At the time of filming this it was just over a week since the Crick Show where I had bought three new 100 Ah lead carbon batteries for my narrowboat. Having also bought some new wiring and dongle things to plug into my Victron inverter/charger, it was now time to pull out the old batteries and put the new ones in place.
I haven’t been to the Crick Show for a couple of years because it’s much the same each time but this year I wanted to book some boat tours and also buy some bits for my current boat – so I moored the boat again and headed off to Northamptonshire in the camper van.
I visit a narrowboat hire firm in Gilwern, South Wales, on the Mon & Brec canal. Amongst their fleet of conventional narrowboats they also have two fully-electric ones that don’t even have solar or a generator on board. So how have they managed this feat when it would be impractical elsewhere? Watch and find out!
In this vlog I visit the “Pamela May”, a trip boat run by the charitable Droitwich Canals Trust. We see their current boat and hear about the excellent work of the Trust but visit Ortomarine, the company building the Trust’s brand new, all-electric powered boat.
The sun is out and it’s time to sort a few bits of the narrowboat that are looking less than prime, notably the paintwork needs a spruce-up and polish plus one or two tiny rust spots on the roof need attending to.
After getting frustrated with the cheap little twin-tub washing machine I had aboard the boat from the early days, I ditched it and bought a proper automatic machine.
In this video I explain what I think of it and why it fits the bill.
Last winter, I was disappointed during winter to find white grungy muck dribbling down the flue inside the boat onto the top of the stove. This was down to a badly fitting and broken chimney. Rather than buy an off the shelf replacement which might also not have fitted well, I opted to get a custom-made replacement.
Following a few recent questions and comments from viewers, here is a beginners guide to how electrics work on a narrowboat. It may also have general relevance to people in campervans, motorhomes, caravans and RVs although there are slight differences but the gist is similar.
Every winter the Canal & River Trust shut parts of the network down for a time in order to do maintenance which often includes taking out broken or old lock gates and replacing them. New lock gates are not something you can just order in from Amazon however, so the CRT have to make their own and in this video I visited their Birmingham workshop to see how the process works.
The third and final part (for the moment) in this mini-series about unusual, rare and vintage narrowboat engines. Here we meet Keith Lodge who had a replica working boat built to his specification including a two-cylinder National DA2 engine from 1949.
