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Col, tie your boat up properly, sit back and enjoy the weather.

Having to drop in and out of gear is ridiculous. Any boat should go fine at 2mph and I see no reason to go much slower past boats unless someone is actually in the process of tying up or, like here on the Caldon, the canal is barely two boats wide. Or it's six in the morning & I'm trying to be quiet, though I do wonder if they'd rather I went quicker and got further away faster... And if someone's permanently moored in the middle of a mile or two of linear moorings, tough. Set springs or buy a bungalow.

If you've moored such that it requires boats to move so slowly that they have to constantly drop into neutral, then you either need to moor somewhere else or moor properly. Consideration works both ways. One who understands boatmanship won't have a problem mooring more sensibly.

Brentford long ago. 1920s?

Not had much time to update as I'm back at work having viewed the boat first thing and it's 120 miles in the wrong direction to work! It's a lovely boat. Obviously well cared for and kept immaculately. I understand the owners' used it a lot but kept on top of it. Nothing alarming found - false bottoms of cupboards etc pulled out, everything's dry. Paint is in very good order for the year. Negatives are the galley. It's smaller than it appears on the photos and not a lot of cupboard space. Same with storage in general for liveaboard use, it's lacking but I'm sure fine for leisure. And although it seems trivial, there's nowhere for a washing machine to go. I got one of the guys from the workshop over and he had a proper good look - the only place he reckoned on was removing the pretend stove at the stern but even then, not ideal and no obvious route for the water. Unfortunately it's a no go I'm afraid and the search continues. Certainly not put off by a Gardener 2LW though. I did smack my head numerous times in the engine room cos I'm 6ft. Was good to meet Bumble in the flesh though too.

Someone has to do all the work there...

Same again today with possible thunderstorms SE and Midlands later.....back to the paddle boards... Oh, and 5.30 ish am this morning....

Oh sorry I meant I posted it on the wrong thread, I meant to post it on the one I had created not hijack a thread about a TV programme telling everyone about a boat I'd bought.

Or might be M5 (5mm diameter) with a thread pitch of (I think) 0.8mm. Assuming of course that it is a metric thread. X 20mm. Thread length on pan head screws is measured from the bottom of the head.

This is a subject without an answer. There are so many moored boats in unsuitable places that a deep draughted boat will move them anyway. Speed is in the eye of the offended person. When we loaded on a canal like the Oxford fishermen were always shouting about speed. Some chance of even 3 miles an hour but we shifted a lot of water just going along. I used to drop out of gear and then reverse up to the complainant which took some time to ask him what he said, then getting under way again would stir the mud up. Learn to tie up or move.

Drill out the hole on the lever. Get a local model engineer to make up a fitting like the standard one, but with a longer pin to suit the thicker lever. Or screw a meccano strip to the lever using a bolt into the tapped hole, then attach the standard fitting to the meccano strip.

Interesting aside to this is that I found my adblocker is happy to block specified files, so I can have a blank space in place of avatars that otherwise would upset my karma. Sorry, @bizzard @Jen-in-Wellies

Need to buy a better boat

No pressure then 🙂 On this day in 2005 River Clyde by Bowling Basin

Ah. Your getting to the bottom of it.

Love to know, so how many times have you shouted back the following.then? CANT GO ANY SLOWER !!!!!!! {this is is dropping in and outer of forward reverse gear that difficult ?? or is this a a growing art now days. this isn’t just hirers, but all boat owners as well same old, same old I suppose the faint screams of a blustering red face man, who doesn't understand boatman ship Big Col

On this day in 2002 Tixall Wide S&W Compare 23Nov2003/23Nov2011 12Jun2004 11Oct2011 3Nov2013 15Jul2014 10Jun2018 19Mar2019 25Oct2019 24Mar2020 22Jun2020 30Aug2020 9Sep2020 posted19Mar2020 And So To Bed

Another option is if you have a 5mm drill bit and a drill to hand. Make a hole in a bit of wood. If the screw will push in snug it is M5. If there is a lot of slop it is M4. If it won't fit at all it is M6.

I've taken the liberty of extracting a couple of bits of tape measure and laying them over the major diameter and threads of the screw,, with no scaling then blowing up the detail. Definitely M5, not M4, or M6. Definitely 10 turns makes 8mm, so 0.8mm pitch. Jen

I've just removed and measured a pan head machine screw from one of our kitchen drawer handles - M4 x 0. 7 x 25mm. ETA: Gaairman kitchen units btw. Nod to Stan Boardman there.

The 4G intertubes dongle thing has not been a happy gadget these past few days, slowing down the connection speed and occasionally stopping completely. It was very warm to the touch and clearly the heat in the boat was not doing the little electronic gubbins inside a lot of good. I have a bad history with these things, once destroying a previous dongle by leaving it in a south facing window on the hottest day of that year, which wasn't as hot as it is now. Fortunately, I had a small spare 12V fan, purchased by mistake for another project. Also fortunately, the ancient miniITX PC I use on the boat has a 12V supply easily accessible. A few minutes work with connectors, soldering iron, solder, heat shrink tubing, wire and a couple of cable ties and the dongle now has fan cooling! Seems to be working too. Jen

Difficult? Not only grammatically impossible, but physically so as well.

It was a bot cooler this morning. A mist had settled on the fields and pond here. That has soon burned off though and it is boiling hot again already. Hoping for one of the storms to come over this way later and cool things off a bit!!

Hold up with the doom, although nothing Alan has said is wrong. Colour of oil? If black it's engine oil, so for an inland boat Alan's diagnosis is probably correct. If amber, then it may be hydraulic gearbox oil and that will come from a split oil cooler. A few inland boats and a lot of sea boats might have an engine oil cooler, so that might be the source of engine oil except such boats are more likely to have indirect raw water cooling, so any engine oil is more likely to end up coming out of the exhaust. Make and model of engine, type of boat, type of cooling system, make and model of gearbox to illuminate the above.

When we used it seemed like the gearbox was making a lot of noise and the gate hesitated now and again (perhaps it was getting momentarily jammed?) but that still doesn't explain how a underpowered slow lift and decent would jigger the gears. I could see how it may jigger the motor.

Just wondered how you intended to get power in December and January ? You are unlikely to be able to fit sufficient solar panels onto the roof of a narrowboat (are you narrow or a fatty ?) to be self sufficinet and your existing 600w will not do anything much to recharge your batteries during the Winter 4 months. Doubling to 1200w will make an impression but (guesstimate) it would probably only provide 50% of your daily requirements so you'd be running your engine at least an hour per day. A week of overcast, rain or snow and you'll be back to running your engine 2+ hours per day. I consider Solar to be a Summer option only with a small contribution in Spring and Autumn. You will need to find alternatves for the 3 or 4 Winter months - either take a mooring in a Marina, run a small generator, or run your engine. ANYTHING you do get from the solar is an unplanned bonus. Running your engine not only charges the batteries but provided hot water 'free' - what method of water heating and central heating do you have as an alternative to running the engine.

Jasmine was launched in 1964. Build at a boat builders in brownhills by my dad. I have been searching for her for years and I am so happy to see her still in one piece. If you would like more info I will be happy to help. I have loads of pictures etc… caron