Two’s Company.
After a bit of organising the day finally arrived for a trip on the River Severn, a new one for me. We were due to set off from Tingdene Marina just after 10 o’clock which meant an early start for me and my guest Rob and his dog Isambard. Apparently the dog is very good at designing railways.
We hitched up the Edwin James, having reinstalled the rudder after the fiasco from our last outing, but it left me nervous. The boat is 21 feet so add on another 6 foot for the trailer front end and the van this is quite a long load. When towing a boat you become hypersensitive to all the little squeaks and tugs that you feel coming from behind the boat. I was particularly nervous on the section of the M42 with all the roadworks, this was peak traffic time and I really didn’t want anything to go wrong here.
I became aware of an intermittent puffing noise and I thought it might be the noise from the van going past all of the barriers. I kept checking my mirrors but it persisted even beyond the barriers and I began to think something was going to go wrong. Was it the tow hitch, was it a tyre, was it a loose strap? No, turns out it was the dog panting on me.
Anyway this is a post about electric boats so we got to the Marina, they were nice people and informed us that we needed a CRT licence to go onto the river. I didn’t have one. I tend to ask for forgiveness rather than ask for permission as I feel so righteous being in an electric boat and dealing with the CRT is ordinarily so painful. But because the marina guys told me I wouldn’t get through the lock I thought I had better get a day pass, cost £5. Incidentally on the river Thames you can buy these from the lock keeper, nice and easy.
Before I go on and on about the CRT I should mention that the slipway at the marina is excellent, nice and steep and, as they say, it floated by boat.
Back to the CRT, I called, I waited, I waited more, I got through to a nice chap who had been on a ‘lets talk slowly to old people’ course. Fortunately I had a CRT account which made life easy and was able to give details, albeit slowly, to the CRT guy.
“Can you check that number please?” We did, several times, but there was something wrong with the system and it just would not accept the beeps that were coming from my phone. This continued until we were in the first lock and I felt the need to flash, my “I’m the Secretary of the Electric Boat Association and we are doing a lot for the environment dont you know, card” Meanwhile I said goodbye to the nice chap from the CRT and directed my attention to the stern lock keeper who incidentally was very high up. The locks on the Severn are very deep.
I am sworn to secrecy but the locks accidentally opened,or maybe they didn’t, and we were allowed through to the next section of the river. Thank you to the nice lock keeper.
It’s nice to go to other parts of the system so thank you to those people for suggesting it, however the rally itself was rather thin with just myself and Rob in the Edwin James and John Dalby in Celandine with his friend. We also had a dog and maybe next time I will bring my pet hamster to bump up the numbers, make it more rally-like, or maybe Noah’s Ark.
So with the two boats and in fact two pod motors we decided to have a drag race. John’s pod motor is an outboard version whereas mine is fixed in place and I steer using a rudder. His is an E-propulsion, mine is an Aquamot. GO. After a fairly equal start John started to pull away, But it’s never as simple as that on an electric boat, he was using 1.2kW and I 0.8kW. I think both motors are good and come with a good plug and play system.
An observation of the Aquamot pod motor. Maximum prop speed is 1500rpm when Idropped it back to about 600rpm the power reduced massively and I was able to maintain a good pace and according to the onboard GPS that comes mounted in the display, I could travel for 23 hours like this. Needless to say I didn’t do this so I can’t verify this figure and it might just be an Austrian exaggeration.
The river Severn is quite charming, it reminded me so much of the Hawkesbury River in Australia which I am so very fond of. Along the sides, dotted here and there, are a mixture of stunningly picturesque houses that have been there seemingly forever and what I can only describe as eccentric huts with totem poles and massive barbecues.
There’s an interesting diversity of watercraft too from paddleboards to narrowboats to gin palaces and retired ferries being reincarnated.
We lunched at The Lenchford Riverside Inn. The food was good and we sat outside to eat. The fields nearby were being harvested and I can only think the crop was coriander but that herb just didn’t seem to correlate with the Malvern Hills in view. I got stung on the cheek by a wasp.
The trip back was a blast, literally, always max speed on the way home and looking at the temperature gauge of my motor it only got to 39 degrees centigrade. This is because the Aquamot motors are AC induction motors. Not the latest technology but very well put together and very reliable.
The lock keeper still hadn’t got the hang of the locks and accidentally opened them for us again and we sped through. Again these are very very deep locks, but unlike the rest of the canals in the country there’s plenty of water to quench them.
Recovery of the boats was easy due to the steep slipway and the trip home uneventful. The coriander had started to play on my mind which might be the reason why I stopped off for a takeaway curry near to my destination in Oundle.
