#480 Now Sold

NB Dane Elm and 24ct Gold Plated Rollerball Pen 

(£5 from the sale of this pen will be gifted to The Narrowboat Heritage Foundation, the Custodians of NB Dane)

EUROPEAN ELM - Ulmus procera

European Elm has is a light to medium brown, sometimes with a hint of red. With an oil finish, it can turn a beautiful golden brown colour. Unless, of course, it's been kept at the bottom of a canal for an awfully long time.

The rotten parts of these rebuilt boats are usually used to stoke the fires that steam the new planks for bending to the hull's shape.Luckily these pieces of elm were too important to burn and have been properly stored. I wasn't sure how deep the rot would have gone and how deep I would have to delve into this piece to find stable wood. The pens I make from historic boat materials have been thoroughly tested by me to make sure that they will give pleasurable daily use.

Narrowboat Dane was built by the Mersey Weaver and Ship Canal Carrying Company and used as part of their fleet. She was built in November 1946 and first registered on January the first 1947. Ade from A P Boatbuilding is currently restoring her on behalf of The Narrowboat Heritage Foundation, the work being done is re-bottomed with new chine planks, kelson, stem post and soon to receive two new bow planks, gunwales, decks, new back cabin and engine room. The pens that I will be making from Dane are all from a heavy lump of Elm bottom plate.

We had stayed in Stratford-upon-Avon basin for our full allowance of 14 days as the weather had been so nice. The plan was that we'd go out for a belated birthday drink and dinner for Debbie on our last night and slowly plod back up to the outskirts of Birmingham in the couple of weeks after.

Debs treat out very nearly didn't happen. We'd had a day of rain, not particularly heavy locally, but I was seeing a lot of bad reports of flooding from fellow boaters a long way east in Northampton. It wasn't until I looked closer at the maps that I realised that the River Avon was a stream over that way and it was the same river Avon that we were 100 yards from.

The river is usually about five feet below the canal basin and the basin itself has floating pontoons and wharf walls about another foot or so above the canal height. Worryingly though there were some flood markers on the town wall that showed the river had the potential to go quite bit higher. We hadn't had that much rain though. Had we?

On the mooring of our last day the river was up by about three feet and the park and bandstand was starting to flood. Sirens sounded in the distance. I later found out that it was the emergency evacuation procedure for a local mobile home park. Maybe we should leave a bit earlier, get through the two low bridges and up the closest town lock and safely above flood height.

It wasn't that we were particularly bothered about the flood, more that if the basin rose by up to 1 foot we wouldn't be able to get out under the bridges and would be trapped for however long the water stayed high. I logged in to the environment agency's web site and looked at the data for the river hight. Worst recently recorded (1995) was about 1.9m with an average this time of year being about 0.7m. It was now 1.6m but wasn't increasing over a couple of hours that I was checking.

We gambled and stayed in the basin. After a great evening out we returned to the boat a little the worse for wear and to a river height of 1.68m. We decided that if the river level rose to basin level of about 1.85m we would move the boat through the bridges and first lock whatever the time of night was. I took the first watch - midnight to 7am, well I'm a light sleeper and Deb doesn't function on anything less than eight hours sleep!  

The level stabilized over night and was just under 1.85m by 6am. Just as we were getting ready to leave a couple of hours later, using the pontoons to do a quick repair job on our sagging front and rear button fenders, the canal and river equalised. The river bottom lock gate gently swung open to show a completely open ended lock with the tree strewn river rushing past just a boats length from where we were moored. Time to leave.

Pen #480 was turned a week or so later just south of Knowle on Saturday 19th March

You can follow my pen making here on this blog and our travels on another blog here
http://nb-lois-jane.blogspot.co.uk

oh and please like us on Facebook too here
https://www.facebook.com/ThePenMakersBoat