BruceinSanity

Not the first time I’ve posted this, so apologies to those who are fed up with it! To test suitability of toilet paper for a macerator: 1 Place one sheet of paper in a jar of water 2 Let stand for a couple of minutes, not more than five 3 Stir with spoon or other utensil of choice 4 Paper should disintegrate into small shreds. Any paper that does this is fine, no others are. If the macerator is struggling to cope with ordinary paper, it’s likely scaled up. Treat it with either LeeSan descaler since you’re rich and can afford Thetford toilet paper or else acetic acid (“non-brewed condiment”) or phosphoric acid bought online. You want about a 10% solution. Ideally, let the macerator stand full of descaler for several hours, preferably overnight.

On that basis, the Shroppie would be a contour canal!

All I can say is that we have a Shoreline fridge and it hasn’t been a problem in the last eight years of (until this year) at least six months cruising per year. Depends on how hefty the supply cable is, I guess, and of course the inverter is only on for short periods, an hour at most when using the oven.

It should be, worth trying it out before you leave the marina. What output does the new genny have? That may affect whether you can use 230v appliances in the boat whilst the charger is guzzling all the juice.

This another case of something that’s always been present in the human psyche being amplified by social media, isn’t it? I’m sure people used to go to watch dare devil high wire stunts in the hope it would all go wrong, and indeed public executions used to be a major crowd puller. Then there’s the problems of ghoulish rubber necking at accident sites. How many people go to F1 races with the idea there might be a crash? Not by any means all or even most, I’m sure, but I bet it’s an issue for some.

We do this too, very successfully until this year. My health issues meant we didn’t set off cruising in April as usual and SA has been sat on her mooring all this time. All well and dandy except the solar only charges the domestic bank and it only occurred to me to check the start battery at the start of this month. It was down to 12.5v and 24 hours with the shoreline charger on only lifted it to 12.6v, so I guess it’s goosed. It’s 9 years old so I’m not too upset at having to replace it. I don’t want to start faffing around with VSRs and the like, I guess I could just put a jump lead between its positive post and one on the leisures, removing it before boating.

AIUI, they detect any reducing gas, that is one that binds to oxygen as CO -> CO2 or H2 -> H2O. A typical arrangement is a Wheatstone bridge (remember them?) with three resistors and a piece of platinum wire of equal resistance in the four arms. Platinum has the property of changing resistance in the presence of a reducing gas, thus unbalancing the bridge, causing a current to flow across it and triggering the alarm.

I’ve never found a topical antihistamine that does any good. For small bites I use one of those piezoelectric thingies, (one of these https://www.boots.com/boots-bite-relief-click-it-10234814) gives a bit of counter-irritation at the site, for anything serious straight hydrocortisone cream does the trick every time.

In addition to alarms elsewhere in the boat, I’ve put a CO alarm on the bulkhead by the engine room door into the bedroom, at head height, so more or less clear of the ceiling/deckhead, and an ionising smoke alarm on the ceiling forward of the door into the electric cupboard. The door has a vent grill at the top, so hopefully early combustion products of an electric fire would trigger the alarm. The CO alarm has a digital display, so handy for glancing at when the batteries are on charge to see if hydrogen is finding its way out of the battery box.

I googled for otters killing mink and found several reports that they do. An example here which reports that mink bones have been found in otter spraints.

So take some ranitidine (Zantac) before you go out.

Not at all unknown for hirers to decide they made a mistake booking a canal holiday and just abandon the boat somewhere near public transport, leaving the hire company a) to realise what’s happened and b) recover the boat.

Do you sell surrealist package holidays, such as three nights and eight days? 😄

I’d go along with this, safer moorings this way, by and large, too. If you have time and stately homes are your thing, there’s Wightwick Manor near Compton, too, well worth the short walk.

Up until now we’ve stayed with the typical gas cooker+solid fuel stove+diesel CH boiler on our boats, but as we get older and more feeble (even without my present scary health problems described here et seq) lugging gas cylinders and bags of coal gets to be a problem. So the next boat is going to be gas free with a big LiFePo4 bank, an induction hob and a diesel-electric drive, hopefully. I see Fischer Panda are now offering a drop in genny+electric motor package, just like all those locomotives and modern ships. Tradtionalists may feel free to sneer, glad to give you something else to grumble at 😜.