Leo No 2: Painting update (9) too hot

Leo No 2 is a 60' Orion narrowboats shell with an Aquarius Narrowboat Fitters fit out. Leo No 2 is moored on the River Wey at Addlestone in Surrey.

Leo No2's owner is member of Byfleet Boat Club (the other BBC!).

The picture was taken by Neil Corbett of Herbie Blogspot fame on a Queen's Diamond Jubilee Practice practice at Blackfriars Bridge in September 2011. The background picture was taken by Kathryn in August-2006 (at 04:10) in the Swale.

An excerpt from Wind in the Willows

Nice? It's the ONLY thing, said the Water Rat solemnly, as he leant forward for his stroke. Believe me, my young friend, there is NOTHING - absolute nothing - half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats. Simply messing, he went on dreamily: messing - about - in - boats; messing----'
From 'Wind in the Willows' by Kenneth Grahame.

Monday, 23 July 2012

Painting update (9) too hot

Well it's getting to hot to paint by 10:30 which is a bit of a pain but I won't wish for colder (or wetter weather). We'll just live with what the weather gods deliver.

Posted by Leo No2 at 13:08

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From Leo No2

Local Tide Times

Richmond half tide
London Bridge
Tenby - (For Sue)

Calendar

Waterways and Special Friends Blogs

Narrowboat Tacet

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Coventry and Heading South - Since our last post we reached the very end of the Ashby Canal and we've then retraced our route and followed the Coventry Canal into Coventry itself. The...
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All set for Crick - It's the Crick Boat Show next weekend. We'll be setting off on Wednesday, and should arrive on Thursday.
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Canalway Cavalcade - Finale - On Tuesday and Wednesday, nb Stronghold, nb Leo No.2 and nb Winging It stayed put, as we were going on the St Pancras Cruising Club outing to the Thames Ba...
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Locking Program - *A PDF version of the Locking Schedule is available by clicking on the title - 'Locking Program'* We have done our best to match the locking program to yo...
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A Happy and Healthy New Year to All! - Hello all! I can’t quite believe how quickly this year has flown by – suddenly Christmas is over and we are preparing for the last day of 2012! And what a ...
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Blog Archive

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Background

A Kiwi who came to the UK in 1977 (arrived on the Friday of Jubilee week). I had an idyllic childhood in the South Island of New Zealand with one sister and an English father and Irish mother….

As children we did a lot of messing about in boats from dinghy sailing off the east coast of the South Island, to power boating in the Marlborough Sounds and a bit of offshore sailing in the Hauraki Gulf.

My mother’s cousin operated her brother’s narrowboat Heather Bell on the western side of the UK during the war and started off the Idle Women who took over from the male boaters to release them for war service. Daphne March (later St Joseph) operated Heather Bell from Gloucester Docks through Birmingham (Tardebige flight) and on up the Shropshire Union to Ellesmere Port. Heather Bell is still around and currently (April 2012) being restored. Here’s something Daphne (Daffy) wrote some many years ago:

When I started boating in 1941 the snow was deep on the ground and there were no women skippers. When I left the water for the bank this summer, practically the whole system of inland waterways had been covered by amateur boatwomen trained by two of my early ‘mates’. An advertisement for the first of these brought applications in a number and variety that surprised me: they ranged from ballet-dancers to moneylenders and from sailors to ‘service-dodgers’.

It was two years before I attained the competence and social standing of a professional boatwoman, and my experience was gained at the cost of long hours, some spent in the heavy work of handling cargoes, anxious moments at the tiller, and exposure to all weathers.

The romantic features of boating have already had their share of publicity, but details of the work done by boats and boat people are usually left behind the curtain of obscurity, which veiled the canals and everything to do with them until AP Herbert published his Water-Gypsies. In four years our Heather Bell carried more than 7,000 tons of cargo. She took slack to Worcester, spam to Nottingham, sugar to Wolverhampton, and flour to Tipton, sauce to Wigan, coal to Oxford, copper and aluminium to Birmingham, shell-cases to the Potteries, grain to the Mersey, and RAF stores to the Bristol Channel. Each cargo had its own peculiarity, and each canal its rule of the road. On some ‘cuts’ boats keep to the right, on others the left, on some empty boats must give way to loaded ones, and on others uphill takes precedence over downhill traffic.

Our usual round trip started with loading 352 sacks of flour at Worcester for Tipton. In the first fifteen miles there are 36 locks. If these were against us, we had to draw them off as well as fill them, which meant double work for us both. Novices used to complain of having been made to run half way to Birmingham. At the top lock we would thankfully take the shining handles or ‘windlasses’ from our belts where we carried them and stow them in the cabin for ahead of us stretched a 15-mile ‘pound’, with three tunnels, the last 1¾ miles long. There is no lighting in these tunnels, so we carried a headlamp. If another boat had just gone through, her smoke reduced visibility sometimes to 15 feet, which made steering difficult as the boat is 71 feet long.

At the Bar Lock we would give our tickets to the toll-clerk, hear the latest boating news, fill the water-can and perhaps stop for the night at a tie-up. These recognised stopping-places which usually boast a lock, a shop, a village inn (the ‘boozer’) and a stable, are often called after lock-keepers, some still alive, some living in the memories of old boatmen, and others long since forgotten: at Gill’s, Parkerses, Dick’s, Denny Merril’s Mother’s lock, live the families who have given their name to the place, but ‘Ammonses’ is no longer kept by a Hammond.

At Tipton the flour was unloaded in a couple of hours and then we set off for Cannock Chase for slack. Here we made friends with the day or ‘Joey’ boatmen who have homes ashore, and never go far from the collieries. I have been glad to know the Black Country, which looks at its best from the water, and its inhabitants – kind people with a good sense of humour.

Another trip we often did was to go empty to Sharpness for grain. We locked down into the Severn at Worcester, keeping a good look-out for the petrol tankers which ply up and down the river, and whose crews are always ready to give us a tow: their 160 horse-power was a big help to out 10 if we were trying to reach a tie-up before dark. In the summer the river is lovely, though you have to be careful to avoid the shallows: in the winter there is sometimes too much water for comfort, especially if you run across the tide as well, because the Severn is tidal as far as Tewkesbury.

At Gloucester we locked up into the Docks and Berkeley Ship Canal with its low white bridges rather like those over Dutch canals. Sixteen miles further on in Sharpness we loaded bulk wheat from the silo, and if we had time we would brush up our French, Norwegian, or Dutch with the sailors there. In Sharpness before D-day there was a grand array of ships, all flying the B flag: ‘I am loading or discharging explosives’. We were glad to hear that of the sixteen ships, which went to Normandy sixteen came safely back.

Fog, wind and ice were our worst enemies. It was on a foggy December evening in 1941 that the Darleydale – the biggest tanker on the river – ran into us. We sank in 8 feet of water in 8 minutes, having luckily salvaged enough blankets to spend the night in moderate comfort on the floor of a Gloucestershire cottage. Fishers History of Europe stood up well to its three days immersion.

At Whitsuntide or in August we used to go down the Shropshire Union Canal. If locks had to be repaired, they were generally done then, and boat after boat took her place in the queue waiting for the work to be finished. Those were blissful days with time to paint, shine the brass, scrub the cabin, or de-carbonise the engine at one’s leisure, and afterwards to yarn with the boat people or play the accordion, knowing for once that there was no more work to be done. Then when the ‘stoppage’ was over, everyone set off again in a mad hurry, often going all night to make up for lost time. Twice we went ‘fly’ like that from Ellesmere Port to Wolverhampton: thirty-three hours non-stop, with about an hour’s sleep each.

Day and the fields of Cheshire changed slowly into night and the sandstone cuttings of Shropshire. Dawn came at the top of Audlem locks, and the first boat we’d meet would say: ‘What, you two girls been night-‘owlin’ again?’

I shall miss the cut and all my friends there: but it is a community that does not change and it is nice to know that Big-Mouthed Bella, Sam and Flo, ‘Stickemup’ and Soapy Joe, young Ada and all the rest of them will probably be about when I go back every now and then.

I started by narrowboating by crewing on the Surrey and Hampshire Canal Society’s Trip boat John Pinkerton and becoming a Marine and Coastguard Agency ‘captain’ and then RYA Inland Waterways Instructor. I bought Leo No2 from Mick and Suzanne Wilson (Aquarius Narrowboat Fitters) in May 2007 initially taking it home to Brookwood but latterly Leo No2 has been moored on the Wey at Addlestone. I am a member of, and currently Secretary of, Byfleet Boat Club.

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An excerpt from Wind in the Willows

Monday, 23 July 2012

Painting update (9) too hot

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