Leaderboard

In case anyone is interested... Just over a week after leaving hospital with 7 days of antibiotics I am still not 100%, don't get me wrong I am not ill as such just tired and not quite right, at least I am able to do a the normal day to day stuff as long as I take my time, anyway I've been signed off for another week and hopefully that should see me right. I have been spectacularly unlucky considering how many people live, work and play around canals but it's certainly worth keeping in mind if you get a fever after contact with the water

“…looking for boaters to share money saving tips” “Don’t buy a boat”

I totally agree, Balloon. I rarely recommend the forum to newbies anymore., I'm am sad to say. I joined in 2006. I hate hearing myself say to people not to take it personally when (not if) one or two grumpy people on CWDF come across as arrogant, dismissive or unkind. It's a handful of people, but of course they're the most vocal, and it makes the whole forum seem unapproachable. I don't understand why anyone would want to give advice to a newbie by cutting them down cruelly. That's not advising, sometimes it seems like bullying, or "you're not in my club" belittling. Utterly unhelpful, and makes all boaters seem like arseh*les. I think that If the forum had been like that when I first researched boat-buying, and i frequently came here to ask questions about everything from technical problems to boating etiquette, I would have gained the impression that a lot of canal boaters must be unpleasant people, must hate outsiders, and act superior. I could easily have decided not to want to be part of all that pomposity, not to buy a boat, and not to become part of the canal boating community. Fortunately, 15 years ago this forum felt much more welcoming and was much more representative of the open, friendly attitude of most people on the canals. And i soon met many of the old skool forum contributors in real life on my travels and at banters, and have remained firm friends ever since. In fact, i actively wanted to meet the new friends I had made online at CWDF. I wonder how many newbies don't get to experience that, because of dismissive or patronising responses to their first posts making them think: "what a bunch of tw*t's," turn around and never come back. When the forum became more politicised and so comparatively less boaty a few years ago, there was a lot of online unpleasantness and bullying publicly and in private across here. We lost a lot of previous members (especially women) who added some balance, and several of those who remained on the books, just stopped posting. (I didn't post on the forum for a long, long time. It's still a fairly rare thing for me these days). Those people will never come back. They've moved to Facebook, in all sorts of groups, fracturing the rather special CWDF mixing-pot community that once it was. And CWDF has a negative and unapproachable reputation among some Facebook groups, which is a shame. We made our bed, now we lay in it. But I do think it does this place good when someone relatively new holds a mirror up to our faults, and reminds us that we can do better for the next generation of boaters, as well as for our existing canal friends and colleagues. (Nice one, Balloon) 👏 Let's think before we speak unkindly on someone's post, especially to newbies going out on a limb to try and educate themselves. It is possible to give honest advice while still being supportive; to at least sign-post specifically to where they can find out what they need to know if it seems like a naive question; and to resist the urge to act like a keyboard warrior or, to put it plainly: to not be a scornful nobhead. 🤔

Pencil, ink and watercolour

I’ve been floating (pun not intended!) around this forum for years now. a post from @MtB stating “Despite the brutal nature of some of the posts in this thread everyone here has the basic intention to help. Take it on the chin and come back with questions. No matter how basic, banal or advanced your questions are you will gt good and constructive answers. Mostly lol!” prompted me to start this thread. I’ve received an invaluable amount of very knowledgeable information from this forum, both from passive reading and active posting. There are some incredibly knowledgeable members. I’ve also seen some incredibly frustrating newbies posting limited information and expecting endless help, as well as being rude. however, I do wonder why we’re accepting that for anyone new on this forum one must accept an element of unkindness to access any sort of help. We’ve all been new to this once. And I’m pretty sure if anyone actually came up to anyone on this forum and asked a question or for some advice, in real life, posters would be far more patient. So why is it acceptable to destroy posters on here with unkindness and intolerance? I say this because I’ve had the good fortune to meet in real life a number of posters from this forum, and several of these have been left enormously upset by the postings of some. I think some members forget these are real, fallible, flawed humans just like the rest of us. I’m interested to hear opinions on this. I completely understand some posters’ frustration at being taken advantage of for their substantial professional or amateur expertise. Perhaps there’s a way to work towards an increased kindness, which might in its own way perpetuate the success of this community for more than a mere handful of “acceptable” posters?

When I were a lad there were regular fights on the beach between the mods and rockers (both sides beat up the hippies). Not long before that there were signs in windows saying "No dogs, irish, blacks". When I was a teenager there was a trend in Leeds of pouring petrol on tramps and setting them alight, and Paki-bashing was a bit of good fun. When I worked Civil Service in Liverpool in the eighties the office lads had a great laugh throwing bananas at the black footballers. I'm not actually sure it's got a lot worse I think it's the opposite. What used to be normal, unremarked behaviour has been marginalised because most people behave well, so the plonkers stand out more. And, of course, there are more people on boats than there were, and the same proportion of pains in the backside just means there are more of them, too.

It’s because despite changing attitudes, there is still a not-small contingent of british people who are homophobic, and a smaller contingent who are quite happy to voice that and demonstrate it by physical attack. Why not have a heterosexual pride thingy?, part of the answer is that people don’t get verbally abused, beaten up, killed, thrown out of the family home etc because they are heterosexual, but all those things still happen because people are homosexual even in 2022. And that is just in the UK. In other parts of the world, these people can be unemployable, imprisoned or executed by the State. The gay pride thing is about normalising being gay, that it is nothing to be ashamed about, and is a normal subset of humanity, always was and always will be. The aim being to make it less socially acceptable to be ostentatiously homophobic.

We had one try it on a couple of years ago on the boat in front of us. "Working boats have priority at locks ..." The boater they were telling it to accepted it, so I stole the lock from the ex-working boat. Furiously marched up to me and said "I know you heard me tell the other chap that working boats have priority" I smiled sweetly and agreed I'd heard him say that. Then I pointed out politely that he had a pleasure boat licence and I have a roving traders licence. By definition only one of us is a working boat ...

Hi Tony, I appreciate everything you’ve said and will work towards making it a more streamlined business. Whether it’s a non residential address, or a PO Box. At the end of the day, no one books my services by post or by visiting my home address. 99% contact myself via Telephone, Email or by viewing my social media channels and making an enquiry. People are absolutely entitled to do their own research, and if the address issue puts them off, it puts them off. That’s entirely their right and choice. However as a Sole Trader (Which is still a company btw) who focuses on delivering boats and giving tuition/advice my focus is on delivering a service that doesn’t involve my own postal address, and rather that of visiting the client. This year I’ve got a team working with me, which consists of myself, a fellow Boatmover, a professional merchant seaman and also a Web designer. Everything is 100% legitimate, it’s not a scam or a legal loophole. It’s simply following my career delivering boats which is my passion and skill. That’s all 😊

In a world of so much negativity I just wanted to share a lovely encounter I had yesterday. I was admiring a beautiful garden near Kinver and a charming elderly gentleman offered to show me around. We chatted for a while and he then kindly gifted me this beautiful vase from his wife's pottery shed. She is an no longer with him and he doesn't want to empty out her stuff, but is happy to gift it. Meeting him really made my day and I will always treasure this little act of kindness. People really can be wonderful and it's a joy meeting them when out and about on the waterways.

There is no priority for anyone, I suppose it could be considered polite to let a fuel boat get a head if they wanted, and I probably would, but beyond that nope. What you have encountered is a species called idiotus foolious, they exist everywhere in relatively small numbers, unfortunately their impact on those around them can be out of proportion to any real authority they have (which is generally none), best ignored. Occasionally one can encounter idiotus foolious spp.clipbordiois these generally have a much higher opinion of themselves and feel they do have some authority, again best ignored occasionally a wave and a gentle smile helps, as a last resort cup your ear and shout loudly "sorry I'm a little deaf, but I think it's half 2" this seems to clear most problems

Waterworks seems to be gagging for battles with CRT. Normal people just pay CRT's reasonable changes and get on with their lives, rather than prattling on about how recovering them is civil matter and CRT can't add them to the license fee or withhold a license. Such an idea would not even occur to most boaters who are happy to comply with reasonable rules in order to get well controlled and available moorings.

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.

Ladies and gentlemen I have a crucial update to this thread. I had the honour of bumping into (not literally, I’m a careful boater!) the charming Mr @Lincoln Mansfieldyesterday at the boater facilities in Banbury. Having had a lengthy conversation with him about this thread I do believe his intentions are innocent and he would, I’m sure, be an honourable and lovely companion to any woman who felt like joining him on a trip. We did discuss, however, the unlikelihood of finding such a woman on here, as most of us already have a boat of our own! I have just read this whole thread again as I was very much saddened to hear that Mr Mansfield had been upset by the comments on here and wanted to rediscover the context. Now, I did explain to him that almost every thread on here goes off topic after the first page. And I don’t think anyone said anything overly harsh, having reread the comments. But I do think it’s worth remembering that the people posting on here are real people and that advertising ones loneliness on a public forum to strangers is likely to be a very vulnerable and brave step to take, and perhaps to treat such a person with the same kindness one might if they were stood in front of you. Long story short, he seems like a perfectly pleasant guy and I’m sure if you fancied a trip he’d be great company.

CRT PRESS RELEASE 1st April 2022 IMPROVING LOCK BALANCE BEAMS ON THE CANALS Over the next 12 months, the waterways and wellbeing charity will worked with dozens of volunteers, community organisations and youth groups to deliver a major improvement to the canal and river infrastructure of our waterways. The biggest improvement in recent years that the Trust has made has been to change the many signs on its property from black and white to shades of blue. This has lead to increased wellbeing of all visitors to the waterways. The next phase of the project will take things still further and remove some inconsistent branding from the built environment of the waterways. Most lock balance beams are still either painted black and white, in the old British Waterways brand colours, or worse, in bare wood, with white ends. To maintain a consistent image across the Trusts environment, a major program will repaint all lock beams in the Trusts dark blue, with pale blue ends. The pale blue on the ends of the beams are an important health and safety feature, allowing visitors to spot them in reduced light conditions. To this end, we will be diverting all navigation staff from other maintenance tasks to working with volunteer groups on painting while the project is going on. We believe that consistent branding will be more beneficial to boaters and other users and visitors to our waterways. Considerable work has gone on by our engineers to select a paint for lock beams that will adhere well to rotting wood. A feature of many lock beams on our 200 year old canal system. Unfortunately, this paint is very expensive and we have decided to cancel next winters program of lock gate replacement as the best use of the Trusts funds. April Blague, community engagement coordinator at the Canal & River Trust, said: “We are really proud of this new plan to improve our Waterways. This continuation of our rebranding to a Wellbeing Charity will improve the waterways experience for all our customers." “Research shows that being by the water makes you happier, and it’s satisfying to make a difference. The volunteers are doing an amazing job and their hard work will pay dividends this spring and beyond as visitors appreciate all the newly repainted locks. They will rightly feel very proud with what they have achieved. For more information about how to volunteer or donate to the Canal & River Trust, please visit www.canalrivertrust.org.uk. -ends-

The man clearly needs support but that should be by health and/or social services which his 'supporters' should be finding for him rather than using him in their fight against CRT. Deeply cynical and frankly repugnant.

I've passed Connor a few times on my travels around the network and found him to be a decent fella who is also helping raise his young family. I can't believe the hoo ha of this thread. 10 pages deep 😳. The guy is a sole trader and has many years experience of moving boats without incident and plenty of glowing reviews. The whole thing about the Co-Op... really? It's a post office and you are allowed to have a post office address. Surely narrowboaters and liveaboards know the challenges of getting post when you live afloat? Unless those throwing shade don't live aboard and are just your classic forum, keyboard warriors, with nothing better to do. I'm lucky to be able to use a family address but that's not an option for everyone and it will be a challenge for me once my parents pass on. I recently helped Connor on a delivery, with the consent of the owner. As a qualified skipper myself and with a few yacht deliveries under my belt myself, it was interesting to see him in action and the care he afforded the clients boat. He has fixed engines and even washed a boat on a delivery to the Peak Forest canal. I really don't understand the negativity and vitriol aimed at a guy who is hardworking and going the extra mile.

Moored boaters objecting to boats passing through a bit of ice are the same people who generally object to any boats moving, unless they are in neutral doing 0.1mph. As far as they are concerned, the canals are for cheap housing with a nice view, not for transport. Doesn’t make them right though! If you don’t like boats moving (whatever the weather or state of daylight), buy a caravan.

"I know it is pride month or some such nonsense" is a pretty poor choice of words. Let me explain. Next month Birmingham is hosting the Commonwealth Games. If someone wrote "I know it is the Commonwealth Games next month, or some such nonsense", it wouldn't be a problem. People either like sport or they don't, but those who don't like sport, don't generally go around persecuting athletes and athletes are not an oppressed group. LGBT+ people have historically been met with extreme oppression and persecution, and a fair bit of that persists to this day. Pride has been instrumental in tackling that discrimination and is therefore a very important symbol for many LGBT+ people. Deriding is as "nonsense" is therefore likely to be offensive to some people. The same would apply to other events or movements which seek to provide equality for all in society; BLM, for example. LadyG - you may wish to choose your words more carefully in future if you would prefer to avoid causing unintended offence.

Just met a man at Hartshill down on his luck and walking home from Kensington. Didn’t speak to him much but I gathered he’d gone for work and not got paid. He’s been walking for 17 days and is heading along the canals to Chester and then on into Wales and home. I gave him some food and a fiver. A sorry looking man who seemed harmless but kind of desperate too. Just thought I’d point him out, if by chance you see him you might want to help him on his way. Big green ruck sack on his back and has a Welsh accent. He’s not begging, well he didn’t ask me for anything, I offered.

A proud maritime nation? Haven't we just colluded in the sacking of nearly a thousand sailor chappies? My horn shall remain, sadly, resolutely unblown...

My boats bathroom is based on an underground train. Don’t think I’d want the exterior look but all the grab handles make it easy to use in the strongest wind.

Last time I reported on the Forum Finances was at the beginning of January this year This report covers the period from then to 31 July 2022 We started the period with just over £2291 in the bank. We received £375.81 in donations (same period last year £1016) and expended £789.26 in running the site (same period last year £785). At the end of the report period we had £1877 in the bank. Our major expenses are: Digital Ocean who provide the storage, servers etc. their charges are variable by Forum usage, paid in US dollars and are about £100 each month. Invision who provide the Forum operating software and the Chat Room software. We renew the licence every 6 months and the most recent renewal was $115 (about £99) IPS Focus who provide the Theme on a 6-monthly renewal at a cost of just less than £9 Send Grid, who provide an e-mail relay service to make PM's etc. work. This costs about £110 every 6 months. Donations averaged just over £53 per month. June top-scored at £89.50 while February and April tied for the least income at £28.75. For those who like a picture the whole year looks like this: Regards to all, and thank you for your support of the Forum. We are entirely funded by our members donations so that the site can remain free from Commercial advertising. Nigel

I'm not entirely sure why this means depreciation will be huge? If new combustion engine boats can no longer be built, whilst the ability to operate a pure electric boat is limited (due to no charging points, insufficient grid capacity etc) then surely the value of second hand combustion engined boats will increase? Yes maybe there is some intention to ban combustion engines altogether after 2050 but there is absolutely no certainty that this will happen and personally I doubt that thousands of combusstion engined boats will suddenly be declared unusable. It's a standard scare tactic to get people to go electric.

I would like to apologise if my post of a few weeks ago has contributed to this feeling of being attacked etc. There are very few people upon whom I wish direct harm, and you are certainly not one of them. Your post above has made me realise that it was a quite unpleasant statement to make, and the more civilised approach would have been to simply ignore your posts. I had formed the opinion that many of the posts I read from you were unnecessarily robust in tone, if not outright rude and negative, but in hindsight I'm not sure I was being fair, and you do also offer a lot of advice that many forum members find really helpful. When you suggested in that thread that I could move to a Schengen country I took it as a very sarcastic attack, and tbh I flew off the handle, because losing my freedom of movement around Europe is an issue that still causes me great anger, and that anger is only growing as time goes on. I have fallen out with two of my brothers over this issue, as well as several ex-colleagues. But it was wrong of me to express all of that anger so bluntly towards you, and I regret it. We are very different people, and we will probably never be friends, but I have since realised that you were not attacking me or trying to wind me up, as I first thought, and my sharply worded post was an overreaction.

Difficult to say. In simplistic terms the cost of handing out money is going to be high. The actual picture is more complex. Leaving people financially destitute has an actual cost and a societal cost. Reducing individual stress will lead to savings. With the accelerating advances in AI, society will soon reach a crunch point because so many jobs will be lost. The choices will be: 1. Legislate against AI. 2. Allow half to population to be unemployed and destitute with the consequent societal breakdown which would inevitably occur. (This is the head-in-the-sand option). 3. Legislate for a redstribution of wealth by taxing the ever more profitable corporations to allow payment of a basic income. Look at it this way: A few years ago supermarkets introduced automatic tills. Many people got cross about this because it led to people losing their jobs, but they were all missing the point. The supermarkets made the change because it was more profitable to them. In that situation it's the job of government to take some of those profits to provide for those who lost their jobs. This change has been going on since the time of the Luddites and increase mechanisation in factories and farms. The ultimate solution was a bodge: the creation of the welfare state but also the creation of non essential jobs, to keep the masses compliant. A huge shock to the system is coming, when all those calls centre jobs are gone; when all driving jobs are gone. We're talking millions of people. We need a sensible conversation about how to manage that. For example: do we want ever cheaper taxi rides, or do we want to pay the same for a driverless taxi but pay a universal basic income. I would prefer the second option, but I suspect we'll sleepwalk into the first option and then wonder why half the population are rioting. I suspect the countries which have that sensible conversation will come out of it all the strongest. The forthcoming "AI world" should be the greatest opportunity in history to raise the world's population out of drudgery, hunger and servitude. Will that happen? Probably not.

Just wanted to make a public recommendation and huge thanks to the team at River Canal Rescue and Richard of Primrose Engineering who attended the sinking of our narrowboat/home this week. Incredible response saw Tom of RCR attend on the night of her sinking to help the fire service, then a team attend within 48hrs and had her up, minimising the damage. Meanwhile Richard of Primrose was there within 48hrs to first aid rescue the Lister SR2. Within just 3 hours of tender tinkering she was firing on all cylinders (well, two). More importantly was their advice and reassurance that we were doing the right things and that it wasnt as hopeless as it feels when you see everything you own and your home covered in sludge and soggy cat biscuits. I'll avoid discussing the detail as it's likely to become a legal matter, but our 43ft cruiser ended up on the bottom of a Thames stream here in Oxford, together with another boat. Some how the water levels dropped over 1.5m in an hour, tilting boats on their moorings and those unlucky to be over slanting river bed or air cooled vents like ours went down but didn't come up.... It's an horrendous situation but with a quality insurance policy in place and quality support companies such as RCR and Primrose at least these situations can be managed well. A huge thanks again, should they be on here. Tim

Summary: "Boat enters lock and geese and goslings avoid the boat. Observer very upset even though nothing happened, and posts angrily on discussion forum." This strikes me as similar to 20 tonne lumbering narrowboat skippers panicking they are going to hit a fast and nimble canoe. The canoeists are totally confident the NB could never hit or squash them even if they tried.

All I can say is that the editor and myself spent a year looking for someone to take over from me. I had deliberately kept the "trade" at arms length to avoid accusations of partiality, and I really don't think the way modern magazines are edited gave the editor any more contacts. I suggested a couple of possibilities and asked one or two of the more technical members here who also showed a degree of writing ability, but in all cases they said no. I think that in the end, RCR took up the offer. I think those with the experience, practical ability and knowledge in both mechanical and electrical systems were too busy earning money and were scared off by the thought of putting it down on paper. Actually the number of questions that came via the magazine were only one or two a month, the vast majority came direct to me via TB-Training, and they were getting less and less as those who had attended my courses got sufficient experience. In the end I was re-answering questions from over 10 years previously. I was not happy doing that, but the editor needed a selection to choose from. If anyone is interested in why I stopped, it was for several reasons. perhaps the major one is that I was of an age that relatives, friends and acquaintances were increasingly dying or getting rushed into hospital. I did not think it would be fair on the magazine if I suddenly could not produce the 4000 to 5000 words a month. As I indicated above, it was getting increasingly difficult to meet that target. Then there was the fact that my knowledge was/is getting less and less relevant for modern systems and practice, lithium battery systems being a case in point. Finally, I recognised my brain work was, and is, becoming less sharp than it was, as illustrated by the cock-ups I have made here over recent years. The message is use it or lose it, send your questions to the magazine.

Dr Bob here with the duck Well things haven't changed much here in the 2 year since my last comments on composting toilet waste. Still the same un-informed bullies, loudmouths and Crocodiles (big mouths and no ears) beating down any attempt at a reasoned argument why composting may be good on a boat. The aggression shown to Squid's 'first time' question on the topic in a recent thread shows just what a toxic place this can be. I write this note – and it is a long one – to give some hope to those who seek some real input to their decision on whether to attempt to compost their toilet waste on a boat – but it is a long read. I expect the crocodiles will give up pretty quickly. If you get bored easily then dont bother reading any further. Let's be clear, after having a separating toilet on our boat and composting our waste for 2 years now, I can honestly say it has been the best purchase ever for a boat. This is on a boat that was brand new in 2020. After 6 months we ditched the state of the art pump out macerator toilet for a Compoost loo (anyone want to buy the toilet and holding tank?). I'm not going into detail of why it has been the best purchase. The list is too long. But believe me, it has been our best purchase. So why am I posting such a long and rambling post on here? Well, there are a couple of big points that I think are never discussed but provide all the ammunition for the naysayers and Crocodiles to beat all who stick their heads above the parapet into submission and silence the large number of people (inc on here) who have these toilets. Maybe it will help those trying to understand if composting human waste on a boat is a viable route. The Crocodiles can now go and spout their un-informed rubbish on other threads. For the interested, please read on. The first big issue is when the Crocodiles use the phrase ' it's disgusting' when referring to separating toilets and composting of the waste solids. If you see anyone saying “it's disgusting” then you know they dont know what they are talking about. They've probably never seen a separating loo. So many of them dont even have canal boat – so how can their words be believed? Let's look at how conventional toilets work. You sit on the bowl and deposit a load of wee and poo in the bowl (not necessarily in that order). The instant these two streams meet, enzymes in the streams start a chemical reaction which turns urea in the urine into ammonia and some other very smelly molecules. The evolution of ammonia is significant and as the volume builds you start smelling a very unpleasant smell coming from between your legs. That is disgusting. Can you remember exiting the bathroom and closing the door, saying to the next person “I'd give that 5 mins if I were you”? Yes that is disgusting. Separating toilets – if they are working properly and used properly – do not mix the wee and poo so you dont get the ammonia evolution and there is almost zero smell. In the 2 years of operation, I have never smelt the disgusting smell made by previous user (or by me). Handling the waste after (the poo box and wee bottle) is not at all smelly or unpleasant. We were up in Jockland for 4 weeks in December and using the loo in the house was an experience. Very smelly. You just dont get that on the boat. Everyone I know who has moved to a separating toilet has said the same. I note one person on here who moved back to a conventional toilet after trying a separating toilet but I wonder if he had a well designed separating toilet or even used it right. If he had smell then something was very wrong. Separating toilets are not disgusting. What is disgusting is asking your visitors not to use the toilet after eating sweetcorn or apple cores. Well its not the asking that's disgusting, its the job needed to clean the remnants out of the duck valves in a vacuuflush system. Similarly replacing the seals in a leaking cassette and dont get me started on the state of the elsan points on the network. Disgusting is the word to describe it. No, if someone says to you that separating toilets and composting of the solids is disgusting, then it is clear that they have no experience of the issue which then questions anything else they may utter. The second big issue is can you compost human poo? This is a real issue and in defence of the Crocodiles, I can see why they may say its impossible, so how do you dispose of you untreated poo? I really can see why you are so passionate about our inability to compost. Let me try and tackle this thorny subject and bring some clarity to the debate. I am going to digress here and declare a professional interest. I am a director of a test laboratory up in Jockland. In 20 years we have grown to be one of the countries best respected UCAS accredited test labs in the UK for testing of plastics. At the start of 2020 we expanded our expertise to cover biodegradation testing of initially plastic packaging materials and that has now grown to the point we are one of the leading test labs for biodegradation and composting in the UK. We test a range of packaging products to see if they biodegrade or can be composted (either for home or industrial composting) using a range of Eu defined test standards and methods. We test to BS EN13432, ISO 16929, PAS 9017, ISO 17556, ISO 14855 and ISO 20200 amongst others. Have a read of the BS EN 13432 standard to see what is involved. We know what composting is all about. I personally have been the technical gatekeeper for this activity so now see myself as an expert in the field. Unfortunately however, the majority of people in the UK do not know how to compost – and that was also me 5 years ago. I've lived in a house with a garden for 40 odd years and being a keen gardener, always had a compost heap. Various heaps, boxes, machines. None worked. Filled them up in spring and summer and by next spring – nothing had happened. In 40 years I likely only ever made a few shovelfuls of good compost. Composting doesnt work, does it? Maybe that is too sweeping a statement but there is some supporting info out there. Three months ago, University College London (UCL) wrote a paper summarising a trial they ran over 24 months, asking the public to compost in their home heaps, bins, custom designs etc, items you can buy which claimed to be 'home compostable'. The output of this was picked up by the Guardian and ran as a story claiming that over 60% of items claimed to be home compostable were not. Now, these were not just items claiming to be compostable, they were items deemed to be compostable by the accreditation organisation TUV, a very very well known Austrian company. TUV run a scheme where clients get their products tested and TUV accredit that it is all done right. The UCL study concluded over 50% of their accredited products did not home compost, things like plastic cups, wet wipes etc. We as a company do not work with TUV but the labs TUV use are bone fide labs and do things right. We know the limitations of the test methods but the huge discrepancy here is because the average Jo public doesnt know how to compost. To compost properly you need food, water and oxygen. It's really is very simple but the majority of peeps do not know that -so dont understand what composting is, how to do it or what it can achieve. Let's then look in a bit more detail at composting. The words 'industrial composting' describes the process that the big compost makers use to make their compost. We are dealing here with aerobic composting (ie with air) and not anaerobic digestion which is a totally different process (which is where all food waste in the UK goes). Industrial composters use a 12 week cycle to complete the composting process – to turn for example garden waste into a fully composted product. Yes, only 12 weeks. The temperatures used are of the order 65°C for a couple of weeks then 55/60°C for another 6 weeks followed by <45°C for the final month. In the lab we use kit that simulates large scale Windrow composting – kit that is not a million miles away from the mini-hot bins you see used on boats for hot composting. For the ISO 16929 test, we run these bins at the temps above to monitor biodegradation and fragmentation to show what composts and what doesnt. What is absolutely clear is the things like food waste or horse manure, that we use to create the composting medium, degrade totally in the 12 weeks to a soil like, compost. It looks like soil, its smells like soil and it probably tastes like soil. The biodegradation is the action of bugs (ie bacteria etc) eating the food (the waste you put in). You can clearly measure how fast the bugs eat by I) the temperature rise and ii) the amount of CO2 evolved as they eat the long carbon chains. To multiply and eat, the bugs need food, oxygen and water. Get any of those 3 wrong and the biodegradation will not happen properly. In performing these tests we have learnt what food the bugs like. Firstly you have to have a balanced Carbon/Nitrogen ratio but then some food is better than others. An example is sawdust vs coconut choir. Sawdust is a pig for the bugs to eat. You really need the whole 12 weeks to get that to degrade. The coconut Choir disappears in half the time. Newspaper is a pig. Too much lignin. Good quality office paper goes in half the time (far less lignin). Food waste and horse manure is a delicacy for the bugs and half way through our 12 week cycle the food waste is fully decomposed. There is a test for the maturity of a compost ie the Rottegrad test, which is used to determine the final quality of the compost. So, where does that get us? We know we can fully biodegrade food waste and horse manure in 6 weeks at 'industrial' temperatures. The product is not food waste or horse manure. It is a fully degraded compost. It is therefore interesting to see these mini hot bins being used on boats. Yes, they really do work, and work very well. In that cold spell before Christmas at the lab, we had night time lows of -9°C and day time highs of -5°C in Livingston yet we were maintaining 60°C in a couple of hot bins we were testing to see the limits of the low temp performance. Quite a few peeps have these on their boat (they fit in an open cratch quite well), but the drawback for me is that you need to feed them with things other than poo – otherwise there is not enough food. This then doubles the amount of compost you make so disposing of it is more tricky. What's then best way to do it on a boat? Human manure degrades exactly the same way and at the same speed as food waste/horse manure - chemically it is almost the same. I talked about food, oxygen and water but the other key input is temperature. Typically chemical reactions half in speed if you drop the temperature by 10°C. This means composting speeds reduce as the composting temperature goes down. If then you can aim to drop temperatures from the 60's/50's to 40/30's you will basically quadruple the times seen in the industrial composting work. This is what we do on the boat. We have 3 * 40L boxes. Our poo bin is emptied into box 1 (on the crusier stern every 5 to 6 days). It takes circa 12 weeks to fill the box. It is then transferred to a similar volume box(es) on the roof and box 1, now empty is ready to take the next 12 weeks of poo. 3 months later box 1 is emptied into the 3rd 40L box. We are not full time liveaboards (but on the boat all summer) – but extrapolating we make circa 160L of solid waste a year which decays down to around 120L. With a decent size boat (ie 65ft) we have loads of roof space so storing this amount of solids in not a chore. In the summer the dark blue roof gets to 65 to 70°C more days than it doesn't so allows you to get a lot of heat into the roof boxes. Our poo mix is fully composted down to compost only in 6 months max in the summer (ie a couple of months on the roof) and the the stuff produced in the Oct- Feb time is fully composted after starting the first part of the summer on the roof. From my experience of knowing what compost looks like at various stages of decomposition, I can see how well ours is composted. At the end of the 6 months (summer waste) or 9 month (winter waste), I can see that we have perfect compost which is no longer poo. We use that 120L direcct for our plant pots, half for the summer pots and half for the winter pots. No soil. Just compost. Last summer we had the best tomatoes in the marina. As the compost has seen temps of 50-60°C and spent 6 months well aerated, all the pathogens are dead. It is absolutely fascinating to see a box containing a mix of human poo and coconut choir change before your eyes in 6 months to be a non toxic valuable resource. A long way back up this thread, I said that it was impossible to home compost. For most it is. For most they will look in disbelief that you can turn turds into compost. It is totally a surprise that you can do it with very little effort if you do it properly. Once you get over that hurdle then it suddenly dawns on you that you can compost human waste on a boat – and all of a sudden a separating toilet becomes an option. Yes guys, it works. It's not disgusting. Using the heat of the roof of the boat gets you to the point where you can compost in a short space of time. The wee bottle ….you ask? Down the elsan (that's how I know what a crap state they are left in!) or down a toilet. Siiimple. Obviously the Crocodiles who are on my blocked list will not get any replies from me on this thread but if anyone needs more info then the best thing is to go over to the farcebook site on boat composting as there are some very knowledgable people over there with a wealth of information. You wont get a sensible discussion over here. Definitely the best thing we ever bought for the boat...but make sure you get a properly designed one that works. See you all in another 2 years to see if you've all lightened up.

Well, I'm glad to say it was a happy and prompt ending. The chap had a butchers down into the box with an endoscope thing (he said it was a tenner on ebay), and he was fairly sure he could see the connector in there. He tried to get it with a stick with a blob of sticky stuff on the end, but being covered in oil the connector wouldn't stick to it. But he managed to fish it out with one of hose flexible grabber things (as David and Jon illustrated). So once again thanks for all the replies and advice, and as it turned out it was a grabber and an endoscope that did the trick, just as you folks suggested.

It would be better to just ban fishing on all inland waterways...its a cruel and barbaric activity.

There are usually two sides to every story, and I try to be sympathetic to people who choose a different lifestyle, we need them, but if the government does not give CRT its grant then we could be facing the closure of some canal and its just wrong that there are people not only refusing to make a positive contribution, but sucking the life out of the system. He has effectively had his own private towpath mooring, including fenced off private towpath, for a long time now. Its not right.

Hi guys, just an updated. Been towed by a lovely gentleman who also gave me a care package as I’ve been away from shops for so long. Engineer comes Friday. Thanks all, hopefully the issue will be addressed and not too expensive

"The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.” Socrates.

Luckily i have only experienced discrimination because of my sexuality once (a long time ago and dealt with by one of my friends - He's six foot five and the issue went away very quickly 😀). Pride is important for many people, perhaps you could be a bit more considerate and less judgemental in your comments.

As above another painting by my Daughter 😀

Thats what you get for Peking .....................

I blame the vast increase in university education that all too often produces highly qualified practical idiots, plus the easy of using social media etc so there was no time while growing up for more physical practical experiences.