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Which, if you are going to the elsan every few days anyway, seems to negate all the effort of separation in the first place. Mind you, "tree huggers" do seem to occasionally struggle with logic !!

I remember doing Atherstone back in the mists of time, without vollies turning up and interfering with my peaceful and unhurried boating. Those were the days.....

This morning, lock 13 W&B. There's just a higher quality of graffiti near Worcester!

Good for you, another rare land owning separating toilet user... but it's notable that you and others extolling the virtues of separating toilets still avoid addressing the wee issue unless pressed and don't have an acceptable practical answer. Or do you transport 3 months of festering urine to your land too? I suggest the vast majority of liveaboards are not land owners or they wouldn't live on a boat. IMO it's irresponsible to encourage people to install toilets with no acceptable means of disposing their waste products.

That’s sadly what’s now wrong with the world… “you’ve got insurance so why worry”….. much the same as I was told by plod after having £40k worth of kit nicked from a site…. Somehow it’s always someone else that pays….in reality we all pay through higher premiums.

Every time you mention ceramic bowls an pump out tanks and £1,000+ and £100's on maintenance you sound more and more desperate. You are over egging it. e.g. I'm a liveaboard and have a cassette toilet and spare cassette that was on the boat when I bought it 5 years ago. So far it's cost £0 to maintain and £0 to empty it. Your £100 home made bog seems expensive to me. I suspect anyone with a cassette toilet is laughing at your attempts to justify your choice on cost. You tip your pee god knows where, put your poo in dog bins? Street waste bins? because there is no "green" way for you to deal with it and your toilet cost you a comparative fortune. Cassettes, even flushing ones use almost zero water so you can't win there either. You're loosing the argument on all fronts, in fact I suggest you get a cassette toilet so at least you'll be able to stop dumping your piss and shit in the local environment. No need to thank me.

I always get given a box of various real ales at Christmas by several people, none of whom have noticed I hate the stuff. Luckily my wife likes it, and whisky, which was my tipple of choice until it struck me that I was up to two or three bottles a day and it possibly wasn't too healthy. I haven't touched the stuff since. If we get invited to a party I make sure I'm driving as it saves bothering with explanations. I was never an alcoholic, I just could never see the point of stopping drinking until the bottle was empty.

Alcohol eh? The government approved heavy drug of choice. Rather a lot of people equate how much fun they're having with how drunk they are, it's a fact! Then some of them find they can't enjoy themselves without being drunk. Then some of those become alcoholics who can't even function without it. A slippery slope for some. I used to love getting completely fall down drunk when I was a youngster, in the pub every night for 5-6 pints of real ale was just normal and even at college I had a couple every lunchtime. Got bored of it eventually.. or maybe it was when I had kids... or maybe it was when the weekend hangover lasted all week. Don't drink at all these days or go to the pub to be bored stupid by drunk people who think they are amusing. Sober people should probably be banned from pubs, we ruin the atmosphere.

The magnets would be better employed stuck on your oil filter can. They are doing nothing on a fire extinguisher. Needle in the green? Just give them a good shaking every month or so.

Give 'em a shake now and again and they are fine. Just a handy place to store magnets which "like" to be stuck on something known as a keep to stop them loosing their power. ?

Maybe it’s because of my day job but I have a rule of no alcohol till moored up & finished for the day. ….friends I’ve taken on day trips don’t see why but if the worst happens and I end up being called to a coroners court Id rather say that I wasn’t impaired by alcohol…if that’s boating or running a show.

Do you think any composter will take their liquid waste to the elsan?

You appear to be forgetting that whilst the solid waste cannot be disposed down an Elsan point, liquid waste can.

It ceased to float.

Now now don't go spoiling the fun for grumbling grumpy old men. They are never happy till they are miserable. I've just accelerated my compost bin btw.

I’m sure I read in an old gardening book that ‘old men’s urine’ is particularly good for fruit trees. I used to use it as my excuse when I went out in the back garden. We had apple and plum trees. I wasn’t old then though, but thought it good practice, saves flushing a loo.

A friend of mine is a retired copper who if prompted after a pint or three, will happily regale you with tales of how few real coppers there are nowadays. There were weekend shifts sometimes when he was just one of three on duty, expected to police the whole of Berkshire from Slough to Hungerford. And how making just one arrest would result in the arresting officer spending a day or more in the office filling in paperwork so they were always reluctant to arrest anyone, as it was such a ball-ache for them. Really quite disturbing and the reason he was delighted to get out when he did.

One really must go a bit further when taking the piss. Some drivers speed etc etc, that doesn't mean we stop all driving.

I'm happy to address the wee issue for me as a yachtie, it goes into the sea. Far better than our sea toilet where the whole lot goes into the sea! It's worth remembering, that even if you pump-out you can't afford to feel too smug, because in 2020, raw sewage was released into UK rivers on more than 400,000 occasions from sewage 'treatment' plants, amounting to 3 million hours of sewage release according to the BBC news website. That puts into perspective the tipping of a few litres of sterile wee into the undergrowth well back from the waterside.

A few years ago you could not make all male/all female bookings. I'm not sure when that changed, but it looks like most hire companies. permit it now. It all comes down to money. The 10 / 12 berth boats are nice little earners. Out of interest, I just checked online how much a 10 berth ABC boat would cost next weekend. £1550 for 3 nights. I wonder if the hire companies insurance covers them for the loss of a boat in circumstances like this? I mean, who in their right mind would hire out 3 boats to a stag do and not expect trouble?

Why is that farcical? Have you been the victim of a burglary or theft? Maybe if you had arrived at your parents house to find it ransacked as I have you might appreciate some effort to catch the culprits…or perhaps if that’s not going to happen we should be allowed to carry out our own justice…when my kit was stolen and we said to plod we and the local hells angels which one of my crew was a member would sort it then we were told we would be arrested…..

Maybe if the bins are low enough you could take a direct shit in one. You could carry your own two foot plank about, with hole in so you can put it across the top of the bin and sit without the worry of getting your arse stuck.

Sounds about right, but you're missing the efficiency generated by adding in private sector incentives (the NHS fires the rower before hiring him back via a newly-formed private contracting agency specialising in rowers with NHS experience that's run by the Director of Steering's old schoolfriend at twice the previous annual cost) "Creating a market for canal service innovation" consisting of paying inflated fees to contractors with good relations with government ministers might be the best hope of the CRT keeping its grant though...

Almost certainly 1 paid CRT employee and 5 volunteers, especially when you see the ages they look. Something similar to this appeared on Facebook a few years ago when a group of us (all volunteers) were cutting the offside vegetation. We'd moved to the towpath to stop for some lunch and a nearby moorer photographed us standing around. He wrote something derogatory like 'this is what we pay our licence fee for'. Some people seize every opportunity to have a go at CRT and I agree much of the time it's justified (especially with the erection of unnecessary signs). And I have to admit I did find this photo of the sign erection funny 🙂. But a lot of CRT haters take it seriously and really do think it's their licence fees being wasted.

I wouldn't rely on the police response in case of break-in or theft. The woman whose boat was stolen says that they told her they were too busy to attend , even though she knew where the boat was and who was on it. CCTV images aren't much use if no-one is going to look for anyone. I suppose they might help your insurance claim. If you stay out of city areas the boat will almost certainly be ok. Probably. I got a load of abuse on FB (not surprisingly) for suggesting that dumping tens of thousands quids worth of boat and contents on a towpath was about as sensible as buying a TV for a grand, leaving it on the pavement outside your house, going on holiday and expecting it to be there when you get back. And every scrote who has ever nicked a bike has a battery powered angle grinder these days. You simply cannot make a boat secure. The more steel they have to jemmy to get in, the more it'll cost you to repair. And making it look smart just makes it worth breaking into - only an idiot would bother with an old tub like mine... but they have, twice. Think how much dosh you've spent on the boat, and how much your licence costs. Then risk it all by skimping on a fraction of that in marina costs for a fortnight here and there. I simply don't understand the mentality of it.

I think I prefer the 1977 version.

Sorry, the word "farcical" was used ironically, as I thought would be obvious from the context. Judging by the response of other coppers, they think it's a daft idea, which, in view of staffing levels and the virtual improbability of catching a culprit, it probably is. If you want a decent police force, properly trained etc, you have to pay for it, not cut numbers endlessly and then try to patch it ip by arming "specials" with tasers.

Or the poor addicts who have to steal to get their fix, or the drunks with "mentol helf" who are really not responsible but are sick. Perhaps they will learn. Eventually.

I guess it depends how far under it went….I do hope the hire crew are made to pay for it all including the recovery/loss of hire income and repairs.

I ve seen many yootoob vids on this subject and theyre all bollox. If I seriously wanted to rejuvenate a flooded battery I would empty out the acid and fill each cell with ammonium formate solution. (lead sulphate is soluble in ammonium formate) and then bung the whole thing in an ultrasonic bath for a while to aid the dissolution process. Empty out each cell and repeat. At a rough guess 3 iterations would be enough to remove most of the lead sulphate. Then refill with new battery acid. This won't replace lead shed from the plates but if your battery is still heavy that won't be a problem. It also wont work if the plates have warped and shorted causing failure which would be a problem. Never tried it, probably never will because my current set of cheap and cheerful flooded batteries have just done their 4 th full time liveaboard winter and I'm in the rag em in bits and then replace brigade. Otherwise, as has been suggested, give em an aspirin, and take a couple y self.

That possibly depends on how many mates of various MP’s have vested interests in heat pumps and the like….and I mean MP’s of all sides!

Bagging dog shit was originally invented by dogs as a way of ensuring that their DNA is protected in the event of a silly end-of-world scenario which would probably be caused by humans. Dogs are clever. They realise that some humans would survive and they would probably have the technology available and seek ways to recreate canine companions. It's entirely probable that this can be done from waste products. Preservation is key here.

One word! Don't

Advantages of the BCN over Venetian canals. Can any one think of more? Any one can become a commercial boat skipper in Birmingham. Gondolier jobs are a closed shop, passed down in families. The smell of sewage wafting over the Venice canals. The smell of skunk wafting over the Birmingham canals. Global warming and sea level rise will doom Venice to sink below the waves. The Birmingham level is at 453 feet. Sipping a very expensive coffee on St Mark's Square, overlooking the Grand Canal, compared with sipping a cheaper pint of beer in the Tap and Spile, overlooking Gas Street Basin. Venice has the Campanile overlooking the Grand Canal. Birmingham has the Post Office Tower overlooking the Farmer's Bridge Flight. Venice has cruise ships in the Grand Canal. Birmingham is protected from wide beam monstrosities by flights of narrow locks on all the approaches. Venice is on the Adriatic, so sea life can get in to the canals. In Birmingham, sea life is safely segregated from the canals in the Sea Life Centre. No risk of your boat being pulled down to its doom by a kraken, or damaged in a dolphin collision. Listening to the beautiful, melodious Brummie accent, compared with the jarring drone of Venician Italian. Your Watermate key won't open any Elsan facility in Venice. The artistic endevours of Birmingham's many painters are displayed in public on every canal side wall, or other vertical surface, not hidden away in galleries, churches and museums as in Venice. Venice has no tunnels, or locks on their canals at all. In high summer, on some parts of the BCN, you can go all day without seeing another boat on the move. In high summer, Venice is so overcrowded, the authorities want to limit the numbers allowed in. Birmingham has never been a major naval power, or used its boats to carry fire and sword to other cities. The overblown lines of a gondolier, versus the elegant lines of a narrowboat. Venice might have the Bridge of Sighs over a canal, but Birmingham has Spaghetti Junction soaring over its canals.