Alway Swilby

Maybe I should have said the engine running but not driving the propeller. PS (derailing my own thread here!) Our alternator puts out 65 amps (at 24v) at idle when first started. Increasing the revs doesn't increase the amps.

Do people change their drive plates as a matter of course even if it is still working? I.E preventative maintenance. If so what interval would you suggest is good. Our Beta 43 with PRM 150 gearbox has now done getting on for 5000 hours of which approx 4500 have been for cruising with the other 500 idling to charge the batteries. Should I be looking to change it or should I just carry on regardless?

I don't know if it's boring or not because I never look at it so I can't vote.

There was a swing bridge on the ECML across the Ouse at Naburn. The bridge is still there but they shifted the ECML in the 1980s to avoid subsidence caused by the Yorkshire coalfields. 15 years later they shut the coalmines! The bridge now carries a cycle path and doesn't swing.

What's a ska band?

There were two volunteers on there when we came through at the begining of December. One remained at the top lock and the other came down the next four (or is it five) with us where we stopped to go shopping.

I reckon a liveaboard continuous cruiser without a home mooring falls into the off grid household category. Nothing to do with houseboats or registered sites etc.

But it is happening already, has been for a few months. It isn't being administered by the local councils. Every one of the millions of households with an electricity account is already getting a £66/67 discount off their electricity bill every month. No need to involve council tax or the local authority at all. The problem is the less than 1 million households that don't have a relationship with an energy company like boaters in a marina, caravaners in a caravan park, people living off the electricity grid etc.

Marina dwellers have possibly had big electricity price rises because the marina has passed on their own increases. The end users don't have a contract with an electricity company therefore don't get the £400 off their bill. CCers have had big increases in diesel and lpg gas prices. You are correct though that true off gridders have been less affected.

The "original" £400 payment that we are talking about is being paid to us via our electricity supplier (we have a house) knocking £66 (or£67) off the bill every month for six months. This is being paid to everyone who has a domestic electricity supply. Nothing to do with the local authority. The scheme announced today caters for those who don't have a domestic electricity supply. You are mixing this up with a previous £150 scheme that was indeed paid via the local authoroity and paid to every household with a band C or below council tax property.

I looks like it's gone in Tamworth but there's still ice under the surface. Hoping to move tomorrow.

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2022/dec/19/people-living-care-homes-caravan-parks-400-pounds-energy-payment

Gold licences are fiendishly complicated. I would ask CRT and see what they say. I was surprised to be able to downgrade our gold license (expiring 31/12/22) to a standard CRT license at the end of November and get a refund of the one month gold element (about £21).

It's snowing inside my computer screen. Very strange.

I've been to the basin at the end of the Ripon Canal in our old 60' boat. The top two locks were tight but we made it. We came back down them backwards. We got a survey done when we bought the boat and the chap said it was 60'.

20 megs does fine for me. I can do emails and browsing as well as watching the telly all at the same time. 300 megs would be wasted on me. It amuses me that half a gigabyte of data is used just for a test. I used to install 300 baud modems where half a gig would have taken about 2 months to download. Happy days.

Three is rubbish. I've had no end of problems with their network being very congested with too many "Unlimited" users. On the boat I have a router with a EE sim card in it and it's rare to have problems. Here at Alvecote Marina for instance just now at 16:45 I am getting 20 megs. At the house I have a similar set-up with a router and I used to have a EE sim in that too which also worked fine. But ID Mobile (who use Three) offered me a cheaper deal so I swapped the house system to them. Now I get very slow speeds (often 500k or less) when you would expect the network to be busy. There's a definite drop off at around 3:30pm when the school kids get home and start gaming. The slowness continues all evening with people watching telly etc. But if I do a speed test at 4 in the morning I get about 30 meg. ID Mobile deny this is happening. As soon as the contract ends I'm going to do something different. Grain have offered me full fibre to the premises with guaranteed 100meg download and upload for £18 per month, only £2 more than I am paying ID Mobile.

I'm hoping for Tuesday but you might be right. We were hoping to get to Alrewas for Christmas. Got a (paid for already) duck ordered from the butcher there. Will keep you updated.

Great video. We're moored next to her at the moment. I wish she'd go ice breaking now then we could escape!

Yes, those are the ones. We stopped there on our first night night on our maiden voyage after leaving Sheffield. I would recommend spending a couple of nights in Sheffield basin first and sussing out any snagging issues with the systems. It's then easy to go back to the yard to get them sorted. Ricky was very happy with that arrangement.

Shame. That was a handy mooring before tackling the trip to Sheffield the next day. Can you still get electric hook up there?

Yeah, I don't think I would have done this even if I had the oportunity. It was only a fleeting thought.

How do you dispose of the old stuff that you have flushed out of the system? I had 10 litres of old coolant that I took to the local council tip but they said they couldn't accept it. I was tempted to put in their old engine oil tank but they were watching me like a hawk! In the end I found a boat yard willing to accept it.

I had 250 watts of solar. It wasn't enough. I now have 500 watts and would like more.