Arthur Marshall

I've got an ammeter, small block of circuit breakers, a headlight switch and the manual switch for the bilge pump. That's it. Quite enough.

I don't bother with comprehensive insurance, just 3rd party, so they won't be bothered! I'm on a fairly secure farm mooring on the offside and if anyone was going to nick a boat of the mooring line, it almost certainly wouldn't be mine!

Don't think my hooks have ever come loose and they're more or less all I've ever ever used while cruising. Home mooring's on scaffold poles.

People outside London work full time and have to claim benefits too, you know. It's not compulsory to live there . There seems to be an attitude problem that says one should be able to live wherever one wants, whether or not one can afford it and whether on not it involves breaking the law or the "rules". As well as a terrible fear of life north of Watford Gap. Anyway, this really is a pointless thread now, going the way of all previous ones in the subject. Ultimately, people will do whatever they want or think they have to do, justify whatever means they employ to themselves, and then whinge like hell when they find authority disagrees. Personally , I feel anyone who lives in London is welcome to it - I can't imagine being stacked up two or three deep is particularly pleasant and the constant threat of enforcement won't make it much fun either. As someone has said, if all these lowpaid people left, the city would collapse. It's an inverted pyramid, a mass of the poor, complaining endlessly about poverty wages, crap housing and lousy benefits, servicing a rich few. It can't last. Yet they all seem so keen to perpetuate it.

Maybe it's just London. Too many people all squashed together, bound to cause conflict. At least it keeps all these apparently unpleasant types away from the rest of us. Even when I lived on board, I only experienced people wishing they could, too. And all being aware of how those who cruised all year helped to keep the system open. Like a sensible person, as soon as I could I moved north where there's space and Yorkshire. And room for tolerance, even of hippies...

I'm afraid the real point us that you're talking bollocks. PMers etc do not have any sort of attitude to CCers, in thirty years of boating I have never heard anyone express such a thing as "distaste". In 10 months you do seem to have built up a hell of a shoulder chip and I suspect this reflects your attitude rather than anyone else's - you seem to have an irrational dislike of anyone whose boating pattern is different from yours. Try to get it into your head - 99% of boaters (whether we live on them, cruise on them, hire them or just go on holiday on them) don't give a toss about what anyone else is doing - we just like boats. PS you can't call it undirected , either, if it's directed at "rat boats and bridge hoppers". That's directed, rightly or wrongly. PPS I also suspect that your attitude reflects the fact that if you are tending to CMing, which in the past you seem to have denied but now say you do, the constant worry of whether you're going to be chucked off the cut is feeding this rather neurotic attitude that everyone hates you. We don't. We really aren't bothered. CRT may be, we aint.

Hippies belong everywhere. Just thought I'd mention it.

I can see why hooks might be a problem if leaving a boat for long periods, they can slip out of the piling, especially if passed at great speed...ordinary pins the same.

Be interesting to know which Macc mooring, too.

As with most things , it's not the reality anyway, it's the perception . I, and most people I know up here wouldn't be interested in travelling to London because of its rep. So CRT might as well accept reality, take the money and turn it into a housing estate. They don't even need to define them as residential moorings - let the local authorities sort that one out.

Or simply do what was done before the advent of mooring fees. Boat registers a "home area". Licence rises to include what CRT would charge for mooring. Moorers are no worse off. Rebate at year end for CCers if CRT's records show distance travel satisfies them .

Sometimes it's just "housing", cheap doesn't really enter into it. There's got to be an answer, preferably one that increases CRT's income. I suspect a big increase in CRT's online moorings, heavily policed, in the popular areas, with some visitor moorings also being charged for, as at llangollen. It'll make London virtually unvisitable without prior booking, but it probably is already as far as I can tell. And most leisure boaters don't want to go there anyway, being more interested in country than city.

I didn't find that when I lived on maybe 25 years ago. Maybe because most boaters I knew lived on, I suppose, with or without a mooring. Bit like I find now, no one cares very much. The debate, rather like on here, seems to be between just a few people with axes to grind or chips on shoulders. Most boaters just like boats, and boating whenever they can,whether they are owners in marinas, CCers, hire boaters or whatever.

I did run the engine for a while in gear before trying. I'm always a bit wary of overusing reverse.

Any suggestions as to how to get the old oil out? I physically can't get to the drain plugs and my suction doofer tube is too big for the dipstick tubes, and I suspect if I get a tube thin enough the oil will be too thick to pass through it. I tried a tube down the filler hole but couldonly get half a litre out.