Not many posts recently, I guess because its cold and I’m not on the boat! What I have been doing is adding photo’s on canalplan mainly of the places without photo’s, but some with just the one. So you can go to the gazetteer and browse your planned route, which is quite good. My time lapse photo’s mean I can contribute quite a bit, and I’ve been steadily going up the leader board, which shows how many photo’s people have added. So next time you’re on a boat, take a few extra pictures of the bridges, locks, and turning points, and share them. Also why not browse over your route to gleam off information and see some pictures too.

I have been using Dr.DivX the free open source software to create the final versions of my Time Lapse Cruise videos to upload to stage6.com. Now whilst there is a DivX Pro out there I never bothered buying it, since Dr.DivX is fine. It normally costs $20, but for a limited time the folks at DivX are giving it away free! So if you’ve ever wanted to convert and compress video’s into DivX format easily with Divx Pro, you may as well get it for free now. I often use XviD for encoding, but I can’t find any of those tools that allow you to encode from WMV files.

For a limited time, Divx is offering a complimentary download of their Divx Pro software, which consists of both a converter and the Codec. The converter includes an easy to use drag-and-drop feature to make your conversion time simpler. This software is definitely a useful one to have available.

It is currently not mentioned when this free download ends, so if you are interested, make it quick. Versions are available for windows and macs.

Youtube isn’t a great site for having my time lapse videos on, so having a look at blip.tv.

I’ve set up http://narrowboat.blip.tv  and guess its now a matter of putting stuff up again.

Hmm writing these pages late at night isn’t that good an idea as you tend to run out of time, okay lets get down to it. Hope you’ve read part 1 & part 2 …

Got to Fenny Stratford and shared the lock with another bargee. We had a chat about the weather, oh very British of us - it is mid-September and the weather is a lot better than it was in May or June, with less traffic on the system as its not a school holiday. I wonder if I should have attempted the London Ring this time, hmm, would have meant long days and probably spent more time worrying whether I could make it round than relaxing and enjoying the scenery.

Next up Milton Keynes where the canal isn’t too troubled by the town with the town planners having put many recreational parks adjacent to it. We stopped for lunch overlooking a park and saw a sign for Gulliver’s Kingdom - didn’t realise it was here! The wind was blowing strong so as we set off after lunch it was a case of give the throttle some welly to get speed up before the wind blew us across into moored boats. A quiet afternoon, it had been a quiet day to be fair, and so once we got past New Bradwell it was time to think about mooring rather than waiting until it was dusk. There’s a canal side pub at bridge 68 so we initially pulled in to check the place out - it wasn’t open and wewere unsure whether it did meals. So rather than risk it we carried on onto the embankment stopping before Cosgrove Lock.

As Stage6 has closed here’s a HiQ version @ blip.tv

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Having spent a couple of days doing the video you then have to translate this into text i.e. rake the memory with prompts from the video, which is okay if you have time to do it the same day you post. Well the video & start of the description was done on the 30th, so read that before continuing…

Have you played “chicken” with a narrow boat? I’m very confident in my skills - if I can navigate down a snaking ‘disused’ arm festooned with boats occupying every inch of available bank on both sides and then reverse the boat up the same course, then surely its not boasting to say I think I’m a “decent driver” - hmm is there such a thing a synchronised boating, a bit like synchronised swimming but with bigger objects?? If you read various articles on commercial narrowboaters of the past then you will most likely read that they stayed in the middle of the canal where the water is the deepest and go wide round bends to see round the corner (I remember an article describing how the deep part of the canal has changed round bends - traditionally it is the outside edge where the boats were steered to maximise visibility, but now they are moving to the inside edge because many holiday boaters “drive” the boats like the car choosing the shortest distance, the inside edge, when navigating the bends ). Two oncoming captains would head their boats direct for each other, in the deep channel, until they were almost upon each other before deviating just enough to go around each other. The benefits are you stay in the faster channel longer and by deviating late and passing close to the other boat your boat is then pulled back into position by the passing boats wake, all in all an efficient way to boat - unfortunately not so if the other boat is a holidaymaker!!! I’ve done this a few times and found the other boater moves very far to the edge and then scowls a lot, or even shouts at you - still just means I have to deviate less to go round them. Hmm, what’s needed is a quick vid of core skills to suggest to all boaters, as that way less diesel would be used each outing (though you are then reliant on their skill at steering!)

So what’s all this got to do with this day’s cruise? Well shortly after bridge 97 on our way towards Fenny Stratford we met a bunch of pirates, well a bunch of women on a hire boat wearing pirate hats. So I thought I’d steer quite close to them as we passed, still leaving a couple of feet or so in between, to get in the spirit. They seemed quite panicky - not very “pirate like” at all, about how close the boats were passing. Plenty of space, and on a straight piece of canal, but I hope I added to their day - I’m just glad I didn’t try and give them a true taste and pass within a foot.