Monkey 1

Mine still has it's original fit out and is 25 years old, it still looks and feels very well screwed together I must say. My surveyor was very complimentary too.

Are narrowcraft still building boats? Just curious as I bought an old one a month or two ago.

I enjoyed reading Honey Ryder, very interesting and amusing. I knew little about flags. It's a shame the thread took a dive, as usual. I dislike this forum. I have a look every now and again when browsing but often find myself wondering why I bothered. :/

Thank you very much for that Tony, I understand it much better now. And thanks London for the link, I shall have a look on my laptop later this evening.

My old alternator needed periodic tensioning as it wasn't lined up perfectly. Last year I had to re wire the engine as I hadn't noticed after adjusting the alternator, that the case was touching the +ve terminal on the glow plug above it! One cold morning after a lenthly pre heat It melted the loom filling the boat with smoke. I ensured this new one was strait and it hasn't lost tension since.

Yes it has a new belt and is tensioned correctly.

Thanks for the info. Ok so I need to use a lower wattage bulb then? I did wonder. My 20w bulb was just a trial, hanging out of the control panel on the end of a wire! I think what you say IS happening because the bulb extinguished as soon as the starter is cranked, before the engine has fired. I shall buy a selection of bulbs and work my way up the watts until the light only extinguishes once running. Does that sound about right? One thing I don't understand is if the voltage supply to the warning light increases once the alternator is charging, how does it extinguish?

I've been doing a little research on this alternator business and I came across a porsche forum where an owner had a similar issue. Apparently on his model there is a resistor across the alternator warning light fooling the alternator into thinking the bulb uses more power, so the alternator charges at start up. So, I have just replaced my 5w alternator warning light bulb with a 20w car indicator bulb and hey presto, the light extinguishes as soon as the engine is running and the alternator charges with no revs at all. This has to be better than reving my 40 year old bmc hard every day to get it charging! Happy man

Thanks everyone for your input, so it's quite normal then. My concern is that it needs quite a high rev to get it charging. I guess I'll just have to keep warming it up a while before hand.

When I start my bmc 1.5, I have to give it quite a bit of throttle before the red charge light goes out. Is this normal? I've never met anyone else who has to do this! I have replaced the alternator with a new one after the old one failed but it still requires a high rev. Also, the new alternator has a loose blue wire coming out of the casing? Any idea what that is? I'm sure this is not good practice on a cold engine so I normally let it warm up a while first, but it is a bit of a pain. Your thoughts are appreciated!

The clifford arms is very dog friendly and serves nice food. It has a lovely atmosphere and can be quite busy at weekends.

Maybe I didn't word my post to well! The last sentence not being related to the first. My appologies, I have edited it for clarity.

I've never interpreted people saying " it's a contact sport" as not caring, more something said cheerfully to perhaps hide embarrassment. I dont believe anybody really wants to bash another boat.

I believe people use "it's a contact sport" to lighten the situation, keeping things cheerful, and not to be taken as a disregard for the boat they just hit. Also, I have said it to boaters that have hit me so they don't feel so bad about it.

It has a very similar front end to mine, quite a point and rising quite high.My roof is curved though where I notice yours is a slight V shape. I have just 6 ft clearance walking down the middle so I can just stand up.The same 2" bilge yours has. Mine is a Seamus Walsh boat, I believe he was Stoke based?

I see Carlt is still hell bent on 'winning' lol some things never change.

I thought I recognised your boat name, we are one of the three at shugborough. I love your red led lit gunwales! We ventured out today, cruising for a couple of hours then returned to shugborough. It has been beautiful. Merry christmas everybody

It was completely free at easter when i visited, no charges at all.

A few hundred yards further & you could have snapped my boat

I'm in the midlands! There's been very little ice & it never Hung around for more than a couple of days on & off. The bit we did have wasn't that thick to stop us moving if we wanted to. We did cruise through some lovely snow but that didn't hang around long either. It has been rather wet though, mud mud & more mud!

We are coming out of winter now so I thought I'd update everybody how it went! It's been a very easy winter really, not much hard frost, more damp & muddy. As we thought, power usage went up & we have had to run the engine almost daily for a couple of hours. I fitted a remote temperature guage to monitor the engine bilge temps & even through the coldest nights it never dropped bellow 2 or 3 degrees. So in answer to my original query, yes you can live aboard a raw cooled boat through winter Thank you for your help & advice

We must be lucky, but we regularly discharge our two seven year old 110ah batteries down to as low as 9v, then charge them up for a couple of hours & kick their arses all over again! they just keep taking the abuse. We have had the boat a year now.

Our bmc had the same noise, Identical to that of a bottom end knock. Being a car mechanic by trade I would have put money on it being that too, even the guys at Stone boat yard thought so. I had the engine out & the bottom inspected, nothing wrong. The only problem we found was the drive plate was deteriorated & was knocking back & forth so it was replaced. Also the water pump was grumbling a bit so that was swapped. We ran the engine on a test bench & it was perfect again! We are still unsure exactly what was causing the knock.

I did the same as you, removed the entire floor & side panels, & I know exactly how you felt when you saw the bilge rust! My boat has paving slabs for ballast. I took them all out, dried the floor out, scraped off all the rusty cack & then gave it a paint. When I put the balast back in I just layed it evenly across the boat. When the floor went down I left a couple of removable pieces at the stern end, water always makes its way to the back, so I could remove any water that might get under there in future. When I re fitted the boat I just planned it so weight was reasonably well distributed but it is not perfect. To level her up perfectly I have some off cuts of railway line stuffed to one side under the cruiser deck! There was a load of lead slabs under there originally but I weighed them in at the metal merchants.