Deck Equipment

Deck Crane

The Hiab 025 deck crane sits on the counter stern offset to the starboard side. Its hydraulic pump is situated in the engine room and is electric motor driven. When extended 3.3 metres, the hook overhangs the quay about 1.5 metres and will lift 750kg, the weight of a small car. The car can be carried on the roof of the aft cabin when cruising, however, our experience in France is that there are very few places you can offload a car to a suitable quay so we now cruise without the car, returning by public transport to collect it as needed. We now have the dinghy on the aft cabin so we can use the crane to launch it.

Mooring

The original manually operated anchor winch, anchor and cable remains but an electric motor has been retro fitted. This would only be used in an emergency, say in the case of engine failure on a busy river or canal. For normal mooring, good bollards or sturdy trees are used but in their absense we have spudpoles fore and aft. These consist of 2.5 metre long pointed steel poles about 150mm dia which sit inside tubes extending about a metre above deck level from the ships bottom. Each is operated with a small hand winch which lowers the poles into the river or canal bed. Provided the water is shallow enough and the bed is soft, we can moor anywhere close to a bank.

Tender

We have a semi rigid Suzumar DF-320 inflatable dinghy with a 7hp Suzuki DT6S outboard motor. This enables us to moor in remote locations, using the dinghy to provision the ship and commute with civilisation.