Stories about boats and waterways
This is Part 2 of my trip along the Canal du Midi courtesy of Le Boat, travelling from Port Cassafieres to Trebes, near Carcassonne. I was joined by my friend Sally – and in this episode, another, familiar, face too.
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Who could resist an offer to try canal boating in the South of France in May? Certainly not me, so with a friend along to help out at the locks, we jetted down to Beziers…
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After a long period where it seemed that all I did was make holes in my fibreglass cabin cruiser, “Twiggy”, I have at least started to repair them.
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I attended the Inland Waterways Association’s annual restoration conference the National Waterways Museum at Ellesmere Port, and heard what delegates and speakers had to say about the state of the canal network in Britain.
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Although lots of technical data about narrowboat propellers exists already, it largely relates to the traditional diesel engine. With electrically-propelled canal boats now becoming more commonplace, boat-builder Ortomarine held a practical trials day to see if changing prop made for a better or worse experience when your narrowboat has an electric motor.
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In order to fix the holes in the sides of my boat that I made when trying to find out where the transom wood ended, I need to open them out a bit so as to give me a space onto which to stick new fibreglass so that meant buying an angle grinder and making the holes even bigger. Don’t worry, it’s all part of the plan.
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For the second cruise on my ‘new’ tiny narrowboat, Gentian, I turned right out of the marina and headed about 7 miles west along the Fossdyke Navigation until I got to Torksey lock where I stopped for the night before heading back. In this video I also reveal the mystery of how to change the lightbulbs!
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With the weather nearly warm enough to be working at the boatyard on my Microplus 600 cabin cruiser, Twiggy, again, I decided to get a ‘straightforward’ (?!) job out of the way and remove the old and rather odd leisure battery setup. This had for some reason been installed under the sink and comprised three batteries of two different sizes but there was a surprise or two as I took them out.
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The day before I went on my first cruise on NB Gentian (see the link for that video below), I pottered around the boat doing a variety of odd jobs as this was only the second weekend I’d spent aboard since buying the boat so there was still lots to finesse to my liking. This is the document of that day.
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At last, on my second weekend aboard the boat since purchasing it, I had a sunny day and the time to take it out for a short “test cruise” to see how it went along. I turned left from Burton Waters marina and went the two miles to Lincoln whereupon I turned around and came back. It was a glorious trip!
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