Arthur Marshall

If you've got a baffle plate, take it out - that's where all the gunk settles, hardens and blocks the flue. Personally, I leave mine out. I'm going to make myself one of Tracy's inventions, been using a rod with an old grinding dusk on so far but it's fell to bits .

Alwsys nice getting more plugs for the Guardian on here.

Battery power? I know if the water pump is running for a shower and I turn on the shower pump the water pressure drops immediately. Is there enough power to run both pumps fast enough to get the rise? Bilge pumps are pretty wimpy things.

Marinas cost a stack more, obviously. I've always moored on farms, in thirty years never paid more than £500 for the farm mooring, plus the EOG. No facilities, no power. If you parked a sinker up here, without anyone to keep an eye on it, it probably would sink. It rains a lot and bilge pumps fail a lot. I'm making an assumption as to what a CRT mooring costs as the EOG is meant to be half. Farm moorings on the Macc are like hen's teeth, but a couple of folk on here have settled on my mooring when we had vacancies.

No it doesn't. My licence this year is just over a thousand quid. CRT get over eight hundred quid off me for my EOG fee. My maths skills may have gone off a bit, but I think that's slightly more than 25%. And as that is calculated as half their local mooring fee, it means one of their moorers must be paying about £1700 for online mooring, in addition to their licence. That's not 25% either. Or, for that matter, 5%.

Ccers may make use of the facilities, but mostly they know what they're doing. And anyone on a proper cruise isn't rushing, either. I'd think the biggest and most careless users of the system are hire fleets (not all, of course). I don't think the "who uses it most" argument gets us anywhere, or is at all relevant.

I doubt it. A genuine CCer has expenses a home moorer, most of whom visit their boat a few weeks a year at most, don't have. They also perform a lot of other useful functions, such as keeping the system open all year and spotting potential problems. I wouldn't be surprised if the surcharge goes up to about 50% though, or to an averaged out amount of the EOG fees charged round the country (which would probably be nearer 80%). But the whole point of the differentiation was because some people had no need of a mooring, because they cruised the system while living on their boats (I'm ignoring daft paradoxical interpretations of the law ). A continuous cruiser who doesn't move much is an entirely different matter, as are the serial dumpers, but that's a different fish kettle for CRT to tackle and has nothing to do with licences or mooring fees.

If you do, send them feedback about the icon size and the fact that it doesn't store your choice of POIs (& anything else you spot, obviously !) . It does seem like it's still in development, quite a few bits say "coming soon" so there's a chance of improvement.

RCR have updated WaterNav, still free from their site. On android it now runs in dark mode and shows stoppage information, the latter unfortunately in huge red icons that don't minimise as you zoom out so they block everything else. Otherwise seems an improvement. With luck they'll get enough feedback so it ends up as good as the old eCanal maps.

And it'll still be an awful lot cheaper than paying for any kind of mooring, as indeed it should be, as that was the point of the CC concept in the first place for those on a genuine cruise.

Every auto bilge pump I've had in thirty years has failed when it was needed. Admittedly only three times, I think, but the first time sank the boat, the third would have done if the bloke using the boat hadn't driven halfway round the 4 counties with it on permanent manual. I just don't trust them any more and treat the auto feature as a backup which might, but probably won't, work.

While the EOG mooring fee (or home moorers surcharge) is going up by 10%.

Nice to see you , as usual, adding nothing but pointless snark to a discussion. Perfectly in character, of course. Well done.

Deleted as can't be bothered.

You're right, my back went clunk and I'm hobbling about on a stick. Probably explains it.

Back in the year dot, before there was any fuss about renting, I used to let friends use the boat for a few weeks a year, for which they did indeed give me money, if not much. Every time it came back it had damage that was never owned up to - one huge dent in the bow, broken deck planks. Once it was left with a literally overflowing toilet. Simply wasn't worth the grief.

The op should (assuming they are serious, which personally I doubt) also remember that, in general, advice given for free is worth what they've paid for it. Odd, too, that the boat owner seems to know nothing about either marina regulations or continuous cruising. And appears incapable of reading anything CRT has produced on the subject.

Keep going, I'm enjoying this...

Some old boats had big front decks below the waterline and a pipe running from the front bulkhead through to the engine bilge. A lot of rain over December sank my boat thirty years ago. The bilge pump failed as usual, or else just flattened the battery while pumping. I'd only left it a couple of weeks. Luckily for me it only sank about a foot before settling on the mud.

I just use Irfanview for everything to do with pictures. Simple and does everything .

Surely something as simple as that would have been noticeable in the month they were living on it. I wonder if it was simply that it was insured as a leisure biat rather than residential, though why that should make any difference to its floatability I can't imagine, but it's the kind of thing insurance companies love.