David Schweizer

No not too late. They could take some careful renovation and restoration if you are good with a small brush, but if not, Dave Moore's suggestion is the best way to go, it is what many boat decoraters would do.

Alternatively, having realised it was a typo, you could have edited your post to remove the unfortunate comment.

Why do you do it? Your subsequent post indicates that you clearly understood my post despite the obvious typo, making foolish comments does you no justice.

I read somewhere that you need rto be qualified to make and set up Lithium battery banks, but do not remember what the qualifictaion involved.

I did monitor the batteries on a regular basis, but rather than install an expensive monitoring system, relied upon good old fashioned voltmeters and ammeters, together with a Sterling Advanced Battery Regulator. I had a battery charger on board, but cannot remember ever using it on my batteries. We tended to move every day which ensured that the batteries were always being re-charged.. The US batteries we had on the boat were desisigned to power golf buggies, small fork lift trucks etc and would tolerate being heavily discharged, without any damage occuring.

In my many past years of boating I have heard various reports of LA batteries leaking acid or gas, and someimes exploding, but have never had any experience of this happening in my boat, or indeed on any boat owned by friends. All this leads me to ask whether this is good fortune or better quality equipment and installation.

My first set of extra deep cycle batteries lasted 13 years before I passed them on to another boater. They were beginning to loose charge when I left the boat for several weeks, and needed a top up charge every few days, AFAIK they lasted at least another five years before they did not want to hold charge for more than a day. Not knowing how much an equivalent bank of Lithium batteries would cost, I do not know whether there would be any cost advantage.

At the risk of hi-jacking this thread, may I please ask what are the benefits of replacing LA batteries with Lithium ones. We had two heavy duty Deep cycle US batteries in Helvetia, and they went on trouble free for years. They never ran down during usage and kept their charge consistently, they did not even require the electrolyte topping up for the first five or six years, and then it was only every few months (or more) when a small amount of de-ionised water was needed.

I removed all the "blacking" from the top planks on Helvetia. and found that White Spirit was the best solvent. That was a traditional Bitumen. based product, and it may not work on more modern coatings, which may not contain bitumen, even though the term bitumen still seems to be the generic description used by most people.

Precisely, and that is what I used to make replacement catches on the Severn Yacht windows on Helvetia. From recollection I bought the box section from B&Q. I drilled the original rivets out, filed a section of box section off the ends to create flat sections, and and replaced the original rivets with pop rivets of suitable length, using a thick piece of leather between the glass and one of the flat sections.

Correct!

Back in the 1960's, we used to take Pisces through thick ice without a murmour of complaint from other boats. There were several Glass fibre boats moored above the lock where we moored, they were always lifted out onto the bank every winter, except for one which did get sliced in half by a passing working boat, it took about 5 seconds to sink! I can still remember the name of the working boat and it's captain, both still with us today.

I have found that the "Submit Reply" button sometimes fails to respond when pressed, even though the post has usually has been loaded. Persistant pressing of the button usually fails to give any response, but can result in numerous reply postings. The unwanted replies can usually be deleted by editing, if you do that within the first hour or so.

Back in the 1960's, the older working boatmen that I knew, referred to the non towpath side as the outside, and the towpath side as the inside. Probably originating from the days when narrowboats were hauled by Horses or Mules.

An issue I rarely ever have when using my own name as a user name on websites. 😀

I agree that a profiled edge would enhance the trim, but would advocate a square ovalo profile which will throw the light better, and can be matched up, either way round. I used mahogany ovalo trim against pine on Helvetia and it looked really good after it had weathered a bit.

Not really, just scroll back over a few pages, count the posted pictures and all will be revealed. You appear to be the only person consistently asking me to name the prolifically posting person, it would appear everyone else knows who it is, including the person themself. I will not be tricked into naming them.

Agreed. Even clear varnish will darken the wood a little, and oak will naturally mature over the years to a lovely golden brown.

None of the people who have asked are the guilty party. However, one peson has chosen to wear the cap, albeit in obscure disguise, and surrounded by some peculiar dialogue, which masquerades as gobbledygook. Work it out!!😀

Not sure why one of my posts was chosen as an example, but for clarity, I have always had the same User Name, from the very first day the Forum was started.

The prolific poster has been placed on my ignore list. Unfortunately it does not prevent the hundreds of previous posts from slowing down the thread.

And do all the images load immediately, or do you have to wait for them? If I go back six pages it takes nearly a minute for all the images to load, Jan has the same issue with her iPad. The problem is predominately images posted by one prolific person, images from other posters load almost immediately.

Is it not about time that this thread was closed and replaced with a new one? with over 600 pages of large images, it is taking ages to load, which could lead to some members ignoring it. I have a brand new computer, which is very fast with a huge amount of storage, but it can still take almost ten seconds for the thread to load, and even longer for newly loaded images to appear on the screen. The original purpose of the thread seems to have been replaced by some people just using it as a gallery to download their holiday snaps which I feel does not meet the original concept of the thread. It needs replenishing. Alternatively: Is there any way in which I can dump the first 500 pages, whch would, presumably, speed loading of the thread?