Kerr Barging Blogs

Here are some of the photos from Dunkirk.

Princess Elizabeth- made 4 evacuations from Dunkirk to Britain

Early conveyor used in the Port

View from the Belfry

View from the Belfry

View from the Belfry

View from the Belfry

View from the Belfry

Second Belfry- Town Hall

Huge lifting bridge for entry to Port

Town Hall with Belfry

Engine from crashed Lancaster

Evacuation from Dunkirk

 

Dunkirk Beaches

Dunkirk Cathedral

Cathedral organ

Bells in the Belfry

Carillion keyboard in the Belfry

WW1 bunker on the canal near Dunkik

Jean Bart- famous privateer

3 masted sailing ship- 1903- same age as Anja

14th Century Watchtower

Bridge to the Dunkirk Beaches

Here are some of the photos promised in our last Blog Post. The Dunkirk ones will be in the blog after this.

Unfortunately, it seems notifications are not being delivered to Gmail accounts whether there are photos or not. Gmail is not treating the emails as Spam.

Most of the photos are now in the photo gallery, many annotated. You can see all the photos from 2016 by clicking here.

The maps on our home page have also been updated.

Almost 5km underground- Canal du Nord

The little-travelled Scarpe Superior

Weed cutting on the Scarpe

Scarpe lock gates choked with weeds

Friends, Brian and Charlie

Vauban's Garden in Lille

Old factories being demolished (Deule River, Nth France)

ANZAC war cemetery in Sailly sur Lys

The old church at Sailly

War memorial on the Scarpe

St Venant Church after the war

St Venant Church now

Lifting Bridge on the River Lys

Huge 13metre lift lock on the Grand Gabarit Sensee

The ancient 13metre Boat lift, replaced by the lock shown above. Foreground- old barge pullers

For some reason, the Blog system has not been sending update notifications to subscribed readers with Gmail accounts. We cannot understand why and only blogs with photos are affected. So, if you have not heard from us for a while, have a look at our web site and you may find a new Blog. When there are no photos, there are no problems with Gmail. This problem seems unique to Gmail.

A reminder that you can see the map with our travels on the home page.

From the Somme Valley, we proceeded North along the remainder of the Canal du Nord (Canal of the North). We had a side trip up the hardly-used Scarpe Superior to Arras, which we had thoroughly enjoyed in 2013. The trip was quite slow because four of the seven locks broke down and we had long waiting times for someone to come and fix them. Indeed, on the first day it took us five hours to travel five Kms and four locks! On the way out, only one of the seven locks broke. We had been issued with a remote control for the locks but had to summon someone by telephone every time there was a failure.

From Arras, we proceeded North again, through Douai to Lille, where we picked up visitors Charlie and Brian who had been to World Youth Day in Poland. They had been very sleep deprived and were able to recover during their eight days with us on Anja. We travelled along the Deule River to the River Lys which we had also enjoyed in 2013. We visited Armentiers and other towns along the River. From Sailly sur Lys, Brian and Charlie were able to duplicate our bike ride from 2013 by visiting Fromelles, VC Corner, Pheasant's Wood, Le Trou First Aid Post and other places from WWI.

We had an excellent lunch at Sailly to celebrate our 45th Wedding Anniversary. It was a fantastic restaurant in what is a relatively small town (of 2,000 people). Guests must have come from many other places because the restaurant was large and full. They even provided a Jumping Castle for children to enjoy.

From the Lys River, we rejoined the large, high capacity canal of the Sensee. There, many of the barges are 1,500 to 3,000 tonnes. But, the canal is wide do there was plenty of room for all of us. We were able to stop for one night near the disused Fontinettes Boat lift. We had seen some like it in Belgium. This boat lift replaced a staircase of five locks which took around 7hrs to traverse. The boatlift could pass six barges per hour. It is made up of two "bathtubs" linked together so that when one went down, the other went up. The design is Scottish and the boatlift operated continuously for 80 years from 1886 to 1967. David visited it and saw the film of it working- taken two weeks before the final closure (because it could not handle the newer, bigger barges). It was passing 2,000,000tonnes of produce a year which is very good.

From there, we went to Dunkirk (Dunkerque in French). Highlights of the visit were:

The 12th Century Belfry with magnificient views.
The Port Museum which detailed the history of the town and its commerce.
The Operation Dynamo Museum which illustrated and documented the evacuation of 338,000 allied and French troops from Dunkirk in WW2.
The famous Dunkirk Beaches.
The Cathedral.

We will send photos in a separate Blog (which Gmail might refuse to accept).

We farewelled Charlie and Brian a short while ago. They are going to Frankfurt for a flight to Australia later in the night.

At the moment, we have stopped for the night 2Kms short of the Belgian border, near the old Customs Post and near the town of Bray sur Dunes. There are not many boats along this section of canal. So far, we have travelled almost 1,000Kms and are looking forward to visiting Ypres, after which we will be turning around.

Best Regards,
David and Penelope

We are close to Lens and Bethune, in the North of France and go to Lille tomorrow where friends will join us for a week or so.

July 14th in France is celebrated in most places as "Republic Day". However, in Paris and New Caledonia it is called (for us, the more familiar) "Bastille Day".

People in France had recovered to some extent (though no-one can forget the horror) from the massacres last year. Many outdoor events, particularly those involving fireworks, were cancelled following those terrible events. Finally, people seemed to be settling down and we sensed there was a desire to celebrate on Republic Day. Penny was very concerned about fireworks because the noises would seem to be a good cover for terrorist events and did not want to attend anything big. So, we selected the small town of Long to celebrate Republic Day. Nothing was publicised, but when we asked the butcher the day before, he checked with someone else and said that something was happening. David saw fireworks being prepared in an area near our barge (well, about 300metres away) on the 13th.

That night, we heard a band playing far away on a hill leading to the town. The band wound its way through the top of town, collecting townsfolk behind it. There were many families and lots of young children carrying lit paper lanterns on sticks. It was like the story of the Pied Piper. The crowd grew bigger and bigger to several hundreds (about the town population) and came down across a bridge where a couple of hundred more people had gathered. There were no gendarmes around and no traffic control. Motorists trying to go down the main street were faced with a big crowd and had no option other than to reverse away. Then there was a short but excellent fireworks display. After that, the band marched away towards the top of town, leading the townsfolk back and the crowd diminished as their homes were reached. What a beautiful night and there was the sound of fireworks from many other towns in the nearby countryside. We were about a third of the way up the Somme Valley and there are over 400 villages and towns, of which 380 were destroyed in WW1. Many of them were also celebrating.

  It was then with great sadness when we and others learned of the terrible events in Nice. These occurred a few hundred metres from where we had stayed a few weeks before and where we frequently walked. Our hearts and prayers go out to all affected- indeed, everyone has been affected.

Now, the terrible events have occurred in Rouen (as well as those in Germany). Here, there have been many marches and religious services held with attendance by Catholics and Moslems who are expressing huge solidarity and condemnation of the violence. If the terrorists want to start a war of religion, it is not working though undoubtedly there will be some xenophobia around.

David and Penelope

This one is for the technically minded people. Others can skip!

Back in 2010, we discovered that our barge's alternator was totally unsuitable, barely able to sustain the boat's batteries even when motoring. This is because someone fitted an alternator designed for a high speed engine to our low speed engine. We rectified this in 2011 with an alternator that they use on the American yellow school buses.

We also built a generator unit in the garage at home in Sydney and shipped it over to France. Heart of this generator was a 1 cylinder diesel engine, driving a US built Zena welder-alternator. This impressive unit is either a 200amp welder or a 200amp battery charger, at the flick of a switch. In the early years, we used the welder quite a bit making things (such as bike racks) and also for repairs in all sorts of areas. For battery charging, the Zena is impressive and can quickly recharge our very large AGM battery bank in about 45minutes.

All went well with the Zena until 2014 when it stopped working. Basically, it is a rewound alternator originally designed for a small truck. Zena add a second set of diode rectifiers and beef up the windings. However, we discovered that there really is not enough air flow and the configuration/connection of the extra diode rectifier is not electronically correct, leading to unbalanced heating of the diodes. They added a false back to the alternator to house the second set of diodes. There were also problems with internal nuts working loose and poor soldering. These would not normally be a problem, but our one cylinder engine does vibrate a lot and things have to be perfect to survive well.

So, this year, I rewound the alternator stator with very high quality, high-temperature wire and removed the diode rectifiers. I built a new rectifier box with big copper bus-bars and new high powered diodes. The box has two fans that turn on one by one as the temperature increases. Everything is interconnected by much bigger wires and large brass nuts and bolts.
Rewound Stator with special wire, nomex insulation and new three phase connections
Unfortunately, everything worked really well except that the small wires leading into the rectifier diodes fractured due to the vibration because I mounted the rectifier box onto the engine frame. Even strengthening the wiring was unsuccessful with the diodes fracturing again after a relatively short time.
Rectifier box with fans, copper bussbars and original fragile diodes
So, I was able to obtain some much more rugged diodes here in France and mount them on the copper bus-bars. I also moved the rectifier box to the side of the generator box-cover which has far less vibration. Either solution would have been okay but both together should be more than enough.
New rectifier box
We have now run the whole new arrangement for many hours with no troubles. The alternator winding are 100degrees cooler than before and the alternator diodes are also more than 100degrees cooler with the second fan never coming on. Also, we are getting more amps out of the generator.

So overall, a big success which should continue to give trouble-free service for years to come.

Best Regards,
Dave