WJM

For anyone who is unfamiliar with this story: these boats are moored alongside a public park. The boat pictured in the ES article above is by far the 'least decrepit' of them all. The moorers pay absolutely nothing to moor there. I appreciate that London has a massive housing crisis but I don't think that a floating shanty town beside a public park is a good idea. I moor in Brentford, I pay a fee, I keep my boat tidy, and I don't misuse public spaces set aside for others to enjoy. I am against wildly expensive gentrification but I am also against freeloaders who complain when their luck runs out.

Thames Lock is operated by staff, not volunteers. By contrast, I often use the River Thames when it is on Yellow Flood Boards. The lock-keepers there will offer their good and learned advice about conditions, sometimes recommending that it might be better to wait it out. But at no point do they ever attempt to overstep the law - the river is available for navigation at all times regardless of the conditions. I have been coming through Brentford Locks for over a decade, maybe four or five trips a year. This is an isolated phenomena. It is the veiled threat of "I might not be here" that really gets my back up.

I get the impression that as long as you are following the standard procedure then all is well. It is moving away from the standard that elicits this unacceptable response.

Has anyone else had a very unsettling experience with one of the lock-keepers at Brentford's tidal Thames Lock? There is a well established set of standard procedures for transiting in and out of Brentford. These standard procedures are highly recommended for anyone who is inexperienced, has no local knowledge or who is generally nervous of being on the tideway. However, if you do have a good local knowledge and a good understanding of your boat's capabilities then there are many other options for when and how to transit through the area. Twice now, I have had a phone conversation that verged on an out-and-out argument with one particular lock-keeper. The dialogue goes something like this: "No you can't do that". "Well yes I can" "There won't be enough water then". "Yes there will, I have checked the tide height" "Well I might not be here then". "You are obliged to be there for two hours each side of high tide" As I understand it, the lock-keepers are there to facilitate the transit of boats and to offer guidance and advice to boaters who seek it - and in extreme circumstances to prevent safety problems from occurring. They are not there to enforce their own opinions on navigation in areas outside of their lock area. Am I the only one experiencing this strange aberration?

Ralph Kitts - 07956 333892 Dave O'Rourke - 07939 487485

I have a theory that if you go too slow you are more likely to foul your prop. A faster moving boat pushes the rubbish aside. I have used my weed hatch four or five times in the last decade!

In the last few weeks I went up the GU to Braunston - the northern end was busy, especially with hire boats. The South Oxford was quite busy too, quieter towards Oxford but busy at the Napton end. And the Thames seemed busy until I got closer to London. Perhaps it is a London thing - now that the London waterways are more about cheap housing and less about boating.

I came through Molesey Lock last weekend, the lowest lock on the non-tidal Thames. The keeper said that the average traffic for August was over 3,000. They had not even reached 2,000 as of last weekend!

Thanks everybody - I am going to compile a list from your recommendations and get an engineer to go through them all.

Apologies - I just noticed a typo - When I opened the fuel filter I got ONLY CLEAN FUEL - not water as I mistyped earlier.

Thanks for the responses . things seem to be pointing to fuel supply. The exhaust smoke remained clear through all of this. It may be unrelated but... around the same time the Hours Counter (small LCD display in the centre of the RPM dial) began so display a scrambled display ie: just random lines, not proper numbers. There were many hours of this where the engine was running perfectly but this was the condition during the problem. The display has now corrected itself and is displaying normally again.

OK - I have a fuel filter with a bolt on the bottom so I opened that and drained some liquid from it. I half expected some water but I got only water. I have run about 40 hours since the problem last occurred and it has been running perfectly.

I forgot to mention - i checked the prop and it was clear. And there was nothing external that I could observe - just a normal canal.

I had a strange experience with my Izuzu engine recently. On three occasions over two days it suddenly dropped revs. I was cruising along and suddenly the revs dropped and the engine seemed to be about to stop. I pushed the morse lever fully down, which would normally produce over 2000 rpm and the engine kept running at around 800 rpm. Then I pulled the lever to idle and the engine ran very slowly, much slower than normal idle but it never actually stopped. After a few minutes, on each occasion it recovered and carried on as normal. Does anyone have any thoughts on what might have caused this? It has been running perfectly since these three odd occurrences.

Asset depreciation of a steel canal boat - very similar to that of a prestige car, BMW or Mercedes. Residuals: rapid initial fall, then a very slow gradual fall, and almost impossible to reach zero.