Arthur Marshall

Can't complain about legal requirements being imposed on you if you can't be bothered to vote.

I had my SR2 fettled about five years ago after a major oil leak with a rebore, new pistons and a few other bits and pieces that i now forget. The guy doing it had difficulty sourcing pistons that would fit after the rebore and I know he had to make the rings himself (whether this is normal I have no idea). The whole thing cost £2,500 plus marina charges for where I had to take the boat for him to get the bits out. It still smokes a bit when cold - I think they reckon blue smoke is OK, it's the black stuff you have to watch out for.

You will have to bear in mind the possibility that your seller won't quit his boat when he says he will and you may have no way to make him. This happened to me over a house purchase made rather like your boat one - in my case it cost me a few grand more than expected to get him out, followed by the threat of physical violence. The seller had taken my fifty grand deposit and lost it at the bookies instead of using it to settle his mortgage. Not a deliberate scam, nice bloke, just a gambler. In my case, it all worked out well in the end, and it usually does with boats - I bought mine cash on a handshake, no survey, no papers, no proof of anyone's identity, and I've still got the undated receipt I got for my money. It's been pure joy ever since...

Shovelling water through the engine for a couple of months won't have done it much good either, will it? I had to have mine stripped right down after a relatively short episode of steam engine impersonation.

Agreed. I have no idea what the various horn signals mean (I have read what they are, but there no point in remembering them as no-one else does either), and just assume that they all mean "I'm here, watch it", so I do. That, of course, is on the rare occasions that, standing on top of an air-cooled Lister, I hear them in the first place. Neither do I often use mine, for the same reason. generally, if one is going at a sensible speed for the junction, corner or blind bridge, there's plenty of time to dodge, especially if you assume (same as you do when rising a bike on a main road) that everyone else is an idiot. Unless, as happened on one occasion, the gear cable snapped as I moved into reverse to stop to let a boat out of a lock and I just speeded up straight at them instead.

Putting a big shed up on a farm mooring can be a problem as councils often won't allow them - I seem to recall they see it as a change of use and it affects the farm rates. I do know that when I moored on the Shroppie, everyone had to take their sheds down after the council flew a helicopter over them and filmed them, though as it was some years back I can't actually reemmber when the argument was. There is a big canalside property on the upper Macc called Branches which used to be a boat builders that already has sheds and a long mooring, I think the coal boat uses it. Bit out of your way though...

I'll clean it all up as per Bizzard. It is all a bit mucky round there. There is a split charge relay, and the light stayed at full brilliance, apart from a short period when it flickered on and off, then came back on. After I'd wiggled the plug, the light went out, came back on when the engine stopped and went out when restarted as normal. I'll replace the alternator when it finally gives up the ghost - I think it was put in by someone from the chandlers in Middlewich. Mind you, when it does go, RCR will replace it for me, but who knows what with....

My knowledge of auto electrics is minimal , and I've forgotten most of that. The charging light wouldn't go off today and it seems to be a loose connection on the plug that goes into the back of the alternator, held in by a spring clip. When I gave it a shove, all became well. Is this likely to be the case, or is it something else and that was just coincidence?

At the hourly rate most yards charge, it really doesn't take much to go from £90 to £500 - about five hours work for two people probably. If they charge VAT, even less.

They seem to be becoming standard on hire boats. And without the silencer mentioned above. It is getting to be virtually impossible to be moored among other boats without some kind of engine noise. Sometimes I can hardly hear my damn trombone.

Not always easy to do. I had a major engine rebuild a few years ago and part of the deal was that after it was done I would get a complete itemised list of what had been done. Not only did I never get it after several increasingly annoyed prompts, but the guy refused to believe a diesel into oil leak was happening (or even possible on a Lister SR2) following the rebuild and do anything about it. Sometimes a breakdown in communication is what boatyards do best.

How they managed to run mine backwards I have no idea, apart from sheer incompetence. If you look at the back of the boat you can see one drainage hole is about three inches above the other one. They just welded the deck on wrong. When I complained they just shrugged and suggested I took all the ballast out of the front of the boat and put a load more in the back to change the whole boat angle. It would have looked like a speedboat to get the drainage working. Not a yard I ever went back to. Oh, and they also fitted a new stern tube with a seal that failed after a year and nearly sank the boat. I won't name the yard as I believe it's now under new management, thank god.

That might just make a song...

That's more or less what happened with my re-steeling. I got a quote of about 7 grand, which was fine, but when they actually cleaned it all off it need a lot more work than anyone could have guessed, and we found more as they went along. They more or less said they wouldn't put it back in the water unless some extra work was done (complete new weed hatch and tiller tube) as the boat wouldn't be safe without it. The flexible coupling was just a nightmare, which didn't surprise me at all, as we'd had real trouble getting it in and out before, though if the guy who rebuilt my gearbox had put it back properly in the first place, it would have been completely unnecessary for the yard to do it again. That's the other lesson for the OP to remember - every time you get an engineer or a yard to do a job, you'll either have to finish it off yourself or hire another one to do it. I don't think a single job has been done on mine which didn't need me to go over it again at least with a spanner to tighten the nuts up. Most have needed another engineer to finish it off, unless, like the self-draining deck which doesn't, you just have to put up with it. Boats are essentially pits you chuck fifty pound notes into. Worth it, though...

That's the way every yard that's ever done any work on my boat has done. I've only ever taken a quote with a huge pinch of salt and basically ignored it. That's why it's called an estimate - yards tend to assume you want the job done whatever the cost. And the bloke actually doing the job probably had no idea what had been quoted, anyway - if a yard employee he'd be on a wage, if a subbie, he'd just put in his bill afterwards.