Leaderboard

In our village in which most houses use oil (no gas) we have a scheme where every couple of months we place a bulk order with whichever supplier has the best offer. The tanker delivers to individual houses, we pay individually to the supplier, and get the bulk price (usually for around 10,000 L). Typically get at least a 5 p/ L saving over a 500 L individual order which is well-worthwhile. It's a bit of hassle for the person that compiles the order, but he's happy to do it and with everyone giving their needs by email it only involves a handful of phone calls to the four or so local suppliers.

GJW do good live aboard insurance and have a good reputation for paying out, I have been with them 20+ years.

Are there actually any liveaboard specific insurance policies? I've been living on boats for nearly 20 years and I've never had liveaboard insurance. When I did once ask my insurer whether living aboard made any difference to my policy or premium they said it didn't. They weren't really interested in that. If anything I think they probably view liveaboards as lower risk as they know the boat is more likely to be actively maintained, especially over winter. I've only been with 3 or 4 different insurers so maybe others have "living on board" written into their policies? I imagine there might be some difference if you have a proper residential mooring.

Being cynical, my view is its best to put all your effort into not needing to claim, then buying the cheapest policy possible in order to get a license.

If you are in the same boat, you can play @Captain Pegg right now! Sorry, couldn't resist.😀 Welcome to the forum by the way.

Not read the link but a few years ago when buying antifreeze myself, I found the price varied according to the concentration. The cheapest tended to be "pre-diluted", "for your convenience" meaning you were buying mostly water, with 30% antifreeze in it. This may be why your cheap stuff is cheap, because you need to use it neat.

And a surveyor will include so many caveats and get-out clauses his opinion will be meaningless. Best, unless you're rich enough to buy a new boat (obviously from a reputable builder), not buy a boat at all... And yet... Here I am, still afloat after thirty years.

I watched a fascinating program on Channel 4 last weekend where a group of scientists tried to find out what was happening in the Arctic by spending a year on an ice floe (they cheated a little by basing themselves on an ice-breaker). The polar ice cap is definitely melting which means the Arctic is warming faster than the average for the whole world. It was called Arctic Drift: a Year in the Ice.

That's a cruciform key, and they are much higher security than a star key like this: They can be opened with a screwdriver as @MtB said. The star key (or rack bolt key) is only much cop for single sided locks. They used to be quite common as an extra lock inside double glazing. Useless on the outside.

We love the gas heating on the van. It runs near on silent, much quieter then the diesel heating that we had on the boat. Mind you gas heating wasn't really an option on the boat due to the limited size of the gas locker only taking Camping Gaz 2.7kg bottles which were and still are an astronomical price. They must be around £40 a refill now.

Sis-in-law says: National Grid are working on plans to boost the existing connections from Scotland to England using Interconnectors from Coast to coast. They were calling them ‘boot straps’. One will be from Peterhead to Drax. They will officially be called Green link 1 and 2 and are expected to get planning permission in 2022/23. National Grid don’t own the electricity system in Scotland but they run it for Scottish & Southern. We really rely on wind and solar panels and NG have to manage constraints like frequency in set parameters. So I can see why they had to turn on gas stations. I guess managing frequency in Scotland meant they had to turn off wind farms to balance the system.