TALES FROM THE TIDES

The surface of a canal usually looks muddy brown. Occasionally it reflects the sky but that does not mean that canal water changes colour with weather or the seasons. Water is colourless innit?

I live on canals; well more correctly I live on a boat which floats on canal water. Looking out across the surface of what I float on, it is almost always muddy brown.

Dip a glass in the canal, withdraw a draught, (don't even THINK of quaffing it!), let it settle and peer at it, mostly the liquid will be 'clear'. 'Impurities' either float to the top or fall to the bottom.

This is not a lesson in canal microbiology; it is about the colour of water as observed and the physics turns out to be right. The water is 'clear' in the glass but muddy brown as I peer at it outside the window. WHY? I don't have ready answers as to why this should be so but it provides me with a working title for my book.

MUDDY BROWN WATER
UISGE DONN SALACH

BARGES have flat bottoms. Narrowboats have flat bottoms. Narrowboats come as short as 18' and as long as 78'.

A narrowboat is defined by its beam. "Narrowboats" are nominally 6'9" although I have seen 6'6". Pentargon is 6'10" and can fit into into narrow locks, which were intentionally built to a nominal width of 7'0" from the 1700s. Subsidence over decades means that Brick Lock on the Stort is not quite as wide at the top as the bottom but it does not matter in practice as it was built 12'6" wide and even fatboats rarely exceed 12' in practice. There are locks around the system where a narrowboat is able to sail in at the bottom and get jammed at the top as the water lifts it. With boats on inland waters never mind the quality feel the width.
Narrowboats have been lost and court cases won on this bit of utterly priceless and totally useful piece of information.

The flag is of the Irish Republic. The island of Ireland is politically divided: Green is for Fenians; Orange for dudders; white signifies peace. In reality it keeps the two factions from each others throats. Nowadays, Pentargon flies the flag of St. Piran or, on occasion, her own colours.