IanD

I know all that, I've been across the HNC and through Standedge several times. But none of it justifies your moan about whatever new comms system CART is installing at Standedge, which is basically you saying that it's a total waste of money -- but without actually knowing anything about it, or why it's being installed... 😉

Sure you can have an opinion, but it carries more weight if you back it up with some actual facts. What have CART installed, how much did it actually cost, and what was the reason for doing it? Facts not hearsay, speculation or whinging... 😉 If the existing system worked fine and the new one is no better and was a vanity project for no good reason, then I'll agree with you that it was a waste of money. But I doubt that this is actually the case, CART have far better things to spend scarce cash on...

In other words you don't know or care why they're installing it, you just want to have a good old whinge about CART...

On the face of it that's true, but does anyone know *why* they spent this? Did they have to in order to keep the tunnel open for navigation? Elf'n'safety? (which remember, stops people being injured or dying at work, it's not just a whipping-boy for the Daily Wail) Increasing capacity? (should more boats ever choose to brave Standedge, obviously...) It seems unlikely that they'd have done this just because someone fancied it, given the CART budget shortfall...

"The requirements for installation of a fuel system on a boat with fixed fuel tanks are given in the harmonised standard BS EN ISO 10088 Permanently installed fuel systems and BS EN ISO 21487:2012 Small craft - Permanently installed petrol and diesel fuel tanks. [snip] Each tank shall have an inspection hatch of at least 150 mm diameter. The inspection hatch shall, as a rule, be located on top of the tank, but for diesel oil tanks it may also be on the tank side. There shall be access to the inspection hatch when the tank is in position." If that's not suggesting this is a legal requirement, I don't know what is -- average reader or not... 😉

As the thread about this made clear, closing the HNC is extremely unlikely because it would probably cost CART something over £30M in penalties to the bodies which funded its reopening, plus millions more to close off and make the canal safe. And that came from a poster who was actually involved in the funding negotiations and knows what he's talking about, not a scaremongering armchair lawyer... 😉

When we've gone over the HNC, any day which had even one boat coming the other way was a busy one... 😉 Given that such motorhomes cost about a third of what a typical hired narrowboat does to buy -- and the hirer doesn't have to pay commercial license fees -- it shouldn't come as any surprise that they're also a lot cheaper to hire. A cargo bike with a tent on the back would be much cheaper still... 🙂 I'm sure if you hired one of those massive American truck-sized RVs that cost the same as a boat (and are similarly large inside), the hire fees would be similar too... 😉 (just checked -- £300+ per night...)

Though of course if you had to hire the campervan the gap would be rather smaller... 😉

Agreed about the bow wave -- but 15kts isn't fast enough for a boat this size and weight to get up on the plane though, is it? It's all cloud-cuckoo land anyway, what's being asked for is completely impractical...

Which would make the power required even more ludicrous -- especially given that the theoretical hull speed limit for a 57' boat is 10.1kts, which needs 85hp/63kW (the 70hp I worked out was for 72' boat, but looking back the OP wants a 57' "go-anywhere" boat). 15kts in a 57' narrowboat would need 260hp/195kW... 😞

If your router/MiFi runs off USB and you have USB sockets (or adapters) on the boat you should be fine -- the warning was for routers (like your new Huawei?) which normally run off 12v DC via a mains adapter, don't run these straight off the boat DC.

Whether it's legitimately licensed and insured for rent is another issue entirely... 😉

And it's bigger than a typical CART licence fee!!!!

The Huawei is a good choice if you don't want/need 5G. If you still have poor reception/data rates then a better antenna might help. You could also (cheaper and easier) try a different network, EE have the best overall coverage but are not as cheap as Three -- you could try this out using a 1-month SIM from 1pMobile.

I agree, but unfortunately most people (and governments) don't -- and the costs and timescales to build nuclear are enormous... 😞 Yes there are all sorts of proposals for things like SMRs but these are completely unproven and their proponents ignore their disadvantages -- and there's still the waste to deal with, which people are terrified of even though there's not very much of it, and it (and nuclear power) have killed *far* fewer people than fossil fuels -- or even hydro power... 😞

Schrodinger's inspection hatch, then... 😉 Methinks there are also two possible meanings for the acronym in "Thanks for the BS extract Alan"... 🙂

Nobody is saying that cutting down rainforests to grow palm oil trees is a great idea, assuming this is indeed the source used for HVO. But you always have to look at what the alternative is -- and if that's burning fossil fuel diesel, HVO palm oil is very likely a less bad solution when everything is taken into account. (palm oil trees are green trees, just like rainforest trees, and do a similar job of carbon sequestration -- probably a better one given how fast they grow) Of course truly renewable energy (wind, solar...) is a much better solution than HVO, but if you can't use this for propelling a boat (or whatever) that doesn't matter. Again, it's a case of what's the least bad solution -- is it still better than any usable alternatives for this case? (baseload power generation when there's no wind or sun) Transport costs -- money and CO2 emissions -- for moving stuff round the world on ships are quite small, IIRC this adds something like 10%-20% to the carbon budget for those woodchips. That still makes them far better than burning fossil fuel, if that's the alternative to providing baseload power (since people don't want nuclear power plants in their back yard). It's all fine saying "palm oil and woodchips are terrible!", but that ignores the fact that the energy has to come from *somewhere*, and if that's not renewables then they're still better solutions than burning fossil fuels...