waterman

Sorry nick, I did not see your reply in Lt, I did not mean to Plagiarise your , I just read the first few replies and put the numbers into a spread sheet As you say this will rumble on and on, personally I keep my NB tank full over the winter and run it down during the summer season.

Just to add to the discussion, I think there are some guestimates on how much old fuel is left each year. By old fuel I mean of the original full tank To be precise the amounts are as follows. Year % of original fuel 1 80% 2 64 3 51.2 4 40.96 5 32.77 6 26.21 7 20.97 8 16.78 9 13.42 10 10.74 Some of you will say that if 10.74% is original fuel then 69.26 must be between 1 and 9 years old. The other 20% is the new 40 lt of fuel. Is this an end to the discussion, I think not, unless you know different?

Just to add to the discussion, I think there are some guestimates on how much old fuel is left each year. By old fuel I mean of the original full tank To be precise the amounts are as follows. Year % of original fuel 1 80% 2 64 3 51.2 4 40.96 5 32.77 6 26.21 7 20.97 8 16.78 9 13.42 10 10.74 Some of you will say that if 10.74% is original fuel then 69.26 must be between 1 and 9 years old. The other 20% is the new 40 lt of fuel. Is this an end to the discussion, I think not, unless you know different?

Having sold our sea going Tupperware yacht and moved inland from the coast, we were missing the enjoyment of boating, so we decided to buy a narrow boat. I thought as we had had 2 boats before, we knew a lot about them and buying, how wrong I was, this narrow boat thing is a whole new world with its own vocabulary. What is a Cratch? What is a weed hatch? What is the difference between Trad/ SemiTrad and Cruiser? These are just a few of the many new terms we had to become conversant with. To give canal people their due, they are mostly very patient with Newbies like us. Having soaked up lots of terms from magazines, the Internet and friends who had boats, we decided to look for a used/second user boat about 57' long with a semi trad stern. After looking at many boats in numerous locations across the country, we settled on a 60' boat and made an offer on it, which was accepted. Only then to be told that it was too long to fit into some locks. (never saw that one coming) Now I like to think I know about the state of boats, but we decided to get a full survey done. What a disaster this boat was, something about a pigs ear and silk purse came to mind. The boat moved and the hull was fine, but nothing else worked . Ah well! lets put this down to experience and move on. We looked at a lot more boats with a much more critical eye but every time we came off a boat, I said "Afraid Not", onto the next one. Eventually we realised that the boat we wanted had not yet been built, or if it had it was not for sale. As the NEC Boat show was a few weeks away we waited and then spent a day looking round all the new boat builds. This was it!!! we needed a custom built boat, so a few days later we visited Cole Boats and ordered a 57' sail away The start of our boat The sides are on Boat in Coles shed ready to go to Kate Boats Having settled the specification of the Cole boat, we thought, just find a suitable boat fitter to finish off the build to our specification. Easy isn't it!!! Dozens of boat fitters in Canal World etc, so we just go and see a few and choose our fitter. Again we travelled far and wide looking at what various fitters could do and at what cost. Again we were bombarded with questions about the sail away specification, which we could not answer. Eventually we whittled it down to 3 boat fitting companies , a low cost, a medium cost and the highest cost. All said our final spec needed some modification to either the electrics or the layout. After much soul searching on each company, we have finally decided on going with the one we were most comfortable with and that is Kate Boats. We are currently waiting for the sail away to be delivered to Kate boats in early May and will update this blog to let you know how we are proceeding. Boat leaving Coles May 5th 2009 We visited Kate Boats today to see our baby being delivered from Cole Craft. It was an amazing sight seeing the 57 ft Green boat swinging through the air to be placed on metal rollers (a bit of ancient Egyptian technology) to be rolled into the fitting out shed. The forklift truck pushed it in the final few yards and we were allowed on board. What a dark metal tube it seemed. I took a video and then agreed more of the specification and went home a happy chappy. May 19th 2009 Another visit, wow what a difference, the entire inside had been spray foamed and the deck placed and marked with the proposed positions of the internal fittings. The was no need for lighting inside as the foam made it very bright and we spent the next 2 hours discussing every item of fitting, where it would go and how it would be fitted. If you think that the fit out company make all the decisions, think again!!. I had a list on 2 sides of A4 with queries of everything from the type of shower tray to where we wanted the wardrobes and drawers. But we could see that it was taking shape in exactly the way that we wanted it. Again we went home very happy, so far we were on time and most importantly on budget. Next visit in about 2 weeks when all the internal lining out and bulkheads are up. 16th June 2009 If the last visit made it look like a boat this visit really made us realise what it was going to look like. All of the bulkheads are up, so each compartment is now defined. The light oak cladding makes a real difference to how it looks. We went through lots of queries from Chris the fitter and made a few more decisions. All of the staff at Kate boats are very knowledgeable in all the aspects of the fitout and answer all our queries with sensible answers, No Bull.. Off to Spain for a week and will see it again in July. 8th July 2009 Great time in Spain, came back to rain but what is so unusual about that in England. Lots of work has been done in the past few weeks. The Galley units are all built, just waiting for all the appliances and the worktop. The bathroom has some shelves, a shower base and a vanity unit. The bedroom has the bed base, calorifier and the beginnings of the wardrobe. In the saloon the window linings are being fitted and look really good, the craftsmanship that is going into the wood work is very good indeed, if the rest of the woodwork is like this we will be very satisfied. Next visit at the end of July, it's getting close to the September launch date, excited or what!! 29th July 2009 Raining as usual, we had a quick look around the boat and as Chris had been on holiday for a week, there was not much else done since our last visit. The cooker had now arrived , we discussed the tiling options for the kichen, bathroom and behind the wood burner. . Then we went across the yard to Dragonfly, who do customised upholstery and soft furnishings. We had a swatch of our settee and Lin the owner did a good job of guiding us through fabrics that would match the settee, so we ordered curtains, tabbards for the front door windows and side hatches. We will make a discission on the bathroom and bedroom colours when we know what the bedding colour is. Dragonfly (they have a norrowboat in the marina of the same name are specialists at narrowboat furnishing and give a lot of tips and help from their many years experience in the market. Back to Kate boats to make one more query and then off in the rain again (does it ever stop raining in England!!!!) 7th September 2009 Well today is the day, A Frayed Knot wqas launched, but not without incidence see the movie. No damage done to the boat!!!. It is now in the paint shed for 4 coats of Lincoln Green and coach lining. The inside will be varnished at the same time, expected hand over date - who knows, this is canal time... 14th September 2009 Call from the boatyard, "Do we really want this colour as it looks like a big pea pod". Dropped everything and drove 2 hours to the yard, when I walked into the paint shed I was presented with a large bright green object that should have been Lincoln Green. Stop painting I said, lets find out what has gone wrong... It turned out that we specified 276 Lincoln Green, but the paint manufacturers had sent 267 Traffic Green. Ah well at least it has some good undercoats of Green and they will be able to paint over it the right colour I hope.. No more panics, so we went home. To be fair this was not the fault of the boat yard but the paint manufacturers. We expect the boat to be handed over on 7/8th October. 31st Sept 2009 Well we finally took delivery of our new boat, wow looks great, it was moored in the boatyard marina next to an all matt black imitation of a stealth barge. We off loaded all the things that we brought in our car and then went off to the shops to buy lots of things that we had forgotten. When we returned to our boat we found it had been moved across the marina and moored next to another boat. Strange I thought, so went up to the office to see if they had moved it, No, was probably the people on the boat you were moored next to. Up until now all the boaters that I had met had been very friendly and helpful, to come across someone that would move our boat without asking, was beyond my experience. Anyway I did not like beeing next to a Black coffin called Valhalla, which is from the Norse legends and means "Hall of the slain". Well touch my boat again and you will be joining your namesakes (Just joking) Later on that day we moved to our permanent moorings at Calcutt Marina, at last we could relax on our own and start to enjoy the canal experience. 1st Dec 2009 The weather has been foul since we picked up our boat and we have spent a few weekend nights on it, I found that I had to keep running the engine to charge the batteries, strange I thought as we had shore supplies connected. After a little searching through the electrical diagrams and the electrics of the boat, I discovered that we only had an inverter and not an inverter/charger. Back to the buildcontract and sure enough there was only an inverter specified, so I got a quote from the electrician who did the fitout and got him to retrofit an intelligent charger. Having tried it out it works fine and no need to run the engine to charge the batteries. 19th Dec 2009 Cold weather and snow forcast for next week so we emptied the fresh water tank and drianed as much as we could from the pipes, although our builders had said thqt with plastic water pipes the chance of a burst is almost nil. The engine and central heating had anti-freeze in them, so we felt it woul dbe alright now for the winter. Then came the wanrning of a very cold snap, so I bought a cheap Argos fan heater with a frost setting and left it on the boat, just in case. 27th Dec 2009 Dropped into the boat on the way past form a Christmas visit, found the boat very cold but everything was OK. 9th Jan 2010 Got a call from the Marina (were they going to tell me it had sunk or something?). They had noticed that our pay as you go electricity meter was down to its last 18p and did we want them to top it up. Now that is what I call service, Saved me a 200 mile round trip, so well done Calcutt Marina!!!!!. We are now busy planning what to do in the forthcoming cruising season, visits on our itinerary are , Ellesmere Port Boat Museum, Pontcysyllte Aquaduct, Berkhampstead and just pottering to anywhere. Contact me To be continued shortly..