross straps. 

[tonyreptiles]

Hi All,

thank you all so much for your input and advice. I'm reassured that the idea of pulling the butty is viable and doable by me - after a little practice of course.

I think repetition will be the key to acquiring sufficient skill, so my apologies to anyone who sees me veering around under bridges on the Lancaster this autumn.

 

Thanks again all, much appreciated.

 

TR

[Cloudinspector]

On 27/04/2017 at 22:00, ditchcrawler said:

Here is one of them almost connected the right way round . I'm the bald one in  the other picture

We've only owned it a few months, it's currently being converted into a workshop for my wife. We've found a few photos online so I'll add these to our collection.

[ditchcrawler]

6 hours ago, Cloudinspector said:

We've only owned it a few months, it's currently being converted into a workshop for my wife. We've found a few photos online so I'll add these to our collection.

When this photo was taken there was next to nothing inside it. The boats were sold in those colours as a pair and they would both fit in a narrow lock.

Edited April 29, 2017 by ditchcrawler