Search results for tag #boating
Part of the vacuum broke, so it won't work.
It had a noisy motor that required aircraft-grade, noise-dampening earmuffs. But it was tiny, and storage space is an issue on boats.
Argos sells a tiny vacuum that separates into parts for storage.
We must pick it up. Delivering packages to a boat on the move is a no. The Maps app says there's an Argos 1.4 miles (about 2¼ km) from the rural farm field we're at. 🌞
#CanalLife #BoatLife #canal #boating #narrowboat #boat #shop #delivery #VacuumCleaner
It was just a fuel hose that leaked, in the engine bay.
It was under £100 to get it fixed.
All spillage was contained in the engine bay, except the portion that evaporated. Diesel vapour!
The aft cabin was unusable due to the fumes, but the boat has 3 bulkhead doors, so the fumes stayed contained back there.
The lounge has a sofabed, so no problem with sleeping fume free.
#CanalLife #canal #BoatingLife #BoatLife #boating #narrowboat #boat #diesel #engine #leak #repair #UK
The diesel leak is being fixed.
The engineer is using a piece of hose, not one of the screw-on types, though. I guess it'll be jubilee clamps.
#CanalLife #BoatingLife #canal #boating #narrowboat #boat #maintenance #engine #repair
The diesel leak continues.
It is one of the two fuel lines, one for diesel in and one for diesel out.
It's not a loose brass connection that's leaking; it's one of the hoses itself.
A new hose arrives Monday.
#CanalLife #canal #boating #narrowboat #boat #FuelLine #hose #leak #diesel
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Two fuel lines, diesel in and diesel out. They have brass connections to a green engine block. The red-striped hose on the right leaks. Below is the bottom of the grey engine bay, with a pink tinge—that's red diesel that has leaked.
The boat cooks with LPG or propane. I have a brass coloured spanner (wrench) to dis/connect Calor canisters or bottles.
I just swapped an empty for a full one when a fuel boat* passed. We stopped side by side in the middle of the canal, which blocks it.
The brass-coloured spanner was quick to find among the nickel-plated ones, so the entire exchange was quick.
*Fuel boats sell diesel, LPG, and some do pump-outs.
#CanalLife #canal #boating #narrowboat #boat #cooking #fuel #LPG #propane #gas
For those of you wondering how canal locks work, this is how.
On a canal, locks are like lifts or elevators. To admit boats, they have a gate on each end: on the high side and the low side. Locks fill from the high side, and drain from the low side.
Referring to the photo and labels:
A. Is the ground paddle. This one has been raised, to let water flow through. A ground paddle lets water through a channel in the ground.
🧵/1
#CanalLife #canal #boating #narrowboat #boat #lock #gate #paddle #UK
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A lock, surrounded by green grass and trees. The post describes the parts. The parts are painted in the traditional black and white.
Behind the lock is a brick bridge.
It's a sunny day.
A few weeks ago, in my black, cast-iron solid-fuel burner—or wood stove—I laid a fire with coal briquettes, kindling, and a log.
It was a place to store some briquettes, kindling, and a log that now don't need locker space all summer. Also, I figured in the fall it would be nice to have it ready to go.
Guess what? It's mid June and I lit the fire this afternoon to chase away the damp. It's been 23°C in the boat, all day.
#CanalLife #canal #boating #narrowboat #boat #UK #weather #spring #chill
Four hours after cleaning out the bottom of the engine bay with a mop, there was more leaked diesel.
In the engine bay, various parts have been bagged. So far, none of the bags have collected any diesel.
Slowly zeroing in on the culprit.
#CanalLife #canal #boating #narrowboat #boat #engine #diesel #maintenance
The aft cabin had the smell of solvent all day. I checked the drawer that has the supplies of oil, WD-40, grease, fuel additive, … found nothing that was leaking.
It also wasn't coming from outside. Eventually I noticed a trace of red fluid in one side of the engine bay: diesel. That was the smell.
Tomorrow I will work up a list of possible sources of a tiny diesel leak.
#CanalLife #canal #boating #narrowboat #boat #engine #diesel #maintenance
Sunday, walking toward a lock, I saw a boater opening the top paddles of a lock.
Then I saw the lock was empty and the lower gates were open! With water flowing through the lock, they got the bow of their hireboat in the lock but the flow stopped them entering further.
The boater who'd opened the paddles sauntered back to close them—but forgot his windlass. Eventually he closed them.
Water conservation? Safety? Huh?
#hireboat #CanalLife #canal #lock #idiot #boating #narrowboat #boat #CRT #UK
To moor, yesterday, I hammered 2-foot pins (60 centimeters) into the ground—a soft bank covered in wildflowers.
The first few boats this morning passed at speed, which pulled the stern pin out of the ground. [Insert curmudgeonly grumbling about hire-boaters being wankers, here.]
Irony: just after the next bridge there was a hardened bank with a rail that boaters clip onto.
This evening there was a hard bank with mooring rings.🎉
#CanalLife #canal #boating #narrowboat #boat #mooring #pin #ring
Things disappear on a boat. There are so many nooks and crannies that houses and flats don't have.
I spent 10 minutes scouring the boat for my favourite drinking glass, actually a jam jar.
No success.
After I sat down—only once my eyes were at gunnel level—could I spot the glass atop a radiator. It was sitting very still, to avoid being spotted, tucked under the gunnel. That's a ledge on the outside of the boat; inside it's an anti-ledge.
#CanalLife #canal #narrowboat #boating #boat #gunnel
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An empty jam jar sitting very still on a white radiator under a narrowboat gunnel, against a light oak wall and behind a thin, brass rail (which is for hanging damp things over the radiator).
Last week's roses dropped their petals. To replace them today, coming down a rural flight of locks, the offside bank (not the towpath side) offered several abundant choices, only accessible by boat.
Not sure what they are, but they're looking good on board in the evening sunshine.
#CanalLife #canal #boating #narrowboat #boat #flower #bloomscroll #floral #plants #UK
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A green glass vase sits on a wooden surface and holds two kinds of flowers. One kind has clusters of tiny, deep-pink flowers. The other kind has white petals and a yellow centre, resembling a daisy.
The long and winding road…
For once the camera has caught a bit of the beauty I see with my eyes.
#CanalLife #canal #boating #narrowboat #boat #vegetation #tree #lighting #photo #camera #overcast #sunshine
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A gentle bend in the canal, lush green trees on both sides, grassy towpath on the left, dark cloudy sky overhead but somehow the sun is lighting all the green, making it glow. The water is a murky brown—but an interesting, colourful brown.
Last night in the dark, a boat went by.
I say "in the dark" but it had a headlamp on it, a foot (30 centimeters) in diameter that lit up the world.
I heard this boat long before I saw its headlamp. It was a steel narrowboat, about 30 feet (about 10 meters), with a diesel generator roaring on the forewell, and a tiny electric outboard motor on the stern—barely enough to get this boat crawling through the water in the dark.
#CanalLife #canal #narrowboat #OutboardMotor #boating #boat #generator
Along the canal there were wild roses. It was on the off side, not the towpath side, in a stretch that nobody can reach on foot.
Have boat, will flower.
With the bow in close to the rose bush, it was possible to clip a small bouquet. These roses are in full blat but there are also some buds tucked in below.
#CanalLife #canal #vegetation #plant #rose #flower #bloom #boating #narrowboat #boat #BloomScrolling
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A short vase of pink roses, cut short and arranged in a bunch.
The vase is sitting on an oak worktop beside a white sink, below an open swan doors, against a grey-and-white tiled backsplash, next to a square ceramic and wood soap-dispensing pump.
In other words, it's in the galley, or kitchen.
Where a weeping willow hung low over the canal, the only option was to slowly boat through the hanging curtain of leaves.
Then: an enormous TWANGGGG. Something caught the solar panel brackets.
Amidst the twigs and leaves was a hidden limb with a diameter of 5 inches (12½ centimeters).
Out comes the electric chainsaw. That tree got a trim.
#CanalLife #canal #willow #tree #vegetation #pruning #maintenance #boating #narrowboat #boat #solar #SolarPanel #CRT #CanalRiverTrust #CanalAndRiverTrust
A long day of boating. It was busy on the cut, but not crazily so, which is good for a bank-holiday (long) weekend.
The weather was gorgeous so I wore a wide-brim hat, long sleeves, and cotton gloves. There's nothing like holding a tiller all day for getting a sunburned right arm and hand.
Call it a boater's tan.
#CanalLife #canal #boating #narrowboat #boat #weather #sunshine #holiday
In dim light, spiders always look bigger than they are.
One just did a Tom Cruise Mission Impossible drop from a ceiling vent. Straight down, like it owns the place.
. |
🕷️
I turn to the light switch, flick on the lights. By the time I turn back to it, the spider has made a speedy return to the ceiling. It's medium sized.
One gentle tissue-grab-and-shake later, and this spider finds itself on the canal towpath outside the swan doors.
It's time for moving on.
Cloudy days are days you don't get sunburned. If it rains, it usually blows over quickly, on days like this.
#CanalLife #canal #waterways #boating #narrowboat #boat #CRT #UK
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Photo from the stern (back of the boat), looking over a narrowboat's roof—a long, narrow boat—in a canal. V-shaped ripples show the boat is moving, but slowly. The water is murky. On both sides of the canal there are green bushes and trees, including blossoming hawthorne, all with their spring growth well underway. On the roof of the boat there are mushroom vents, named for their shape, and a few ropes, or midlines, fastened to the boat roof at the middle of its length. There are solar panels near the bow. The towpath (like a footpath, but named for the horses that formerly towed boats along the canal) is on the left at this point. The sky is cloudy.
We were set to pass a steel narrowboat when it slowly backed directly across our path. At 2 miles per hour, that's enough time to walk through the boat to the bow and push off.
"Sorry, sorry!" they said.
I said, "No worries; it's just boating. Everybody knows backing up is hard to do."
Like that 1960s Neil Sedaka song:
🎵 Don't take your boat
🎶 away from me
🎵 'Cause backing up
🎶 is hard to do
(I'm quite sure those are the lyrics.)
#CanalLife #canal #boating #narrowboat #boat #reverse #BackUp
The boat has a dedicated brush in the outside locker just for dog 💩 on shoes.
When you're trying to moor a moving boat, handling ropes, mooring pins, and mallet, it's easy to overlook an abandoned turd.
Dog owners who use the towpath to let their dog out—but who don't pick up after their pet—should be dunked in canal water. And then helped back out, of course. Boaters aren't mean-spirited folk.
#CanalLife #canal #towpath #pet #dog #walking #boating #narrowboat #boat #CRT #CanalAndRiverTrust
We share the Grand Union canal with all kinds of birds.
Here are some swans and their cygnets at the aptly named swan doors of the boat, eating bird seed.
Their long necks help them graze for underwater greens.
#waterfowl #bird #birds #aquatic #wildlife #swan #cygnet #canal #CanalLife #boating #narrowboat #boat
Today was an enjoyable day. Though overcast and windy to start, with the wind at my back it was fine. I wore 4 layers: a T-shirt, a long-sleeve T-shirt, and two hoodies. By the afternoon it had turned sunny.
Now it's nearly 2 am and I'm still wearing all 4 layers, wondering when the weather will warm up.
#CanalLife #canal #boating #narrowboat #boat #weather #wind #chill #cold
When the boat is in the water, the stern deck is about a foot (30 centimeters) above the water level.
When it's on land, it takes a substantial stepladder to board the boat.
#CanalLife #canal #board #boarding #boating #narrowboat #boat #maintenance #ladder #stepladder
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An aluminium (aluminum) stepladder that has 6 steps, standing on a gravel surface and beside the stern of a narrowboat. Several short-cut railroad ties on the bottom of the ladder give it stability.
When the boat's out of the water, and I can see the propeller clearly, I am always surprised at how that small thing can propel 15 tonnes of steel forward.
#CanalLife #canal #waterways #boating #narrowboat #boat #propeller #propulsion
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Back end of a narrowboat out of the water, showing the propeller and rudder, and, above it, a bit of a knotted-rope fender. The boat is sitting over a gravel surface, on wood blocks (not shown in the photo). In the distance on the left there's a mobile office building.
I am used to the floor moving as I walk around the boat. I have no trouble.
I also have no trouble on land.
Currently, the boat is on land, getting its hull blacked. As I move around the boat, I find my body automatically adjusting for floor movement that isn't happening—which is slightly unbalancing.
Aren't bodies amazingly adaptable?
#CanalLife #canal #boating #boat #maintenance #narrowboat #balance