Leaves on the line

It used to be almost a tradition at the old Ownerships annual meetings that the topic of leaves on the prop was raised.  It always caused a laugh.

Leaves round the prop - thrust is sideways
and much reduced, with a lot of turbulence

We don't normally go out in November, but we're on Sundowner this week.  We started with two glorious days followed by two nights of frost followed by some wind.  The effect has been to bring the leaves fluttering down into the canal - and they certainly do get round the prop.

If you do what you usually would when you think there's something round the prop - moor up, open the weed hatch and check the prop - you find nothing. The only resolution is to put the boat into neutral before giving a quick burst of reverse.  This will normally disperse the leaves and you can can carry on cruising - until some more of the pesky things form a ball on the end of the prop shaft.

After a quick burst of reverse -
the leaves are dispersed, the thrust is
now directly backwards and the
turbulence is minimal

We've encountered plenty of them this week, so I took some pictures of what the water looks like at the stern.  In the before shot, you can see the main thrust of the water is sideways with a great deal of turbulence.  In the shot after the burst of reverse, the water is being pushed straight back and the turbulence is much reduced.  

Both shots were taken with the engine running at about 1,100 rpm.

The difference in thrust between the two shots was dramatic.  When the before shot was taken, the boat had almost stopped moving.

We've seen plenty of other shared ownership narrowboats on our cruise from Aston south towards Fradley - Compton, Invincible, Farndon, Ramsden, Hawksmoor, Padworth, Goosemoor, Orchid and Yelvertoft to name just a few.