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Yep, it’s quite common, more so on newer boats and lifeboats. There’s a few off the shelf systems you can buy, the most common is probably Pythondrive. You get a thrust bearing which bolts to the hull and takes the lateral force from the propeller, and a short shaft with car type CV joints on either end to connect the engine to the propshaft. The engine is then free to move in more axes (perpendicular to the propshaft) and the mounts can be softer as they dont need to take any thrust forces.

Basic wiring loom installed, upper walls insulated, upper wall panels all cut to size and the 2 bulkheads prepared and temporarily fitted in place.

The modern way of mounting engine and transmission in most narrowboats is horrid. Shoved right up the back as far as possible to give as much cabin space as possible, with no room for decent proper marine flexible universally jointed drive with thrust bearing to allow the engine to move at will and not be restrained by Poxy centaflex units and the like that don't do much.

This is a tricky one, prices can vary and quality can too, but if you buy from marinas it’s all pretty much of a muchness and of course you’ll pay a couple of quid a bag more (maybe) I’ve been budgeting £160 for the month, and that’s worked for me, We’ve not had a very cold winter, if we had had then I might have had to spend another £40 on that cold month, but it’s felt quite mild at times and I’ve let the fire out at night and not relit until following evening, where as when it’s really cold you keep the fire on 24 hours a day. past years I’ve scavenged wood here and there but didn’t bother this year, in a nutshell: expect to double your budget for fuel, oh, you used to able to set light to proper coal easily with a rizzla paper and a twig, now nothing wants to burn!

Actually meeting the requirements listed does not seem to be an actual requirement.

Due to my partner working in Manchester (even with me WFH) we are continuous cruisers who do the northern circuit (or whatever it's called) each year without issue of water or moving the car around. Just means you occasionally have longer days. To clarify northern circuit, Rochdale > Leeds and Liverpool > Calder & Hebble (or the opposite way if feeling fruity) We aren't anything special in what we do, so can't see why others couldn't do it.

When you've got the boat you can get this sorted easily in a couple of days, see my post above.

Maybe you should wait to see what the survey pulls up.

Some interesting comments that mention barge and narrow boat traffic on canals, but the subject is wider than just tar and oil, with narrow boats there was also the transport of gas water and cyanides and chemicals Whilst Claytons had an important share of the market, there were other firms involved. Yeomans of Oldbury was a case in point. Crosbie moved chemicals by narrow boat. It is a complex subject.

Nice to see your priorities 😂😂

We've had an offer accepted on a boat, pending surveys, BSS and maintenance logs, the boring stuff! Now I may need to get reliable internet sorted in a hurry and don't know where to find myself a router I can plug a 4x4 MIMO antennae into! Ahhh!

Keep trying, he’ll get there eventually😎

Yes you are correct - there it is

The map shows 'Foxton Swing Bridge' being the road bridge

Is that the one in question or the one in Foxton village itself? Edited to add: According to the stoppage notice it is bridge 4 so not the footbridge at the junction as per the OP, rather the larger vehicle bridge in the village.

I've changed my mind! 😆 I bought what looked like a heavy duty manual pop rivet gun, drilled out one of the holes to 4mm and put in one pop rivet yesterday as a test to check the size was correct in terms of what they call the grip length, etc. The plan was then to order the more expensive stainless mandrill rivets. But I'd forgotten how much pressure one actually needs to apply to get the mandrill to snap off! I probably needed longer handled rivetter but the one I had should have been up to the job. Also I didn't like the finish either - you get left with a snapped off steel mandrill which slightly protrudes from the centre of the rivet head and I imagined walking along the gunwale wearing shorts in summer and scratching myself. I know you can tap those jagged ends in with a punch but in the end I decided to order a load of A4 stainless dome headed screws and flange nuts. I'll use a small socket on the inside and an allen key on the outside to do them up - maybe I can rope in a neighbour to hold the allen key.

If C&RT don't think you have one you will have a problem next time you try to license your boat.

If I'd had a diesel or series hybrid boat built, I'd have specified that it had an Aquadrive or similar. Mine doesn't really need one since it's electric, but it still has flexible couplings between both motor and thrust bearing (in the flexibly-mounted motor drive cage) and between thrust bearing and stern tube -- with cutless bearing and greaseless stern gland, so a bit more misalignment tolerance (and less vibration into the hull) than a greased bronze sleeve bearing.

The drive line with universal flex like Aquadrives are not even fitted to most very expensive premium build mainlt cruiser stern narrow boats, your new boat probablt hasn't. In the past I've had to renew many badly worn stern tube bearings and shafts because of engine misalighnment, sinking engine mounts and even when the engine have been in alignment.

Last picture is lovely

On this day 2017 A sunny day on the Fossdyke

Trent 5: https://hnbc.org.uk/boats/trent-5

That sounds like an urban legend to me ... 🙂 Is there a reference to something in the legislation ??

Alan is absolutely correct. You have the option to purchase elsewhere or adjust your declaration next time. Only boats on official residential moorings are supposed to be allowed to declare 0% propulsion.

One of the big attractions of living on a boat is the sense of freedom, and a static boat in a marina rather negates this, you are stuck with whatever rules and regulations the marina chooses to apply. However they must know that the boat is static so asking for propulsion duty is rather unfair.

We added that beam to support the centre post for the stop planks. The centre post was added to add a bit of support to the centre of the planks as they are 16 feet long and we were using them over an extended period of time. The lock had a fall of 6 feet or so before the ship canal was built when the level change became a few inches meaning that quite often the top and bottom gates were left wide open. At some point concrete copings were added to raise the level of the walls a bit so that the lock had to be used and this is can be seen today. The bottom of the lock is still at the original pre-ship canal level so there is essentially a full lock of water there. In the 1990s we sheet piled a dam at the lower end to excavate the chamber (it had been infilled) all the way down to the original bottom which is constructed out of stone blocks. A concrete plinth was then constructed up to 6 foot below water level which we could then sit stop planks on that along with a socket for the centre post. At other locks we had used cables to anchor the post but we had a beam lying around which did the job instead. The gas pipe as you refer to it is actually part of the countrywide Exolum aviation fuel pipeline. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exolum_Pipeline_System

yes, I’ve saved myself £800 this month by not having a mortgage, £1000 by not renting, another few hundred with not paying council tax, water rates, a lecky bill, a gas bill and so on, mugs game, who’d choose to do that? why choose a life of debt for oneself and then grumble at folk for opting out? Feeloaders Unite 👍

Even with their ability to stretch 25mins of content over an hour program with coming-up's & recaps around each ad break?