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Log

Journey to Kings Cross

Summary

This is a trip of 2 miles, 1½ furlongs and 2 locks from Whitmore Road Bridge No 43 to St Pancras Lock No 4 travelling west on the Grand Union Canal (Regent’s Canal).

This will take 1 hour and 10 minutes.

Route

Grand Union Canal (Regent’s Canal)
From Whitmore Road Bridge No 43 (Whitmore Road) to:
Islington Tunnel (East end) [see navigational note 1 below]

Colebrook Row crosses here. Also known as Colebrook Row
 1 mile, 2 locks
Islington Tunnel (West end) [see navigational note 2 below]

Muriel Street crosses here. Also known as Muriel Street

Having passed through Islington Tunnel [see navigational note 3 below].

4¼ furlongs, 0 locks
Battlebridge Basin

London Canal Museum. Also known as Horsfall Basin, Maiden Lane Basin
 2 furlongs, 0 locks
St Pancras Lock No 4 3 furlongs, 0 locks

Totals

Total distance is 2 miles, 1½ furlongs and 2 locks (not counting St Pancras Lock No 4). There are at least 1 small aqueduct or underbridge and 1 tunnel (Islington Tunnel [see navigational note 3 below]. ).

This is made up of 2 miles, 1½ furlongs of broad canals; 2 broad locks.

This will take 1 hour and 10 minutes. For initial calculation purposes (before adjusting for such things as overnight stops) this is taken as 1 day of 1 hour and 10 minutes.

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Journal

Friday 13 March 2015

A very dark day.

Nat got a call from Lucio, whom we offered to stay on the boat previously, that our beloved friend was diagnosed with terminal cancer. She was a mother of three young children. Nat wasn’t sure if she can call to Berlin or not, so she made a few phone calls to other friends in London, things were not going ok. It was a heavy and dark moment, nothing could be done at this point.

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Log

Journey to De Beauvoir – first cruise as bargees

Summary

This is a trip of 7 furlongs and 1 lock from Broadway Market Visitor Moorings to Whitmore Road Bridge No 43 travelling west on the Grand Union Canal (Regent’s Canal).

This will take 31 minutes.

Route

Grand Union Canal (Regent’s Canal)
From Broadway Market Visitor Moorings (7 day moorings) to:
Whitmore Road Bridge No 43

Whitmore Road
 7 furlongs, 1 lock

Totals

Total distance is 7 furlongs and 1 lock.

This is made up of 7 furlongs of broad canals; 1 broad lock.

This will take 31 minutes. For initial calculation purposes (before adjusting for such things as overnight stops) this is taken as 1 day of 31 minutes.

We stayed in our old neighbourhood for two weeks but the time was up, we had to move. Luckily the next stop was in De Beauvoir Town, this is where my friends have their upholstery workshop. And it’s still in Hackney, we didn’t have to leave ‘my beloved’ borough just yet. It was a short cruise and De Beauvoir Town was one of Antonios’ favourite mooring. Our friend, who stayed on the boat prior us moving in permanently, came along.

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Journal

Moving in…

We decided to leave the flat on 21 February, a week prior to the official deadline, which was a wise decision, the flat above was vacated early too and they started with the renovation straight away.

So, it’s official: we are bargees. The past week was a difficult one, physically and emotionally. The boat was moored up on Broadway Market and we could carry all our stuff from the Goldsmith’s Row flat to the boat. Antonios lent us his trailer, which made it a bit easier. Natascha was in an unstable mood and was afraid of what is going to come. The unknown, the lack of space, lack of amenities. Leaving the flat after 9 years was hard, she had her routines and old habits die hard. Though in this instance those habits, like doing the washing when you want, had to die immediately. From now on we relied on launderettes. We received a weekly veg box from Riverfold for some 7 years, this was now delivered to my friends place and we had to go there and pick it up. Putting on the central heating when it was cold? Gone. Instead we had a coal powered Morso stove.

The fact that we have to move the boat every 14 days didn’t make the situation easier.

And Natascha didn’t know how the cat will take it and kitty was very dear to her.

Lastly, when we wanted to use some water we realised that the tank was empty. We had to go to the water point at Victoria Park. Antonios’ boat was towed with ours, so we had to un-tow his first in order for us to manoeuvre out of the other moored boat. Natascha then had to pull Antonios’ boat back in. On top we were hoping nobody will come and double moor with him in the meantime… It all went well, apart from the cat having a nightmare because of the engine noise.

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Log

Lucio’s cruising tour with Quintessence

Summary

This is a trip of 2 miles, 3 furlongs and 3 locks from Marshgate Bridge No 15 to Mile End Lock No 9.

This will take 1 hour and 16 minutes.

From Marshgate Bridge No 15 travel southeast on the Lee and Stort Navigation (River Lee: commercial section) for 6¼ furlongs to Hertford Union Canal Junction, then travel southwest on the Grand Union Canal (Hertford Union Canal) for 1 mile, ¾ furlongs and 3 locks to Hertford Union Junction, then travel southeast on the Grand Union Canal (Regent’s Canal) for 3¾ furlongs to Mile End Lock No 9.

Route

Lee and Stort Navigation (River Lee: commercial section)
From Marshgate Bridge No 15 (B112) to:
Hertford Union Canal Junction

Junction of Hertford Union Canal and River Lee. Also known as Hertford Union Canal and Lee Navigation Junction
 6¼ furlongs, 0 locks
Grand Union Canal (Hertford Union Canal)
From Hertford Union Canal Junction (Junction of Hertford Union Canal and River Lee. Also known as Hertford Union Canal and Lee Navigation Junction) to:
Hertford Union Bottom Lock No 3 [see navigational note 1 below]

Also known as Old Ford Lower Lock
 1¼ furlongs, 0 locks
Hertford Union Top Lock No 1 [see navigational note 2 below]

Also known as Old Ford Upper Lock, Homerton Footpath Lock

Having passed through Old Ford Three Locks.

2 furlongs, 2 locks
Hertford Union Junction

Junction of Regent’s and Hertford Union Canals. Also known as Hertford Union Canal and Regents Canal Junction
 5½ furlongs, 1 lock
Grand Union Canal (Regent’s Canal)
From Hertford Union Junction (Junction of Regent’s and Hertford Union Canals. Also known as Hertford Union Canal and Regents Canal Junction) to:
Mile End Lock No 9 [see navigational note 3 below] 3¾ furlongs, 0 locks

Totals

Total distance is 2 miles, 3 furlongs and 3 locks (not counting Mile End Lock No 9).

This is made up of 1 mile, 4¾ furlongs of broad canals; 6¼ furlongs of commercial waterways; 3 broad locks.

This will take 1 hour and 16 minutes.

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Journal

December and certainly no xmas mood

Quintessence is moored up in Clapton and reality hit hard. As mentioned in an earlier entry, Natascha worried that the living situation in the Hackney flat will not improve, the proof came through the letter box. She received an eviction notice requiring possession. Section 21 means that the owner will use the property for his personal use. What utter bullocks, it was clear that this will not be the case. The flat will be renovated and rented for a much higher price. She was given two months to leave the flat, though she could have stayed on, so that the owner would have had to go to court. But was it worth it? No.

Natascha had two choices at this point: to move in with Adnan to the boat or return back to Switzerland. Her work situation then wasn’t going in the right direction either, leaving the current job was looming on the horizon too. As it often is in life, many things come at once. Still, to become a boater, or not, that was the question…

A few days later Natascha got a phone call from a friend, asking whether he could stay for a while in the living room, he was being kicked out from the flat. He couldn’t pay the rent any more, the council suddenly decided to stop his housing benefit. This was really hard but Nat had to refuse him staying with her, the living room started to look like a removal van, card board boxes piling up. All we could offer him was the boat until mid February 2015. A few days afterwards he moved onto the boat.

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Research

Dashboard Update

After some fiddling with dashing there is a dashboard that we find useful…

What we have is four temperatures, battery volts, 4G data allowanceremaining, solar panel production and amphours information for the last 24 hours.

You can see there that we do not make enough energy from the sun. What you can not see is that the generator is running once a day to make up for the lack of sun. The current censor for it is on order and then we will be able to add the Amphours produced from fossil fuel.

Smd Soldering

Solder smd ICs

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Log

Anton looking after Quintessence

Anton got Quintessence back to town between October and November. This was the journey he did.

Summary

This is a trip of 14 miles, 4¼ furlongs and 10 locks from Broxbourne Bridge No 51 to Marshgate Bridge No 15.

This will take 6 hours and 48 minutes.

From Broxbourne Bridge No 51 travel south on the Lee and Stort Navigation (River Lee) for 4 miles, 1¾ furlongs and 4 locks to Waltham Town Lock No 11, then travel south on the Lee and Stort Navigation (River Lee: commercial section) for 10 miles, 2½ furlongs and 6 locks to Marshgate Bridge No 15.

Route

Lee and Stort Navigation (River Lee)
From Broxbourne Bridge No 51 (Broxbourne, half a mile northwest. Also known as Crown Bridge) to:
Aqueduct Lock No 8 [see navigational note 1 below] 1 mile, 4½ furlongs, 0 locks
Waltham Town Lock No 11 2 miles, 5 furlongs, 4 locks
Lee and Stort Navigation (River Lee: commercial section)
From Waltham Town Lock No 11 to:
Rammey Marsh Lock No 12 [see navigational note 2 below]

BW key needed to operate the gates / windlass for the paddles
 5 furlongs, 0 locks
Enfield Lock No 13 [see navigational note 3 below] 6½ furlongs, 1 lock
Stonebridge Lock No 16 [see navigational note 4 below] 4 miles, 7½ furlongs, 3 locks
Tottenham Lock No 17 [see navigational note 5 below] 5¼ furlongs, 1 lock
Marshgate Bridge No 15

B112
 3 miles, 2½ furlongs, 1 lock

Totals

Total distance is 14 miles, 4¼ furlongs and 10 locks Today’s travel includes at least 1 small aqueduct or underbridge.

This is made up of 10 miles, 2½ furlongs of commercial waterways; 4 miles, 1¾ furlongs of small rivers; 4 broad locks; 6 large locks.

This will take 6 hours and 48 minutes

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Research

Wireless Access Point

Setting a wireless access point for the beaglebone black

It should be easy if we get the right usb dongle. So far we have tried 2 different realtek types and they fail miserable with the existing open kernel drivers. Not going to compile crap kernel modules and use hacked ancient versions of hostap, thanks

Our last purchase which is a “TP-Link TL-WN722N” should hopefully be an atheros chipset which we always had great experiences with.

Well the previous two we bought were supposed to be atheros but only until version 3. The ones we received where version 4…

If this works it will be great. It also has external antenna connection.

 ***UPDATE***
 And it does work out of the box ...

setup

Assuming that a bridge is setup already with the wired interface in it and something like dnsmasq is serving ip addresses all needed for it to work is:

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aptitude install  hostapd  haveged firmware-atheros

Haveged is a daemon that helps providing entropy for our wpa ap.

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  egrep -v '(^#|^\s*$)' /etc/hostapd/hostapd.conf
  interface=wlan0
  bridge=br0
  driver=nl80211
  ctrl_interface=/var/run/hostapd
  ssid=boat
  hw_mode=g
  channel=1
  wpa=2 # This sets the security settings to WPA2
  wpa_passphrase=hackme
  wpa_key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
  wpa_pairwise=TKIP
  rsn_pairwise=CCMP
  beacon_int=100 # This sets how often the WiFi will send a beacon out.
  auth_algs=3
  wmm_enabled=1

Start the services

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service haveged start
service hostapd start

We also need a couple of iptables rules for NAT:

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#!bin/bash
iptables -t nat -F
iptables -F
echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward
LAN='br0'
WAN='usb0'
iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o $WAN -j MASQUERADE
iptables -A FORWARD -i usb0 -o $LAN -m state --state RELATED,ESTABLISHED -j ACCEPT
iptables -A FORWARD -i $LAN -o $WAN -j ACCEPT

ip route del default
dhclient $WAN

The $WAN interface could be anything that the internet is plugged in. In our case a 4g usb dongle on usb0. We add this to /etc/rc.local before the exit 0 line at the end if it exists.

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...
sh /root/bin//masq.sh
...
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