Arthur Marshall

I did mine after stripping out to bare shell in about six months, though the engine and electrics were still in place and the latter didn't need much tweaking. New gas and plumbing, insulation and the rest. But it was on hard standing for which I wasn't charged and I was only working two days a week so had plenty of time to do the job. Small boat, too.

I've always chucked the baffle plate out. It's fine in my fire at home wuth a proper chimbley but a design flaw in a boat stove.

But the other taps all work. Could it be the taps themselves, tap washer gone over winter? Were they left open?

Presumably the galley is furthest from the pump? I'd leave it running with just one galley tap open and see if it clears. Maybe some muck has settled in the pipe. If it's a gas water heater, I wouldn't run that until the cold flows ok.

Do we actually know that this is the relevant boat? I'd like the OP to confirm the size of the boat before commenting further. I would consider 55 foot the minimum size for a liveaboard boat for fwo people. I couldn't have lived on my forty footer longterm, though a friend did live on a thirty five foot boat for many years, but he was on his own, and it was almost all cabin with a trad stern.

If there's no proper pull from the flue, fumes could easily leak through the top vent (it does in my fire at home). I suspect the throat plate is impeding the up draught when the fire is low - might be worth taking it out for a few days and see if the problem persists.

If it is that boat, which is 38 foot with a cruiser stern, it's fine as a holiday boat but much too small for two people to live on. Mine is forty foot, but with only a 23 foot cabin, which is just about ok for one to live on, but impossible for two - we struggle with space even on the rare occasions both of us get away. There is no room for storage space in a boat that small.

Any project is manageable given time and money, but when you calculate both, work out your estimate and triple it. That will factor in dealing with problems. Most of the work is fairly simple, but because you're working in a tight space and every single thing you do affects everything else it ends up frustratingly complex. You can't just finish one bit and move on to the next. And construction work is easy enough on land, but on a boat there are no levels and few right angles. Even if the boat's on land, you can't use a spirit level. Project boats are usually projects because they haven't been looked after. So assume at least fifteen thousand for replating, if not now, fairly soon. With no engine, surely you'd be better off looking at something useable your partner could just tweak a bit for that money. But the most crucial thing if all is to go and hire a boat for at least a two week cruise. You may love it , but you may not. It can be claustrophobic in that small space and if you like your privacy - well, there isn't any. I met a bloke singlehanding a new boat down a lock flight - they'd just bought the boat to live on, after one night the wife couldn't stand sleeping under the low roof and had taken their house off the maket and the bus home.

Came back for a while, gone again .

The next tune in the book was Lady Windermere's Dump, and I nearly called the boat that.

Well... what's done is done... https://youtu.be/FW7AxkxdW3U?si=Ta3CrHy18-J3CU0I

I reckon so. I've only got a few more years anyway, as age and infirmity creep up and I've given up expecting to go where I'd like to (the L&L again) as there's too much risk of not getting home, so it's back to pottering round old haunts. That's what I meant... That's messed up an entire song lyric...

That's as may be, but I suspect the government will get in anyway. And it won't be much bothered about a failing canal system, being, as usual, more concerned with sorting out well paid employment for when it gets kicked out again.

That was your second post on this forum. Needlessly agressive, no attempt to take on board any of the suggestions or take any part in the discussion that arose, just a bit of snark. They do say them as hands it out can't take it. Maybe it's fat boat syndrome. Park it on a corner in everyone's way and make it everyone else's problem. Nothing to do with bullying a newbie - someone new with a new problem to think about and discuss is always welcome, but it's a two way thing. A forum isn't like FB, where you post something and it gets "liked", a comment or two, and is then forgotten and dumped by the algorithm - it's a more robust place where opinions get thrashed out. I guess I, and one or two others, just lose patience with the attitude. It does seem to be getting more common. A first post, detailing a problem, a few replies and comments, a snarl of victimhood from an OP of "they've all got it in for me" because not all the replies were sympathetic "there there" noises but attempts to get to the root of the problem via discussion, and finally the OP delivers another broadside of general abuse and vanishes in a cloud of huff. Anyway, now I've got that off me chest, I'm going to go practice the fiddle. Paddy's night coming up. I hope the next chunk of blacking stays on, and everything we've suggested might be the reason the first lot didn't was wrong. Good luck. Composting toilets are the coming thing, you know.

It's supposed to work off line, same as the old eCanal maps did. Being of luddite tendencies, I had no internet on the boat until two years ago. It also should link seamlessly to RCR so they can find you, and post stoppage info as soon as CRT announce it. The eCanal ones had a built in log which was useful. As in all progress, WaterNav is a step for the worse.

The WaterNav map on Android has now been updated. The very large and blocky icons still disappear as soon as you zoom instead of reducing, which is annoying, but there's a switch to turn off all the stoppage notices and it retains your choices of POIs, so you don't have the whole thing obscured by billiard halls, cinemas and other nonsense. Unfortunately, it no longer shows locks. At all. Which is, it must be said, a bit of a programming lapse. I can't understand why, with the excellent example of the old now unsupported eCanal maps to look at, this is being such a mess. Nor how this can be bunged out with so little checking. Maybe the Apple version works properly and they just don't care about Android users. ETA it doesn't show tunnels, either. I've sent feedback.

If they didn't launch in with a stack of insults when they get comments intended to help and occasionally amuse, they wouldn't get that response. They wouldn't have lasted thirty seconds in the bad old Dunkley days. Dunno what it is. You'd have thought people would know, how forums work by now , or perhaps they don't and think it's just like Facebook where nobody is really very interested, it's not a discussion, and the attention span is about that of a day's end mayfly.

I think it was me that mentioned the words " stupid" and "idiot", not you - I'd hate the wrong person to get battered!

Terribly sorry to hurt your tender feelings. I was responding to the sheer unnecessary rudeness in your original reply to a couple of members' attempts to provide helpful advice. You appear to have little interest in making friends or being influenced by well meant suggestions so unfortunately the only way you are going to learn is by experience. Good luck with that, it certainly doesn't seem to have worked so far.

At least it's not asking daft questions like "How much do you enjoy boating, 1 - 5, where 5 is Deliriously and 1is Very Much. Did anyone do much boating last year without running into problems? I'm giving myself six weeks for a two week trip this year.

Which presumably it can. CRT, however, as lower in the contractual pecking order, has no say in the matter. I'm sure the guys who run CRT are doing well out of it, as all heads of charitable organisations do. When the money runs out, they move on to another sinecure about which they know (and care) nothing, usually for a higher pay rate. As I once pointed out, Parry knows an awful lot about trains.

Oh gods , another one. When you come on a forum and ask for opinions, that's what you get. That's sort if how it works. The fact you may not agree with them doesn't entitle you to start slinging insults about , it just makes you look a prat. It cost me £1000 to black a forty foot thin boat. Less than twice that to do something more than twice as big does look relatively cheap, in my opinion. I may be wrong, but there again, I may not. The fact that half of it has fallen off tends to make me think I'm right and you got what you paid for, instead of stumping up for a proper job. It's the experience of almost every long term boater that unless you keep an eye on what's being done, it gets bodged. Again, you didn't, and it was. If you're fool enough not to listen to advice, and idiotic enough to insult those who suggest ways you could avoid repeating your mistakes, , you're heading for another crap job for exactly the same reasons and, tbh, serve you damn well right.

If it was informal, and not part of the written contract, then it should be ignored. You won't find the government sticking to "informal" promises, like manifestos, for example. Bit daft one side being 'honourable' when the other very definitely isn't. So I suspect it wasn't informal at all, and it's written into the gubbins setting up CRT, or it wouldn't be happening. The inescapable fact is that without government support the system will collapse and reurn to being a muddy ditch full of stagnant water and old mattresses. Was good fun while it lasted, though.

Very true. And as almost everyone on here appears to support the Party that has made the cuts, I can't actually work out why they're complaining so much. They really ought to be pleased - at least MtB is honest enough to say he will be happy to pay his 15 grand licence, though due to maintenance cuts there may not be any water to float his boat on!

They appear to be funding the yacht club move too, which always seemed a bit unnecessary to me. Fix the reservoir, yes, but let the boys pay for their own damn club. But this is what you get for skimping on maintenance, same as the T&M breach that flooded Northwich , which could have been avoided if most of the weir paddle gear hadn't been rusted solid. But we know there's no money for maintenance and hasn't been for years. Most of us have got called pessimists for mentioning it. The canals came back into life through volunteer labour, corporate stuff was never going to keep it going just because a few well off people love the life style, and the young who might once have got stuck in have got their own struggles to contend with.