DandV

Well you could use that photo of the propeller retaining nut as you avitor and change your user name to the "The Mangled Nut" Cheers Don

Took your advice Typed "Boatbuilders" in the search bar - The Result? One Post Your One! Taking volume produced hulls less then ten years old and volume produced cars less then ten years old surely both are produced to recognized standards but on some meeting price points is at the expense of better detailing, better features and finishes. This becomes significantly more important the longer you intend to own the boat. The quality of the functional fittout, protective coatings, electrics, plumbing etc is yet another matter not readily visible but important to the functionality and reliability. It is our intention to visit England at least once before arriving to purchase our boat and set off, so we would devote some of this time viewing boats and focusing our requirements but with 1200 narrowboats listed on Apollo Duck setting prescreening criteria is a requirement. Cheers Don Cheers

As I have said earlier we are looking at purchasing a 2plus 2 berth narrowboat in a couple of years time for two or perhaps three years of six months cruising, six months away six months cruising etc . Current indications is that a purchase budget of 35000-45000GBP should give a sensible reliable "clonecraft" 5 to 10 years old 45 to 60ft long. This is a bit cheeky but it would be helpful to us if forum members could rate well known hull manufacturers as motor car equivalents say Ford, Toyota, Honda, BMW and Mercedes. Liverpool Boats = Ford equivalent? Cheers Don & Val

If there was an LPG leak during the transfer which placed the air intake of the diesel within the air/vapour zone then this would become an uncontrolled fuel source for the engine hence potential runaway. There was an incident of a lorry engine running away at a fuel station. There was a motor spirit delivery underway into the underground tankage when a lorry came into refuel and the driver did not shut his engine off. The air intake snorkel of his truck found itself in the discharge plume of motorspirit vapour being displaced from the underground tanks during the delivery and his engine started an uncontrolled runaway. The tanker driver shutdown the delivery just before the runaway disintegrated but the comments were that the engine sounded like a boy racers Subaru WRX. Don

My wife was bought up in outback South Australia. At the southern end of the Flinders Ranges is the remnants of the original 3' 6" Ghan Railway operating as heritage line from Port Augusta through the Pichi Richi Pass to Quorn. For some reason all the directional signage on the railway and adjacent road has since time immemorial kept losing the first letters in all three words indicating the Pass. Don

When decommissioning bulk lpg tanks the procedure is to push the liquid lpg back into a road tanker by pressurizing the tank with lpg vapour using a portable special compressor and once liquid is removed sucking the vapour across into the road tanker using the same compressor. The compressors are diesel powered and the risk is an adjacent lpg leak could cause the engine to runaway using lpg admitted via the air filter. Consequently the emergency stop mechanism includes a fire extinguisher permanently plumbed to discharge into the air intake between the air cleaner and engine. Thank god never seen it in operation! Cheers Don

Flex has inferior heat dissipation due to the closer packing of its load carrying conductors compared to fixed wiring cable types of the same cross sectional area. Therefore it's use must be restricted to avoid high load applications where its surrounds may give inadequate heat dissipation and therefore create a fire risk. It has however far greater resistance fatigue failure due flexing and vibration therefore its applications as appliance cords and final connections to motors etc. Cheers Don

From my experience as an oil company engineer responsible for fuel dispensing installations and therefore involved with resolving customer complaints regarding fuel quality, recreational boat fuel provided a disproportionate number of problems. In almost all cases the problems could be ascribed to the configuration of the fuel tanks on board and the operating regime. Flush deck mounted filling points are prone to water ingress compared to road vehicle fill points. It is important that they are kept correctly tightened and the seals regularly inspected and replaced when necessary. In some boats the location of the breather openings also facilitated water ingress especially in heavy seas and torrential rain. Boat tanks are often subject to large temperature variations on a daily basis which means a large transfer of air and vapour outwards during the daytime heating phase and a replacement with outside air including its attendant water vapour and bug inducing yeasts during the night cooling period. The water vapour condenses and accumulates in the tank. As the air/vapour expands and contracts a lot more then the liquid fuel then it follows that keeping tanks full reduces condensation problems. Another problem is upon cooling the water condenses on the unwetted inner surfaces of the tank initiating surface rusting. This rust can then be later dislodged and migrate through the fuel system to block filters and in extreme cases I have seen actually perforate the fuel tank. On pleasure boats the problem is exacerbated because fuel tanks are often large to give range but because of the cost and weight, operators tend to run them on near empty. A graphic illustration of internal condensation in fuel tanks on underground fuel tanks is the rust stain that develops on the tank floor directly below and exactly mirroring the manway above. The tanks are completely surrounded by sand that provides insulation except for a manway which is generally uncovered in a pit through which the tank top fittings penetrate. This provides the cold surface for the water to condense before dropping through the fuel to stain the tank bottom. On using biocides my view is strongly that they are not a substitute for fuel housekeeping. First efforts should always be made to prevent water ingress and then to have the hardware (filters) and operating regime to remove the inevitable water/crud that does get past. On aviation tanks the regime is a daily tank bottom and filter bowl water check but it would still be a negligent operator who did not check his aircraft fuel for water daily as well. Biocides are extremely toxic , and dead bug blocks filters just as much as live bug. In twenty years I never raised an order for dosing fuel tanks and I know of one contractor seriously poisoned doing so. Edit to change egress to ingress

I am just interested as to how are inverted siphons prevented from silting up? Cheers Don

Seeing there are no navigable canals within thousands of miles I have to content myself getting waterborne on the lumpystuff. Cant afford a my own boat, or diesel so its crewing a very old boat, a 19Century 58ft 23ton restored gaff rigged cutter. Out yesterday 4th September racing on Auckland harbour 33kt wind gusting 43kts. Didn't break anything other then one crew member now has a permanently mute cell phone. From the upright side of the world here in New Zealand, at least I know when I stand up, you ditch-crawlers are way way down beneath my feet, and worse, are upside down. Cheers from NZ Don Getting the photo in did not quite work 1st time, or 2nd.(or 3rd) it harder then steering a narrowboat.

You could have beepers, whistle/horn signals plus shouting, frantic random hand waving and finger signals , reversing lights, orange flashing indicator lights, brake lights, white head lights rear red lights, with white mast head lights, white stern lights, green and red side lights. It would add tremendously to the colour and sounds of the waterways. Or alternatively how about requiring that three short blasts on the whistle/horn should be sounded when going astern when there is potentially conflicting traffic. Cheers Don Edit to remove stammer

Marine/industrial diesel engines are generally quite tolerant of the fuel used but intolerant of water and particulate matter, including rust and diesel bug both alive and dead. Fuel stored in a can for long periods may contain the above but it should be concentrated in the bottom of the can. From my oil company experience I would advise that you leave the can upright for a few hours before carefully decanting the fuel through a filter such as a nylon stocking. into your fuel tank immediately prior to a refuel, and not before any critical passage. Discard any dregs showing particular matter and the extreme bottom of the can. Flush the can with half a cup of diesel shake well and discard before refilling the can. It is good practice to use and replace standby fuel at least every 2 years. It was always an issue for standby generators that unless the operator had a regular test run to maintain fuel turnover that the generator could fail because of fuel contamination just when needed. Cheers Don

Skippering was when I was in charge of running the boat, helming varied from no single person in charge, equality and all that, to being allowed to steer on somebody else's boat. On the Stratford canal I got caught a couple of times in locks, notably entering the canal from the river Avon that when the sluices were opened fully the boat charged forward and rammed the lock gate even when hard astern. Did it on another lock as well. Case for instructing lock hands to open slowly initially. Also when passing another boat whilst turning on a tight inside corner was totally surprised when using an increase of power with full rudder had totally the opposite then intended effect as the prop dragged the stern into the bank against the rudder and the boat turned against the helm. Bang. On the lumpy stuff shallow water might stop you, in some cases very abruptly but does not generally affect the steering. all contributions welcome Cheers D & V

Let the worms wiggle free, but we are particularly interested in the boatmanship, lock operation issues , environment preservation, conflict avoidance (why fight when you can run) and best practice etiquette. Have noticed lots of ways to enhance bitchiness on the forum but of these we have no interest. Cheers D & V

As a couple who planning on purchasing and using a narrowboat and I have helmed/skippered hired boats on the Stratford, K&A and Broads and other watercraft on the lumpystuff what are the boatmanship bad habits and practices to be avoided on the canals? Cheers

Our future NZ state pension is severely trimmed if we stay out of the country more then six months. We intend to buy a narrowboat and cruise for a smidgen under six months a year. Our intention is to moor up the remainder in a commercial marina. Do we need a BW licence for this period or can we just purchase six month licences for the time we are out of the marina? Cheers Don

On land the term is “horses for courses” Afloat “floaters for boaters?” Steel is extremely robust, it is heavy so not favoured by he “go fast” brigade either under sail of power because the extra mass absorbs a lot of power. It requires constant corrosion control maintenance. A lot of the required hull maintenance is beyond DYI however the required skills are readily obtained. Heavy gauge marine grade aluminium is expensive but provides a much lighter hull for the same robustness and with considerably less corrosion control maintenance. Hull maintenance/ repairs is specialised and the required skills less readily available. GRP again provides a much lighter hull.. Corrosion control maintenance is minimal and small repairs are DYI. However it does not offer the resistance to serious impact damage of steel or heavy gauge aluminium, Wooden boats all require constant maintenance of the timber preservative coatings to prevent rot Planked wooden construction is heavy and reasonably robust. Minor repairs are DYI but major stuff requires specialist skills and good timber both of which are getting harder to source. Ply type construction is light and construction, repair and maintenance are all suitable for competent DYI. And then there are inflatables We have four boats; two GRP canoes and one polyethylene one , and one Aluminium dingy that spends it entire life outside. Our next boat will be a steel narrowboat. In the meantime most of my time afloat is on a 23 ton restored 19th gaff rigged cutter, race crewing, painting and varnishing. Cheers Don

I have had experience of pit corrosion both internal and external on buried steel underground fuel storage tanks. These corrosion failures led to a rapid industry replacement of steel systems with plastic secondary contained systems here in New Zealand Internal corrosion was rare, but never the less devastating, and was characterised by few, sometimes only just one, deep parallel sided pits with a white shiny active surface. If it did occur it was at the tank low point of a diesel or paraffin tank. It was attributed to the presence of a particular type of diesel bug, presumably thiobacillus ferric oxide.living in water below the fuel and producing local sulphuric acid in the pit. Some failures were in tanks under five years old Failure from external corrosion was much more common. There were generally two forms. The most severe was an attack by anaerobic bacteria resulting in generally crater pits covered in black slime that could be wiped off with your finger revealing bright white metal that that in just a few minutes would dull and develop a rust red film. Some tanks lost kilograms of steel a year. Another characteristic of this attack was the rotten egg smell of hydrogen sulphate. This type of corrosion was particularly present in tanks installed in estuarine and peaty locations. The other type of external corrosion was electrolytic corrosion causing a number of pits often with near parallel sides. Sometimes the pits would accurately show where lifting chains had been used in carting the tanks to site prior to installation. The electrical source could be mains earthing or dissimilar metals, even very slightly dissimilar metals like the adjacent plates. Where a new tank was installed in an existing system and electrically connected via pipework to existing tanks it was the new tank that was prone to premature failure To mitigate external failures the initial response was to improve tank coatings, but by it self it proved counterproductive as it concentrated the metal removal by at the inevitable breaks in the coating. When however combined with cathodic protection using either impressed or sacrificial systems and electrical isolations it was useful in reducing failure rates until the total storage system replacement program was completed. What is the relevance with canal boats? Hulls will be prone to electrolytic corrosion which can be greatly exacerbated by faulty electrical systems both 230VAC and the DC systems. Well designed and maintained electrical systems, good anodes and good coatings provide effective mitigation. I would suspect that that any portion of the hull sitting directly on mud canal bottoms would provide suitable conditions for anaerobic corrosion. And yes there are steel devouring bugs. Cheers Don

Oops,sorry about that! Should have done a date check. (perhaps it shows wishful thinking on our part) Thanks, DandV

We have discovered this forum and found it enlightening The thread “What boat do you need” was very useful until it got sidetracked on the quality of English water and its containers!. My wife and I will become New Zealand pensioners in early 2004. Our intention is start our retirement with two six month narrowboat cruising holidays in the 2004 and 2005 seasons. We are both experienced boaties (though on the lumpy stuff) but have spent time on UK canals. It would be our intention to have guests (two maximum) for short durations. An options is to lease, Escape the Rat Race, at say 950GBP/mth, are there other companies? Leasing is obviously cheaper for one year, but two years? Perhaps more. Alternatively we buy a boat between 45 and 55ft and resell at the end. Pros and Cons of ex hire boats? For pension considerations we would probably have to return to NZ for six months between seasons, so if we bought we would need secure mooring, not too far from an airport that is served by long haul Middle Eastern, Asian or Australasian airlines (Heathrow , Manchester and perhaps Birmingham). How do we find such a thing? For this moored time would we require mains power?, or could we rely on an aligned solar panel, and/or employing somebody to do a monthly engine run to keep the batteries charged and the bilge pump operational? We currently have a shared ownership in an “off grid” and remote solar powered holiday house so are familiar being away from unlimited 230v power and doing minor repairs but our intention is a good look at canalside Britain not the contents of the bilge, engine, heads and electrical panels so a reliable boat is essential. Also what are the must haves, nice to haves. best to avoids. And absolute pitfalls. We know we have a lot to learn but time is on our side. DandV