And we've done enough trips to know the boat really works just as if it had conventional drive (bit more powerful, actually).... but almost totally silent running electric (except for water noises,) and only a slight hum if the generator is on. Which it only has to be about a third of the time (to be basically fully charged by the end of the day) on the canal or going downstream on the river.... upstream, needs to be on most of the time...
But the other day we were on the river which was still on code yellow - very strong current for boating. Absolutely no problem, plenty of vibration free power. (Going downstream, whey-hey, white water rafting for narrowboats. Sort-of. I would have been nervous using the old diesel, our new drive, not at all.)
So it was time to write my article for Waterways World... after a sleepless night my brain at last got around to thinking of a way to write it, not too detailed, but not missing any essential points.... and I thought it would be good to include a diagram of how essential units are arranged at the stern of the boat.
All the material has gone off to WWW... and they had said they'd be very interested previously so I hope and assume it will be published, eventually - I've yet to hear for sure or when.
But they say they redraw diagrams to their in-house style.....
So it seems my fine artwork, as above, will not appear. Owing a lot to Arthur Ransome, I suspect. I felt it should have a more public airing than just to Jane and the back-room artist at WWW. It pleases me. It's also nearly correct. (It's a sort-of vertical section through the rear of the boat.)
If only the weather would clear, we might actually get a trip on the boat one day, again. In the meantime we took a ton of old computers and printers and enormous collapsed cardboard boxes and expanded polysterene to the tip today... so we actually have a spare room again.
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