Apologies for the picture quality, one handed shooting these !
28th August 2004
Well I finally remembered to take a camera with me & thus was able to get the pictures you see here. I have made various trips in the PB & because the weather was a bit dubious around the coast I decided to take the boat for a trip around Bristol's historic harbour. http://www.bbc.co.uk/bristol/content/cityviews/webcams/harbourside.shtml This shows a short dead end reach where the River Frome enters the dock from its man made underground passage under the city center in the back ground. There are converted harbour warehouses on the left known at the "watersheds" (now pubs & restaurants) & an art gallery on the right with hotel & offices behind. The bridge in the middle is a recent addition & has two crazy horns at either end of the opening section in remembrance of the slaves that passed through these docks which were once the British center of the slave trade, Bristol was second only to London in impotance & cargo delivery at that time.
According to my GPS, the full extent of the navigation is 7.25miles from the launch point by the harbour masters office to the first lock on the river Avon, where the navigation changes to British Waterways regulations (http://www.waterscape.com/index.html) & where another license would be required to cruise further. It is possible to navigate from Bristol to London via the river Avon, then the Kennet & Avon Canal to the river Thames, maybe a trip to attempt in the future :) The current docks occupy the old river course & a new cutting was made around the outside of the docks area, when the decision was made to create the "Floating Harbour". Basically a couple of large locks were built to retain the water in the dock to allow for easier loading & unloading of cargo from ships that were permanently afloat, a 1 mile long smaller cut was made called the "feeder canal" this reaches back upstream to just above the first weir on the River Avon. This plus the Frome & a couple of smaller streams maintain the level of water in the docks & make up for water lost when the locks are used.
There is now only one working lock set just below the harbour masters office where we launched the PB, this is the Cumberland basin lock which is the largest & the closest to the sea, the others were all permanently sealed during the second world war to avoid a breach in the docks being caused by German bombers. The Cumberland basin has 3 separate locking compartments, so any two breaches would not have lost the dock !
So this was just a short trip to check how the new rev counter come hour meter works & the answer is great. I mounted it on the tiller handle via some double sided tape & drilled & rivetted it in place, it is very easy to see & works great. As I had already run the engine for about 10hrs, I strapped the unit to a friends car engine to get the hour reading up to where it belongs (I couldn't use mine or my partners, nor my bikes, as they all have coil on plug fittings, so no HT leads !) These meters are ideal for keeping track of engine usage & have a 25hr service reminder feature to boot. I used a SenDEC rpm/hour meter see here http://www.sendec.com/meters/html/smt.html .
For guys in the UK, you can get these from here http://www.henryarmer.com/
(Call them, they cost about £27 + postage)
Apologies for the picture quality, one handed shooting these !
The trip round the docks & up the river was uneventful & was enjoyable pottering about in the reasonable weather. Check out the pictures below for the Walker Dolly in action & no comments on the fine figure of a man that brought you this web site :) Oh and excuse the messed up hair, it was windy & I took my hat off, don't you just hate that look :) The picture names tell the content, the actual launch was missed, as I was shooing the Swans out of the way & mummy Swan was not happy about it.
This diagram shows an alternative way to anchor small boats to avoid the bow being pulled under by rouge waves. The Green line is the standard anchor line attached to the bow, crossed out ! The Blue line is a single line with a loop in the middle, the ends are attached to each side of the boat approx 1/3rd back from the bow (see A), such that the loop will clear the bow if pulled straight forward. The loop is kept inboard at the bow & when you want to anchor, you lower your anchor (Red line) until sufficient line is out & then tie it off to the loop in the Blue line at the bow. Lower the Blue line over the bow & leave enough slack in the tail of the anchor line (see Red loop) so that the Blue line can hang near vertical from its attachment points if required. Then secure the tail of the anchor line to a hard point at the bow.
When a wave comes along, instead of the bow being pulled down as the anchor line goes tight (as it would if anchored with the green line) the bow will rise & the boat will pivot about the blue line attachments points !!!
Simple really & because the boat is attached at both sides, it reduces snubbing in the wind !
That's all for now
Still
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