Tony1

Even with my limited understanding it seems clear that an alternator controller is the most efficient and elegant solution, but I don't know if its going to be cost effective for everyone. Consider those unfortunates among us who have sub-40hp engines (such as my canaline 38), many with narrow V belt alternators that have quite modest current output (and I mean continuous output). On top of the cost of the lithium batteries themselves, you're looking at perhaps £1200 to install one of these controllers on a domestic alternator, that can only put out say 45 amps safely on a continuous basis. Its a lot of money to spend for such a modest output, And upgrading to a powerful alternator in some cases requires a crank upgrade to fit a poly V belt, so that adds maybe £250-300 for the alternator and maybe £500 for supply and fit of the crank upgrade. So perhaps another £800 on top of the £1200 for the Wakespeed controller? And that's on top of the cost of the batteries themselves. I suspect that to many folks with older or less powerful engines, it will appear just too high a cost- so its easy to see the appeal of this new victron B2B unit for that group of people. They can still achieve their max 45-50 amp charging rate, but for only £300 - and they can probably install it themselves and save money there too. And if they have two alternators they can get a second B2B unit and get another 40 amps charge from their canaline 38 (if they're feeling a bit brave). I totally agree its not the best way to solve the problem, but I reckon for for a certain segment of the boating population it will look like a decent cost effective option. The biggest question in my mind for people pondering spending a lot of cash on lithiums is- which of these charging setups will meet any potential future regulations...

Looks like Victron have produced the ultimate easy-to-fit solution for lithium charging, for those who cant afford an alternator controller costing anything up to £900, plus a few hours labour for an electronics person to fit it- and its 98% efficient! AND it has the ability to change the charging current- that will allow people to buy it with confidence, knowing that it will work with any alternator from 25 amps up to 200 amps. For those folks with good powerful alternators, you could get a pair of them and have anything up to 100 amps charging current, which is pretty decent really. If its a super hot summer day and you're a bit concerned about the alternator heat, you could reduce the charging current a bit using the phone. Yes its maybe 100 quid more than the basic 30 amp B2B, but the ability to precisely set the charging current is a bit of a game changer for me. I dont think there's any other unit that will let you do that. All you have to do is get in the engien bay with a thermometer, and find out what your alternator can safely put out, and set the B2B current to exactly that value- you'll be able to get every possible amp from your alternators. Erm, anyone interested in buying two used Victron 30 amp B2Bs?

Tbh I didnt do that, but I did measure the alternators operating temps when only charging LA batteries (at various current levels), and I dont think they ever got above 55 to 60 degrees in that more normal usage. So I reckoned 100 degrees was as high as I wanted to go, based on a normal temp of less than 60. I'm afraid the quality and capability of alternators in lower-end engines is not really ideal for lithium battery charging. Thats why I tread rather carefully when I'm trying to squeeze more current out of them!

I did those tests on a cruiser stern with the engine board off, on a freezing January day with a strong breeze swirling all around both me and the engine. The ventilation was rather better than I really wanted at the time!

My 30 amp victron unit has bluetooth control but it doesnt have current adjustment- its a couple years old so maybe the newer models do that? That new 50 amp model would be absolutely ideal for a new install tbh - you can up the charging current when you do a static charge at higher revs, and lower it for normal cruising. You'd want to be very strict about remembering to change the setting back in each case though, or you'll overheat the alternator. I think £300 is pretty decent for a unit like that, and I'd deffo get that if I didnt already have mine.

I wish I could give you a proper answer! What I did was to cut various lengths of cable, and did a bit of trial and error till I had a set of different cable lengths that would limit the output current from the alternators to 30 amps, 35 amps, 40 amps, and 45 amps, and I think 50 amps. I wired those in and ran the engine at idle, and used one of those thermometers that you point at things to measure the alternator temp (measuring the hottest spot, as the temp does vary around the casing). In my case I found that if the alternator was putting out more than 35 amps at idle it would get hotter than 100 degrees, so I bought the B2Bs with that limitation in mind. I did also measure how the alternators behaved at 1300 rpm, and found that I could suck more current from them at that speed, but you can only guarantee doing that rpm when sat on a mooring doing a 'static' charge.

I follow that principle when engine charging- I usually charge at about 1100 rpm or bit more, after a couple of mins at idle to let things warm a little bit. The scenario I have in mind is when cruising and you're going past a long line of boats at tickover, or going trough a lock, say- those times when you're engine is at idle for periods of time. Thats the sort of 'worst case' I had in mind when selecting the correct size of B2B to suit your alternator.

I currently use two LA batteries- one for each alternator. So each LA then 'feeds' into its own B2B unit. I did try running both alternators through a single LA battery to start with, but one of them runs at about 0.5v higher than the other. What seems to happen is that when they run in parallel to a single LA, the alternator running at the lower voltage fails to operate fully, and only puts out maybe 10-15 amps at best. But when running into separate LAs, they both run properly. I originally tried pulling more current from the domestic alternator but it just got too hot. Revving the engine to 1300 helps to cool the alternators, and I can squeeze out maybe 90 amps safely at 1300 rpm from both alternators, but it feels like I'm asking a lot of the crank and the belts doing that. So a 50 amp unit wouldn't really help me. I do think that before buying anything, people considering B2Bs need to test out their alternator(s) capability in the worst case scenario for alternator temp (i.e. sucking max current out when running at idle). If you buy a 50 amp B2B and your alternator can only put out 35 amps like mine, you've wasted your money, because you cant use the 50 amp B2B at all (although some can be set to run at half power, e.g. the Sterlings). In my case the panels are wired directly to the lithiums and not via the LAs, partly for the reason you suggest. This does mean that if I only cruise every 4 or 5 days in summer, my LAs are not getting a daily charge because the engine isn't running for several days, but they've been running with that very poor charging regime for well over 2 years, and so far they've lasted fairly well.

Those are the ideal solutions, no doubt about that, but so expensive... My thinking was that the market could do with having a unit that could be cabled in by an average boater (like an MPPT or a B2B can). As magnetman says, the MPPTs seem to be tantalisingly close to being able to do the job...

I can say the B2B units get very hot in use, so there's certainly a lot of heat energy wasted, although I've not measured the current going into them, only that coming out- so I cant say for sure. The previous Sterling unit I used seemed to waste at least 15% of the input current as heat, and maybe as much as 20% at times. My starter and domestic alternators are rated at 70 amps and 100 amps respectively, but they cant keep that up without overheating. To keep their temp below 100 degrees, I can't take more than about 30 and 35 amps from them respectively, so the victron units are a pretty good match for their safe current output level. So I get about 60amps into the lithiums in total. I did also install a third smaller B2B, with 18 amps output. I sometimes use the third B2B when I'm doing a static charge, because when doing that I can keep the revs up at 1300 rpm, which helps cool the alternators. So flat out I can get almost 80 amps of charge, but I don't always use the third B2B. Mine is a canaline 38 and it has narrow V belts- not poly V- and I feel like I might be straining the belts and the crank more I really should, when I'm doing a 90 minute battery charge at the full 80 amps. So I tend to stick to using two B2Bs for most of the time. I cant remember the max charge of the lithiums, but its certainly much more than I ever do to them! Even when cruising in high summer, with maybe a further 90 amps of solar coming in for long periods of the day, the charge current is only around 150 amps max. Tbh in those high solar months, I tend to leave the B2Bs switched off for most of the time, even when the engine is running, since the solar does everything I need and more. (Speaking of which, I've had 1100 Wh of solar today, so I feel like we may be starting to get into the period where it gets useful again) I can't understand why some wizard doesnt design something like that- a charging unit that will accept the output from an alternator, and transform that into charging current for lithiums. You've almost got that with the MPPT units, as you say - they just need adapting to accept the alternator input current at lower voltages than solar panels. Obviously an ignorant chimp like myself couldn't do it, but on the face of it, it sounds like a simple task for an electronics wizard?

Obviously I'm no expert, but my hope/expectation is that placing a B2B charger between the LA and the lithium bank will resolve point 3. I use victron 30 amp B2Bs, and my understanding is that no current can flow from the lithium back into the LAs. The fourth issue is managed by setting a safe bulk charging voltage on the B2B, e.g. 13.8 or 13.9v. From what I've observed, when the lithium gets up to about 90% full its voltage will start to rise above the bulk charging voltage in the B2B, and this causes the B2B to go into float mode. If you set float voltage to something like 12.5v, it means effectively no further current will pass into the lithiums. So maybe a B2B does provide a step up in terms of safety from a simple 'long wire' setup? Certainly it allows more precise control of the charging that is done to the lithiums. On the downside, as has been said here many times, B2Bs are very inefficient, and not really very a cheap solution, and who knows whether they will be deemed acceptable by potential future regulations?

Apologies if you've already considered this option and discounted it, but for anyone who wants a liveaboard craft with a lower budget, I would always suggest taking a quick look at a large GRP cruiser like the viking 32cc. If you include the covered centre cockpit (although in winter you can't really do that), it has not much less interior space than many 45ft narrowboats. It will definitely need some significant upgrades to make it comfortable to live on, and especially during the 3 or 4 coldest months of the year: things like a solid fuel stove, extra water tanks, a security/locking system to protect the outboard motor from theft, more batteries, an upgraded engine/battery charging system, to name a few. But it will be cheaper to license, cheaper to keep in a marina if needed, easier to find a mooring space in busy places, and easier to manoeuvre and to turn around without needing a full size winding hole, and it wont need biannual blacking https://www.apolloduck.co.uk/boat/viking-cruisers-32-for-sale/734713 Just a thought.

There is some truth in that, but I think the reality might not be quite so bad. For example, if your alternator can only charge at say 40 amps, when it is charging lithiums they will absorb a consistent 40 amps for almost all of the charge period, until almost full. However (as I understand it) lead acids will start to 'resist' the incoming charge within maybe 20-30 mins, and it seems that resistance increases as they get increasingly full. So it could be, for example, that in the second hour of charging they are only being charged at 20 amps, instead of the potential 40 amps available. That is a guess, of course- an expert like Tony B will have a precise idea of what the 'fall off' rate is for the charging current as the battery gets full. The final 10% to get the lead acids up to 100% SoC might therefore take a good few hours. Maybe that's why people give them an 8 hour charge every week or so. So there is that advantage of lithiums- even if you can only charge them slowly, they will still absorb that limited charge faster than lead acids will.

By Jove Sir, you may be onto something there. Not that I would know, of course, being an electrical ignoramus. But if it does work and your boat isn't incinerated during the early testing phases, I recommend painting the new device blue and marketing it as a 'Wictron'. And you'll need a sexy Dutch-English accent for the marketing videos. Go for it Sir. This time next year we'll be ruined millionaires.

Tbh I'd be happy with 10ft beam, it would feel so much more spacious than 6ft 10. I guess 10ft would rule out one of those ex-hire GRP broads cruisers though, they tend to be 12 ft or more.

Well, that's the strangest thing. There were a number of potentially contentious items which magically disappeared from my boat on the morning of the BSS inspection, and were later found under a tarp nearby. If the chap had asked about the tarp, I was going to say it was some wood and other junk I'd moved to make it easier for him to access the gas locker and other places. I may have said I used it to store the bodies of boaters whom I'd killed for running generators late at night- anything to keep him from looking under there.

The guy from whom I bought my boat had just replaced it with a widebeam, and his home mooring was not too far from Ely. He'd been happy cruising those EA waterways for years, and he fully intended to carry on. If you've made an underlying assumption that you're not going to move any further than Northampton, then a widebeam makes a lot of sense, in your case. Why sacrifice living space and live in a 7ft wide tube, if there's no strong reason to do so? Personally I want to cruise a lot of the narrow canals (at least for now), so a wide beam is not an option. But some people have already done all that, and are now happy to stay on the wide waterways. Other folks are not planning to do the narrow canals at all. There's no right answer except what fits your needs and preferences, and if what you mainly want is the experience of living afloat (but not cruising very far), a wide beam will let you live aboard in some style and comfort, with lots of storage space, big water tank, enough roof/deck space to compost toilet waste if you want to. I love the things, I really do, and its not out of the question that if I ever get bored of cruising the waterways, I'd get a wide beam and head East. Or rather, head east and THEN get a wide beam. I've even wondered about whether a GRP broads cruiser would be a nice thing to end up on. ETA- I was never keen on marina living though. I did try it for a few months during one of the lockdowns, but the side-by-side arrangement of boats didnt sit well with me for some reason- I guess I wasnt keen on the view from the windows (on both sides) being other boats beside me, moored about 4 feet away.

This is all very sobering information. It looks like my over 70 plan of becoming a highly paid canal gigolo will have to be revisited. The 'nuclear' option would to move to Bangkok and become a ladyboy (at the age of 75). No pain, no gain, as they say.

I think Mr Haggis is giving these peasants far too much leeway. I find the best approach is to get up to ramming speed on a long straight, and then slip past the offending vessel. As your stern passes their bow, swing it out so that it hits them. With any luck you'll send the blighters into the offside bushes and weeds where they belong. Hopefully a passing farmer will shoot them for trespassing. If they do catch you up, then of course you say it was all a terrible misunderstanding. Mistook them for Somali pirates. Dreadful business. Couldn't be helped, sir. Never mind, whisky all round, etc. What I can't understand is why these awful people insist on driving a narrowboat with less than 40 years experience, no waistcoat, and no cowboy hat. The nation is sleepwalking to disaster.

My initial reaction was that it would be great to see Denzel Washington assist him in the creation of a new ass**le, but you are of course correct. You do come across boaters who seem to have anger management issues, and in many cases I suspect it is a mental health issue underlying it. Perhaps Denzel's time would be better spent on the rude old gentleman in the OP.

In the comments on the video, a few local boaters recognised the shouting narrowboater- apparently he's well known locally for being rather aggressive and confrontational. One can only hope Denzel Washington will cruise past one day on a narrowboat holiday, the guy will insult him, and Denzel will do something very unpleasant to him with some coal tongs, as he does to so many of those gangster types in his 'Equaliser' documentaries.

The 50 cals are quite an unusual design feature. I think Braidbar used to offer those as standard, to deal with speeding hire boaters. Its rare to find a boat with a good quality belly turret these days- they're all just like floating caravans. I'm not a fan of the wheels, but I can see they'd be jolly handy on the Ashby when the water level is low. But at least it hasn't got one of those awful bow thruster things.

I wonder if there is an element of 'group think' going on behind the widespread disdain for 'wide beam narrowboats' (as apollo duck seems to classify them). I've heard a few boaters mention them with a look of disapproval, or a sarcastic comment, and I'm getting the impression that it's not poor behaviour on the part of the widebeams that creates this general lack of positivity towards them. My guess is that the negativity is mostly caused by their sheer size. There's no getting around the fact that when its busy, you do have to be a bit more careful passing wider boats, as they reduce the available width of the canal more than narrowboats do. I think anything that stands out, even slightly, as being the cause of a bit more inconvenience or hassle, is going to stir up some negative feedback. The hassle factor they cause is not very great, but hassle doesnt have to be great to make people resent it. Add to that the perception that the widebeam owners are maybe prioritising comfort and space, ahead of the ability to cruise lovely canals like the Llangollen of the Macc, etc. Maybe some narrowboat owners find that they feel little in common with that approach to boating, and maybe that contributes to the lack of positivity. I almost feel as if we're supposed to feel a lack of positivity and sympathy towards widebeams- almost like its a cultural thing. But that bloke was just a bellend, frankly. Common decency suggests that if you don't like someone's chosen car, or boat, or house- you don't normally just say that to their face as your introductory sentence. At least not if you want to get along with people. This video (at 26:50) shows a widebeam youtuber getting shouted at by a narrowboater, apparently just for passing him! He says its happened to them several times in the last few years.

Well that's certainly worth knowing, thanks. But then I think about how much 'referring' google do when I use Chrome, and I bet it makes the binance thing look fairly minor. I think it might be worth having a play around with brave browser. My worry is that YT are going to increase the price of the premium service before too long, and I'm going to get more interested in alternative ways of stopping ads. They'll do it it in small increments but I definitely think they'll do it, and its worth having an option ready for when the price gets unfairly high. And knowing YT, that is a 'when', rather than an 'if'.

Exactly right- YTs dream scenario probably involves more than 50% of all users paying for the premium service, thus guaranteeing them a huge base income, free from the variability of relying on product advertisers. The way YT are heading, I think you're right that the non-premium viewers will end up getting a really crappy experience, with ads every couple of minutes in the videos. I think it's the way a destructively-greedy corporation sometimes works. In the end, the greed causes strategies that kill the company itself. Too many ads would just drive the non-premium users away from youtube to a large extent- they would only watch very specific things, perhaps recommended by friends or whatever. I know at the moment there are ways around the ads, such as brave browser etc, but YT and google are really going to war on these workarounds, and on ad block software in general. In fact, I believe one of their future tactics will be to threaten that if you use an ad blocker when watching YT, they will ban your google account altogether from watching YT. They might even try to stop YT working on any browsers other than Chrome. And for many people, YT has become their primary source of video content- more so than netflix, sky or amazon, etc. So a YT ban will really hurt, and that threat will deter many from trying an ad blocker. It's hard to say where YT's greed will end up going, but if they make the non-premium experience bad enough, viewers will migrate to Vimeo and elsewhere. I know for a fact that if premium was not available and I had to sit through ads, I would not watch half the amount of videos that I do now. And once the viewer numbers on vimeo reach a critical mass, it will be become the new de facto platform for creators. YT will kill its golden goose at some point- I feel that its greedy practices make that inevitable.