that there is the anderson boat lift it's
the cathedral of the canals the wonder of the waterways it's quite something for now i've
got to head down the river weaver and get some work done my boat needs to come out of the water
it needs to have a hull survey i'm hoping they won't find anything wrong
but it all means i get to do a little bit of cruising whilst many people can't go anywhere
so i'm very happy about that and of course i can share it with you as well so that's nice isn't it
roughly 20 minutes cranking it upstream from the anderson boat lift lies hunts island and
the location of northwich drydock company this is where i'll be getting my survey done getting some
blacking welding whatever's needed and hopefully not spending too much money in the process
right let's have a look at a bird's eye view of where we are in the country we're in the
northwest of england about 20 miles south of manchester in northwich and if we zoom down
through the clouds we can see the dry dock which is beneath the weaver railway viaduct
which is built in 1862 it's 900 meters long with 12 arches and it's about 12 meters above the water
the family that run this business are the parrot family you've got matt and rebekah there and
their daughters eliza and martha and little dog ashby he's a brand new addition to the family
to get to the dry dock boats need to actually go up through a lock
and then around and down on the back waters to then come back to where the viaduct is
but it's quite an event i think every saturday there's a changeover
i've booked a week in this dry dock and i'm joined by ilford which is a historic boat and the guys
that work on this boat yard pretty much all of them own but various different boats and they're
all so passionate about them specifically traditional working boats like this one
here's the water going out of the dry dock and that flows back into the river on the
navigation side
there's been a dry dock here since about 1881
according to local historian colin edmundson shout out colin
and i found this post here saying 1917 but colin said that there was a lot of these along the river
weaver but "why they felt the need to cast the date into every item," he says, "i don't know"
on northwich drydock's instagram we've got a picture of matt here pressure washing the
base plate on Naughty Lass so this is a proper job we've got it all scrubbed down and ready
for the survey it all looks fine to me but in order to convince any insurance company
i have to get a survey done and that's where this guy comes in
Cor look at that it's actually a dry dock! clean and dry!
the way i understand it the job of a marine surveyor is to put together a report on
things like the thickness of the hull
any safety issues that might be of concern
highlight any work that would need doing to make sure the boat was - not sea worthy
because that's a separate test altogether - but just to make sure it can carry on cranking!
knocking a boat with a hammer can actually tell a surveyor quite a lot about
the vessel that they're working with
it's one of the first things that elliot's doing on my boat and he's working out where
bulkheads might lie and just the general state of the thickness of the steel
A nice ringing sound is good... but this...
[dull thud]
is where you've got a hole okay
sorry come again?! hole?!!! yeah there is a hole there isn't there! That actually came up
when matt was pressure washing it's right next to the one i need to have for the gas locker
as a safety feature but that's going to need some welding and that's not all we've
also discovered that apparently something or some things have been eating my boat!!
This is microbially induced corrosion... right what does that mean... that's bugs
that eats steel to all intents and purposes these pits here are galvanic ... galvanic
meaning? ...galvanic is dissimilar metals yeah so within a steel plate because it's an alloy itself
the various elements of the steel make-up reacts against each other
according to elliot although this can be a serious problem very high pressure washing will help to
remove the microbes and slow the process down but without shot blasting it won't be eradicated
it's all done by microsoft organisms and bacteria?
Yeah
yeah i got ya!
what are you doing there Elliot? ...i am checking the thickness of the steel ultrasonically
...what like the same as pregnant ladies would have? ...exactly the same principle
this machine will send three beams through that surface to the back side of the plate
and send the signal back if you don't get three signals back you won't get a reading so you
guarantee an accurate reading with these between point one of a millimetre is about the accuracy.
a full survey also includes checks within the boat itself as well things like electric
wiring plumbing and gas fittings for example but this isn't a boat safety scheme examination
i still have to get that done separately later on in the year
the survey itself arrives about a week later and there are some some things to watch out for
in red ink but it's all good and it passes so the next thing to do is just some minor welding
and blacking and then i'm out of that dock but not before i've added another name to my logbook
the name's in the book... marvellous thank you very much... so you're now a fully fledged Crank
It Crew member... splendid... but you've you've also done some work for me as well
and you've got all the nice chalk marks to show as well... i have yes i have and you;ve got all the
nice chalk marks to show as well... yeah and i've also paid you just to be clear... yes he has paid
definitely... i hope to see you again but not uh too soon
no ...yeah perhaps not in a working capacity... yeah you know in a Crank
it Crew capacity... definitely yeah... good stuff there we go!
life on board whilst you're on hard standing it's much the same except the boat doesn't
move about at all which is great and there's no uh difference in in terms of um the boat being
higher at the front than the back and i can use all my facilities fine you know hot water
and all that except my inverter has suddenly stopped working on me
uh the light comes on but there's no one home so i think Matt's gonna have a look uh hopefully he
can sort it out but for the time being i've stretched a cable across from the side there
the main supply here in the dry dock goes all the way in to the naughty last this way
and i've got an extension cable on it so it's here i can actually plug in my
combi boiler and at least that will give me some hot water
so running that tap you can see it's going to go down the plughole
and right outside onto the ground below it
anyway now it's time for *beer of the week*
right this time we've got a bottle of Old Tom and now this is strong ale it says from
robinson's which is a stockport brewery so it's not particularly local to northwich
but it's not far away still in the north west they're readily available in most supermarkets
certainly up north it's won the world beer awards 2017.
it's also won a great taste award 2019 so i'm expecting good things from this one
it's best before april 2022 so i've got to get going on this right here we go
Doesn't that look good - it's got a lovely reddish
color to it i don't know if you can see that properly but
smells great yeah it's got that nice fizzy stouty fizziness that i just i can't get enough of
you know fizzy beer is something i'm a big fan of as long as it's not too hoppy i'm
genuinely a fan of it! let's get a little taste oh it's quite marmite-y i wasn't expecting that!
it's fizzy it's beer and it's it's quite strong as well! i'm enjoying this a lot and
i'm to pair it with some well with some basically leftover pizza that i've reheated in the oven!!
here we go a few slices of reheated Pizza Hut pizza washed down with some quality ale
so this is it this is my home living inside a dry dock for the moment
but um there's more work to be done which you'll see on the next video
thanks so much for watching this one cheers and keep cranking it!
come on safety first Robbie... get back inside
before you keep drinking beer especially not 8.5 percent...