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To return to the long-lost OP, I have now receiv2d a reply to my complaint: Cranfleet Lock Thank you for your email of the 16 July concerning your passage through Cranfleet Lock. Can I firstly apologise for the poor service you experienced. I quite agree with you, it is not a matter of opinion as to whether you need the skippers say-so before opening the paddles, it is essential and critical to the safe operation of the lock. We will speak to the volunteers concerned and address any training requirements to ensure they are acting safely. I am glad that your other experiences of our volunteers are good and so I hope this is a one off issue that we can quickly address. Thank you for bringing this to my attention and my apologies again that you had to. Regards Sean McGinley Waterway Manager

You know you are always welcome to come and get a floating boat fix with us one weekend.

Rather than new high speed lines that will only benefit a few how about reinstating and modernising the branch lines? HS2 is yet another london centred project. Improving east-west rail connections at various points up the country would help greatly. It's also bizzare that the cheapest fares are from london. E.g. It's cheaper to go from London to Glasgow or Edinburgh than from the East Midlands.

It may well be that you would wish to help me. However, I have no wish to be "helped" by anybody who isn't fully behind the idea that if the steerer of my boat says we do it in a particular way, that is the way we do it, no matter how much better he thinks his way is. In a similar way, if I am helping another boater, then I want the helmsman of that boat to make the decisions, rather than me making decisions for him. Let me assist you with parsing my opening sentence in my previous post, as you appear to be struggling. "Clearly" is appropriate, because it refers to the probability that you will stick to your views. The bit about them being wrong is a humorous aside. Others may have added a smiley. I prefer not to add smileys, as I always feel that flagging up a humorous aside with a smiley implies that you think that the reader may be too thick to see it as a humorous aside without a label that says so. Unfortunately, you seem to be incapable of any degree of acceptance that other people are entitled to do things their way, and your reaction to any suggestion that people should be allowed to stop a free-for-all where all-comers can do what they please if THEY think it best, is frankly edging into the abusive, with name calling, and remarks about captain's hats. Your views are clearly not shared by the majority, and they don't accord with the rules that CRT lay down for their volunteers

Bloody hell, a PC that draws more that a kW???!! Yes. Get a house...

I'm so sorry that you are struggling to understand that my contributions to this thread is split into two seperate issues. Perhaps this link will help:

Another reason for using 18mm WBP or marine ply is that it is strong stuff and for external doors you do want something strong enough to withstand a bit of 'breaking and entering' from passing undesirables.

Not at all, I came into boat ownership for all the wrong reasons ( somewhere to live) with no boat experience and no knowledge about boats and after the first few days of fear and panic I lived on cloud 9. This didn't last long, about 5 years or so and I them became complacent and drifted onto cloud 8.5 and live there to this day. Good isnt it?

Yes, still seal it. Why tempt fate? 1mm less will be fine - your Marineflex will probably be that thick anyway

Definitely worth sealing the edges, if not with paint/glue,then a hardwood strip. When fitting don't allow water to have access to the endgrain if possible.

At the very least, WBP ply. Better would be hardwood marine ply but that's maybe OTT as you're painting it. Ordinary ply, OSB board, Blockboard, MDF will all fall to pieces with damp. DO NOT buy so-called Marine Ply from the diy sheds - it's rubbish.

HS2 is going to be 30 years or more before it gets to Manchester. Do you really think that people will still be commuting to an office in a city to the same extent that they do now? We do desperately need more freight on the railways, but that needs a government that is prepared to make it financially viable, rather than carry on with the huge subsidies that road haulage gets. Yes there will still be a "rush hour", but outside of that the freight could easily be moved, either during the day or at night. I quite often travel from Crewe to Euston to link up with Eurostar (from St Pancras - why do we have to we still have to drag our cases half a mile up Euston Road?) and the trains are generally half empty, or less. OK so some improvements will be needed to some of our main lines, but that would be a fraction of the cost of HS2.

There will also be a huge embankment and large yards for car maintenance close to the Middlewich branch near Wimboldsley. They said that with E-W Crossrail finishing, that will free up £2Bn a year for this project. However now they are planning to use that to build a N-S Crossrail in London. It's a huge amount of money, and will no doubt go 3 to 4 times over budget as there are no fixed costs or penalty clauses for the Government's mates, the contractors. It would have been great to have done it 40 or 50 years ago, when France was putting in its TGV lines, but by the time it is built I doubt it will be needed.

Flashback a couple of centuries or so. Why do we need these ditches? Come forward another century or so, and do we really need these 'snorting beasts'? What about the 1950's? Did we really need these swathes of concrete? Where would we now be without canals, railways and motorways? I agree that the saving in time is minimal, but these will be in addition to the existing tracks and anyone using trains knows that there is a need for extra capacity. Any large infrastructure project has its detractors. It is just that this one impacts upon those who consider themselves above the average individual andcan make lots of noise. If we want to keep moving, with an burgeoning population, then so be it. Carry on.

I can relate to what has happened here. In May coming up Lapworth, as we came out of a lock a bolt protruding from the top gate into the open lock space hit one of the brass fender eyes that are in the side of the hull and mangled it. This is the same issue, except in this case the bolt got stuck in an opening in the boat and the momentum pulled the bold out of the gate and the metal strip with it. To me this is caused by poor maintenance not vandalism, unless they are referring to the potential damage that CRT has done to the boat (irony).

Bet the greyhound pub is loving the lock being shut! Might pop up tonight, only moored round the corner.

I've fixed that for you. I do completely agree with your sentiments above. If you're not one of the 45,000+ folks* who enjoy narrow canals then you shouldn't waste your time and money buying a narrowboat. Stick to the wide open spaces. * estimated at 1.5 users per licensed (over 30,000) narrowboat.

HP and BHP are the same, sort of. BHP is a sub-sype of HP. As mross says, BHP is a historic term telling you the type of device used to measure the actual output of the engine. In this case a brake. A brake is a wheel of known thermal mass with a band around it to create some resistance to it turning. The engine turns the brake and the brake band tightness is adjusted so the engine speed is constant. Then this is run for a measured amount of time, and the temperature of the brake wheel is measured at the beginning and end of the test. The HP of the engine can then be calculated from change in temperature together with the mass of the wheel and the length of the test. The output calculated in this way is BHP. Another way to calculate the HP of the engine is to measure the consumption rate of the fuel over the period of the test, and use the specific energy of the fuel for the calculation. This actually tells you the HP input of the engine rather than the output, so frictional losses inside the engine are not taken into account. Hence the BHP method is regarded as more useful amongst petrol heads, as their prime concern is absolute power output, rather than niceties such as efficiency. Nowadays engine power output is stated in kW, or some unit called a "ps", which I think is the same as a BHP.

FYI, I've been out pretty much every weekend and more since the end of March, mainly in the Marlow to Wallingford area, you are talking complete and utter rubbish. I get moored in Henley whenever I turn up, there are always spaces on the SRB moorings, I will concede that Marlow can sometimes be full, as can Goring & Wallingford, but if you know the river, and you clearly don't! there are alternatives. I've no idea where all these 'dumped' boats are that you refer to, unless you mean the boats on the council moorings which pay £55 a week for the pleasure, a good price IMO! And, yes, lets take Sonning, there are always plenty of spaces both above and below the lock on the TVM monitored moorings, it is you who cannot be getting out much. You seem to be trying to make a case to support your OP and it quite clearly doesn't stand up.

I think you mean "isn't prepared to accept my way of doing it"! The group norm is that we generally all help each other, you are the odd one out in not wanting any outsider to help - you have repeatedly said on here you don't want volockies helping you. If that was the group norm, there wouldn't be any volockies as there would be no point.

Er...Yes, I do understand. The bit I have highlighted says that the point that you dont think I understand, I do understand. Of course SoC is not related to voltage, but you dont have to be a rocket scientist to work out how to use voltage at rest to calculate capacity. Wotever obviously understood it. I was trying not to write the ultimate detail so as to bore the guys who arent interested. I measured the voltage at rest when full - ie 12.8 ish, discharged during the day (but not on a known load). Measured voltage at rest again and noted the amps out. You can then do what you want with the numbers - ie work out difference in state of charge between the two values and thus estimate capacity. Would you like me to show you the calculations one needs to do? It seems that you lot want all the gorey details. If your maths isnt up to it, then I can happily oblige. I did this maybe every couple of months but mostly just noted the Ahr used to go from say 12.8 to 12.5 and if the number was the same and not trending down, then I knew the batteries were ok. I cant remember the exact numbers I used. There are two problems with the above approach which I am sure Tony will charge in with. 1) Voltage at rest needs a couple of hours to stabilise the voltage. Not always easy. On our yacht it was more easy to do this with no inverter. With experience you could see the difference between a light load and at rest. That wasnt rocket science either. In a 'single' system, where you do the same things all the time and the number of inputs is low, it is not difficult to understand the difference between light loads and at rest. 2) Normally the accepted way is to put a known load on the batteries to calculate the Ahrs taken out. Great if you need an exact number. I was looking for a trend of decreasing Ahrs out (not in - not needed) with varying voltage at rest so an individual accurate reading was not necessary. Over a period of a year if I saw the 12.8-12.5 range use 80Ahr ( a guess as I cant remember) +/- 10Ahr, then I was happy as long as the trend wasnt downwards. Over 5 years it didnt go down much - again cant remember. I was not after an exact number. For battery charging you dont have to be exact. +/- 10% is good enough. Watch the trends and you dont have to worry too much over individual readings as long as they are near the trend line. Whilst part of my career was spent on materials, ie plastics, paints, sealants etc I spent 10 years managing computer modeling teams, modelling a range of refinery/chemical plant applications. The models here were to predict operation of processes - viz monitor inputs and outputs and hence predict performance. Modelling a battery is no different. I made a comment in a post above about Smartguage (which I didnt elaborate on - yet it got some very negative vibes- so here is more detail). It would not be difficult at all to write a model based only on voltage that would predict a part of the charging process - After 5 years of watching batteries and charging/discharging, I could have written something similar for my set up given my knowledge of computer modelling, going from techniques such as the simple regression models up to more challenging methods of Topology or sparse data/others. I have read all the comments on here about Smartguages which is why I have not done any modelling myself and rely far more heavily on the Amps in/Amps out but following voltage does give you a lot of information if you use it in comparison with the other inputs. What would be interesting is to take a model based on voltage only (something similar to Smartguage) and add in the extra inputs of Ahrs change, plus inputs from the alternator (and or controller) plus solar, type/size of battery. Maybe the Ahr counters do some of this but I dont think they go far enough as they have their own model built in. Each system is diferent so you have different inputs/outputs. It would be possible to write a model for your own system and then this may be transferrable to other systems where a knowledgeable user could input his own data. Has anyone here done this? Apologies for such a long post but I am getting tired of a number of you trying to tell me I am thick.

Maybe she can start another crowdfunder to cover costs of taking him to court, then he can start one to pay the costs and damages. About the norm these days. Best thing she can do is move on, learn from it and dont be so stupid again.

I'd strongly contradict this advice for the OP as a newbie. LiFePo4 batteries need very specific charging and management and the equipment to do this simply isn't widely available. Dedicated chargers are madatory, yet I've seen websites selling these batteries yet barely touching on LiFePo4 charging systems and equipment. BEWARE. Charging them cannot be done with an ordinary boat engine alternator or Halfords battery charger. If fact it would be very dangerous so to do.

Not true. I would wish to help you, and I would wish you to help me. If you don't want to help me and don't want me to help you, that is your prerogative. You are irrational. It is not "clear" that my views are wrong. Firstly, they are views that are shared by most other non-control-freaks, and secondly they are my views. They are thus neither right nor wrong.

Clearly, you are going to stick to your views, which are wrong. Everybody being in charge is a disaster waiting to happen. One person being in charge, but everybody empowered to call an emergency stop, which is respected until such time as the person in charge decides how to proceed is the correct way. Happily, having had this discussion on here, and as we know each others boat names, we know that should our paths cross again on the canal, our attitudes to the operation of the lock are such that we will not wish to assist each other. We don't even need to have an awkward conversation to decline the offer.

What happens to the water level if you carve a carrot into the shape of a duck then chuck it in the cut?

Torquay?

You could get arrested for that you know!

One does not drive narrowboats...one steers. And no, he doesn't.

Although the "Axiom prop shape" has changed a bit. I personally think that the shape parallels the development of the propellor since 1836, and is now at 1914, or thereabouts ....

If I think something is going to be a problem then it's best to sort it. On one occasion I just moored up and let the other boat go ahead...the guy opened the gate paddles first on a deep lock and was too pissed to see that it was wrong. I don't share locks to make friends...if we end up friends that's a bonus. My boat is my home and I'm not going to put it or me in danger

If it's my boat in a lock then either me or the OH ARE in charge. If you do something that might cause damage to either us or the boat then I'm afraid whoever you are you will find in no uncertain terms that it's not going to be a good idea. My boat....my rules. Ive no doubt upset a few people over the years but that's life. I'd rather be in control of a situation.

Loving this tool, been playing with it all afternoon...

The mapping system on the National Library of Scotland is much better allowing todays satellite view to be shown partially or in full. Plus many other series of maps are available. http://maps.nls.uk/ This the tunnel west end: http://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/#zoom=16&lat=52.4466&lon=-2.0310&layers=6&b=1

About the biggest thing you are allowed to 'dump in the cut', is your boat. Provided its licenced.

It might be worth checking that the gearbox is not slipping when is astern (reverse). I would try disconnecting the cable at the gearbox end and engaging locally.

I think some of that guidance - even deployment of laser guided missiles - is now done from drones guided from an air base in Texas.

Sorry Nick, but that is utter tripe. Yes, of course there is an expectation that the paddles will be opened.... Just as soon as the boat is in the best position for passage! Allow that the steerer will have a preferred way of transiting (ride the front gate, ride the back gate, hover in the middle). You or I may have firm views on which is right, but it isn't our call when it isn't our boat. We prefer to ride the front gate in tickover, so if the paddles are whipped up before we are settled, we get thrown about, and really the idea that you whip the paddles up and be prepared to drop them if there is a problem is just plain silly. Far better to avoid the problem in the first place.

They'll all behave the same if you put them against the top gate as everyone used to.......The person on the top paddles waits for the stempost to touch the cill and up they go.

Person loses everything due to own stupidity, expects everyone else to pay for mistake. You sure she doesn't work in the banking sector?

SHHHHHHH! Don't tell everybody, if you do they will all moor there and will walk to the top of Coombe Hill to see views like this. (not the best picture in the world but I loved the light in the sky)

I suspect you are of unusually strong moral fibre in that case. There are loads of boaters living happily under the radar on CRT leisure moorings. Those boaters who CM generally do it to avoid the cost of a mooring of any type, I posit. It would seem faintly hypocritical of a boater to refuse to live on a leisure mooring because it is 'plain wrong' then adopt the 'continuous moorer' lifestyle instead.