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This exactly Arthur! We are both in our 50s and pretty peaceful folks.. For myself, I will always refuse to be cowed into shivering in fear behind my curtains by a psycho bully. Others however might prefer to totally avoid, and that also is a perfectly acceptable response. My reason for "naming and shaming" is to give folks the heads-up on this nutter, forewarned is forearmed and all that.. If it were a case of "this bad thing happened and I THINK it MAY have been this boater", then I also would disagree with naming them - but it wasn't. This guy is a scary nutter.

Surely your Bro in law just needs to find an internet dentist?. I suppose that wouldn't work as well though because it would be hard to speak on the phone with yer mouth wide open ................Dave

This type of person is not welcome on the Canals nor in society in general. Police should not ignore this incident. I think you'll be okay tomorrow. Once the drink or the other 'd' wear off. Wot a plonker.

*blush* cheers Jen.. One more freeeeeky thing Jon found when he went out to work this morning was quite a few fag butts outside the boat. Nobody here smokes, and they would suggest to me that he hung around outside for quite a while before banging on the roof and offering violence.. seriously creepy.. I'd like to thank all the folks here for all the support and kind words. It's only our 2nd winter as liveaboards, and while 95% of the time I really love it, just now and again one can feel a little vulnerable. Whether that's because I'm scared rigid of falling into wintery waters in the ice or because of the occasional mad bloke - it's nice to have somewhere to ask silly questions and get advice! I agree also that whiskey should NEVER be adulterated - except by more whiskey...

Having moored next to Mary Anne and her owners for a couple of months last winter, I can confirm they are not "pretty peaceful folk", they are exceptionally peaceful and pleasant! Totally chilled, and not ones for making a fuss. I'm glad for the heads up, it's lonely on the cut and people can feel vulnerable. Shame really as people are generally chatty and friendly, but there''s always the odd ones.

Some of us find a good technical discussion fun. You could always go and look at Facebook or Twitter if you want to.

Hopefully the water point was frozen when he got there.

I ahd one of those once. It gave two or three years of good service then one evening I smelled burning. A quick dash to the engine room found it pouring out smoke. I couldn't do a post mortem as I unplugged it in a screaming hurry and chucked it in the cut. Probably a slight over-reaction in hindsight.

There's thermal switches on Ebay for a couple of quid. Maybe have one to start the pump running slowly at 60°C, then another to run the pump fast at 90°C. Usually they switch back at 10 to 15°C lower. Or use the dig thermostat to start the pump running slowly at a lower temp then have a 80°C to 90°C thermal switch as a backup.

(Pedant mode on) In electrical terms low voltage is 50-1000 volts AC, so all inverters used on canal boats are low voltage. (Pedant mode off)

Most would agree that it is rather rude to make your bad day everyone else's though, eh?

Some of us really are over thinking this!

I can have a go at the sums, but there is no real answer. I reckon most people would get away with using no additive at all for most of the time. Its a bit like life really, all you can do is try to tip the odds a little bit in your favour. We use about 1200litre of fuel each year. I use the Stanadyne additive because that consistently gets good reports from people who actually know about these things. This costs about £72. The Stanadyne does the lubricity/detergent/stabilisation/water removal things and is also a cetane raiser, but is not a biocide. With luck the cetane raising improves our fuel consumption a bit but I have not a clue whether this makes it pay for itself or not. I also add a bit of marine 16 biocide but I am more random about this, doing it sometimes in winter and less in summer. If I see even a hint of any slime when I change a fuel filter then I do a bigger dose of marine 16. Maybe spend £30 per year on this so a total of £100. If I had a injection pump contamination issue then its about £600 to get the pump fully stripped. cleaned and rebuilt, plus lots of time and effort from me to remove it, get it to a suitable agent (few and far between) and refit it, plus cleaning fuel lines, organising a generator and petrol whilst the engine is out of action etc etc. For me the additive looks to make sense, but then again two winters ago we still had a pump contamination issue despite the additive. but I think that was a bit of a "unusual" event. ...........Dave

Our longest trip on the boat so far had been 5 weeks. We use our little Candy washing machine every 3-4 days. It means we don’t have to have loads of clothes on board and we don’t have a pile of dirty washing taking up space. As others have said, use of the machine has to be organised around days when we can top up the water are planning to be on the move for 2-3 hours. The drying’s no problem as OH made a mini version of one of the ceiling mounted drying racks (like my mum used to have in our kitchen) for the cratch and I have a couple of pull out drying lines in the bathroom. No iron though!!

And folk wonder why this bot is taking so long to finish, i spend more bloody time faffing on what to buy I debating if to up the funds for one now.

Pedant alert! 1000W = 100A (approximately) 1000Wh = 100Ah (approximately)

i was suggesting they look at the electricity meter, you know, in units. i just use a tiny oven rather than the big cooker oven, it cooks breakfast including bread rolls, in one hour, 1000watts, so i guess that = 1 unit? 15 pence.

If I didn't use a spill sucker you wood never reed my posts

That will be fine from the point of view of the batteries. Just bear in mind that attaching jump leads to batteries is potentially a bit dangerous. If the positive lead were to come off the starter battery and touch the hull, you could generate a massive short circuit. You might then for example try to grasp the lead to pull it away from the hull or battery, to find that not only is it welded in situ but also it is red hot and burning through your hand.

There's so many clever people on here aren't there Tim.

It is our civic duty to call out boors and yobs. It's very tempting to say, 'never get involved'. Long live public-spirited people. Even staring at noisy people in a cafe seems to still have a salutary effect on most people.

The ONLY thing you ever add to Whiskey is another.

I have emailed the editor and made my position clear. A while ago the lot who advertise "add to the oil engine reconditioner" and who have a "face" to promote it in motoring magazines must have wanted to do something similar (I assume) so the editor asked my opinion. I gave him my honest opinion and that was the last I heard about it.

Of course, everybody should have turned a blind eye to you speeding round Bayford Pool, look the other way.... like...

Main difference is the length of the antenna. CB requires a long whip aerial that would need to be removed every time you go through a bridge. Legal PMR446 radios have a rubber aerial that is permanently fixed to the radio and cannot be removed.

Permit me to offer a piece of advice... Never be tempted to ask her this question.

Talking about @Dr Bob?

Do some science... find a lock and a timer and off you go ...please report your findings,thank you.

If there's leakage at the other end it will take a lot more than twice as long.

2nd & 3rd

Mr Duker obviously considers himself an expert boater and is using this forum to let us all know that, he is also handing out bad advice to Newbies, and likes a good argument. It must be Tony Dunkley ................Dave

Only on the very latest ones. Mine is 10 years old and you just turn the key and fires up instantly. The injection pump however does does have some sort of mechanical cold start device which increases the fuel and advances the injection timing slightly. This only operates at below 0 degrees C.

Pretty sure my yanmar and Lister don't have glow worms

Turn your Ecofan to face the vent and it will blow the cold air back out of the boat.

The recommended venting of a waste tank is for one vent exiting the top of the tank to emerge low i.e. hull side and for second vent from top of tank to emerge high i.e. roof. This then creates a good flow of air and no filters are needed as the waste is aerated.

I'm just waiting on my watt meter to arrive and then I will hopefully be able to calculate a much more accurate audit. Again, I can only apologise for my inaccuracies so far. And I'm honestly not intentionally being uncooperative. I'm sorry that you've taken the questions I've asked in that way. And on this point, they are neither paid for courses, nor will they be held aboard. Basically I volunteer run a workshop for vulnerable single mothers and their children in collaboration with an art gallery in south london, and one of the workshops we run involves baking little items into bread for them to find in their loaves. This means the kids making things during one workshop and then me going home (alone) and sticking them into the bread maker surrounded by flour. Most of them don't even eat them or manage to get them home to mum and dad but just tear them open at the next workshop and play with them. I choose to do it with a bread maker because it would be more time consuming to make the bread by hand than just stick it in the machine, and as I say I do this as a volunteer. As I'd mentioned before I am willing to just not run this workshop anymore, or not cook it from the boat etc. etc. if the electricity would be too much for it, but as others have mentioned they are able to run these sorts of items then I have just been trying to understand the best solution to enable me to run them too. It would not, as I understand it, require any further insurance or licensing. Thank you so much to everyone who has shared information about generators - I will sit and have a good read through that victron test and look at the Fischer Panda's, so thank you to those who shared that