Nearly at the end of day one of our October cruise. At this rate it'll be the other side of Christmas before I finish writing it up. As we continued along the LLangollen Canal just above Hurleston Locks I spotted an obelisk or folly following us. Well, OK, it kept its distance, and was more to our left than behind us. I've scoured the map and can't find a reference to it - anyone know what it is?
One thing we noticed as soon as we entered the LLangollen Canal from the Shroppie: leaves. Leaves in the cut, and congregating round the prop. We kept having to give it a blast of reverse to clear them away, but it was never long before we had to do it again. And again.
It doesn't look too bad here, but you can't see the mass of neutrally buoyant leaves just below the surface. It seems impossible that they should have such a large effect, but they certainly do. Speed reduces and steering virtually disappears in extreme cases of leaf soup. You'd think that the water flowing past the prop should take the leaves with it, but somehow it doesn't. A short blast of reverse is the (temporary) cure.
6 comments:
The "folly" is a recreation of Big Ben, in a field next to the A51 which is part of the Snugbury Ice Cream set up. It celebrates the 150 th anniversary. See www.snugburys.co.uk/sculpture.htm for full details.
Alf
Thanks Alf. What weird things they do! No wonder I couldn't find it on a map.
The farmer is well known for his straw sculptures. The farm does a new one each year. My sister lives quite close to there, and it's one of the ways I know I'm nearly there!
re leaves on prop:
Sue on No Problem discovered that if you just put gears into neutral and give the tiller a good waggle it does the trick without slowing the boat so much. We tried it recently and it does seem to work.
Neil
Good tip, Neil, thanks. And thanks to Sue for originating it. Yes, it seems obvious really. The only reason the leaves stay around the prop, interfering with the flow of water, is that they must get caught in the swirl. Just engaging neutral, stopping the prop and therefore the entrapping swirl, should be enough to allow the mass of leaves to be left behind as the boat continues forward.
I'll try it next time. Mind you, there's something satisfying about seeing the naughty leaves surfacing after a good blast back and forward! Sue's way is kinder on the gearbox though...)
Nice tips and tidbits on this post Halfie, including the comments!
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