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The problem with all these "work for dole" schemes, which is what they are really, for the participants is that the dole you get isn't very much. You have no savings. So now you have to pay for travel to where you're working, pay for food, get suitable clothing - all without the funds to do it. You end up hugely worse off. Plus they'll probably find, when the scheme finishes, that their benefits get stopped because they haven't kept up with applying for real jobs. Sanctioned, they call it, and the offices have targets for how many benefit claimants they can shut down. Back in my dole days, the worst thing you could do was get a temporary job for a few weeks, because it then took you months to sort out your claim when the job ended and you nearly starved in the process. The benefit system is now infinitely worse and it was a nightmare then. I solved it by moving from Yorkshire to Sussex to try to find work (and living rough for a while), but that kind of mobility is not an option for most people. It's nice to think it will encourage the youth to get involved but it's more likely to breed huge resentment. I hope I'm wrong, and at least it might get a bit of towpath work done on the cheap for CRT, but I very much doubt it'll make much difference.

Yes maybe I wasn’t clear, there is a small bit of PCB with fuses adjacent to the battery terminals, then a further run of wires to the actual BMS PCB. So the only unprotected wires are the few inches from cell terminals to fuse board within the battery box. I suppose I could have had an individual micro-PCB with SM fuse for each terminal, but worst case scenario is some fairly thin wire vaporising itself - not really the same as a dead short with 75mm^2 cable!

Just this^^^^^^^ I am an educational volunteer for the CRT and have been for eight or so years. We talk about water safety, canal history and how and why the canals are there. As matty40s says if it just gets a couple of children interested, although with the amount of work that I and other volunteers put into it I hope it's a lot more, then it's work well worth the effort. What curmugeonly boaters who only seem to want to blast CRT, ESPECIALLY on this forum, is that we will not be around for much longer and it's the kids that WILL be taking over the running of the canals. In my time as a volunteer I haven't seen many boaters who volunteer to help out most (not all I will admit) it seems to me, just want to pootle up and down the canal system and leave the work to others. If we want our canals to survive and more importantly the lifestyle that boaters want, then EVERYBODY, boaters, fishers, walkers, cyclists and people and children who use our canals, MUST get together and help out. Yes I know as boaters we pay a lot of money to use the canals and I am still a boater paying my bit but it isn't enough, everybody must dive in, um not literally, to help. Once the canal system disappears you all will have to live in bricks and mortar. Think it wont happen? Think again, it can. it has and quite possibly will happen if we as a canal community don't do all we can to keep the inland waterways system in existance. We have already seen what happens when builders get their hands on canal land. Even where canals and canalia are retained the hoy poloy who buy the properties overlooking the water don't want boaters in their field of view and, occasionally when I see some boats, I don't blame them for that. Some canals have disappeared totally and have been replaced by cardboard housing complexes. That WILL be the fate of the inland waterways system unless we ALL do our bit and teaching children about safety, maintenance, heritage etc etc is the only way to go because, as I keep saying, we will all be dead and gone all too soon.

It could well be that your stern gland needs either tightening or repacking. If you keep greasing the gland, the grease will come out of the prop shaft end when running and spray on the sides and into the water below.

A very messy bilge. Your engine tray has a lot of oil in it looking at your picture. That mess elsewhere looks like a nasty mixture of water, oil, grease and degreaser or detergent that has created an emulsion. Could I suggest that you clean out the whole lot without polluting the canal then you may be able to see where it is coming from?

If crt were to actually ENGAGE with boaters instead of ignoring us and making our lives increasingly more difficult,maybe some of us would be more supportive.

Don't be daft - they won't get a complete set each ...

My solution to fitting a DC switch to a mains light pattress. Use a blank metal pattress cover, then drill a hole in it to take a proper DC toggle switch. This one is for the solar panels for my boat, between them and the charge controller. Rated at 20A, though there won't be that going in on a grey drizzly December day. Jen

if just a couple of these kids can make a difference and get interested in the Burnley, Walsall and Leicester sections, the money is well spent, very well. There's not many kids getting interested in canals other than a temporary cheap accommodation basis,so having kids on the bank able to relate to them will be good. In this kind of economy and potential recession, this is damn good news for kids and canals......all of us were kids once.

Good morning, I hope this is the right place to post this. I work in a residential home, and one of the residents here has a big interest in narrow boats and canal life. He used to work doing carpentry on long boats in Alvechurch Marina. Would anyone be interested in sending a letter or a card please? Everyone here is very lonely and I am trying to find things which interest them, so I hope you don't mind me asking. Due to data protection I can't pass out his details, but the address is Phoenix House 2 Swallows Meadow Shirley Solihull West Midlands B90 4PQ and you could address them to "Canal Enthusiast" maybe? And I will make sure they get to him. Thank you for reading x

Beaten to it, And me

Take a look a crt's annual report!!! ?

But they can waste money on this!?

20 hours ago, John Liley said: In the lands of big skies. You can be in one waterway and something comes trundling past on another. The big freighter was in the Ketelmeer, on the eastern side of the Ijsselmeer. as here ??? ... which might be a separate waterway? Compare #294 #1957 (also 2018)

I use the same connections from the cells to the BMS for voltage sensing and the 200mA balance currents. This means that the measured voltages are wrong when balancing is taking place, which is a bit of a pain, but maybe there's a hidden advantage in keeping the contacts clean. Do you fuse the wires from the cell terminals to the BMS? Are you going to use gold plates fuses and holders in that role, following this logic? MP.