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If it helps one person embarking on a sailaway project to avoid one bad decision then it will have been worth my while doing this "rant". I agree its not light reading, I'm no writer. If reading it was compulsory I would not write it but its not. And its not as bad as the personal invective in the Political section. I'm a little disappointed that it is Blackrose of all people choosing to cast solid round objects.

Rod here. Me and Penny want to do the Lancaster canal in late September but are confused about the Ribble link and in particular Savick brook. Penny assures me it'll be fine, with plenty of water. She tells me the first cut is the deepest, though she does have misgivings about the half tide barrier and stormy waters. Mrs Rod wants to park at Penny Street basin, whilst I am attracted to the Lune aqueduct. All we need is a friend to lend a guiding hand. Can you hear me? Can you hear me? Anyway, I don't want to talk about it. Thanks for all the help. You're in my heart. X

1) My Wife 2) All sense of dignity

Me. Through the ice, on Xmas day in 1986, after a lunchtime pub session at Cosgrove. Didn't spill a drop, all they could see was an arm holding a tankard sticking up through the hole in the ice. Legendary... 😉

Is it really you, Rod? I need a reason to believe it is, and not just another forumite in disguise. If it is a disguise, you wear it well

I think that many see replies from experience boaters as negative, but I think many are trying to ensure that new potential boaters go into with their eyes wide open and do not spend tight resources on near worthless boats. Only today, we had a potential new boater who did not seem to know about CaRT's conditions you have to comply with if you register as having no home mooring. We recently had a chap who bought a boat with a less common engine that early in his journey to his new moorings refused to start. If he had consulted earlier, he might have bought a boat with a more common engine. So it goes on. Find out all you can about the CaRT requirements. Learn all you can about batteries and charging because that is all too often a MAJOR problem area for new boaters, and try to get a grasp about how all the boat systems work. Also, don't hesitate to get the forum's opinion of any boats you are interested in. Then you will have a much better chance of having a good outcome, do not take comments that do not accord with your views as negative until you have given them some thought.

A good outcome, I wish all developments were as fruitful for the canal. Well done, dad would be proud.

I think lots are interest only, not repayment. So in reality the owner is renting off the lender and reletting to the tenant

Its simple. Moor up. Light your phone. if it comes up 3g light your fire if it comes up 5 g you light your fire in the dark. You will be in lunnun anyway surrounded by boats charging batteries with old engines and burning ‘ substances’ not always on the stove. if it comes up 4g you are in a sensible area. And are a tightfist who hasnt updated their phone. Light your fire if you have 3 g ist principles or not if you are a bit 5 g ish. Those only using wifi are exempt from all regulation, unless it is in the 3 days before or after nov 5 th when the entire uks particulate output is tripled to celebrate an attempt to interfere in the tax affairs of parliamentarians. Its quite plain.

A properly designed wood burning stove with preheated secondary air will burn clean once it is hot enough. 593 degrees C seems to be the figure for this. Once the firebox gets to this temperature and is being fed by air preheated by the stove itself the combustion process consumes all of the volatiles in the smoke. I've got a diy fire made like this on one of my boats and it has a 2 metre flue. Once it is up to temperature there is no smoke at all. At the moment it is only ticking over so there is some smoke but if I need more heat I can get it going more. This a problem with a lot of fires on boats. They are too big. What you want to have is a fire which is properly specified for the space needing heating. Otherwise you get a lot of inefficient burning. Also if your flue diameter is too large you can't keep a hot flue. A hot flue is one of the key requirements of an efficient fire. If the flue is losing too much heat then the fire will not perform as efficiently.

So my claim to dumbness, arrived at Marina late at night, desperate to get everything out of car into boat and sorted, bags on each arm, carrying two sets of keys, then numbnuts tries to underdo catch zip, without putting any thing down, how's that ever going to work and it didn't, both sets of keys, found their way through the decking and into cold and darkness, as they do, eventually saved by magnet fishing. I now have a lanyard!!!!!

I have, now I know what it is!

And that root cause could be easily addressed with a direct wealth tax. Of course, any politician advocating such a thing would be thoroughly vilified in the press and many, many people would obediently genuflect to that vilification, all the while telling themselves that they've made up their own minds.

Rod seems to be going though some changes recently. The lifelong Tory is now calling for a a Labour govt. I guess that old heart of his realises he can't stay forever young. But he wears it well even though he doesn't want to talk about it.

You will be fine in September but it might rain so take an old raincoat that won't let you down. It is easy to miss the entrance to Savick Brook, so I'll PM you a photo, every picture tells a story. If you get it wrong there will never be a dull moment.

Why not join the Refleks Diesel Stove FB group. There's a wealth of information on there. Looking after and servicing a Refleks is very simple.

Thankyou for a honest, useful and informative post. Please keep writing despite any naysayers.

the gypsy lady was built by John Hawkins of D & D engineering the challenges we faced were the sheets we used were 3mtr long and 1.5tr and our challenge was how do we do this without it looking like a patchwork quilt Along with that how will a diesel engine work within a plastic boat? cooling, prop shaft exit, weight, the strength of the hull of the boat, and ballast also there are a lot of long flat sides how would the roof react to expansion and contraction (heat of the sun and freezing temperatures|) 50mm or 2" over 12mtrs from freezing to around 20 C we needed curved edges on the boat mainly the back corners of the boat how can we achieve this on the bow of the boat we need this to make the boat aesthetically pleasing another challenge was how we fit windows to a plastic boat do we use safety glass as with most boats or can we use polycarbonate another issue was plastic is very slippy how can we overcome this for decking ( we used a product called safetech) lot of people think HDPE cannot be painted however we have a primer with a chemical additive that bonds to HDPE making the floor was a challenge as the plastic has to be welded on both sides so no turning over we made jigs and formers for the oven for various parts of the boat the roof was partially designed to allow it to expand ( every 5c increase is equal to 1mm expansion per meter over 12mtr=from freezing to 20c 50mm) we had to look at a simple steel structure to support the base we used an h section of steel beams and is a flat-bottomed boat we now thought we would have an issue with ballast as HDPE is very buoyant and floats we increased the underfloor area to allow for this as said previously we are looking at the best solution for ballast the advance I believe we have achieved so far has proved it is possible to build a boat of this size (of course there are still things to learn) with more investigation this should lend itself to electric propulsion also, a third of the weight of a steel boat needs less than half the power to push it forward never needing blacking every 2 years we have proved something of this size for a plastic boat can be made to look excatly like a traditional boat but this is environmentally friendly moving forward hopefully we could make any size that anyone wished ( it could even just be a hull etc ) if anyone has calculations etc by all means il say this again you more than welcome to come to take a look at this for yourself as we are based in Leeds or even if we had a zoom chat to show you where we are at with it im open to everyone's help on this and appreciate all comments

It might help if you could get some sort of assessment of the boat and it's potential as a liveaboard. Living on board in winter without a good stove, good insulation, and maybe a Webasto type diesel heater as back up could be pretty desperate. The cost of living on board and the extra hassle factor in winter can indeed be a deal breaker. It's easy enough in summer when daylight is not a limiting factor and temperatures are moderate. When people buy a boat they usually get a hull survey which means it has to be hauled out in order to measure the integrity of the hull, this might be a starting point before you buy anything for this vessel. The surveyor could be tasked with reporting on the fit out and it's potential. When I mention potential, I am including the potential for draining your savings! There are lots of Youtube vlogs, which will give you some ideas. There are some fit out vlogs: if you have to do any major work, the general thinking is that it will cost twice as much as you might think and take three times as long. No matter how much money you spend on an old boat, it will never morph in to a new boat.

I think you need to give serious and early consideration to whether to look for a mooring in a marina, or be out on the cut. Even if you take a CRT mooring out on the cut, it will not have an electricity supply like a marina generally will. This difference is crucial because out on the cut you will have to generate ALL your own electricity and this can turn out to be a total deal breaker if you underestimate the task. Learning how to generate (and store) enough leccy in a socially responsible way is a long, steep and expensive learning curve that defeats many eventually, and these boaters either give up or take marina mooring with a shore supply. Marinas generally have all manner of facilities that make living aboard easy (showers, washing machines, pump-out and Elsan, water supply to every boat, car park) but about from the cost this ties you to living in a marina which might not be the 'life of freedom' you envisage. So think about it at this stage, and consider in detail how you will generate and store your leccy if you decide to reject the marina way of life.

Decision 013. A Sizeable Well deck. GOOD. I chose to go for a largeish well deck, big enough to get four folding chairs in, easily, with sociability in mind. A feature which I didn't give much thought to was the floor. It was not flat but gently curved so that any water drained nicely into the scuppers at the rear corners. The curves were not so big as to bother any furniture. I elected to have no brackets of any sort in this area as this would have committed me to particular usage eg where benches were, and I wanted complete flexibility. At the bow was a conventional locker specially designed in most boats to make getting gas bottles in and out difficult. Since I had provision for the bottles at the stern, I aimed to use this for general storage and I specified that it was to have no drain holes to the exterior as these would be unnecessary as gas drainage was not required. This surprised Colecraft but they did it. One problem with the locker that I discovered much later was that the fold-down lid, though very elegant, was in no way watertight. It took great effort later to devise a way of keeping water out when usng leaky locks of which there are one or two on the canal system. Colecraft also asked if I wanted to have a cratch cover, I'm not sure why. I replied, no, there are ugly things. They smiled and said "You will!". I was adamant at the time but they were right. The bow itself was a standard Colecraft bow, and I like its functional shape and the solidity of its design. I do not like the style of bow that looks as if somebody has pinched it with a pair of pliers. One other thing I specified was that the transom?? the edge bit of the bow locker was to be horizontal not bowed, which was a bit non-standard for Colecraft but they did it. Decision 014. Accept The Standard Colecraft Hull. GOOD This is just an excuse to comment on the generous and excellent fully welded rubbing strakes, the epoxy blacking, the 2 coats of epoxy paint on the upper works etc. Colecraft did not black the baseplate and did not think it was worth doing. If I'd wanted it I'm sure they would done it at a price. Every apsect of the hull looked strongly-built. Decision 010B. Tiller. GOOD An afterthought. I specified that I wanted the tiller bar to be exactly horizontal, not poking upwards like some you see, and I was delighted with the result. Decision 015. Hull Holes. BAD. As a newby to canal boats, my early decisions were tempered by a belief that cutting holes in the steel of the boat was difficult and only to be done by professionals. Now of course I know that its easy-peasy. So I thought I had to get Colecraft to put holes in for draining the sinks, shower etc in, and deciding where they were to go was difficult because I didn't have the experience to know where the interior fitting would end up. Colecraft put them in where I asked and most of them ended up unused because they were in the wrong place. Decision 016. Windows. BAD. VERY, VERY, BAD. This is a biggy. I wanted lots of windows because I wanted to see out as I cruised. Because I thought metal cutting difficult I got Colecraft to cut the holes for them. I chose 9 windows, all 24" deep which is deeper than many, being 2 x 4ft sliders, 4 x 4ft hoppers, and 2 x 3ft hoppers and 1 x 18" with no opening for the bathroom. But the big decision was whose windows to go with. The cost was immense so changing later would be very expensive again. And Colecraft needed to know in order to know what shape holes to cut. I plumped for Channelglaze screw-in because the boat next to me in the Colecraft yard was using them. Going for screw-in was a huge mistake. This called for hundreds of holes to be drilled and tapped in freezing February weather which was so exhausting. I only broke two taps! Another time I would buy Wesley Marine (?) clip-in windows and have all of them in in one weekend. And the number of windows was a big mistake. Extra windows can easily be cut later. Next time I'll have no windows cut initially. The window holes were made by hand, not by a CNC type operation. This meant that they were not exact, and it was necessary to line up the windows when fitting them to find where to drill the holes. Finding a horizontal in this situation when fitting heavy windows single-handed from a stepladder was very hard. But they didn't look wrong when I had finished. In the long run the position of the windows was satisfactory. But more on that later.

The obvious solution would be to give up power boats and buy a sailing boat instead.

I accept that a CC non moving boat life could be very cheap if you like to sit there with no TV, eating value beans on Tesco value bread with no butter, drinking lukewarm stove kettle tea with no milk, placing a maximum of 2 nuggets of coal a day on your stove. Moving rarely and praying for sunshine so your solar panel gives you another evening with your single LED bulb going. ...and yes, people like this exist, but that's pretty much all they do.

Yes, I think that's what irritates me slightly about all these boaty bloggers - they're all relative newbies. Good luck to them I guess, but most of them seem to know much more about making YouTube videos than they do about boats.

They can't see it through the smoke