MoominPapa

That'll be very useful in locks on the Thames. MP.

Moominmama says, "Ooh, shiny!". Do I spy a remote linkage to the stop lever? That's looks clever. What red paint did you use to pick out the lettering? I've done my polished (ish) ally cover with Craftmaster red twice, and both times it's faded badly, almost to pink, within a year. The same paint done at the same time on the gearbox cover lettering is fine, so I'm guessing the problem is excessive temperature. MP.

Having run even Tawny Owl aground there on the Challenge, I declined to take Melaleuca down..... MP.

Hawne Basin is great, and the Stourbridge canal is a much under appreciated gem. Maybe best to walk the Bumblehole Branch, though. MP.

It's not as if there's a shortage of floating and sunken crap in the Dudley No. 2 canal. Why is it so desperately in need of dredging from Windmill End to Gosty, whilst the Gosty to Hawne Basin section is pretty good? MP.

We visited Hawne Basin yesterday, for the cheap diesel and the craic with Madcat. Left early this morning for the passage back along Dudley No 2. Pretty much exactly half way through the tunnel, everything ground to a halt, and I suddenly recalled the story someone at the basin told me about a boat that was stuck in there for 20 hours last week. Eeek. The problem was a couple of large lumps of timber wedged between the boat and the tunnel wall. I'm actually rather glad that we were in the middle, because that's the high-ceilinged bit, and I could get along the gunnel with the cabin shaft to work the items to the end of the boat and pull them out. If we'd been in low part of the tunnel, I'm not sure that would have been possible. Anyway, with the timber on board, we set off again, only to get a bladeful, so another mid-tunnel stop was required to sort that out. The rest of today's trip, down the Delft and the Stourbridge 16 has been a doddle, but isn't it quiet? Only four boats moving all day, and the VMs at Merry Hell completely empty. MP.

We need pictures. MP.

We stopped at Lower Heyford to buy gas. I can't honestly remember if I checked the signal there. We overnighted at Upper Heyford and that was fine, as was Thrupp, Banbury, Slat Mill lock, Bottom of Claydon flight, Fenny, somewhere on the top near Marston Doles, and the bottom of Napton. MP. ETA 4G seems to be usable even with a really weak signal strength - it's much better than 3G in that respect. These days I have the dongle set to always use 4G in preference to 3G as on the odd occasion when it's picked a stronger 3G signal, I've improved things by manually switching to the 4G one.

We just went from Oxford to Napton and never failed to get usable internet with a 4G capable router on EE. MP.

Which 14-day moorings come complete with some absolutely laden wild plum trees. We have 8 jars of plum jam from them, but there's plenty left. MP.

To answer your original question: it cuts off the fuel. More specifically, it forces the fuel racks in the injection pumps to the extreme "no fuel" end of their travel. When the stop lever if NOT engaged, the racks should be free to move against the spring in the governor, and with the engine stopped, they should be at the maximum fuel position. Cheers, (the other) MP.

Nice approach to Wansford top lock landing. It's an awkward one is that. MP.

http://www.smartgauge.co.uk/batt_con.html Not quite 25% and 75%, but still substantial. The point is that it's not sufficient to make the resistance of each battery circuit low, they have to be the same for each battery. That involves good crimps and connectors (for reproducible resistance, rather than low resistance) and equal lengths of cables. MP.

Yeah, but that misses the point too. Provided that it's reasonably low, the absolute resistance of each battery circuit doesn't really matter, what matters is that all the battery circuits have the same resistance within a very small amount. Even if the terminations have as much resistance as a foot of cable, then a two foot cable (with two terminations) has 3 units of resistance and a two foot cable (also two terminations) has four units of resistance. That's a still big imbalance in battery current. MP.

Have you read Gibbo's writings on this? I turns out (because battery internal resistance is so low) that rather small absolute differences in interconnect resistance can have quite large effects on the distribution of current through the network. 50& and 50.001% sure don't matter, but 25% and 75% sure does. Intuition is not a good guide to what will happen, I recall that even Gibbo was surprised at the theoretical and measured results he got when he investigated. MP.