Leaderboard

They were having an adventure. Much more character building than vegging out in front of the telly, or playing games on a console. Sometimes adventures go wrong. They won't make a mistake on their call out time again, so have learnt something. No one hurt. The local HART crew get some exercise. OK, officially they shouldn't have been there. The same goes for most urban exploration sites, which can be fascinating places to see. A victimless naughty act. I'm involved with a cave rescue team. The media always want a condemnation quote from us when someone gets rescued to spice up the article and give their readers a self rightousness fix. They never get it. Happy to help when things go wrong. You'll note that there was no such condemnatory quotes from the services involved in the Sentinel articles. Just factual stuff. Jen

I think it’s always a good idea to see what most other people have, and bear in mind that is based on a long history of what actually works. Re-inventing the wheel without much practical experience usually doesn’t end well. Most people have a solid fuel stove for their main space heating. Certainly the vast majority of live-aboards. Reliable, Cheap to run, uses no electricity. This is often supplemented by a central heating system comprising one of those evaporative heaters such as Mikuni / webasto / eberspacher. They are good for a short term heat boost on a chilly spring morning or evening when lighting the stove isn’t justified. They are not particularly reliable and use a fair bit of electricity, but clean and convenient. Before they were popular, people used Alde gas boilers which were compact and reliable, used very little electricity, but it is expensive to heat your boat using small bottles of gas. For hot water, most leisure boats have a Calorifier (hot water storage tank) that is heated by the engine - free heat when you are cruising and probably lasts until the next day’s cruise. Which is great for a leisure boat that is probably going to cruise most days, but no so good for a live aboard unless they have shore power to run an immersion heater. Off grid live aboards often have a gas instant water heater such as you have already. so plenty of choice, but all those things take up some space. The diesel evaporative heaters are very small though, and can typically be installed in an engine bay. You rarely see a Combi gas boiler in a boat, such as you might find in a house. Partly because they need a permanent mains electricity supply, partly because there is no product approved for installation in boats, and partly because heating you boat solely by bottled gas is pretty expensive.

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/woman-gets-keep-50000-boat-22113594

After reading the second article, to be honest I don't think they did anything heinousy wrong. No, they shouldn't have been in the tunnel at midnight, but life without adventure would be deadfully boring. They took sensible precautions, arranged a check-in system with their mates, and their mates did the right thing and called the emergency services when they failed to check in. A massive inconvenience to all who attended - but no different from SAR action being triggered for aircraft who forget to close their flight plan or solo walkers who forget to call their friend when they get to the pub. Better this way round than three dead corpses being discovered in the morning...

I am glad I didn't due stupid things when I was younger

Hi Rach, i have been doing a bit but had to watch the pennies due to no work since March but got half way through making the mould, then work started going mad since the slight lock down lift. I didnt want to show much unless it worked out but hey ho, this is a project and projects dont always go to plan. so a few pics, there has been a few modifications since i took these pics aswell.

Sorry. It won't happen again I promise. ?

We found several wooden churches which had survived at agricultural warehouses, with painting as below. There was also one church which had been converted to a power station, with diesel generator. The last photo is of one of the wooden locks we found.

Some people seem to have their lives ruined by boats passing them too fast, constantly complain about it, go to the trouble of putting signs up about it etc. Whereas I can’t remember the last time a boat passed us unreasonably fast such that we were annoyed and might have wanted to shout “slow down”. I suppose it’s probably happened a few times in the 40+ years I’ve been boating. I wonder why that is? Perhaps because we are super lucky, our god is looking out for us? Or could it be that we tie our boat up properly?

There are definitely some people who shout at you to slow down regardless of how slowly you are travelling. For me the classic example was one day when I started my engine, untied the ropes, and pushed sideways out from the bank; before I could put the boat into forward gear, somebody leaned of the side hatch of the boat that was moored directly in front of me and started shouting and yelling at me that I was going too fast!

I've been living aboard for 18 years and I don't agree with the school of thought that says passing boats should slow to tickover so that the occupants of moored boats don't feel their boats move. Slow down of course, but for some ditch dwellers it will never be slow enough and all this talk of broken crockery and flying teapots is for the most part simply myth. If boaters can't handle a bit of movement there must be alternative pasttimes or types of accommodation that would suit them better. Boats move, that's what they do. I lived on a garden end mooring on the Thames for 3 years and passenger boats would go past at 8kts without slowing down at all. It's a wide deep river but once you've experienced that you won't worry about a bit of movement as boats go past on the canal.

Unfortunately, you cant win here Had you posted a question about tickover speeds, the same people would probably have told you in no uncertain terms to do a search before asking your question. If I were you, I would feel free to respond to threads of any age, and ask any questions you like. Then ignore the arsey ones

I lost my long ash pole in a storm last winter as I stupidly had wedged begind the integral handrail to hold a tarp down on the roof and the tarp lifted and the pole went flying into deep water. I was thinking about a replacement, but I've no idea how I'd get one back to the boat as I don't have a roof rack on my car and it's probably not the sort of item that can be delivered. Then it occured to me that in 15 years I only used it a couple of times at most. Does everyone carry a long pole on their boat and how often do you actually use it? It's always worth having a couple of different length boat hooks, but my widebeam weighs nearly 30 tonnes so a barge pole seems to be of limited use.

She is a shepherdess and keeps her sheep on an island and she reckons that the boat will be useful for getting them on and off the island so although not free, it was certainly a lot cheaper than getting a suitable boat for her purpose where she lives. haggis

Even when you can’t get alongside the missus still wants to go shopping.

Presumably Anglo Welsh from Great Heywood & Bunbury would have the advantage that you could go from one to the other in one week and then arrange for a pump out and maybe clean bedding for new guests and then back to the original base. You could easily arrange two different one week cruises between the two with some side trips off the straight route.

Before we discovered the North we spent winters on the K&A where boats of any length moor IN the winding hole ? ................................Dave

It was still there in 2018, and can be seen on the eastern side of the A1 just past Leeming airfield. Access can be had from the old A1 road. The lock has been slightly altered to improve water supply to the now disused water mill, currently being restored as a home.

Are you now saying this is a brand new pump? If so then its probably faulty. if not its likely to be out of warrantee so cutting the wire is not an issue. You may find that if you take the blue box of the pump you can disconnect the red wire but then you will have some form of terminal on the end that may make joining it to another wire to the square D difficult. Somewhere on the CYLINDRICAL pump body (in your case I think its in the end opposite the pipe connections) there will be a black and red cable coming out of the pump. These feed the motor. The red (positivist cable) then looks as if it runs through the pump feet and connects to the pump's own pressure switch below the blue box at the pipe end. I fully expect there is another red cable coming out of the box running to the Square D switch. Now ignore the cable running from the blue box to the Square D switch, well you can remove it from switch if you want. Its the other one that we are interested in, the one that takes the 12v positive from the pumps own switch to the pump motor. If you cut this at the pump switch end or disconnect it from the pumps own pressure switch and connect it to the D square switched 12V + terminal the electricity will flow direct from the D Square to the motor without passing through the unreliable pump switch. Adjusting the pump cut out and cut in pressure on any pressure switch may or may not have an effect on the cycling. If the pump tries to deliver a greater volume of water from the open outlet than can flow from the outlet the pressure will rise to the pump cut out pressure and the cycling will start. Increasing the pressure may force more water from the tap so the cycling period is longer but it is still likely to cycle at some point. if you want to stop cycling totally you need a pump that is of a lower output than the tap/shower can handle, a pump that alters its speed according to pressure so as the pressure rises the pump slows down, or arguably something known as a bypass pump that starts dumping water back to its inlet as the pressure approaches the cut out pressure. Be aware the the maximum water pressure shoudl be (say) at least 5psi below the system's PRV opening pressure and probably rather more. As cycling is all to do with pump flow V tap flow messing with the accumulator pressure is unlikely to prevent cycling but will alter the cycling period so if you are filling a cup or maybe a kettle it seems the cycling has gone but try filling the sink and it will probably come back.

I have now seen another media photo which shows the main line and that is also empty. It does not look like a rainfall issue but a familiar pound emptying event. Either paddles left open or leaky gates, I would suspect. The pound on which the wharf sits is quite short but is fed above from the main stretch of the river through the city centre. If there is insufficient to keep this pound filled then there will be really substantial issues with the river as nothing will be going over Evans Weir!

At this point I think you should just buy another horn of lower power instead of rewiring the boat. It's only because you bought an oversized horn that it needs so much juice, so get a smaller one.

Spending some time in Ely is part of the plan. Thank you.

I have never seen a combi boiler small enough in heat output suitable for a boat. They are all 240v AC mains. Relying on propane cylinders of average size, 13kg, for heating, is hugely expensive. Even if you never move and use 47kg cylinders on the bank you will spend a fortune. Bite the bullet and fit a solid fuel burner with a back boiler, best long term solution, thousands of boaters can't all be wrong.

I didn't even have time to adjust the settings on my camera, to get a sharper photo.... https://scholargypsy.org.uk/2020/06/03/south-dock-to-millwall-take-2/

On more then one occasion when we were cruising back to our winter mooring before decamping back to the southern hemisphere to avoid winters my birthday in early October was celebrated in the building shown here

"We were 1,300 metres through when we saw a torch behind us. We still had about 45 minutes to go. "We didn't think that much of it at first and thought it was probably a dog walker. ... Hmmm. Acquatic dogs. If it had been 1972 there would still have been a towingpath ...

I think there is an etiquette on the canals which suggests that you slow to tickover for moored boats. As a consequence, it seems that moored boats have a reasonable expectation of this. If someone goes past fast enough to rock your boat significantly, then they probably haven't slowed down enough. My tolerance for movement is high. I have been boating all of my life, and quite like it "a bit rough" As a general rule I tend to think that if the water leaving a passing boats stern is churned up, rather than a bit rippled, and they rock my boat significantly they are going too fast. On rare occasions I'll shout something through the window. Most times it either doesn't matter, or I cant be bothered. Those who do it generally know they are doing it and just don't care. Some boats do go past moored boats at too fast a speed. There is a point where they ought to be told.

To be remembered always, the late,great Graham Palmer, founder of the working party movement that saved so many canals. The working parties he organised for the Ashton Canal in 1970 and 72, labelled Operation Ashton and Ashtac, attracted respectively 600 and 950-plus volunteers. They changed civic attitudes and obliged the canal authority to think again. Without them there would be no Ashton, Rochdale or Huddersfield Narrow canals, no Cheshire Ring and not much Peak Forest either.