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People don't have to play golf or tennis, but the recent changes mean that they are quite at liberty to do so. Since you and others seem so intent upon 'commonsense' how about some commonsense Government decisions rather than being led by the wittering classes of the Daily Wail and Sun. When the lockdown is lifted there will be an increase in infections and deaths, I think pretty much everyone is accepting of that. When Spain started to come out of lockdown, their daily infection rate was circa 500-700 (under 1000) and now after about 10 days they are back up to 3000+ so, unless you still believe in the English exceptionalism, we can pretty much expect the same, except we are currently starting from a far higher figure, so after 10 days or so, instead of going up to where the Spanish are at 3000 (still less that where we are now) we could easily rise to 16,000 - 17,000 infections a day if we get the same percentage rise. Do I trust the 'commonsense' Government to then say,"Oh we need to re-impose a lock-down", frankly, no I don't as it would be acknowledgement of lifting the lockdown too soon so we will rattle on with increasing infection/death rates until they have no choice and we will be back to where we started from. Two more weeks lockdown and then monitor what is happening elsewhere and follow the sensible lead would be the commonsense approach, but as you say we don't do commonsense.

As one of the few (maybe only) people here who has done significant boating during the lockdown, can I second this? You're not just sitting, fat and happy, in the middle of the canal, and surface transmission at locks is the least of your worries. Much more of the problem is when you're standing on the back of the boat in the bottom of a lock and someone's ugly mug appears above you whilst they gawp at this new sight: there are a LOT of people taking their Boris exercise on towpaths who have never been near a canal before lockdown and have not seen boats moving. Two metres safe distance is two metres HORIZONTALLY, if someone is standing above you, you're much more vulnerable. To be safe, expect to have to shout at people to get them to clear lock areas before you use the lock, and expect to get very strange looks when you shout at people standing on bridges as you approach to ask them to move off the bridge whilst you pass under. Now that everyone has been let out again, somewhere like Foxton will be hell to boat through; it'll be heaving, as will Buckby top lock; the pub may be closed but people will be using the tables on the lockside. Add similar places in you locale to taste. Also expect the towpaths to be busier than you're used to: there will be a lot more people walking past your boat, and a lot more people cycling. Judging by the prevalence of groups of young males travelling fast on bikes during the lockdown period, gay, poly, marriage is a lot more common than I thought. MP.

I'm amazed at this thread, it's not that hard to understand, boating for pleasure ain't yet permitted, just wait and continue to do your bit to keep the population as safe as you can. Anecdotally the number of boats, that appear to be non-liveaboards, that are moving has at least doubled since the weekend. Including a absolutely massive wide beam which moored up next to me for exactly a week before heading back off in the direction it came. We all like our hobbies, but for now we should make small sacrifices with them rather than looking for loop holes in the new rules

You can only chose from what's on offer, and that wasn't.

In a nutshell Dan, thats how most people with, as the PM put it " Common sense " see it. Rocket science it isnt.

We shouldn't forget that the main purpose of the lockdown, as 'sold' to the public was to prevent the NHS being overwhelmed. It wasn't introduced to stop all deaths from the virus. To do so would be impossible. To get close to 'no deaths' would require limitations on freedoms that would be unacceptable in our culture. If by chance these limitations were accepted, and widely adhered to by the vast majority of the population, the economy would be left in a state as unpalatable to the British people as would have been the limitations to 'achieve' this. So I'm afraid the path is still to prevent the NHS being overwhelmed until such a time as some kind of 'herd immunity' is established and/ or a successful vaccine is developed.

Edwardian are superb, not cheap but the best never is ?

There was no spark between them then!

When I first encounter locks, I shall be washing my hands after each and every lock. Wearing gloves is pointless IMO. It just means you may have virus on your gloves instead of your hands. If you then touch your face, the outcome is the same. Your hands are easier to wash too. Disposable gloves may have some value IF you discard them after every lock but that's probably more bother than washing your hands.

How can common sense be applied safely to what has oft been very wooly information. Even Ministers have had problems interpreting it correctly at times. Easy to say you got that wrong, where is your common sense. Typical get-out clause in my books.

if every thing this girl says is true .and yes there are two sides ,but lets just say its all true what she is saying ,,the bods on here would still look for an angle to twist and turn every thing she said ,look at most if not all the threads on here ,it happens every time ..there are some well meaning threads and even those get the snide remarks ,they all start off well ,but then they slowly go down hill over time .a thread can start of by some one needing a bmc engine ..10 comments in or so. the thread turns to some thing compleately different /.whats her health got to do with this ...any one got any eggs for sale ...oh i might end up being offered a box of spanners ...stay safe all

I agree. It was jolly useful to see their plans over the next few weeks. Of course, we all know those plans may have to change. Let's all hope the R0 stays below 1.

For permanent liveaboards, the question is, can they go on longer cruises, or only to the water/elsan and back? I do think that's a legally grey area but for the sake of being reasonable, they should all be minimising their cruising. Where forum members have had good reason to cruise to a new area, fair enough. I would be cruising mainly for my own enjoyment, so that's not fair enough (even though some boaters are clearly doing this). I will wait until overnight stays at second homes are allowed and then I may head off for my cruising season.

I'd call that a graph, and I think a graph does need labelled axes and a title and possibly a key to mean much. Otherwise it's just a pretty line that means nothing.

Cold fusion is certainly the way forward and I have been working on this too, I used to work at Southampton University in the building next to the chemistry department where it was invented, and I did find a few bits and pieces in the skip, but still can't work out exactly how to put them back together. ..............Dave

My thanks to yourselves for getting this going, and to all who have participated. There have been departures, certainly by myself, from the specification of nice things today but the general wish is to be interesting, I am sure. This field pattern at Montady, beside the Canal du Midi hopefully complies, although it is, I believe eight centuries old!.

As they do where we moor, the boat next door to us is liveaboard, we are hobby boaters.

I'm not too clear as to what work is so urgent. Blacking? a few months not That critical. Depleted anodes? You can always hang a few overboard bonded to the hull with a bit of wire or chain. Galvanic isolator, no big deal if not on shorepower or in a marina. Others may shoot me down but I think you're overthinking the issues.

My daughter is a teacher. She is DESPERATE to get back to work in order to help her children. She would happily work through the traditional summer break in order to try and help the kids make up for lost time. She is not alone.

It doesn't matter what you think the result of catching the virus will be for you personally, the one thing you can know for sure is that if you catch it your body will make billions of new virus particles and distribute them into the world, where they may well cause great harm to others. The best way to protect the vulnerable is NOT TO CATCH THE DAMN DISEASE even if you hardly notice it yourself. MP.

OP hasn;t visted site since 24th March. I'm guessing they received them.

It does depend. On many American alternators the connections are external with the exception of the brush connections. On an A127 it's that yellow lead from the field diodes. Bosch alternators would need careful surgery to the alternator. With a nine diode machine the easiest way is to slap a -ve onto D+. This is an American motorola unit and opening the red lead would do the job. Japanese stuff is just way too varied and may need internal surgery or may be done externally depending. Give me a picture of the machine in question and I will advise if I can.

I think you will find we have left the E.U. Granted we are in a transition until the end of the year, but we then finish that period. Negotiations are continuing to finalise a trade agreement.

Actually found a photo of this day 2016 Grugey Canal burgundy

For a start, your first duty is to avoid getting the virus: even if you're sure you'll be just fine, that's by the far the most effective way to avoid giving it to others, which is highest priority of all. To do that you need to stay at home as much as possible. Staying at home all the time is difficult, so you can justify going out sometimes, but only if you have to. Don't go to the shops more than you need to eat, and don't go out to exercise more than you need to stay healthy and sane. When you do go out, avoid other people as much as possible, and try and have a plan in advance to do this; It's good to go an exercise where you can be reasonably sure there won't be other people around, if you get there and find that against expectation it's crowded, go somewhere else, and avoid planning to go anywhere you know will be crowded. In short , though you _can_ "drive to the boat every day, have a picnic , walk/cycle the towpath" that would be a rather anti-social thing to do unless you were sure that the towpath in question was uncrowded. MP.

Point of order m'lud... isn't it 'lurgy'?

I'd wear full protective PPE in or near sanitory stations.

There's going to be a stampede. Best to continue to treat everyone and everything as a biological disaster area - methinks.

That was roughly the order date. It wasn't despatched until March 17th because of the supply issues we had. As I don't know the OPs name I'm having a guess at which was his order.

Arrghhh... earworm...

You could put it in a coconut

I know they have. Many dozens too. The specific case I'm aware of involves boaters whom I have a pretty low opinion of generally.

It's the European boating of which I have very few pictures. Here from August 1983 is a view of Rotterdam from Euromast and some detail of the radial gates of the lock

Do you just mean their actions today, or those of golfers in general?

Golf, a good walk spoiled.

And it becomes a case not of "right" or "wrong" but "who produced the best video..." Bit like politics really?

There is nothing in what you have said, or what has been discussed, that are good reasons not to go ahead with the purchase, get the hell out of the marina, and deal with things as time goes by - unless you don't really want to buy right now. If the boat is your home, you can live on it and move it for any essential reasons. It seems that some yards are working, (and why wouldn't they?), and you could DIY quite a bit with stuff you buy online and get delivered, (even your solar system is a relatively straightforward purchase and fit). For a variety of reasons, I bought my boat and had it blacked in 2011, but didn't lift it again until 2015, (4 years later). The hull was fine, so I did the same again and lifted it last year for its 4 yearly blacking. Fine again. So... dont worry too much about the blacking, it will be fine for a few months, or even a year in these extreme times.

There are some here who would think an interjection inappropriate

just a small point but you would need to check if the canal is wide enough to turn

Dear Teacher, This is not a graph, it is a representation of potential actions which may be taken at certain points of the developing situation, relative to the progression of the 'R' rate. Therefore it needs no time scale or axis labelling or any evaluation. Open your mind and look deeper at the item presented to you. As the curve illustrates the actual results catalogued daily, it is a perfectly valid illustration for a set of responses to a potential development. As an aside, whilst you point out that the 'R' rate is still at 0.9 in SOME areas, it is down to 0.5 in SOME OTHER areas. ( I only got 6 'O' levels, and 2 of those were Scripture and Latin, but I think it stands up quite well against your degree and post graduate teacher training. But then again, I left school and live in the real world.)

Here is something I have probably put on here before Narrow boats in Threefellows Carrying fleet. (not all at the same time and not in chronological order). Motors. APPLE (ex Fellows Morton & Clayton Ltd.) (camping boat but carried for last two years or so) BEXHILL (ex G.U.C.C.Co. Ltd. – Large Woolwich) BLETCHLEY (ex G.U.C.C.Co. Ltd. – Large Woolwich) BUXTON (ex G.U.C.C.Co. Ltd. – Large Woolwich) CHISWICK (ex G.U.C.C.Co. Ltd. – Large Woolwich) (also operated by private owner after being sold) HALSALL (ex G.U.C.C.Co. Ltd. – Large Northwich) Buttys. ABOYNE (ex G.U.C.C.Co. Ltd. – Large Woolwich) ARGUS (ex G.U.C.C.Co. Ltd. – Small Woolwich) BANBURY (ex G.U.C.C.Co. Ltd. – Large Woolwich) BRIGHTON (ex G.U.C.C.Co. Ltd. – Large Woolwich) DITTON (ex L.M.S.R., ex British Waterways Board)(camping boat) TAURUS (ex G.U.C.C.Co. Ltd. – Middle Northwich) Wide boats in Threefellows Carrying fleet. (Company and Private owners) SHIRLEY (ex Leeds & Liverpool Canal ‘Short Boat’) A38 (ex Leeds & Liverpool Canal ‘Short Boat’) JUNE (ex Air & Calder) SOAR TESS WYE (ex Leeds & Liverpool Canal ‘Short Boat’) Private owners were able to put their narrow boats to work at Thurmaston. These include: Motors. WHITBY (ex G.U.C.C.Co. Ltd. – Large Northwich) PRINCE (ex Associated Canal Carriers Ltd. – Royalty Class) Buttys. PICTOR (ex G.U.C.C.Co. Ltd. – Small Woolwich)

Just had an email from Calcutt Marina to say that the marina is open to visit boats from tomorrow. They seem to have put a lot of thought into this with site signage, and what sounds a well thought out way of the office dealing with things like the sale of electricity cards. Not going to rush there tomorrow though.

KiwiBill's Long Ramble Home - Topic 1 - Europe, North Africa & Near East - 1937 to Present Day Right! We're off! The way things appear to work, the Memory Trigger Pack has to be a physical tactile object which, when presented to the Machine, gives access to other mementos or artefacts, photos and memories from a quite extensive region. Not of much use to my biographer but I am not doing this for him. You are warned: there will be very little cross-referencing. Let's go! The Memory Trigger Pack (MTP) to start with is a selection of gold and silver coinage from UK and Austria. My mother chased her Kiwi ex-boyfriend to London in 1937 but he negligently married an Oxford lass and Mum had to console herself with a debonair, guitar-playing Austrian refugee doctor. My Aunt Helen arrived in 1938 to rescue her elder sister from the wily foreigner but was also swept of her feet and cooperated with the young lovers. Helen spent the Battle of Britain on the south coast in the WAAF manning one of the earliest radar stations.(ref 'Eyes of theFew') She ended up living, acting and teaching in Italy after spells in Ethiopia and Libya. Shortly before she died in Italy, in genteel poverty, she appeared as one of the old English ladies in 'Tea With Mussolini'. Looking exactly like my grandmother (her mother). Immediately after Dunkirk my Austrian father-to-be was interned as foreigner and sent to Australia.(ref 'Dunera Scandal') Mum was evacuated from London during the Blitz but ended up being bombed anyway in Glasgow where my elder brother was born. They eventually got to Australia and I was born there. My younger brother was born in Auckland and we all lived in Australia until 1949. Dad was sent to what is now Papua New Guinea for a year and we lived there as a family until moving to Auckland at the end of 1949. Bill and Jenny (first wife) left NZ by plane in 1968 and took six months to get to London because they discovered that hitchhiking around the Mediterranean was great fun. From Athens to Istanbul Bulgaria, Rumania, Hungary, Western Europe, North Africa, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Turkey again then back to Athens to pick our left-luggage and the plane to London. This is where the cross-links start mounting up. Visiting Aunt Helen in Libya just pre Ghadaffi, loving a sea-side city in Algeria where we ended up living and working four years later, making friends in Egypt who came to visit us in England, making contact with Austrian relations. My Austrian relations all spent the war in Vienna under Hitler. In the mid 1950s my father arranged to bring Rudolf, a Brewery Engineer, to New Zealand with his wife and two adult children. The Scene: Conference Room, Dominion Breweries, Auckland. NZ's biggest brewer supplying a vast population of two million. Chairman: Next item, appointment of Chief Engineer. How do you pronounce this bloody foreigner's name; Sheezel, Shissel? Probably a bloody Nazi. Bugger it! What does his CV say? Secretary: Twelve years Chief Engineer of Vienna Brewery. Monthly production 500,000 hectolitres. Chairman: Hectolitres! What the F*** is a hectolitre? (sound of sliderule slithering) Secretary: Umm. Well he was responsible for producing as much beer in a month as all the breweries in NZ produce in a year. (pause, silence) Chairman: Seems to be a good sort of bloke. I think we can use him. Uncle Rudolf had a successful career with DB then moved on to upgrade two other NZ breweries. The house I live in now was his on one of the sites he was developing and my father had just bought 60 acres out of Auckland. Cut in two and put on very large trailers it was transported 200km and stitched back together. Rudolf and Aunt Fini (Josehpine - famed for yeast baking and being the only woman in NZ who polished her husband's shoes) retired to rural Austria but came back to NZ to be with children and grandchildren. We visited them in Austria during their retirement. They had rescued, from deepest Austria, our only great-grandmother who been to us in Algeria. Do you start to see the possible complications in this telling? Rudolf and Fini died in NZ while we were London-based. So this stirring of memories is, in part, a wake for them. Everything is linked but the only place where it is all clear is in my head. Elsewhere is data on computers, photos, documents and souvenirs. And my elder daughter lives on a narrowboat in Hockley Port. Will she want the 30kg of beautiful petrified wood she helped collect at the age of four in the Algerian Sahara? I will return to the Austrian gold 2000 Schilling coin later. It has a both a Vienna and a Tashkent connection. KiwiBill

She is just a child, at least she is doing something with her life, not just grumbling and farting under the blankets like so many on here.. ?

Front Page features in Practical Boat Owner over the last few months: Top 10 boats to trail and sail (from £3500) French Riviera, on a shoestring 6 Practical Projects. How to spot a bargain cruiser (from just £1500) 12 modern classics (from just £6000) Spring fit-out special. And from (the posher) Yachting Monthly. Solar panels and wind generators (group test and buyer's guide) What's your boat worth? 20 battery power tips. How to get afloat for less than £5000 (and also) "They sneaked on board and attacked us with machetes" (the offshore equivalent to Finch) When the inland mags start writing up about attainable boating, for the young and less well-off, I'll start buying them again. You read here about real enthusiasts, like Janet, GRPcruiserman and others who get their boaty fix without having to spend thousands and, apologies to others, I find that far more interesting reading than "We look at another Clonecraft, worth more than your house." If you want to get a bigger audience, write about achievable goals, as well as the Bugatti Veyrons of the boat world. I love to read about how ridiculously expensive it was to restore Lulworth but a story about a couple who rebuilt their 21' Kestrel for less than a grand makes my goals look achievable, too. The inland mags don't provide this and give the impression that anyone who spends less than £50k on their boat is no better than a licence dodging continuous moorer. Rant over.