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This boat is now back in the water thanks to the river levels rising again!! The owner needs to be thankful for that. It now has at least one pole to stop it going back from whence it came.

Come March the 3rd this year I have been on this forum for 10 years. I don't post much because of the way that some of the "experienced" boaters answer questions. I have been subjected to, what I consider to be, a "holier than thou" type of response to my questions by people who really should know better. Ever since I have been here the bit that I have highlighted in red has been a recurring plea. It hasn't happened and nothing has changed.

But, how are potential new boaters supposed to find out things if they don't ask and you would think that asking on a "canal" forum would be a good place to start. I know we have heard it all before but the folk asking haven't. Lets be a bit kinder to new folk! I appreciate that we don't often get the whole story at the beginning but we know what other info we need to enable us to be more helpful, so why not ask the original poster to provide it? having said that, I must admit to being a wee bit puzzled by the "no metal pipes" but I am sure there is a reason for it. haggis

There are plenty who have been out and about on the cut for years and learned nothing, as your question illustrates.

Hi everyone I’m just sending a brief post to challenge the notion that a restored wooden narrow boat has a life span of just 20/30 years. The boat I own is SE Barlows Boat Hood, she underwent phase one of her major rebuild at Bates boatyard back in 1996 ish by the then owner, a very talented builder called Bill George. I bought the boat from Bill in 2003 and my partner and I continued where he left off by replacing the front and back ends (to keep a long story short) just three original planks remain along with some keelson and engine bearers. Much of Hood is now 24ish years old and the rest is 17 years old and as I sit here I can say with all honesty that not a single piece of wood needs replacement and the bilge even beneath the back cabin floor is completely dry she takes on no water at all. This being said she does require a week to ten days in dock every year with an estimated 150/200 hours of labour and all the modern materials at my disposal to maintain her to this level. Thankfully my partner Anita and I are able to carry out all the maintenance. I am quite simply obsessed with her longevity. In addition to maintaining her in dock we pour wood preservative under the floor and generously splash and spray it into as much of the internal hull as we can. It is simply impossible that Hood will be at the end of her life in just a few years. It will be interesting to see just how long a boat vigorously maintained will last. I am currently moored near to Tar tanker Severn that is 25 years since restoration and she is in very good condition. In addition to her are my neighbours Venus(Harland and Wolf, yes really) and Myra (walkers) both of whom have suffered many years of neglect since their restorations 30 or so years ago and despite requiring some restoration still have huge amounts of excellent timber in them. I have worked on many wooden hulls back when this was my job and I was often astonished by the resilience of these boats after their retirement from hard work. If you’d like to see the extensive restoration work that Bill and myself carried out on Hood please visit Facebook page Narrowboat Hood and have a look at the different albums showing the stages of restoration (the actual posts on the page don’t show much, it’s all in the albums) The work we carried out was under the guidance of Jem Bates and to this day we have not had to replace any planks from this restoration. You may also like to have a look at Ade’s recent restoration of Dane, where I believe they kept much of the wood put in by (I think) John Woolley 40 years ago. Cheers Nick

On the ITV news tonight they claimed that 500 tonnes of water a minute was flowing through Shrewsbury town centre. And a further 500mm rise expected overnight. I don’t think dredging would have much impact on that. You could always try unattaching it and seeing if it wants to float...

You expected me to check stock levels as well as advice!

Hello. Mrs Pushit here, Mr Bizzards secretary at the Clockbatdrill car Co. Mr Bizzard has just telephoned me from the patents office to relay this information to you all to relieve you and the whole wide world of the suspense caused by the delay. His new and revolutionary optional extra add on for EV, Hybrid, Lowbrid and the Clockbatdrill car. Pendulums. Pendulums dangling from the roof inside the car. ''Why pendulums'' yoo may ask. Because if they can dangle freely from mini constant velocity joints which will enable them to swing unhindered anywhere in a circular arc. Surrounded with lots of little dynamos which will generate charging currant for the batteries. The pendulum will continually swing around from the perpendicular whilst the car is in motion, swing forwards when braking, backwards when accellerating, forwards going down hill, backwards going uphill, side to side when cornering, in fact the pendulum wil be continually in motion swinging about on all points of the compass generating electricity to charge the batteries while the car is underway, hence the totally unlimited milage range without stopping your cars will now be able to do, something that the likes of the Yankie Tesla's and others are unable to achieve, he! he! he!. For tall drivers lots of short pendulums can dangle from the roof, as the single longer one would whack the the back of the drivers head under braking and while going downhill and in the ear whilst cornering on a downhill gradient. That's all the information I have recieved from Mr Bizzard because he ran out of pennies in the public telephone box, but I daresay he'll continue with the description of his wonderful invention on his return to our factory. Thanks for looking at this. Regards Mrs Pushit.

But she is asking boaters, as many as she can find in one location

Maybe we didn't have houses all over the flood plains or all the arable land just flattened off for acres? not forgetting we seem to be getting more heavy rain, a lot less trees and banks. Nothing except not dredging has changed over the past 200 years

Agree, and one thing I have never understood is why some that clearly resent new people asking questions that are in their opinion, daft or poorly researched, instead of ignoring the question and moving on to another set of posts feel compelled to respond in a condescending or worse manner.

Duplicate

Clockwork will be the power of the future. Springs can be wound by either Workzone cordless drill from Aldi, or for excercise which folk need very badly with a huge key or a Stanley hand drill. Women can use the Stanley breast drill. Broken springs, pinions and governors ect replacement will be properly described with pictures in your Haynes workshop manual. Cordless drills will be recharged whilst driving along by what is known as ''The bump method'' the cars motion of jogging up and down over potholes and sleeping policemen and women. For fast boost charging of the drill battery one simply drives along bouncing in and out of all the drainholes grids along the kirb, by useing the bump method over the drain holes continuousely with the cordless drill attached in the keyhole you have, in effect as well as clockwork motor also electric to power the wheels. With this cutting edge form of ccccclockwork technology car propulsion with the simple aforesaid winding up aids will ensure that you will always arrive at your destination. A little 3 in 1 oil will need to be applied to the clockwork motion every two milliom miles. This form of lowbrid car will be called ''The Clockbatdrill car'' and will be very cheap. Tesla's and the likes, we s--t em. Bizzard, missmanaging indirector and inventor of the Clockbatdrill lowbrid car company.

I can only suggest people follow Tim's link to get an idea just how hard IWA has worked over the past 10 years on route and noise mitigation. There are several significant examples of route changes brought about by tireless and very professional, high calibre intervention and, in more than one instance, this has resulted in actual cost savings to HS2. IWA's volunteer planners have worked incredibly hard to present viable alternatives to alignments that would have blighted a waterway location or compromised a future restoration. To read their submissions is to see true professionalism at work and a dedication to ensuring that our waterways can be enjoyed in the future. I, for one, take my hat off to them and they have my unwavering admiration for all the unpaid hours that they have now devoted to finding viable, alternative routes for HS2 alignments. It has clearly ensured their credibility with HS2 engineers and they are now, justifiably, held in high esteem.

Goodness it is peaceful! At present am very appreciative of assistance as am entirely new to all this... but the feeling of steering one's own boat is fabulous. Just have to master mooring and locks solo and I'll be off!

Good evening folks. Just returned from the patents office, delay caused by both of the electric trains breakimg down that I used. However Conny that's my secretary. Mrs Constance Pushit tells me she has aquainted you all and outlined the works of the optional extra in reasonable detail for which I am very grateful to her. I have not much more to add really until the cars go into full production. Two points I'd like to mention though. Cat flaps will be installed into the lower panels of the car doors, for the purpose of assisting your car up steep hills. The proceedure will be. As the car begins to slow up on the hill the driver and any passengers will poke a leg out through the cat flaps in order to assist the uphill climb by sort of scooting the car along by a foot on the road surface. For this reason I recommend that folk buy the four door model instead of the two door and to carry three passengers if possible, after all four legs are better than two, just thought I'd mention that tiny flaw in the design. The second point is that I'm having all the little electrical components like all the little dynamos made in Japan, as I think they are the best in the world at making small electrical stuff, they can even make model live steam locomotives in Z gauge!!! The honorable Mr Yoki, Oki Doki owner of a big electronic firm in Honshoe has agleed to make these bits for me which I will couple to the pendulums with Meccano parts. Looking forward to flogging you all lots of these cars. Regards, Mr Bizzard.

Consider excess power from wind or solar. Use to make H2. Store. Blend with N Gas to displace some H gas producing % greenhouse CO2 without having to convert grid or gas burning appliances as it's a blend. So we have excess energy in times of high wind or lots of sun and no demand, that cannot easily be stored, making energy H2, that can be.

You as well ? They only block you if you have something factual to say that they dont agree with

<sigh> yes you can use electricity to generate hydrogen and feed it into the gas grid, to keep inefficient gas appliances like boilers going in the short term. The overall efficiency of doing this is so stupidly low that nobody would see it as a serious long-term solution, it's a short-term sticking plaster. In the long term using the same power to drive heat pumps instead of gas boilers is at least 5x more efficient -- in other words, cheaper. Just because something is proposed and people or companies back it doesn't mean that it makes any sense, environmentally or commercially. Feeding hydrogen into the gas grid is exactly this...

...another good thing about Barcelona is that it seems to have escalators up all the steps and cable cars down. Slumming it this afternoon, cant get away from the sodding widebeams though.

this is one thing that always gets me, on the coast, sharing of mooring rings, breasting up etc is normal practice, however on the cut it is seen as an exception rather than the rule.

NBW has been damaged for years!

A separate post for each one, here is the first "I must remember not to quote the spam links in posts when reporting them!"

KFC is deffo my favourite fast food but unfortunately my local one insists on serving it cold with refried chips so I never buy it now.

Graham Both was horrified when he saw my BC

6x the energy (running) cost of a heat pump...

One of the main problems when fitting out is accomodating the internal contours of the hull, plus the fact that spirit levels are of no use, unless the boat is on a level hard standing. Two things which I found very useful was a large builder's square, which enables verticals to be constructed from a flat base, plus a plentifull supply of large sheets of corrugated cardboard, from which bulkhead and other templates can be made, before attacking expensive timber with a saw.

I've made the reverse trip - from centre of London to York. It really isn't for someone with no boating experience. I had limited experience off-shore (mostly sailing) when I made the trip, but took along a crew member with a lot of experience. You really need to be sure of your boat. Also your ability to deal with issues. Can you confidently replace oil filters, at sea (i.e. when boat is pitching up and down), in the dark? Are you familiar with ColRegs? What is your knowledge of navigation, can you plot a course to make the best use of tide, avoid sandbanks? Making this trip you will end up several miles offshore at times (crossing the Wash). Have you ever done anything similar? What are your emergency procedures if you have an engine failure when offshore? Do you know how to operate a radio and have the relevant licence? Fuel consumption; how far can you motor on your boat's tankage? These are just some of the things to take into consideration before undertaking such a trip. Even the best laid plans can go awry. We had no issues motoring up the coast, hit all our waypoints on time, then snapped the propshaft coupling pulling out of Grimsby dock. No warning, it had been fine for over 200miles. Oh - and you should be aiming for the correct weather window rather than have a fixed date in mind. Don't assume that the weather will cooperate.

She does say that she has no experience at all so I am glad she has asked for advice and I hoe she enjoys the boat once it reaches the Thames. Howard

If you put a Zn plated mooring pin into the water and put a voltmeter between the pin and the hull you will see a voltage of about half a volt because of the galvanic effect of Zn to steel, if you do it near the back end of the boat it may be a bit higher because you could be measuring the difference between the brass prop (Also connected to the hull via the prop shaft) and the Zn plated pin. So I would expect to see a voltage. Not sure this helps.

Is there a Smelly's Law similar to Godwin's Law? (he'll turn any topic round to Brexit and abuse of Remoaners, Johny Foreigners and the EU within a few posts, regardless of what the subject started out as)

Why didn't they show this sort of stuff at school, if I knew jobs were available that allowed people to blow shit up I might have shown an interest in physics rather than biology

Altered that for you! ?