Date: Tue, 08 May 2001 11:55:54 +0100 From: nbrumpus@lineone.net Reply-To: Canals To: Canals Subject: Trip Report: THE STOVE'S GONE OUT AGAIN, DEAR!! So far, Rumpus's adventures have all been downstream of Redhill, except for a brief excursion above Ratcliffe Lock, so a trip upstream to find the Soar Boating Club at Normanton seemed to be a good idea. Thus it was that we set off for the boat this morning with the picnic hamper ('cause Rumpus doesn't have any pots to speak of at the moment and we wanted to be a LITTLE civilised), two bottles of wine and some left-over vittles from last night's barbecue at Shardlow Marina. Susan hadn't done any boating for yonks and had certainly hadn't handled a boat with trad controls before, so she had to learn all about the good shove or yank needed to get forward and reverse, and the right way to turn the speed wheel to hurry Rumpus's six-and-a-half horses along. She also needed to get a handle on steering, but found steering off the new seats difficult. However, she did like draping herself over them, finding them much more comfortable than the slide rails! In due course we arrived at Ratcliffe Lock, where we met up with a couple of other boats, including David Heath (newsgroup lurker) on "Mirage II". Locking up together was fairly easy and meant I could give Susan a hand with boat control. A gentle potter through Kegworth Shallow Lock ("I LIKE locks like THAT!") led us to Kegworth Deep. As Rumpus is underpowered by modern standards, we'd been left behind by all the other boats we'd come out of Ratcliffe Lock with, but they did wait for us at the lock and I was once again able to stay on board. The Monkey's Paw I've got on the end of the centre line showed its true worth here for the first time! Susan fell in love with the massive 3-storey house just off the navigation channel above Kegworth Lock - there's be a decent mooring at the bottom of the garden, too! We got to Zouch Lock to find ourselves in a queue, as somebody else had "joined the party" so to speak and we'd lost out, relatively speaking. However, there were some boats waiting to come down, including a party of canoeists, so a pleasant few minutes were spent chatting before Susan brought Rumpus into the lock. Lunch was cooked and served around this time, but we pressed on to Normanton, arriving about 10 or 15 minutes later - just when Sid's Planner said we would! Having had a chat with one of the Management Committee at the Club we set off back downstream. We had Zouch Lock to ourselves, but caught up with some other boats at Kegworth Deep, where we were worked through by the crew of the Notts Police launch: boating for a job? can't be bad! At Kegworth Shallow we met up with John Lousevet and family, and a very pleasant hour or two was spent chatting and drinking before we reluctantly decided to continue downstream. The evening was possibly the best part of what had been a patchy day weather-wise: it had been cloudy early on but the clouds had broken to let the sun through in the afternoon and by the evening it was glorious, though still a little cold. We ended up back on the mooring about 6-30, packed up and came home. Back to work on the boat tomorrow! As this was Rumpus's first shake-down (or should that be vibrate-off?) cruise of the year, there were bound to be a couple of problems. The table flap wouldn't stay shut: Susan said the turnbuckle span round quite quickly to allow the table to fall, but replacing the countersunk screws with round-headed ones stopped this happening and there's enough "spring" in the table to allow you to open it when needed. The cooling system is starting to settle down: going up-river the temperature gauge stays below its half-way mark, but sitting around with the engine ticking over and lock work causes it to go up to the top, though it does come down again once you start moving. Coming back downstream there wasn't the water flow past the cooling tubes, so the temperature was a bit higher than going up-stream. I would be interested to hear other people's comments about this: as the pipework for the raw water cooling is still all there, it would be a simple enough matter to revert to raw water if needs be. The exhaust doesn't smell "hot" and we're not getting the smoke off it in the boat any more, which means we've now burnt all the cr*p off the exhaust, so it should be OK for the rest of this season. There are a couple of minor spannering jobs to do on the engine, but nothing to worry about unduly. However, the major problem seems to be the Diesel stove. It works fine when the boat's at rest (in fact, I will have it in tomorrow whilst I'm working to verify this) but the incessant vibration under way causes the safety catch on the burner pot to shut the fuel off, and turning it up also puts it out. I suspect a dose of sorting is called for........... Brian L Dominic NB Rumpus Web Sites: NB Rumpus: http://www.nb-rumpus.com Golden Valley Light Railway: http://website.lineone.net/~gvlr/index.htm Coming to GIG2001?? Go to http://groups.yahoo.com/group/GiG-2001 to subscribe to the mailing list! ---