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I had a small success today and thought I'd share it here in case it proves useful to others. When shutting down the boat before lockdown last month, I managed to snap the key of the front locker. For a month I have read about ways of extracting a broken key from its lock; the articles all dismissed my first thought of "How about using superglue" by observing that this usually ends up with you gluing the broken key section irrevocably into the lock. All recommended using some sort of a hook to pull it out, but the big question was "how?" My wife had left a packet of "Te

Bought a shiny new scroll saw, got bored, so made a little model of my Dawncraft 22 boat. It's about 3" by about 2".

I'm not sure anglers who hook fish for so called sport and then chuck them back are best placed to complain about fish welfare. They would also fare better if they didn't drag them out and chuck them back in. Fishing for something you don't end up eating is a pretty pointless exercise, all only in my humble opinion of course.

Autumn into winter 2020 - Macclesfield Canal

It's because CRT now have a fishing peoples department and managers who dont know what a fookin boat is.

Simply a nice rescue dog

Just ban the fisherscum....problem solved as they can chuff off and moan somewhere else!

No anodes, but it is 'shielded'.

This is why Bruce Wayne had the bat signal. How else would he get the call from the mayor of Gotham if the de Enfield's were hogging the party line?

That's not a Viking boat though. This is what can happen with no galvanic isolator.

Polluted silt? Perhaps the fishists could campaign for it to be dredged?

A large part of the problem is a lack of dredging, rather than boating in itself. When the gravel traffic began between Denham and Hayes it was accompanied by extensive dredging, and within a short time we had massive hatches of mayflies, Dragonflies hunting and a lot more small fish but within 6-7 years they gradually disappeared. Some anglers are definitely careless and one injured swan is one too many but there are also many swans and other casualties taken to rescue centres by the majority of considerate anglers, and also 90 percent of pollution incidents are reported by the same

You said "I am doubtful..." and provided no evidence to back this opinion up. Me and others have provided plenty of evidence on this forum showing why your opinion is factually wrong, and why total BEV CO2 emissions over lifetime are a lot lower than ICE even including all the things you mentioned. There's a huge amount of hard scientific evidence showing this, arguing against it without facts is like arguing that climate change is not manmade -- you might possibly be able to find some biased pseudo-scientific article somewhere saying it ain't so, but >99% of reputable sources w

It's the old definition of an intelligent person - someone who comes up with an idea I've already had ...

Fine if you never go anywhere Peter old bean. I am looking forward to a day when modern technology can catch up with old. I drive 150 miles each way to mums care home normaly and there is no charging point there even if I could get that far in one go. I visit kids and Grandkids 220 miles away so again hopeless unless I had god only knows how many thousands of pounds to mug away on a new car££££ At present I and millions of others do this in sub 2k cars in comfort and reliability with 400 mile range and 3 minute to recharge to full again at thousands of places anywhere UK. Millions of people d

Diesel energy content is 37MJ/l, at current pump price of £1.18/l that's 3.2p/MJ. For BEV 1kWh=3.6MJ so at 30p/kWh that's 8.3p/MJ which at first look seems a lot more expensive. But a diesel powertrain is typically 22% efficient overall, so cost of power at the wheels is 14.5p/MJ. A typical BEV powertrain is 64% efficient overall, which puts the energy cost at the wheels up to 13p/MJ. So even at 30p/kWh the cost of energy for a BEV is lower than ICE, the break-even point is 34p/kWh. However this ignores the fact that BEV are much more efficient at low power

Being a 'bear of little brain' when it comes to this 'lithium stuff' - if the alternator can only charge to 14.4 / 14.6 volts then the batteries will never get above this voltage, that being the case why would you need a buck step-down when the maximum voltage was only ever the same as FLA's ? When charging from the mains - could you not also use a 'standard' FLA charger at 14.6v max ? Sorry if its a stupid question.

Which is wrong but I could as easily say all boaters are dirty polluting wasters because I've seen a few occasions where dirty oily bilge water has been pumped directly into the canal

It depends on who has reported it and that we will never know. There is of course a difference between a report from a fisherman against that of a mother and toddler, cyclist, dog walker, naturalist etc. How do you know it is not a conclusion supported by facts? CRT said they had had reports recently not we have had reports over the last 5 years. Have you a reference which suggests the situation is not as report being what CRT say. Equally it could be suggested that all those posting here being boaters and in favour of the commercial use are stimulated by

Not a conclusion supported by the facts. Not unreasonable to suggest that a rise in reports is stimulated by a separate agenda.

The S&SY has always had big boats travelling on it, I see very few dead fish from them. I do see dead fish from fishermen on a regular basis I also see BBQs with the bones of fish around them from our eastern European neighbours, it's a fact of life and the normal for them, it does cause problems between the two fishing groups. The waterway in question is and always has been a commercial waterway apart from a few years when Rix, waddingtons and then finally the Humber energy/Princess etc stopped using it. I for one am glad that real boats are once again trading on these underused waterway

I am aware how fishermen are viewed by many on here and to a degree see where people are coming from, grumpy sods or the blood sports angle are both valid but many fishermen have and still are active in campaigning to clean up and keep waterways open and are often first to spot and report pollution events, I personally have reported a couple. Of course many boaters have and still do similar, the more who support this sort of informal monitoring the better. As reported the chap in the story comes across as a bit of a pratt but it could be a possibility that large boats

In defence of anglers, a friend is a keen one, sometimes he doesn't catch a fish all day, but it doesn't spoil his enjoyment, he tells me it's not all about catching fish, it's the whole experience, like sitting for hours messing around and doing nothing in particular and then a kingfisher perches on your rod for a while, magic moment. Little things makes it all worthwhile, a bit like life in general I suppose. But then he doesn't like sitting in a long line and being fiercely competitive.

There is always dead fish after a fishing match. What I see of the dead fish round here is that there are injurys around the mouth from hooks. An injured mouth for any animal should result in difficulty feeding as the wound heals. The most common causes of death are the physiological stresses caused by the struggle during capture and injuries caused by the hook or the angler.

The crux of the point I was making is your use of the word 'clay' when you referred to pigeons. Anglers complaining about harm being caused to fish are hypocrites. By all means they should enjoy their 'sport' but then to pretend they are paragons of virtue when it comes to fish welfare........... Joke.

It’s just a bloodsport...hopefully to be banned like other bloodsports...

Remove the houdini hatch and replace with steel & insulation. Trim the inside, paint the outside. Do you really need diagrams or written instructions for this? I thought better of you ...

Near one of my moorings, on a clapped out unlicensed cruiser lived a seriously dangerous guy who bragged sbout stealing from our boats, and that from local knowledge we knew it was true. He stole coal, diesel, generators and anything else he could get, broke into a few. Police wouldn't do anything, couldn't even be bothered to interview either us or him. None of us were particularly surprised or saddened when someone set fire to his boat, nor were we bothered that he was asleep drunk at the time. He and his dog (which had bitten enough people for us not to care about that either) got off

Thank you, but I was trying to offer a suggestion as to how these things could happen in general, I am sure there are specific issues particular to the waterway in discussion it could all of course be just down to a grumpy fisherman.

No AVO is a trade name. You have a multimeter that can read amps, volts and ohms. In that respect its similar to an AVO but probably not as accurate. If you call it an AVO then you are not correct and will get answers that make little sense to you. A proper AVO can come with a shunt so it can measure high currents, i bet you Gunson multi-meter does not.

Hi Alan, and thanks for the reply. Having been born, and lived in the Midlands all of my life, I am aware that most of the canal network in and around the Midlands is suited only to narrowboats, so we are probably going to be looking at the Severn or Avon, or canal further south. With regard to being near home, we will be selling our house , which is far too big for us now, and renting a property near wherever we fit out the boat, as we intend to live aboard the boat, hence the size. We have thought about potentially renting either open land or a unit on an industrial

Magnetman, apologies for coming across very negative on the LTOs, I really should have spent time reading through what was out there on them. I agree with you that LTO's really do look interesting for canal boats BUT it looks like the cost is prohibitive. The cruiser forum is a very good resource on info on Li batteries and has been for the last 8 years! Reading through the LTO thread it is possible to come up with some 'theoretical' observations on LTOs. My take on them is as follows: I see 2 issues – Voltage and cost. First Voltage. It looks like the nominal voltage of the LTO

I think if the questions is “since they made a mistake, can I avoid paying the money they should have taken” then the answer is no. But if the question is can I negotiate to repay the debt at an affordable rate, then the answer is yes.