A cruiser stern is bigger, so offers a more sociable environment. It’s usually surrounded by a safety rail which can have a canvas ‘skirt’ or hood attached for protection from the elements. The engine’s accessed through deck boards, making maintenance easier, but it also means more exposure to the elements so rain water and debris can build up (seeping through the deck boards). The additional external space reduces what’s available internally.

A semi-traditional stern offers the best of both worlds; more space than a traditional and better protection from the elements than a cruiser. Engine access is still via deck boards and the extended cockpit, which can accommodate a hood, provides more shelter, storage and space.

Hood

Also known as a pram cover, and attached to cruiser and semi-traditional sterns, it’s great for protecting passengers and the engine from the elements, but not so great when it comes to getting on or off the vessel or cruising under low bridges. A build-up of condensation can also hinder navigation.

Pram covers can also be great for creating extra 'indoor' space, and the vast majority can be lowered for cruising.

Size

While the width of a steel narrowboat (6ft 10”) and the cabin headroom (6ft 4”) remains the same, its length can vary. The majority are built with lock lengths in mind, and those around 57ft will enable you to cruise most of the connected inland waterway system (apart from some of the canals and rivers in Yorkshire which have a 56ft lock limit, and a short section of the Little Ouse in Norfolk where there’s a 40ft restriction).

Lengths can go up to 72ft, giving a lot more space for liveaboards, but you’ll need to research where you can cruise.

If you’re not sure what length of boat you want, look at how many berths (sleeping areas) you need, your intended use and preferred layout. Mooring and licence fees can be based on length and smaller mooring spaces are found more easily. Size doesn’t impact how a boat cruises, but additional length can slow the turning speed.

Widebeams provide more spacious accommodation, but they can be more difficult to manoeuvre, you cannot navigate some narrow canals and mooring spaces will be limited. They also have higher licence and mooring fees.

History

The Lancaster Canal was once a busy waterway, transporting limestone and coal via its seaports of Milnthrope and Lancaster, commodities which gave rise to its nickname of The Black and White Canal. Opened in 1799, it was extended into Kendal in 1819 and down to the sea via the Glasson locks in 1826. Sadly the northern reaches were cut off with the arrival of the M6 motorway in 1968 but these remain beautiful stretches none the less. The navigational section of the canal is 41 glorious miles whose beauty is hard to beat. As a waterway it has so much to offer and delight: an exciting passage to reach it via The Ribble link, stunning countryside, panoramic views of The Lake District and Morecambe Bay, a branch that connects it with the sea and two lively and historic cities to discover.

Southern Canal

There are two ways of exploring The Lancaster canal, either by hiring a boat or taking your own along the Rivers Douglas and Ribble. Latter visitors will arrive at the junction from the Savick Brook close to Preston. I recommend turning right and staying at the lovely Cadley services which has secure car parking and an area for BBQs. The canal’s southern terminus is only a mile away and it is a treat to walk along the tow path to admire the steep gardens that run right down to the water. The canal was shortened by a mile many years ago and now starts just south of Ashton Basin. Preston seems to be a city of churches but also of parks and green spaces. The excellent Haslam Park has much to offer as does the restored Victorian pleasure gardens of Avenham. The 20mile bike trail  'The Guild Wheel' winds it way through its paths and along the River Ribble.

The first section north is beautiful and green with the fields’ edges caressing the waters often trampled by generations of cows and sheep. The boater is aware that the main coast railway, M6 and A6 are never far away but the peace of the canal is still prominent. The village of Bilsborrow is dominated by Guy’s Thatched Hamlet and Owd Nell’s, an eclectic collection of buildings, accommodation, pubs, and restaurants, a fun fair and bowling green. As a people watching location it is excellent! There are also some other canal side inns, a handy PO and shop.

The pretty market town of Garstang is only five miles further north; there are some good independent shops as well as a couple of supermarkets. The walk along the river is lovely and Garstang basin has several attractive buildings, a pub and moorings. A little further on the boater arrives at the services and further moorings where it is very pleasant to spend a week or so. More rural countryside emerges as you glide along the waterway towards Potters Brook, passing under John Rennie’s stone bridges. Just past bridge 85 is the left hand turn down to The Glasson Branch. It is well worth a trip down the 6 locks to see the sea and the remains of the once busy port. The Conder Valley is quiet and unspoilt and ends in salt marshes and the estuary of the powerful River Lune, the tide comes in at such a rate you can hear it before you see it.

Mid-Section

Back on the main canal the cut begins to change its appearance as one nears the historic port town of Lancaster, another grand place to spend a bit of time. There is much to explore: a castle, several museums, (including the maritime one), beautiful squares and interesting streets and buildings. There are still some fine examples of old mills along the tow path. It is not long before the amazing Lune aqueduct is reached which carries the canal over the river some 600ft below. It was built by Alexander Stevens who died before it was completed in 1797.

As the canal continues north it turns towards the west and the astonishing Morecambe Bay comes into view at Hest Bank. It is possible to moor up and have a sea view with the Lakeland fells in the background: possibly one of my all-time favourite places to stop. Carnforth is the next town to be reached; there is a sanitary station in the basin along with a pub and petrol station that sells gas and fuel. The roar of the M6 becomes the dominant noise and the peace is disrupted for a while as you pass under the motorway towards the Keer aqueduct. The last pretty place to stop on The Lancaster is Borwick, a lovely village situated around the green. As you journey along the final mile of the canal the motorway gets louder and louder until you come to a rather abrupt halt at the canal’s terminus next to a service hut. The M6 is only 10 meters away the other side of a mesh fence.

The Northern Reaches

Beyond the terminus it is possible to continue on foot to the Tewitfield locks, these were last used in the early 1940’s but the chambers look as good as ever even though there are no longer any gates. A footpath takes you over the M6 and deposits you on a beautiful towpath, which in the spring was lined with wild flowers. The navigation has water in it for 8 miles and one expects a boat to come chugging by at any moment. The M6 intercepts the waterway in two other locations but it is possible to proceed to the end of the watered section. The Lancaster Canal Trust have dug out, lined and re-watered a ¼ mile stretch, and they have ambitious plans to reinstate the canal all the way to The Canal Head in Kendal if the finance can be found. The Hindcaster Tunnel and the amazing horse tow path over the top is another reminder of the quality of the construction and engineering of this once important canal. The final miles into Kendal have no water in them and in some sections, due to dense vegetation, it is impossible to see where the canal used to run, only the bridges, still standing proud and strong, hint at the now ghostly course of the navigation.

In conclusion, having spent four months on The Lancaster Canal, I can thoroughly recommend boating there and hope that one day the navigation is restored all the way to Kendal.

Amanda’s birthday present was still in its first flush of newness as she steadied her elbows on the bridge parapet and carefully focussed the lens on the buildings to the left of the old canal bank.

“Odd place for a posh tourist on a day like today,” the voice of an old man broke her concentration as she pressed the shutter button.

“How did you know all that?” she asked, replacing the lens cap carefully.

“Your accent nails it,” the man laughed.   “And only the rich can afford a Leica.”

“Russian copy.   Good but cheap,” Amanda replied with a hint sharpness to her voice.

“No offence,” the man smiled back.   “But of all the places in the lakes, you take holiday snaps of the gas works?”

“My parents are watching the cup final at the hotel,” Amanda frowned a little.  “I can’t stand football and I felt sorry for the old canal all filled in and forgotten like this.”

“Crying shame if you ask me, but nobody did,” the man replied.   “I were on one of the last boats up here, cold winters day it was too.   The town won’t see any more craft now with the motorway coming.”

“OK,” Amanda smiled.   “If I confess to being a tourist, could you tell me about the canal?”

“What’s a lass of what, about thirteen, want to know about that old stuff for? I thought you were all pop stars and noise,” the man frowned.

“Fourteen.   About a month ago.   Present from Mum and Dad,” Amanda replied whilst taking another photograph.   “And stuff like this, you know, neglected  places that people don’t see just get my interest sometimes.   There’s no tour guides or postcards of this are there.”

“True enough… But...” the man said after a few moments.

“Look, you’re  hardly going to push me in the canal and drown me for a camera are you,” Amanda laughed.

“You put it like that, well, I can’t refuse,” the man, who was over six decades her senior, smiled.   “You’ll have come up from the south of town so we’ll walk the last bit to the basin, not that there’s enough water to wash your face there now.   Filled in when you was a tot.   All manner of rubbish went in.”

“Seems a real slap in the face to the people that built it,” Amanda frowned as she set off with the man onto what was left of the old towpath.

“Was and is,” he replied.   “Wasn’t in a good state when I brought a light load of timber up to the wharf.   They used the canal during the war because it was a bit safer from air raids.   The Germans never bombed much here though.   If you was a kid then, you could have landed up as an evacuee.   We took a lass during the war.   Looked a bit like you and all.”

Amanda obligingly waited until the man produced a faded and rather creased photo from his tattered wallet.

“Grace was her name,” he smiled.   “Canny lass and all.   Went back to a ruined house and got put in a children’s home.”

“Do you know what happened to her?” Amanda stifled a tear as she looked at the face that was so indistinct that it could have been anyone.

“Aye, she came back about ten year ago, married a local lad and has a couple of kids now,” the man replied with a smile.

“I can see why she’d feel more at home here than there,” Amanda said as she photographed the painted iron plates of the widened arch on the next bridge.   “You said this is the scruffy end of town, but it’s still beautiful.   I wouldn’t go near the rough bit where I live.”

“It’s bonny alright.   I was born here and I’m stopping as long as nature allows,” the man smiled.

“I’d do the same,” Amanda replied.   “It’s as though you’re a part of the area, like the stones in that wall,” she added pointing at a magnificent building that was once a canal warehouse.

“And this is where it all finished up.  We tied the boat up near that lamp post and unloaded, then it got frozen in and sank.   So that’s where it stayed.”

“You mean the canal’s just a dead end here?” Amanda asked, pointing her camera at the area of paving that had been the wharf edge.

“That’s how things often are.  Life goes on, and young Grace got her happiness back.   You can see on her face that she’ll never forget what happened though,” the man replied, looking a little wistful.   “There’ll be people trying to get water back here in the future.   Mark my words.   Then we’d have to stand somewhere else or our hats would float.”

“Is there a café or bakery around?” Amanda asked.   “I could do with a snack and I should get you something for telling me all this stuff.”

“No need,” the man smiled.   “But you’re going to insist, so we’ll go Dutch if you don’t mind.”

A short walk took them to a small shop front which was well off the tourist track.

“Who’s this then Bill.  Too bonny to be your granddaughter,” the woman behind the small counter said.

“Just a tourist with a pretty funny taste in holiday snaps,” Amanda replied with a smile.

“A pot of tea and some of Madge’s best scones.   That’ll fit the bill lass,” Bill suggested, getting a nod from Amanda.

“It’s not often anyone shows an interest in some proper history,” Madge said.   “Once the bug’s bitten I’ve heard it really gets into your blood.”

“Sounds like some kind of infection,” Amanda laughed as she poured the tea.   “It’s true too. People at school are always telling me I must follow fashion more, but I hate being told what I should like.”

“No harm walking your own path.   That way nobody owns you,” Bill replied as they heard raised voices from outside.

“Seems like we won,” Amanda smiled.

©2021 Michael Nye

Thanks to my father-in-law, Jeffrey Armstrong for info about Canal Head Kendal.

I often hear people saying that you cannot run this or that piece of equipment on their boat. It might be the lady’s hairdryer or the coffee maker. Well there was a time when on our leisure boats all we had was DC power from a battery and not very much of that, unless we had a generator. Generators were and still are expensive a 3kW generator still costs today order of £8000 installed on a boat. The electronics world came to our rescue with the Inverter.

A tiny bit of history – The Inverter was first described back in 1925 and has developed over the years to the stage where good quality inverters can replicate what come out of the sockets in our house. It is important to be able to do that because all the equipment we use on boats were designed to run on the power that come out of the sockets at home.

It is very difficult to produce a pure sine wave from a flat DC voltage; as a result there are not only pure sine wave inverters on the market, but also what are called modified-sine-wave inverters, which I will call Pseudo Wave Inverters.

Figure 1: Sine Wave

Lets start with a Pure Sine Wave Figure 1, like the power that comes out of the sockets at home. The Start of the Sine Wave is zero volts, the top of the Sine Wave is in England nominally +230V and the bottom of the Sine Wave is -230V. So the AC mains sine wave starts at 0V and smoothly rises to 230V and without any pause falls to 0V and then down to – 230V and rises to 0V, one complete cycle, all very smoothly and without any pauses, the voltage continually rises and falls.

Figure 2: Square Wave

Now the Pseudo Sine wave inverter is basically a variation on a square wave as in Figure 2. It starts at 0V and rises virtually instantly to +230V, pauses for half the time of the cycle at full voltage and then falls virtually instantly to –230V, then pauses for the time of half a cycle before rising rapidly to +230V,

When compared with the Sine wave this is banging from +230V to –230V rapidly holding the voltage at either +230V or –230V. It is being very aggressive in the way it is pushing the volts into whatever is being powered and the item will overheat and fail after a period. In simple terms of the power it delivers it is considerably greater than the power a sine wave delivers and the item is expecting.

Figure 3: Modified Square Wave

To solve and reduce the problem of over powering items the modified Square Wave can be used, Figure 3, but it only reduces the overall power. The item being powered is still held at maximum voltage for considerably longer than it is with a sine wave which is what they are designed to be powered by. This is particularly a problem with Motors and anything that has electronics in it. Things overheat and deteriorate over a short period of time.

The only thing in my opinion about this that is similar to a sine wave that comes out of home sockets is that the wave starts at the same point in time and the next one does as well.

Finally Pulse width modulation and computers came to our rescue, this allowed a sine wave to be built up from a square wave and then treated with filters and transformers to give a pure sine wave.

Figure 4: Pulse width modulation to produce a crude sine wave

In Figure 4 is an example of pulse width modulation producing a crude sine wave. When finer and more pulses, controlled in both width and amplitude, then you have the starting point of today’s good quality Pure Sine Wave inverters. Then with good filtering and transformers you can produce AC sine wave inverters as good as the sine wave that come out of the sockets at home. Which is what the good Inverters do.

Which Inverter should I choose for the boat

I am only going to deal with Pure Sine Wave Inverters as every boat I have been on has equipment that ought to be only run on a Pure Sine Wave Inverter.

Inverters are made in a wide variety of power size typically ranging from 175W to and almost unlimited amount as good quality inverters can be parallel and it is now not uncommon for boats to have a pure sine wave inverter system exceeding 15,000W (15kW). I personally commonly fit inverters that are capable of supplying 3kWh &b 5kW (3000W & 5000W). People are getting to the stage of using Induction Hobs, which need a pure sine wave Inverter.

So how do you decide?

1. You need to find out what the maximum power (Watts) of the AC equipment you want on your boat is.
2. Does that equipment include any that has a motor in it; if so you will need to allow for the extra power that motor needs to start. Motors typically need 5 times to 6 times their running power to start. I will come back to this with an example.
3. How many items do you want to be able to run at the same time?

So let us take a few examples:

a)  A washing Machine typically a full-blown modern washing machine will use order of 2.5kW that would need a full 3000VA to run it successfully. The main power usage is the heater heating the water and this is a heater order of 2kW. The rest is the electronics and the motors.

Figure 5: Typical Power Block

b)  A mains computer charger – Typically these use from about 60W to over 100W. If the charging block does not have Wattage on it, look to see what the output Voltage and current (amps) in the picture of part of a power block showing the figures need. The output voltage is 19.5V and the current is 3.33A. So Volts x Amps = Watts – 19.5V X 3.33A = 64.935W.

c)  A Vacuum Cleaner – Since the 1^st September 2017 vacuum cleaner have been limited to a maximum power of 900W so that is the I will use for our Vacuum cleaner example.

All inverters have their stand continuous output say 2000W but they also have a Peak power output it is normally order of twice the continuous output.  The reason for this Peak Power rating is to be able to start the likes of an electric motor. They will supply the extra power the motor needs to get turning, the need only lasts a critical few milliseconds.

You may have heard that electric motors need more than their normal running power and it is very true. Electric motors need between five times and six time their normal running power to start the motor turning. This applies to all motors, AC and DC and includes the motors in the compressors of fridges & Freezer.

So for our example vacuum cleaner with a running power of 900W we need to multiply that power by between five and six to get the peak power to start the motor. Times five is 4,5000W so we need an inverter that needs a peak power of order of 4500W and a continuous power of more than 900W. This is likely to be something like a 2000W or 3000VA inverter to get the safe starting power needed.

Fridges & Freezers –

There has been a move towards mains fridges & freezers because they cost so little compared with the 12V versions. The fridge compressor is run by an electric motor and so we have the same problem as with the Vacuum cleaner, the peak current needed to start that motor.

Most fridges/Freezers have about a 1/3^rd of a Horsepower compressor, which means the motor’s normal running current is about 250W. That mean we need an inverter with a peak power of 1250W to 1500W. That means we need an inverter order of 800W to 1000W to run our mains fridges.

I hope the above gives enough insight and knowledge to help those trying to workout which inverter they need for their boat. Do remember if you want to run the Fridge & the Vacuum cleaner at the same time you need to add together their power ratings to arrive at the size of inverter needed.

Postscript:

I have been busy both on board and with Blood bikes during the pandemic. Someone thought it would be a good idea to offer 24/7 cover in Somerset (which is a big county!). Anyway I have spent many a weekend confined to the boat with maps etc., organising everything from COVID samples to emergency medication. We did win the Queen's Medal for Voluntary Service though and DT has become a command vessel - which suits her "Action Stations - this is not a drill" kind of thing, especially at 3 in the morning!