Systeme D

20 April 2006

Ballast

We need to decide what ballast to use for Hagley. Currently we have a load of cruddy old metal in the bottom of the boat, which is effective but hardly slightly. Concrete is the usual solution for steel boats, but with wooden boats like ours, it tends to lead to shoddy bottom boards and leaks appearing everywhere... oh hang on.

Anyway, I reckon if we want something heavy, we should probably install a pipe organ.

The necessity to fit under low bridges means that we probably wouldn't get the 32' Bourdon or 32' Bombarde I've been hankering for. This is a shame, as fitting a 32' Bombarde would save us money on a horn, and would make finding a mooring at night so much easier.

However, thanks to the Robert-shaped profile we have been forced to adopt, I reckon we could easily manage a set of 8' pipes.



Failing that, I did recently buy this off eBay (no. 2 in a series), and it's now happily installed in my Burton flat. Lesson 1 is that you can fit an organ in the back of a Pluriel. Lesson 2, however, is that you should probably not trust the BBC weather forecast when it assures you there will be no rain between Charlbury and Burton on your journey up.


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