DandV

Our boat had a 3kva PSV Stirling Combi Supplied in May 2006 and still working when we sold up in October 2017.

I think you have mistaken the reaction and celebrations, (especially from adjacent boat owners) between the OP's success of starting the engine, to that, when he successfully found a way of stopping it!

A further view from afar. Whilst we can laugh and joke about the incompetency of some of your ministers like Chris Grayling, here in the Antipodies we find it profoundly disturbing, the spectacular descent into collective incompetance of the entire British parliamentary system. A parental system to our own, and so many other modern parlimentary systems worldwide. For us the last two years have been like watching our parents descending into dementia. If it seems like a bad dream for us, it must surely seem like a nightmare to you all. We wish that your politicians would put their personal sector interests and ambitions aside to just work to create a better Britain, for not only their children and grandchildren but all British children and grandchildren.

Salthouse Dock Liverpool must be in a class of it's own. Aylesbury town basin is nice.

I always thought the danger of CO2 was only that it displaced oxygen but that is wrong. CO2 concentration stimulates the breathing reflex so in a fire situation when you get the production of toxic gases, CO and lots of other serious nasties like cyanide, it is then the CO2 that stimulates you to breathe heavily to take it all in. Even in just a depleted O2 situation additional CO2 will stimulate breathing that exacerbates body O2 depletion.

I love the Jury Rigged mast and masthead light rigged on a halyard ready for hoisting!

It was fully tagged. Your choice to open or not. Would you have sooner it was posted under "General Boating -For general discussion on waterways of the world!"?

Agreed. Our Auckland competitive yacht racing started with boats developed for commercial fishing, out to the grounds and return quickly to market using "Mullet Boats", which are still raced as a class, mainly new builds but some veterans. Likewise a similar class was developed for fishing out of Port Phillip Bay in Melbourne, their "Couta Boats" which are still very actively raced there. I am sure there are many other local varients around the world given the imperatives and parameters would have been remarkably similar. Barge races under sail likewise occurred here as in the UK. Course constraints probably ruled out canal racing by working boats!!

Whilst you were suffering an excess of wind on Sunday we spent most of the day awaiting enough wind for a start of the last race of the annual Classic Yacht regatta in Auckand. A bi annual trans tasman event, alternating between Melbourne early November, and Auckland, Early March. For this regatta we had a record six starters for the A class (greater the 50ft on deck) Gaff Rigged Yachts. More restorations are though enlarging the fleet I was crewing on the oldest, and biggest the 58ft 1894 built Waitangi The youngest was the 1905 built Rawhiti that was a crack Sydney boat up to WW2, The fastest the 1904 built 58ft Ariki was the crack Auckland yacht until eclipsed by Ranger in 1938. Ranger was built and raced by two watersider brothers who bought two adjacent wooden houses in a run down inner city suburb. They lived in one and demolished the other to provide both the boat building space and the timber for her construction. She was the crack New Zealand keeler until 1966, and was racing too but in the modern rig class. Above the door at the prize giving is the oldest internationally contested sporting trophy in the world. One that we are pleased to welcome your frighteningly competent and well resourced team to try and wrest from us in 2011. As well as the America's Cup some J class Mega Racing yachts will hold a series, and some veteran classic yachts will be over from Australia. It will be quite an event spreading over quite a period. (Actually I think that may be a replica cup, the real one may be in a more secure location but in the same building) .

I am not sure that paying them more will not just result in more expensive monkeys.

Look I agree if £4 is a minimum charge then it does seem very expensive for short stay, but conversly given the costs involved in building and maintaining a pontoon mooring on a lively river £4 seems very very reasonable for a night stay. Given the ever more limited resources available to councils, there is some logic in their system of using the car park ticket dispensing ticket machine and insisting each boat must display a ticket, £4 as a minimum. This means only one enforcement visit is required a day. Withdrawal of enforcement will just result in semi permanent squatting depriving visiting boaters of the facility. Remember the massive cost pressures on councils, have meant that even public loos are an endangered species, and have totally disappeared from some local authority regions. Given these pressures, can providing mooring facilities be considered as core council business? I would suggest extreme caution in challenging in case these mooring providers decide to take the easy path and remove the facilities.

And if you are successful in proving that mooring providers do not have the right to charge for moorings, and therefore the implied right to enforce those charges, what will it acheive? Prudent riparian landowners/ councils included, will not provide any sort of facilities to incur the capital costs, the costs of maintaining, insuring and inspecting a facility up to public use standards, and potential HS & E liabilities. Prudent land owners will just errect Trespassers Prosecuted or similar signs to mitigate any liability issues in case of misadventure. Is that really the outcome you want? If so I think you will be doing the majority of boaters, who don't mind paying a fair charge for using a facility, a huge disservice.

If organisations/businesses are large enough they might choose to carry a massive excess, effectively only insuring events large enough to effect the stability of their entity. Even insurance companies pursue this method by paying out of their own funds for the vast majority of their claims but buying reinsurance policies for catostrophic events such as major earthquakes. I know when I worked for a major oil company they basically carried their own insurance, but for motor vehicle claims were handled on their behalf by a commercial insurer on a cost plus basis. So sad to see anywhere historical structures being damaged or destroyed though.

Thanks for the link to the boatbuilders site. It is great this skill base is being maintained and new apprentices coming through. I spent some time at that boatyard just looking over the fence when in Gloucester when we were there in 2013. Halcyon was alongside and we passed her a couple of days later on the Sharpness Gloucester canal when she was outbound and we were inbound.

When we ascended the Tinsley flight a lock keeper told us that a Yorkshire bow thruster was "The missus with a pole. Two speeds, push, and push harder"