DHutch

I could guess all sorts of things, or run a poll.

Discussed. Yes. Poll. No.

Curiosity as to what the general opinion on the surcharge was within the membership, following a number of conversations, triggered by a small protest staged outside the National Waterways Museum during the Easter Gathering.

Is that a section of internal timber framing. Or part of the welded steel hull? Hard to see from the photo. However the timber will not be structural to the boats hull or overall construction.

Hello

Exactly. And the one who bought the whisky will have paid tax on that purchase. Should the one without the whiskey contribute an equal or equivalent amount of tax as they also walked through the shop? And how do you spell whisky.

Same. Aware of the concept, and have seen them in workplaces and on the back of boats, but the term is new to me. Helps particularly when the floor is cold, such a concrete warehouse floor, or in winter a steel deck.

Point of order. The amount of water used to cycle a lock is the same, regardless of the boats size/displacement.

Fair point raised. Additional option added.

Yes. Me too, as I suspect that actually the vast majority of maintenance costs for the system, be that locks, bridges, loos or waterpoints, is age related deterioration rather than usage based wear.

Which might be a carefully considered methodology to determine the surcharge based on a typical NAA fee, or a random chance coincidence!

Can you elaborate on why? Correct. Yes, why not. I've added "dont have a boat" as an option to the second question.

Simple poll to canvas the opinion of the membership.

Danboline is the go to and very good as I understand it. However ive never used it, nor have I painted an engineroom bildge. . You want something durable (not to soft, not to brittle) which is also oil based and as 'surface tolerant' as possible. Becuase the prep is always going to be sub par. Recently I have used Rustoleum CombiPrimer and CombiColor Original and was impressed with the product. I then overcoated it with a coat of Dinitrol. As the surface was 'freely rusted' I started by scraping and chipping the surface to remove all loose material (would have used an needle scaler if I'd had access to compressed air or enough power to run a compressor) and then treated with vactan. Two pack aluminium epoxy followed with two pack polyurethane would be my go to if you could remove the engine and shot blast it, but its faff to remove from confined spaces if it fails, and I think would struggle to get oil free enough for oilbased not to be a better option. If you can do it out of the water or in summer, it makes drying after vactan faster.

As others have said, the solution is to change insurers. We're with Brown & Brown now, underwritten by Travelers, formerly Collidge & Partners and underwritten by Navigators & General. Before that we used Towergate who where underwritten by Navigators & General, who cover a large proportion of narrowboats and are part of Zurich. In the past I've had a quote from Collidge and Towergate that where within 20p of each other. But the Towergate suddenly insisted on a full craft survey (as a condition of the underwriters) were Collidge only wanted a hull survey. Which is both what we had and what Towergate had asked for every time previously. It's all a bit random. But shopping around and changing broker appears to work.