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What about the River Cherwell? What's that like? Is that an option?

The Tunnel leading up to Tuel Lane Deep Lock (Sowerby Bridge, Rochdale Canal) had some sort of comms system so the Lock keepers could signal to waiting boats (as boats should not enter the tunnel while the lock is emptying). It broke. Now the lock keepers have a whistle, they bend down towards the tunnel and blow the whistle and the sound travels through the tunnel quite well.

I didn't carefully avoid your question I meticulously ignored it.

Diggles paddles are very angled aren’t they? Are they the only top ground paddle mechanisms that are both on the same side, and also the only ones that face into the canal? that means winding them standing sideways to the canal, and not facing the canal as they are wound? Longford Lock, Staffs and worcs tonight and Diggle from above And below And a repair at Diggle

Only because after Terry Darlington made it sound dangerous in his book (it wasn't), no-one would insure narrowboats crossing the Channel any more. We did take Snail out to sea in Europe a few times where she behaved very well, even in chop. Unlike Chris Coburn who has achieved all kinds of exploits in his very ordinary nb, we had ours especially made with a 15mm bottom plate, ballast cut to fit so they couldn't slide, 67hp engine, PRM260 gear box, large prop (22x22), double sized skin tanks, all portholes, trad stern, tender that was always available for use if needed, easy to tow along behind on the big European waterways. Snail easily makes 10 kts, (we tested this on the Gent-Terneuzen Canal,built in 1823 which is 200m wide and capable of accomodating ships up to 125,000 tons, with a draught of up to 12.5 m) not a lot of use now we've come back to the UK canals. My blog and book illustrates what's achievable.

Thats the one, Good old Jack

The OP could also probably save time and money by modifying his narrowboat as in his last post he says he has a 70ft Narrowboat moored on the T&M, he could possibly save £1000’s by shortening and modifying it to suit his coastal ambitions??? Then again in his first post he doesn’t mention his Narrowboat but says, “I have been hire boating many years, but now that I'm retired I'm ready to sell up and build my dream liveaboard, so I thought I would join this forum and get some advice.” I’m not really taking this Thread too seriously and others may think the same as myself “Cloud-Cuckoo Land”

Impressed.

Yes so 5mph from your boat was below your hull speed and the rest was the tide pushing you along.

yes it’s our Aquaduct again

Thing with super duper systems is they tend to fail on a regular basis, look at the Anderton Lift as an example, and when they fail the specialists have to be called in at great expense, and the super duper system always needs an upgrade, perhaps a bell on either end of a 3 mile piece of string would be fine,

its 1 year ago today we laid the baseplate and whilst the first 6 months produced quick results, the last half of the year have been thwarted by rain, wind, floods and generally pretty poor weather. So what to report..... Well, we found her original stern dollies and rudder. Sadly they're on a bota on the K and A, made from the stern of the GUCCCo butty Satellite, called Adrastea, so they won't be reunited, and the unique Anderton profiling on the rudder top has been reprofiled to a more standard semicircle. So, we have machined an unmatched pair of dollies as they originally were, and also made a new T stud as the location of that is also unknown. We've also fabricated the majority of the deck beam on the bench, to weld into the deck beam frame which is where the first large wooden knees would have been under the deck board. The other job we squeezed in between rain clouds is starting to make the templates for sections of the hull we can't achieve with parallel planking. We can but hope the weather will somewhat improve over the coming weeks....... we're not holding our breath. Photos showing progress as of today

I'll take the bonus point, it is at Fazeley.

Not what I said, so I don't see how you can agree -- and I notice you carefully avoided my question... 😉

I suspect that he has no idea about what controls hull speed on a displacement boat, but going up the Trent with the tide I did sustain 10 mph on a satnav for a while - probably 5 mph tide and 5mph through the water.

In other words the OP could save himself an awful lot of time and money by simply buying a conventional narrowboat and planning those tidal journeys carefully, which he would be wise to do anyway whatever vessel he was on. If it were me perhaps I'd be looking for a slightly higher freeboard, vents, etc, and maybe an enclosed bow but they would be about it. The idea of being able to plough through the water at 10kts is nonsense as you generally go with the tide on these passages and any turn against the tide is short. Anyway, I'm sure the hull speeds of most narrowboats limits them below that figure.

I totally agree the super duper comms system should be bottom of the list.

And as the pump will be on the other side of the filters, exactly how do you think that will help. It will make the delay until the pump cuts in even longer. You will get an initial spurt of water without the filter restriction, but it will soon drop to what you have now, then it will say the same until you turn the tap off, so the new accumulator recharges. Open the tap and the initial spurt, dropping to what you have now will just repeat. I suppose that if you fitted an enormous second accumulator, it could supply a lot more water until the pressure dropped enough for the pump to cut in, but you have mentioned space considerations. So if you don't have room for a second set of filters, I can't see you have room for a giant accumulator.