Arthur Marshall

Sorry to revisit this. Cleaned it up and working OK, but stopped charging again the other day as spade connector fell out - on examination the thin wire is only connecting by a few strands and the plug is falling apart. So I have to replace the plug, but due to the way the boat has been rewired (a story i won't go into) the thin wire, which I presume goes to the charging light (the wiring is now untraceable due to the actions required by my last examiner) is too short to strip the rusted end off and re-attach. Fat wire seems fine. Question, is it safe just to connect a short piece of wire to the new plug and join it to the original with a connector? ETA: there are only two wires going into the plug.

I think CRT have changed tack on EOG moorings now anyway. For info, I've always moored on farmers field moorings, and have always paid moorings fee to CRT and rent for the mooring to the farmer.

Yes, but I'm going to try going up again on Tuesday, so be prepared for another stoppage...

I was just going up there this morning for my last trip of the year... culvert gone.

Thank gods for that. I've always assumed it was used like a stirrup pump. On the small one, you can fit the hose on the bottom, but I'm still not sure it would have enough suction to hoick anything up the tube.

This may look like a daft question, but sometimes you find you appear to have misunderstood something for forty years, so... The Whale Easy baler pump, which is a stirrup pump gizmo of the type I use for emergency bilge emptying purposes, says in its bumpf that it comes with a flexible tube to let you get to those hard to reach areas. Now, I have always used the thing, or its equivalent, by stuffing the body of the pump into the bilge and the hose over the side, ie, water goes in at the bottom and ejected out of the top. The bumpf suggests the hose should go in the bilge, thus the water gets sucked into the top of the pump and then out the bottom, presumably into a bucket. Have I been doing it wrong all these years?

I have a lot of play at the top where the rudder post goes into the tube. Originally, I cut up an old washing up liquid bottle, wrapped it round the tiller post and shoved it down the hole, keeping it in place with a jubilee clip round the top. That worked fine for ten years and cut out most of the vibration. Since I had a new tube put in, when they found that the rudder post itself was bent (would have been better if they'd replaced the whole lot, but they didn't on the standard engineer's rule that they have to leave every job half done so you have something to grumble about afterwards), the vibration got worse, so I put a bolt behind it, put a big jubilee clip round it and the tillerpost just before it vanishes down the hole and tightened it up so the damn thing can't vibrate. Just needs a bit of grease and a new clip every now and then and the occasional bit of tightening. Photo's a bit fuzzy, but you get the idea. It was suggested by a guy in the basin at Llangollen.

Ah. Sorry for giving duff info.

There again, after the cost of flying back to the UK from Australia and paying for half a year's hardstanding, I would have thought you could factor in a new couple of batteries as a normal maintenance cost...

A lot probably depends on where you'e going to leave your boat. Here on the Macc it gets pretty nippy in winter, where i was before near Chester, it doesn't, really. If you're further south, warmer again. Presumably the only power that needs to be left on is for an automatic bilge pump (not that they're much use anyway - every one I've ever had has failed when it was needed!) so any other batteries could be just disconnected and stored in the boat where i would imagine they wouldn't come to much harm. It's only below the water level it gets really cold for any length of time. But again, if you're moored anywhere near any of us forum members, one of us may be able to just run the engine for you?

Can you not get an arrangement with a friend to come down to the boat once or twice a month and run the engine for a few hours? That's basically what I do over winter - quite a few of the other boats on my mooring don't get visited at all from October to April and they seem to survive OK.

I'm sure I recall Nigel saying somewhere or other that there is actually no legal obligation for CRT to allow non-cc-ing boats to moor up anywhere, for any length of time. It's a concession, not a right, so presumably can be withdrawn at any time. As far as charges / fines are concerned, I still cannot see the problem - if CRT can charge for a permanent mooring on the towpath, or for a temporary one as they do at Llangollen, then they can charge what they like, where they like, for however long they like, with whatever conditions they like. No-one has ever challenged their right to do this as far as I know, certainly not successfully, so I presume if they aren't pursuing the £25 quid for overstaying, it's because it isn't worth their while financially. Yet.

I think the only person who benefits from crowdfunding in general is the site owner, who takes a whacking great cut out of whatever's pledged. And I do wonder how much of it ever actually gets handed over - it always strikes me like the great public fundraisers - millions get pledged, but my cynical soul wonders if much actually gets to where it's supposed to go. I also wonder about how the fire started. The first time I had my boat re-steeled I had to strip it down to the metal on the inside as it was all polystyrene insulation, which just caught fire more or less as soon as a welding torch got close.

I don't think anyone's ever suggested he was a troublemaker. That implies active behaviour, and living on an only just inhabitable hulk is more passive. And obviously better to get his other boat cabinned and engined so he can actually CC legally.

Bridge is fixed now.

There are visitor mooring by the Toby pub - usually a few boats there but there's plenty of room. And plenty of room to turn. The marina is adjacent but separate, if you see what I mean. The bottom of the Caldon can be a bit rough at night - first safe moorings are up at Milton or just a bit further at Engine Lock. There's room on the curve just after Milton Bridge for a few boats - it's pretty narrow round there. If you do books, there's a cracking 2nd hand bookshop in Milton...

Just out of interest, where are all the owners of these vandalised boats? Presumably they don't actually live on them, and they don't appear to move much as they are obviously being left in a dodgy area. I can see a time coming, whether we like it or not, when the CC label will only be allowed to someone resident on a boat, rather than to a leisure boater who just shifts it a few miles every fortnight (mostly, anyway) and otherwise leaves it clogging up a mooring somewhere waiting for a scrote to find it. It has always seemed an invitation to vandalism to me, and a huge risk to take with a considerable investment.

Trouble is, there are more and more people like this on the canal. I still find the guy who moors on the lower Macc opposite the visitor moorings and who runs his engine / generator until half ten every night (sometimes later) hard to beat. He gives a mouthful to anyone who asks him to knock it off and makes a good sized stretch of the rare decent moorings on the Macc unbearable. If he was the only local resident he would definitely be a candidate for a trombone solo at three in the morning...

I assume he's just going to turn it so the broken window is on the off side rather than the towpath side? Fitting a boat out on the towpath, assuming it's not a registered mooring, has always seemed a bit odd to me. I can understand that it saves money, but surely you can't really CC under those circs. Even taking a mooring for a short time would give you better access as well as security.

You must live next door but one from me...

Most of those are fairly antisocial, depending on the time of day you pick to do them, or if you run your engine nonstop next to someone trying to enjoy the peace and quiet without breathing diesel fumes all day. The problem with a radio on the hatch is that, because of the engine banging away next to you, it has to be loud so you can hear it. Everyone else doesn't hear your engine so much (it's mostly underwater and surrounded by metal), but the sound of your horrible taste in music (horrible, obviously, because it simply isn't the same as mine) can be heard for about a mile before you arrive and another mile after you've gone, which means we have to put up with it for at least half an hour. And why I should be forced to listen to someone else's choice of music is beyond me, which is why I don't like it in pubs or restaurants either. But I can choose not to go in them, you don't give me the choice. And if headphones inhibit awareness, what on earth do you think a radio on the hatch does? Noise is noise. I am also amazed that you haven't noticed that sound travels miles over water but believe it sticks like glue to the surface of your boat.

I've been tempted to do that very thing in response to some barmpot's radio blaring out, and occasionally next door's dog barking interminably round midnight.. But then, of course, you just add to the irritation of all the other neighbours who aren't being a nuisance (though how they could find a trombone anything but soothing I have no idea). The last place I lived backed on to a terrace, where more or less every one of about 15 houses had some kind of music radio on, all different, all loud, all in their gardens. I do, however, as everyone who knows me is aware, possess a soul of infinite patience, so i just sigh . But people with ghettoblasters on the boat hatch, or the new idea which seems to be catching on of having giant speakers just inside the back door get right on my nadgers. And as for those bloody single cylinder engines banging away...

Wish i did... I think you've misunderstood me. When I say one tends to live in the nicest place one can afford, that doesn't just mean in monetary terms. Everyone has their own definition, but you would, I think, accept that if you had the option, of living in a ditch or with some kind of roof, you'd choose the roof. No doubt there are some who don't, but I doubt there are many. Travellers' origins being in the punk subculture is a new concept to me. It's nice to meet an expert in these things, but I must admit I rather thought travellers pre-dated punk by quite a while (unless, of course, you constantly redefine words to fit your argument, which I think is cheating, though regrettably common). But I would really like to know what my "preferred truth" is as I've spent most of my life looking under stones trying to find anything that I could actually define as "truth". Anyway, this has now started straying into personal comments which have nowt to do with the original topic, which was, if I recall, about plonkers in boats, so I shall bid the thread goodbye and go boating... but do feel free to discuss the dreamworld I live in without me.

Those are daft questions, and reflect more on the questioner than anything else. If you're living in something that's about to sink, you are vulnerable to becoming homeless. You are therefore a vulnerable person. Absolutely nothing to do with anything of a medical nature. People tend to live in the nicest dwelling they can afford to be in. Ergo, your residence is a rotting hulk held together by plastic and tarps, it's the best they have available. If somone is sleeping in a hedge, that's the best they can find for the night. If in a tent in the middle of winter, ditto. In a mansion on the South Downs, much the same. If you really don't think there is a housing problem in this country, you are either extremely rich, in your sixties with no children or simply keep your eyes and mind firmly shut against reality.

Antisocial doesn't mean ill, nor does aggressive behaviour, deliberately breaking the law or, in fact, generally acting like a pratt. Nor does refusing to buy a licence or making the place look untidy. Doesn't stop it being antisocial though, in that it just doesn't fit with our social norms. Those who refuse to comply with those norms can't really complain about how society reacts unless they do, in fact, have good reasons for such behaviour - such as illness.