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Showing content with the highest reputation on 17/01/21 in all areas

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  4. While racing the 1894 built 58ft gaff cutter Waitangi before Christmas the gaff bound oon the mast tearing the local copper sheathing. So the mast had to come out, by itself a major undertaking due to the number and weight of spars, shrouds and halyards that needed to be disconnected and removed first. A boatyard 40miles north had a big travel lift with a hiab mounted on the top, and also a 60m long tent erected to rebuild the mast the large super yacht Janice of Wyoming.So after two days of prep with a crew of four to five, labelling and removing all but the shrouds we motored up and got the mast, boom and gaff ashore for repairs and touching up the varnish. But once the mast could be properly inspected a section was found to be suffering rot, much better discovered then, then when sailing with fifteen people on deck! So the mast was freighted up to the shed the shed of the local wooden boat maestro Wayne Olsen for repairs. The opportunity was taken to strip the mast boom and gaff of all fittings and a full revarnish. Yesterday was refitting all those fittings. In the late 19th C and early 20th C there were two prominent families of Auckland boatbuilders, (and designers). The Logan family headed by RobertLogan and the Bailey family. Many of their boats survive today and form a backbone of the classic boat fleet in Auckland. At Olsens yard yesterday were two 2 1/2 rating yachts about 32ft long , one from each family launched days apart in 1892 in Auckland. Gloriana built as a speculative venture by Logan Brothers was outside under covers awaiting room in the shed. Her design was a 1/2 scale version of 1891 Nathaniel Herescoff New York yacht of the same name. Inside the shed was Rogue built by the Bailey Brothers. Her restoration includes a new lead keel after loosing her original lead keel in WW1 to make munitions and having to put up with firstly a concrete keel, then an iron one. Outside the shed waiting was Ngataki designed and home built in 1933 from scrounged materials by Jimmy Wray, and the subject of his classic book South Seas Vagabonds. A subsequent owner Debbie Lewis and her then ten year old son sailed her round the world on a seven year trip.
    3 points
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  12. Unless its badly rusted so emery paper and hard work would not be enough. Using an angle grinder plus whatever tool you put on it is potentially hazardous so sensible people equip themselves to minimise the danger. that includes learning how to sue the tool safely and getting the correct PPE to minimise the danger. Whilst I agree about the metal shavings cup brushes do shed wires and they can look a bit like drill swarf so also like metal shavings. I would be very interested in the methods you would use to remove rust from a bilge in a timely and efficient manner. I would also be interested to hear how many narrowboat engine bay bilges those who say engine removal is not required to do a proper job have de-rusted and painted because two of us have said in some cases removing the engine is the quickest way. Back to your post, it would also be the safer way because it gives more space for proper body positioning relative to the tool and job and fewer obstructions for power tools to catch on.
    3 points
  13. Yes. This is part of the nuance. That's why I'm careful to say we need to stop extracting fossil fuels entirely in order to be carbon neutral, not just stop burning them. As I say, our giant population is subsidised by fossils, and a lot of that subsidy goes towards industrialised agriculture. And yes it would be very hard or impossible to sustain 8 billion without industrialised agriculture. But muddying the waters with this nuance means that people fail to understand the basics of the carbon cycle, which is that the carbon you eat is carbon you remove from the atmosphere. The reason that's important to understand is because the solutions might not need to include genocide. It is possible to grow food without fossil fuels - but the carbon cycle is a fact of life. We aren't going to have to stop breathing, because breathing is at its core a carbon neutral activity when looked in the context of the whole carbon cycle instead of just the bit where CO2 is exhaled. It is possible to have a carbon neutral cyclist fed only with organically grown food transported to his nuclear power lit local Tesco in a biofuel truck.
    3 points
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  17. We've done all of those - albeit on a barge not a narrow boat. All short sea passages are very weather dependent. We've crossed The Wash when it's been so calm we might have been on a canal, and other times when we've been holding on for dear life! My advice would be to look at least 3 x different weather prediction services - preferably with some sort of wave height prediction (0.3 m is plenty for a narrow boat) - and if all of them agree that it's OK to go, then it probably is. You, as skipper, are responsible for your crafts safety, so it's your call. You can take advice from the pilot, which will most likely be sensible, but it's ultimately your decision. Some friends of ours got caught in 1m swell last summer with a pilot on board - not much fun, and not much left standing inside. Of those 5 passages I would say that, all given good weather, the most challenging is the Severn. There's one section where you need to head across from one side of the estuary to the other with a huge tide taking you sideways. The pilots know where to go, and if you have a good recent chart (you'd better have) and GPS tracking it's fairly straightforward, you'll still post some impressive speeds though. Not for the novice without a pilot. Next comes The Wash - there are more than a few things that can go wrong there - again a good chart, up to date buoyage info from the ports you are using, and good GPS tracking are the very minimum you'll need. If going up the Great Ouse I'd suggest stopping on the pontoons at Kings Lynn - hang the expense. It's an interesting town, and you get to go under the low bridges at a time you choose, rather than near the top of the tide. Once in the other rivers it's reasonably easy going. The Thames in London is a pain because of the number of high speed craft making huge washes. We've been along the Maas in Rotterdam and the Thames is worse for wash. The banks are all solid so it all just reflects back into the river making for very confused water. Best plan is to try and find an early tide on a Sunday and book Limehouse out of hours so you can catch it. Once upstream of Chelsea it's not such a problem, and makes for a nice trip. The Trent upstream of Keadby requires good chart reading skills - but is probably the easiest passage of those listed. Spring tides can run fairly fast, but the smallest neaps are barely noticeable. There are a couple of places you need to be careful - but these are clearly marked on the chart. Don't miss the pies in the pub at Torksey. All of the above is my personal opinion, others will probably have had different experiences.
    2 points
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  25. When I was doing my ONC and HNC in Electrical Engineering at night school, we had a trip to the local sewage works to see how they were actually not only self sufficient in electricity but actually feeding back into the Grid (this was I think - the early 70's). The leccy was generated by methane powered generators. Also they used to sell "at the gate" self-seeded water melons and tomatoes grown from the sewage sludge (the human digestive system doesn't break down melon or tomato seeds, so these were 'secondhand' tomato and melons).
    2 points
  26. Then make a more stable step!! You purport to being handy, so it can't be that difficult for you.
    2 points
  27. So now it's about saving electricity? Where is this coming from? Water falls from the skies, and some of it ends up in the water system, I don't use much water at the elsan as I pee in my pooper, so it comes out fairly liquid, loo paper and all. Other countries have different WCs, a UK WCs can cope with toilet paper, and nowadays most have dual flush. I don't think the elsan uses a lot of electricity, though the building I use is heated to stop the water pipes freezing in the integrated WC
    2 points
  28. Once again, it is not hazardous waste. Further information.. https://www.principalhygiene.co.uk/clinical-waste-faq This the very last time I will research something you clearly prefer to ignore. You are on your own with your sh1t stirring.
    2 points
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  33. Not entirely so. Present day agriculture uses a lot of fossil fuels in making fertilizers and in transport. There was one surprising study that reckoned that electric assist bikes used less fossil fuel to run than conventional pedal bikes for the same miles travelled. Electricity from a partly renewable grid supply, like we now have, to charge the batteries supposedly used less fossil fuel than the extra food required to keep the pedal cyclist going over the same distances. Depends what you eat, but fueling your cycling with beef steaks and the like is particularly bad. So yes, the answer is to stop eating, or breathing. Who's going to go first? ? Jen
    2 points
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  35. Not canals but definitely boating. Today in 2018 we were on board Star Flyer in Cienfuegos waiting to set sail for a voyage along Cuba’s southern coast.
    2 points
  36. Human waste is not "hazardous waste". https://www.gov.uk/how-to-classify-different-types-of-waste/healthcare-and-related-wastes
    2 points
  37. I'm quite confident that it's not illegal but that is not the point; surely if you choose a composting toilet you need some arrangement for composting the output. I would not have had one (despite the convienience) if I was not in a position to arrange composting.
    2 points
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  40. Forget electric drives and future proofing, get a boat that's right for now, it can always be converted to something else in the future (and most likely by somebody else). Unless you have crystal balls "future proofing" is an impossible myth, I think the concept was invented by marketing men to sell very expensive PC's to people who like to call themselves "early adopters" etc. The network of charging points on the canal is currently not even at the planning stage so how can you design a boat to suit it? And by the time 2030 or 2050 or whenever arrives the technology will be very different and a lot cheaper than what we have now. Most people sell their boat on within 5 or 10 years, a quirky electric boat will likely still be worth much less than a diesel at this stage. And if you aspire to a high quality craftsman fitout then do purchase a suitably attractive and upmarket shell, otherwise you will, as they say, just be polishing a turd. ..............Dave
    2 points
  41. Probably an under estimate. As Kermit once said 'its not easy being green'. I don't know costings for a narrowboat but we are in the process of having a 60 X 10 widebeam built. We wanted to go electric and looked for several months into the various options both parallel and serial. A Beta Hybrid system would have cost us £35000 more than the conventional equivalent. That will buy us a lot of diesel between now and at 74, our eventual demise.
    2 points
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  44. Most of us find that after buying a boat, you just have to "cut your cloth accordingly"
    1 point
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  46. They have built houses with composting toilets, eco homes I read about it in a hospital waiting room
    1 point
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  48. Eaton Hastings, Oxon. Aka the thinner bendy Thames bit. And it's a club fender I think.
    1 point
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