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Hello and welcome to the November edition of the newsletter, starting with a quick reminder that I have re-named the editions from this one (ie this is labelled November because it's sent out on 31st Oct / 1st Nov). If you're wondering where the October edition was, there wasn't one as the last one was named September. Confused yet?!
I'm clearly becoming an even grumpier old man these days because a handful of viewers (somewhat ironically, if you ask me) moaned that I was moaning about aspects of my recent cruise holiday, and further down in this newsletter I'm going to have a moan about 'social' media too. Thought I'd better warn you in advance...
With that out of the way, let's look at this month's canal news.
Cheers
David |
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News from the canal world.
*** Press releases or other news snippets can be sent to me at newsletter@cruisingthecut.co.uk ***
Outboard Alert
The UK's Office for Product Safety and Standards has published details of a product recall for certain Honda outboard motors due to a potential fault with the "ACG" (accessory belt).
The alert states that the ACG has a manufacturing defect that may entangle the timing belt causing the engine to stop. Models affected are the BF175D, BF200D, BF225D, BF250D.
More information and a link to specific serial numbers is on British Marine at https://www.britishmarine.co.uk/news/2024/October/product-recall-honda-marine-outboard-engine
Honda is contacting owners who have registered their outboards in its customer database.
The End is Nigh?
Complaints about the state of some of the canals seem to have been rising over recent months but now here's hard evidence of the decline: a holiday boat-hire firm is cancelling rentals on the Leeds & Liverpool canal from next year because of its declining state.
Pennine Cruisers of Skipton say the route's not been kept navigable by the Canal & River Trust and that it's been "soul destroying" because of low water levels and broken locks.
The firm's going to continue offering day-hire because those boats just travel up and down a limited stretch of the waterways and not through any locks so they're less affected.
Boss Ian Clarke told the BBC the problems meant he'd had to offer refunds to customers and the financial strain was too much.
See https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c8rlx6y2dzgo
Mooring the Cut
The Canal & River Trust's official winter moorings period begins from November 1st, running through to Friday 28th February 2025.
There's no requirement on continuous cruisers to stop over the winter but many like to do so either due to canal maintenance closures or simply to make life easier during cold and wet months.
The permits went on sale a month ago and can be purchased for 1, 2, 3 or the full 4 months in one of an extraordinary seven different price bands which vary according to location, facilities offered and suchlike.
Those fees range from £8.50 per metre per month up to £26.20. Using a typical 57-foot narrowboat as an example, with a foot at each end for a fender, that would cost from £153 to £471!!
Personally, I always found marina moorings to be better value with full facilities and the only downside being lined up in rows like sardines.
You can see more details at https://canalrivertrust.org.uk/boating/moorings/winter-moorings
More cheese, Gromit?
A new Aardman Animations "Wallace and Gromit" film will be shown on BBC1 on Christmas Day (and seemingly on Netflix around the world) - and from the look of a clip I found on Twitter via Reddit, there appears to be an exciting (but entirely unbelievable!) narrowboat sequence on an aqueduct that looks vaguely like a combination of Edstone and Pontcysyllte!
The still image shows a traditional canal boat slewed sideways over the edges of an aqueduct above a railway line 😱 which is entirely unfeasible but should surely be great fun to watch.
There's loads of info about the film at https://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/articles/2024/wallace-and-gromit-vengeance-most-fowl
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My recent videos
If you've missed my latest uploads through your own busy schedule or YouTube's inability to let you know what I've uploaded, here's a summary!
Fans of my boat refurbishment - who appear to be most eager to see how the transom rebuild is coming along - will be simultaneously pleased and frustrated with the latest video on my YouTube channel, which is the second in my series of works to dig out the rotten wood and rebuild. (As a little tease, I've since recorded two further videos on this topic, which will be released over the coming month or two).
Before that, I uploaded a wonderfully simple yet pleasing vlog of the day I spent in the company of Jade Murphy, a very new boat owner who's bought a low-cost fibreglass cruiser which she adores and who took me for a jaunt along the glorious Peak Forest canal.
And the video prior to that was my thoughts and impressions of my cruise holiday to Norway aboard P&O Cruises' "Iona" which does (see intro above) include some "moaning" or as I prefer to call it, legitimate criticism of likes and dislikes...
Click the links below to watch.
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Book your perfect canal boat holiday! |
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I've teamed up with Roam & Roost Canal Boat Holidays, a group of independent canal boat hire companies. Book through my link for great rates and a range of locations (and I get a small commission too)
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** Bookings now being taken for 2025! **
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What am I up to?
As mentioned above, the second video covering the rip-out and restoration of Twiggy's transom is now online but since that was filmed, I have been back to the boat several times (not all of them filmed as sometimes I was doing rather mundane things such as sanding down edges which wouldn't have made for interesting footage) and this has resulted in two further videos so far - and I haven't even cut the new plywood core yet!
We were blessed with a very mild October which enabled me to do my first attempts at fibreglassing but the temperatures are definitely now dropping so I suspect further work on the transom may have to wait until Spring, though I may be able to do some sanding on the hull and maybe continue stripping out the interior.
Apart from that, I have a day's filming on the Gloucester and Sharpness canal coming up - hopefully just a lovely old-fashioned style of vlog chugging along on a viewer's narrowboat. Plus, a viewer request which I have taken up is an update on the state of the second-hand narrowboat market, for which I have visited the well-regarded broker, Rugby Boats.
Finally - and this is where your input would be valuable - I haven't done a "Q&A" video for ages, which is ideal for the cold winter nights. So if you have any questions about canals, narrowboats etc etc and would like to send them to me, I will attempt to answer all those that I feel I can. Just reply to this email and ideally use a subject line of "Q&A" or similar. Thanks in advance.
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My YouTube top pick of the month
Every month, I like to pick a YouTube channel I enjoy that I think you might like too. This month it's the turn of Stuart at Proper DIY, who's a very amiable chap with a splendid set of videos covering all aspects of household DIY (and an enthusiastic audience who chip in with suggestions and recommendations in the comments too)
He's done everything from replacing a manhole cover to fixing fenceposts to assembling IKEA furniture!
Watch at https://www.youtube.com/@properdiy
By the way, if anyone has any recommendations for what to watch (other than narrowboat channels, of which I see plenty already!) then please do send me a reply to this email!
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A social recommendation
OK, time for a bit of a rant. I am fed up with 'social media' not because it's not social or because there's too many angry people there (OK, there are but I don't find it difficult to filter out the ones I don't like).
The trouble is, all the apps are simply useless now. Twitter is forever trying to push its "For You" timeline on me which is populated by exactly the kind of people I don't wish to follow, not to mention innumerable adverts for dreadful tat that no-one in their right mind would be buying. It's just impractical to use and impossible to enjoy.
Sadly, the same fate is true of Instagram, with a feed that's usually days out of date, adverts every two or three posts, and constant "improvements" like Reels, Stories, Notes, Notes on Stories, Notes on Reels, OMG JUST STOP!! I remember when it was a nice app for sharing photographs.
And the less said about Facebook of course, the better. I've never known a website go so effectively from useful - chronological timeline of Friends posts - to utter dross. Even using it solely for some Groups I'm interested in seems to be a challenge with FB insisting on showing me "most relevant" which I assure you is not most relevant at all.
Anyway, the point of all this barely-contained fury is twofold: firstly, I'm retiring the "clubhouse chatter" section of this newsletter since I can no longer sensibly recommend social media accounts given the above. Secondly, I am winding down my own use of social media. I will still post on Twitter and Facebook when I've uploaded a new video and I will post on Insta when I have a nice boat picture to share but other than that, I'm done with them. |
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Final Thoughts
Perhaps it's because I've drunk a rum 'n' coke just before I started writing this edition of the newsletter or maybe I really am a grouch but I'm ending with a further grumble.
Users on TikTok (another one I'm going to stop posting to) will probably have been shown an account called "Betty B0att Videos" which started off by ripping off videos from the Betty Boat YouTube channel but which now spends its time ripping off mine instead, re-posting (without my permission) all my YouTube content.
I have filled in TikTok's formal Copyright Infringement form both for the account as a whole and for some of the individual clips but TikTok seems entirely unbothered, and messages to them via Twitter just result in them telling me to use their form (again).
So while TikTok takes no action against this blatant thief, I would urge you, if you get served up these videos, to Report the channel using whatever good reason you can think of, and hopefully if enough people do that, TikTok might finally listen.
Yours sincerely,
The Grinch
aka David |
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