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When will the people of this country realise that they are totally responsible for their own safety? Getting blathered on alcohol and/or drugs is not a responsible way to behave and if their demise by falling into a canal that has been there over 200 years is the end result it is their own fault and nobody else's. Sam.

Only my own opinion, the canal has been there how long? At a guesstimate more than 100 years. Is there really a need for fences,cctv and other measures. Sad that it is, that someone has suffered by falling into the canal, but I live on the canals and have fallen in once, due to my own incompetence. And I was sober!!

Just approaching Newark 'Town Lock' as the lights went onto green - spotted this notice - unfortunately it was a quick shot with the phone and is too far away to zoom in. The sign is expounding the experience of C&RT and the Lock keepers and the fact that Newark Dry Dock is the biggest in the country with a rich history of building and corking boats. I wonder if they ever did any caulking, or if they simply put corks into bottles.

I very much doubt any regular on this forum would contemplate signing such a petition. The world is a hazardous place and people need to realise that. It is not up to “them” to save an individual from their own carelessness and stupidity, it is only to the individual, with the possible exception of a totally non-obvious hazard. Most pedestrians in Manchester die on the roads. Why is there not a petition demanding that all roads are fenced off from pedestrians?

Unlike some other makes that don't flash at all. (after the Hudson thred I am not going to suggest a make)

All I can add is that we went to Edwardian bedding at Mexboro and they were first class. Showed me were they make and we picked their best quality one which they made to my exact measurements and delivered in a week. 800 quid with 100 quid discount for my good looks or whatever so 700 quid. Two years ago now and still superb. Nearly a foot deep and lots of pocket thingies not some foam rubbish.

So going back to my original query. If you can store 30 litres of petrol on board you definitely don't have to go and collect more petrol everyday, which was what was begin said with a view to putting the OP off a petrol boat.

I do not know much about these boats but I found an old receipt under a fridge magnet and on the back was a few details: No boat can be a Bantock and built by Harris of Bumblehole as these were two totally separate builders. The word Bantock is banded about freely nowadays to describe almost any iron boat built for use on the B.C.N.. I am not aware of any evidence to prove that PETRONELLA is any older than 1921, and B.C.N. 137 is accredited to the District Iron and Steel Company Ltd., Smethwick and was an open (cabinless) day boat - i.e. a typical B.C.N. day boat that has similarities to a floating skip and used locally. Consequently PETRONELLA did not have a name but in did have a fleet number, No. 6. My records suggest that this boat ended up in the fleet of Noah Hingley and Sons Ltd. before being sold off to Floating Homes Ltd. in 1961 for conversion to a house boat on the Basingstoke Canal. This boat had become the boat it is now by 1995, with the National coming out of the wooden B.C.N. Tug JOAN II. The serial number of this National (assuming I have the correct number) suggests an engine build date some time after the Grand Union Canal Carrying Company Ltd. motors of the late 1930's, and the British Waterways Board index number can be dated to 1992 (but previously on the Basingstoke Canal so 1992 suggests the date that PETRONELLA came back to the canals). I hope this helps a little, and I probably have more somewhere

Tom, you should tell us about your planned use: Liveaboard or recreation? Extended cruising or short trips? Home mooring? Electric shoreline? The responses above are making a lot of assumptions about how you want to use the boat, but we don't know yet. Lots of GRP boats are used recreationally from a home mooring and never do more than day trips (or the occassional overnight). If so, get a solar panel to keep your domestic battery topped up and you'll be fine. If your home mooring has mains electric then it's even easier. The charged up domestic battery will be fine for short trips. Bring a jerry can of petrol to the boat and top up the tank before setting off. The problem comes if you want to cruise for a few weeks at a time (or more). Solar will look after you from about March to October but not in winter. The easiest way to do it in winter is with a portable generator, but read up on the Carbon Monoxide risk with those and take precautions. Both the genny and the outboard will need petrol, and as has been said, that's not the easiest to find. Plenty of people manage though and there are apps now which will tell you where the petrol stations are. How much petrol does a 10hp outboard burn in an hour then?

Well, after a few years of leisure boating in a little 24-footer, a bit of a break, a brain haemorrhage and subsequent insurance windfall, and all the business of buying a boat and selling a house... we moved aboard our 55-foot narrowboat on Friday. Being on the L&L, I thought we were going to start this new chapter of our lives stuck ten minutes from our old house with nowhere to empty the loo or fill up the water tank; but no, enough of the locks have re-opened to get us as far as Apperley Bridge. Just waiting for the locks into Leeds to re-open now and we'll be properly on our way CCIng around Yorkshire and beyond. We're pretty seriously stretching a point financially speaking, but after my near-death experience and with my wife's career increasingly taking its toll on her well-being, we've decided to just go for it and see if we can't live on a student-level income generated by the proceeds of our house sale - with a decent savings buffer against unexpected maintenance costs and suchlike. Our youngest child is off to uni in three weeks' time so we're as close to having no ties as we've been since we were eighteen. Wish us luck!

Stopped at Tesco last week, three boats on the moorings, new timbers on dock, we got the shopping and moved on. I did notice a mooring sign on the ground after I moored up stating it was £100 per day to moor. I don't know if Tesco own the moorings but there are no visible notices to boaters mooring up as to what the rules are for these moorings.

Fuel filters all clean?

We too have CO alarms, but I strongly object to the BSS adding them as a mandatory item - it is pure empire building, and is not covered by their stated aims. I would rather they add a fiver to the test price and give free CO alarms to the 40% of boats that don't already have them installed, rather than start extending the BSS scope.

Dick did some work on our J3 earlier this year. He was accompanied by a younger chap whose name I forget, the idea being that he was shadowing Dick with a view to taking on some aspects of the work himself. They share the same workshop. He seemed keen and competent in the spring, hopefully still around.

Best to not hide the electrics too much as it makes future alterations much more difficult. Certainly you can run some of the main heavy feeds behind the panelling but it’s also good to have feeds running in a trough below the gunwales for easy accessibility. Gas pipes must be surface mounted so that the entire run is accessible to the BSS examiner. If you run any water pipes behind panels ensure that there are no hidden joints, or that the panels are easily removable. I’d also run a spare pair of heavy duty cables the entire length of the boat - you never know when you might want 12V power up front for something. Wire the 230V as radials - no need for a ring, and it’s actually more difficult to achieve.

Hair Tongue - Terrible affliction

I done similar with a huge pile of garden waste but i didnt have a 20 foot pole, so i ran a trail of petrol up the garden. Plan was light petrol trail and watch the bonfire ignite. I bent down and gave the lighter a flick. The resulting explosion shook the cottages 150 foot away, fired me about 10 feet up the garden and the fireball mushrooming skywards was most impressive, the loss of half my beard was not. Bonfire did not ignite but most of it had vanished anyway.

And of course no one has ever been killed on a narrow boat, have they? Life is a risk and no-one yet has been known to get out of it alive

I drenched a bonfire with petrol once. I had the sense to stand well back and attempt to light it with a rag on the end of a 20ft pole. There was a loud WHOOMPH and a bright light. The entire bonfire lifted about 2ft into the air then dropped back down. And went out.

I use an Ecoblast air horn. Comes with a pump to allow you to recharge it. Very effective. https://www.tcschandlery.co.uk/mobile/ecoblast-rechargeable-air-horn/p7055

Most of the ones I have spoken to enjoy it, Some work it so the meet up with another checker and then transport their bikes back to the start. I also think its flexible hours That doesn't fit the image of most I have met.

'Josher' is a nickname for a narrow boat built by or for Fellows, Morton and Clayton Ltd., Birmingham who were a large independent canal carrier that operated from July 1889 to December 1948. They were still commissioning new narrow boats right up to the end of trading, but the method of construction and overall dimensions limited their carrying capacity especially when compared to the more modern Grand Union Canal Carrying Company Ltd. narrow boats that were undoubtedly the 'Rolls Royce' of narrow boats. Most of the 'Joshers' that continued to carry with 'British Waterways' were soon upgraded to the modern standards of the Grand Union Canal Carrying Company Ltd. narrow boats, being fitted with such basics as electrics and a cabin porthole. Some misguided enthusiasts prefer the proportions of a 'Josher' and consider their lines to be elegant, and when combined with a period Bolinder engine (basically a large diameter pipe with a bucket going up and down within it) are considered to have character. I can't help feeling you already know this

Assuming that there is a crack between the valves, and I have not seen one anywhere else, the heads crack because the space between the valves is the hardest worked part of the head and there is not a lot of supporting metal when the head is new. This, in turn, is because the valves (exhaust mainly) are usually the hottest part of an engine, and the heat from the valves has to be conducted into the head through the valve guides and the valve seats. These then need as much cooling as possible so there has to be a water passage round the valve seats and between them. In the model J this weakens the part of the head which has to take all the combustion pressure. The cylinders are designed for at least 1000 psi, and were available certified as tested to that, so the head has to be able to stand the same pressure. All is fine when new-there is enough metal and enough water space for it all to work. Once the cooling water is in there, particularly sea water, it slowly dissolves the iron out of the cast iron head, leaving just the carbon part of the cast iron. The remaining iron eventually has insufficient strength to support the firing loads and a crack results. The preventive is to ensure there is plenty of corrosion inhibitor in the cooling water and to top it up regularly using central heating corrosion inhibitor suitable for cast iron. You can test for effectiveness by putting a few ordinary iron nails in a sample of the cooling water in a jam jar. If they go rusty after a few days the inhibitor is getting tired an needs a top up. You are perhaps fortunate in needing a petrol start head. They are much more common than the cold-starting heads. I had some new heads from Agra Engineering (in India) about 2001. They were exact copies of one of the batch of heads from the factory with the petrol combustion chamber depression on the top of the head offset to one side, leaving a very narrow land for the bolted on portion to seal to. They worked quite happily though. I have no idea what Agra's minimum production run might now be but it will be at more than 20 items. There are other suppliers' heads about, mainly from India, but I have not examined them so could not say what problems they might have. The general problem with Indian engine items is that Quality Control is unreliable and finishing standards are low. I am not aware of there being a pattern for a head in UK, nor of a finished part drawing which would be needed for the machining up once the base castings have been made. Dick was at one time looking out for a pattern maker with some time on his hands and who might make us a pattern. Once we have a pattern maker I would happily produce a machining drawing. There are now several foundries catering to the 'heritage' market, mainly for road or rail steam engine parts so getting a pattern turned into machinable castings should not be a problem, but will not be cheap either! The general view has always been that they are not repairable either, but modern techniques might challenge that and I am not aware that any of the specialist cast iron welders has been asked to give an opinion. Any repair will not only need to weld up the crack, but also put back some supporting metal. It will certainly involve machining the mended head to renew the valve seats, and inserts might be needed. Ask Dick if he still has the cracked head I cut in half for him. If you look at that you can see the extent of the design problem and the extent to which the iron has been dissolved out by seawater leaving only a black substance which has no strength. N