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Showing content with the highest reputation on 24/06/20 in all areas

  1. Hi everyone (again!), It’s me, Neil (the Gay guy!) who registered on here as “Gayzingalone” and then disappeared a while back. The basic reason for my disappearance was a combination of losing my mobile (Yes, of course in the canal!), and the “Lock down” that prevented me trying to get everything sorted. Even little things like getting a replacement SIM card was a case of “Press 1 for this and 2 for that etc, etc. and eventually being disconnected and asked to call back later, and later, and later. After one journey before lock down to the “Narrowboat Pub” at Weedon I returned to Whilton Marina where I stayed for the duration before leaving there on Friday 29th May. My stay at Whilton was a time to do many things within and on my boat, re-painting, etc. and meeting a lot of new friends in the “Lockdown community”. We all stayed safe, yet were able to have some social distancing events like concerts on the water provided by some very talented musicians. I also re-named my boat to “huami” (think about it!) … Yes, it says “Who am I” and under the name as you will see in the attached photo’s is the text “It’s.me.Neil”. I was very fortunate being a complete “newbie” to have been invited to follow and travel with some very good friends who were my neighbours at the marina. It has been a steep learning curve yet in quite a short period of time I have managed to get through upwards of 100 locks, under bridges without demolishing them, navigated the River Trent (anchor and life jacket!), traveled the full length of the Chesterfield Canal (inclusive the obligatory photo of the bricked-up Norwood Tunnel entrance), and many more adventures. At the moment I am onboard having a week’s “holiday” as my traveling companions have left their boat next to mine near Shireoaks Marina on the Chesterfield and have returned home for a break. Next week they will return and we will continue our journey with a new direction of York where we will also hang about for a week or so. If I feel confident enough to ditch my “L Plates” I will possibly drift off alone and after conveying my appreciation for all their help I will leave them to get on with their life. We have all said we will be heading back to Whilton Marina when things get colder where we will hang around for the winter, and I will look forward to meeting them again. Since recently I have full mobile broadband on board with an amazing omnidirectional antenna which has given me more freedom to communicate so I look forward to saying hello again on this forum. Ideally, I would love to meet some (male! Hey, I’m gay!) traveling companion who might like to share some of the work and at the same time enjoy a free holiday. (He doesn’t have to be gay, just open minded!). The boat has plenty of sleeping accommodation and after this “Virus time” that has been very expensive for many people it might be a nice break for someone without costs. If anyone on this forum knows of anyone who might like to cruise along for a while, they are more than welcome to get in touch with me. So, I might like to change my forum name to “huami” (but I don’t know how!), and please if you see me in passing do say hello. It’s been amazing how many people have said “Hi Neil” ….
    6 points
  2. This post cannot be displayed because it is in a forum which requires at least 10 posts to view.
  3. If you are referring to my posts them I apologise. I don't actually see much in the way of shooting down. What I do see is yet another low post count member coming on with a question that by its nature precludes them getting a sensible answer, who has yet to tell us if its for a boat, what kind of boat or land based, and because of that might be a troll. I don't think you are a troll but have just not done much research about living on a boat. If as you imply you do not understand much about on-board electricity then do some research. It will pay massive dividends. Look at the pinned items at the top of this forums sub sections, study the course notes on my website, see if you can find The 12V Bible on line, do some forum searches looking for topics on batteries, charging, and so on. Study the Battery Primer pinned at the start of one of the sub forms. Sorry to say that unless you severely moderate your electrical equipment expectations you WILL be looking at very expensive boat keeping with the frequent or very frequent need for new batteries because you have destroyed the last set by over-discharging and under charging over a prolonged period. Either that or you will need to stayed tied to marine berth by along mains lead. If you are rich enough to select Lithium batteries and their attendant more complex charge control systems then you will go a short way to minimising the charging problems you face because lithium batteries are happy to accept all the charge you can throw at them for long periods of time. Unlike lead acid batteries that after the first half hour or so of charging start reducing the current they will accept until you run out of charging time before they are fully charged. Leaving LA batteries partially charged reduces the amount of electricity they can hold. Getting your use of electricity, the battery bank size, your method of charging, and your charging regain right so you get optimum battery life is an iterative process where you do some calculations, see the results, think about how you will achieve the results and then go back and start again with other assumptions. You are 100% correct in starting with a power audit although I would have done it in Amp hours rather than Watt hours because batteries are sized in Ah but I see no explanation of how Bimble account for alternator charging and the time running the alternator so we can't really comment on its accuracy. What we do know is that a minimum of 6000 Ah - that is 60 x 100 Ah lead acid batteries is unlikely to fit into a typical narrowboat and if you really required that number for your electrical use you would never be able to recharge them while cruising and away from mains power. I know the responses you got were probably very different from those you thought you would but if those with long experience and/or professional competency can see you are heading for problems what would you prefer them to do? Try to point out where you may be making mistakes and where your apparent expectations are unrealistic or pat you on the head and encourage you to carry on. This forum will usually do the former because we want to help and as in your case all too often vital information is withheld so it is asked for. We get questions like yours almost on a weekly basis and all to often the questioner gets upset by replies that do not try to hide the truth. Having pondered on what has been said on this thread and studied a bit please feel free to come back and ask more detailed questions or ask about something you come across but do not understand. You will have to learn to ignore the jokers though. You should also accept that some on here really do know far more than you and their views are real and hard gained expertise. If you don't want their input to your problem - for free I might add - don't ask the question
    5 points
  4. Schools have never closed. Teachers have never stopped working, they've been contacting kids via email and internet, running distance learning, rewriting lessons so they work that way. Round here, they've been opening at 7am to keep the breakfast club going that feeds a stack of kids from the local estate. Schools have been teaching NHS and essential worker's kids as well as a stack of the disadvantaged ones. It's as ignorant a comment as saying teaching is a cushy job because they get such long holidays - so cushy that loads leave every year because the pressure on any home life is just too much - most teachers do about three hours work a night at home and at weekends. The government thinks that schools are basically just childcare so their parents can go out to work. There's actually a bit more to it than that.
    5 points
  5. Yea but he knew how to make a pint last until Lewis turned up to get ‘em in
    4 points
  6. I arrived early one evening at the top of Rothersthorpe flight to find that some single hander had come up and left all the top gates open. Bloody annoying thing of him to do, it meant I couldn't stop for a beer as I had intended but had to go down the flight before stopping. How inconsiderate can some people be.
    4 points
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  10. If model villages are opening will the social distancing be to scale?
    3 points
  11. If the boat has no historic value then bite the bullet and get the cabin made in steel. A good welder/fabricator with boat experience will do this quite quickly. You can then concentrate on painting, insulating/lining etc. It will be a lot easier to maintain and add much more value to the boat than a "woodentop". Over a reasonable lifetime it will likely even work out cheaper too. .............Dave
    3 points
  12. Sanitise your arse after every flight.
    3 points
  13. This post cannot be displayed because it is in a forum which requires at least 10 posts to view.
  14. That was my original plan, but having to clamber up on the roof and then root about under the panel trying to find the connector(s) was just too awkward.
    2 points
  15. No no. The national arse. It was established in the forum years ago that my arse is a perfect polished peach held in trust for the nation. It's got a bicycle park and everything. God! This must go back 10-15 years! The arsemower is due for replacement soon too.
    2 points
  16. I’ve been travelling with a bucket of water and a bar of soap. Washing my hands after locks. The big habit to drop is touching my face. Picking my nose and poking my eyes. Scratching my ears. Can’t see a good reason for me wearing gloves. Just another throw away item to clog up the planet. Easier to wash hands. And I’ve begun to see the new normal in litter on the towpath; face masks gloves sanitiser bottles
    2 points
  17. Possibly longer if the horse has a long face
    2 points
  18. Thanks for all the helpful replies. I can see that I was over reaching my expectations of solar power. We will make the necessary adjustments and we will go for panels in the near future. For those of you that said I had no clue and needed to understand solar power/electricity....guess what? That is why I asked the question. Not the first time that certain people on here have spouted their superior views. Never known a forum quite this bad for shooting people down.
    2 points
  19. There are some clowns, even on here, who argue that you should always leave gates open behind you (probably not with the paddles up, though). As a single-hander, I'd cheerfully murder the lot of 'em. I'm sure it was a very efficient way of doing things back in the day when boats were hurtling in all directions all the time; these days, with leaky gates and a falling to bits system, it's just daft. In your case, I suspect an idiot in a hurry or someone who simply doesn't know, and may well have been told by now. I met a family on an inflatable today who nearly got squashed because he didn't know we drove on the right. He does now, but i did impart the info in a friendly manner!
    2 points
  20. OK so floating cottage with no concept of off grid living - sorry but this sort of mistake is all too common. NEVER EVER use batteries to create heat so install some other form of water heating. That gets rid of your two immersion heaters. However keep them for when you are on shorepower. I can't think why you need two on a boat. Use a kettle on the gas stove unless the engine is running at charging speed. Toast under the gas grill. No need for a toaster unless on shorepower then the convince does not wreck batteries. Ditto microwave. Alternatively get a dedicated diesel power generator fitted than you can have as much electricity as you want between 8am and 8pm unless it is cocooned for silence. You watch TV 24 hours a day!!!!!! I suspect the fridge freezer consumption may turn out to be a little optimistic but it not too far out.. On a boat battery supplied electricity shoudl be considered as gold dust and conserved if at all possible.
    2 points
  21. Most boats are broken into via large side windows, especially if all other doors appear to be well secured... Must saying. ? Best to get a dog such as a GSD for real security.
    2 points
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  23. Pat Barton's Quercus from 2013
    1 point
  24. This post cannot be displayed because it is in a forum which requires at least 10 posts to view.
  25. No, it should be higher. (Unless you want it to blow whenever the controller is putting a decent charge into the batteries) The fuse is to protect the cable, not the device, so assuming you’re using something chunky (like the 10mm2 you mentioned) then an 70A Megafuse should survive.
    1 point
  26. This post cannot be displayed because it is in a forum which requires at least 10 posts to view.
  27. Even the lower Rochdale looks lovely today. Long route to Aldi. New (ish) lock gates needing some use. At least the younger ones have a good bench for a Bob Marley birthday rollup.
    1 point
  28. I used dc rated mcbs , you could just disconnect the MC4 connector?
    1 point
  29. Speak to Sarah Edgson at Glascote, she is now running Norton Canes. Some of the lads there have experience of this work.
    1 point
  30. I am pretty certain the CD was taken from the boat section of his website. Below is one of Magpie Patrick's photos of the new berrichon when at Orlesn last September.
    1 point
  31. This post cannot be displayed because it is in a forum which requires at least 10 posts to view.
  32. We have two phones on different networks - this choice dates back some years when the coverage was very different. Nowadays we do not find much difference and rarely no reception. There are some places where it is a bit limited, depending on how many connections are made to a limited base station, but again that is much less frequent but still does depend on time of day. We use three for our main data connection (the deal came with unlimited Netflix which got us signed up to that alternative form of 'entertainment'. We have rarely not been able to stream in an evening. No idea what it is like during the daytime! We had been planning (when we last saw our boat) that our first main trip would take us down the Oxford so we could have checked out what was a well known dead spot around Lower Heyford but so far we have not been able to . . .
    1 point
  33. Surely it only saves one lock of water in total.
    1 point
  34. This post cannot be displayed because it is in a forum which requires at least 10 posts to view.
  35. Small travel size hand sanitiser in an easily accessible pocket with a back up bottle on the boat slide if you can't remember which pocket you put it in and don't want to rummage around with potentially "dirty" hands. Wearing gloves will not stop you from getting infected but to start with I worse them as a reminder not to touch my face. We have a larger bottle of sanitiser we use to decant into smaller ones to keep the cost down. We have masks to hand to put on if we feel it might be necessary and have worn them when sharing a wide lock with another boat (as it happened it was only half the size of our boat so the two steerers could stay well distant in the lock anyway Once through a lock sanitise your hands and the handle of the windlass as you return to the boat along with anything on the boat you might have touched as you got back on. Make sure long hair is tied back or kept under a cap so it can't blow in your eyes or mouth and don't be afraid to politely but firmly ask people to give you space.
    1 point
  36. Blue Berry was the home of French waterway historian Charles Berg, who has written a number of books, at least two using his own excellent drawings. He has produced images of all the many closed/disappeared locks, all including a lock keepers daughter in a traditional French manner. His website of French waterways is excellent: http://projetbabel.org/fluvial/index.htm A new wooden berrichon attended the Festival du Loire last September. It is not this one.
    1 point
  37. To get back on topic, I am looking into the precautions that will need to be applied to allow visitors back to the national arse. Will probably have to work out some socially distanced queueing arrangement for the gift shop and ban eye testing.
    1 point
  38. 1 point
  39. Hi Restlessnomad, Nice to see you again and I'm sure you must also be looking forward to the future after our confinement. Your profile name comes across as someone who just likes to move at your pace and possibly without any specific destination (?) After buying the boat at least I had plenty of time to do all the things I wanted to do before setting off. Have a great day, Neil This photo was taken in the middle of a torrential rain storm on the Trent.
    1 point
  40. The last bit has to be done, if for no other reason than to apply for the Chesterfield Canal Trust head of navigation brass plaque. Iron Snail with bow fender knocking on the door of Norwood Tunnel. That picture was taken before lock down! Three months of no hairdresser visits now.
    1 point
  41. I don’t understand You arrived at locks set to your advantage? What was annoying ? No one to shut the gates behind you and fill the lock?
    1 point
  42. This post cannot be displayed because it is in a forum which requires at least 10 posts to view.
  43. This post cannot be displayed because it is in a forum which requires at least 10 posts to view.
  44. Do get your facts right. Virtually all schools are open to the extent the government asked for. September may be a little more difficult as most classrooms aren't big enough for 1m let alone 1m+ However I am sure a way will be found even if it means hiring halls etc. With regard to the kids running riot - good it might make some parents more able to realise the reports from school about bad behaviuor are actually correct.
    1 point
  45. Not long to wait now ? 4th July ? Happy Days Enjoy. (I will be keeping out the way of the ensuing bedlam. ?)
    1 point
  46. Apparently it's the covid19 effect. People don't need to be in central if they are working from home or furloughed. London boaters leaving 'London' and spreading out is also exactly what some people who complain about london have always wanted isn't it? You reap what you sow?
    1 point
  47. I'd query the third and fourth days. You say you'll end up in Uxbridge the third day in the evening and expect to be in Berkhamsted the fourth day? Thats a very long day! The general problem with such ambitious itineries is you have to keep going until late which means youll have to stop wherever you are rather than timing it to arrive early and get a space at a nice/safe mooring. I doubt youll find space anywhere in central london (without booking) if you dont intend to moor until late evening. Other boats will have stopped and taken the best spots much earlier than that. But it doesnt matter if you just want to transit right through london. There is likely to be space somewhere around Hackney/Hertford Union or the Limehouse cut and from there in one day you can go right through the Regents to beyond Kensal where again there will be space somewhere. Anywhere will be safe enough if you arent leaving the boat unattended and aren't walking around towpaths after dark.
    1 point
  48. Would it be possible to have a forum where if people take over a thread with gripes at each other they can move onto? It's getting difficult to get info as I subscribe to lots of useful threads, or started off useful but they degenerated into 'mines bigger than yours' threads and I don't really want to get notifications about when they post their next rant? I love these forums to bits as they are so useful but some conversations at the moment are of no interest to anyone other than those having a go at each other, losing the thread entirely? Hope that makes sense?? failing that can mods lock threads that go waaaay off topic?
    1 point
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