Tony1

My guess would be that if the ads have become more frequent, its partly because the revenue per ad is reducing. I watched a pretty successful political youtuber recently discuss how his youtube earnings had varied over the years, and he said this year was the worst he'd ever seen for ad revenue. His view was that the failing ad campaigns are due to a failing economy, and ever-increasing levels of poverty. I.e. the people who might historically respond to these ads are increasingly becoming skint, so most of the ads are achieving far less. So I would guess that since YT and FB are making less money per ad played, they are trying to force ever more ads down people's throats, in an effort to compensate for lost income. I was tempted to joke about too many ads being a first world problem, but I don't feel it would be accurate, because some aspects of our society and our services (eg the NHS, and childhood poverty/malnutrition levels) are no longer truly of first-world standard. To be honest, as long as its not the exact same model of bike in all the reviews, I'll be ok with it personally. I use my ebike almost daily, and I'm a massive fan of the things. They turn you into a bit of a lazy bugger tbh, but I just cant help my ebike infatuation. As a caravanner yourself, I reckon a brace of legal escooters (after they've been legalised of course) ) could be just the job to effortlessly get you around local towns, visit restaurants or places of interest- and without getting too hot and sweaty in the summer, etc. ETA- apologies for that nonsense. I was of course forgetting that you have a vehicle that tows the caravan, and can get you around local towns quite well!

True, they won't be going bust, but if they mismanage YT really badly, they could eventually lose an awful lot of viewers, and thus a lot of ad revenue. If something like vimeo gets a real hold in terms of viewing numbers, I honestly think they could nick the lions share of the creators, and viewers, and YT could become the new Vimeo. I'm expecting the next thing to be ebike reviews (and then it'll be escooters when they are finally legalised).

I think any fair minded person would agree that YT need a slice of the revenue to keep the platform going and make some profit. But as you say, the debate is around how much they take. I think they are not giving creators enough at the moment. But it doesn't matter how badly they treat creators, because there are so many around that more will always gain higher profiles as the old ones recede and stop making videos. And with so many creators effectively competing for views (certainly in small niche segments like boating), it is YT who hold all the power. BUT in the longer term, if YT becomes non-rewarding for videos of less than say 20k views, then enough creators will stop/remove their work that there will be an impact on YT's profit. If the ad revenue is the golden egg, then the creators are the goose that is laying that egg. YT are providing the barn and the straw. I would contend that encouraging creators to actually pay to publish videos is a step too far, and that approach might eventually kill off 50% of the YT viewer numbers. Re alternatives like vimeo: I've looked at it a few times but from what I've seen it doesn't have anything like the volume of videos that YT has. For example, on YT I found several videos showing how you can do an engine service on a canaline 38, but I doubt I'd find one on vimeo. Likewise when I needed a video showing how to replace my cracked laptop screen. The other worry about the smaller platforms is they are apparently becoming a home for mad conspiracy theorists, nazi sympathisers, various cults, and other sorts of people who get banned from YT itself. And you have to be pretty bloody bad to get yourself (and/or your videos) banned from YT. But if YT continue down their current path, then one can imagine Vimeo growing hugely, absorbing most of the creators, and then taking all the viewers.

I really sympathise with the smaller YT creators, and I really dislike that YT has taken almost all of their ad revenue for itself. But the dilemma is that YT is only really watchable via premium, which is how I watch it- and that money goes direct to YT, and I bet the creators get none of it. And the premium YT service removes ads altogether, so I don't even get the option to click on an ad (in an effort to help the creator a bit). And I would bet that if I did watch an ad, YT would take 90% of any revenue earned from that ad being played. So I'm not sure even watching the ads helps the creators all that much. And maybe that's why they all set up patreon and kofi accounts. Tbh, I think this has made me reconsider making contributions- which I've so far not done. I think when I do watch a video that I enjoy/learn from, I'll maybe give a small donation via kofi- because it seems like YT gives them bugger all these days. As consumers though, we do have to also watch our own purse strings. With many people already having subscriptions for things like netflix, amazon, Sky sports or similar, and who knows what else- its not a welcome thought that we will feel encouraged by conscience or sympathy to spend even more for video or other entertainment. But it does feel like the right thing to do, for really good videos.

I think when a video is uploaded, there is some sort of check done on it. That will weed out certain key words or phrases (and maybe images). And AI will make that a bit more effective in future. I recall that during covid, many creators were loath to even say the phrase 'covid-19' out loud, as it would garner extra checking/attention, and probably a ban on the video. Creators now have to mute any bits of footage where a copyrighted song is audible in the background, as that can get their video banned. But in terms of misinformation, the real damage is not done by ads. And it is being completely ignored by youtube. There are countless videos that purport to prove that the earth is flat, for example. Or that the royal family are alien lizards, or that the Q anon cult is totally legit. Etc, etc etc. There are any number of insane rabbit holes that people can fall into once they start browsing youtube. And tragically, all too many people do exactly that, and have their lives and families damaged by the fallout. There were many prominent US youtubers who persuaded hundreds of thousands of their followers not to accept a covid vaccine, and so indirectly caused many deaths. I've spoken to a number of people who even now think that the govt put something into the vaccine in order to help them control the population somehow. Go back a few years and it was 5G allegedly doing all this stuff. But here's the thing- where do you draw the compromise between allowing freedom of expression, versus stopping vulnerable people being damaged by toxic misinformation and mad conspiracy theories?

I watch a lot of youtube, and I felt I had to go premium to avoid those endless ads. I now skim past the ads that the presenters put into the fabric of the video itself, in the form of 'reviews'. Apparently the bigger channels are paid maybe 5 or 10k to include a positive review for a given product (aka an advert)- so for a creator who gets say 100k views, that can become a major source of income. A year or two ago, there was an endless stream of canal and vanlife vloggers reviewing clever batteries by companies like Jackery. I got heartily sick of seeing these things being talked about by vloggers, More recently it was something athletic greens (which of course all of the youtube presenters were suddenly lifelong fans of). The big US channels are rife with these sorts of ads, and I suspect it is google removing their old-style ad revenue that encourages them to basically sell out and become full-on advertisers.

I have watched some of her stuff, but I don't need to watch that one, because no canal vlogger will ever get 5 million views. Not unless they perform a live boat sinking on youtube- no, make that a live drowning. Spender's earnings from 5 million views are totally irrelevant to canal vloggers, who are considered pretty big time if they get more than 10k views. It is a very small, very niche pool that our fish swim in, and apart from the very best of them, the earnings are microscopic!

I watched a youtube video a couple of months ago where the presenter was slagging off youtube itself ( is it run by google?). Apparently they keep on reducing the share of ad revenue that goes to the video makers. For a creator who typically gets say 20k views (which is very good for a canal video), this has reduced what was a pittance down to almost nothing. So its only the big channels that make any money from those ads. Even David Johns described his ad revenue as 'pin money', if I remember right- and his videos get more views than anyone else. They also introduced a system where creators pay youtube to have their videos promoted to viewers (i.e. shown at top of a search list or similar). So those who don't pay this charge are allegedly seeing their view numbers drop, as the promoted videos gain a 'leg up'. I think this is why so many of those youtubers go on about patreon and membership so much- its now become the only source of revenue for a small to medium channel. I do watch a fair few canal videos, and there seem to be new channels cropping up every month. The majority are not very interesting or entertaining, but even the poorer ones seem to have well-crafted intro sequences, and lots of artistic camera angles, music, clever drone shots, etc. But I think anyone getting into canal vlogging these days is kidding themselves if they think they'll make any amount of money. They wont make anything that reflects the time and effort they have to put into making the videos (perhaps apart from the very few creators who get higher view numbers). Many of them talk of spending hours and hours editing videos, but the fruits of their labours are probably measured in pennies, rather than pounds. Apart from a few 'big' channels, it's probably best to consider canal vlogging as a non-paying hobby, rather than a potentially lucrative showbiz career.

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My dear Mrs H, to paraphrase the Bible- if thy tiller offends thee, then cut it off. I shortened my tiller by about 10 inches when I got the boat, because it always seemed to poke out further than I felt it should, and it severely inhibited my freedom of expression on the stern. I would encourage you to think of it as a character and muscle-building exercise. You will end up either a supreme physical specimen, or dead from sheer exhaustion. And above all- never forget that we boaters are a community. If you need some extra muscle to move that tiller, here on the Macc I will be no help whatsoever. But I believe in you Mrs H. PS- of course this is not a blame game, but it was clearly Mr H's fault, and I hope he was beaten to within an inch of his life with the rolling pin, and denied a week's whisky ration. Remember those wise old words- spare the rolling pin, and you spoil the husband.

As I said, none of us know how the boating 'community' will react to a tripling of the licence, so your take might well be totally correct. But looking ahead a few years and with the current price increases, its easy to see a 57ft boat paying almost 2k for a licence. If that amount was tripled they'd be looking at an annual fee of 6k, on top of marina fees and the other costs that have to be met (blacking, BSS, etc). As an example- a prospective new buyer (with a 10 year boating career in mind) might be looking at an outlay of 40k extra in license fee costs compare to today, when taken over the ownership period of the boat. So a boat that might sell for 60k within the current licence system, might have to fall to 30k, before a potential buyer thinks it makes financial sense, or is even affordable. Times are very hard for lots of people, and I doubt they'll get much better any time soon. But who knows? Who can really predict the outcome of say 10,000 boats flooding onto the used market within a year or two, and very few new buyers prepared to pay the current prices, and an older and ever-shrinking customer base? All the businesses connected with boat building, maintenance, repair, and other general boating businesses and professionals would also take a major hit if boat numbers fell even by 30%. With a smaller market size, the equipment suppliers might have to increase their prices, and perhaps a reduced range of equipment types might become available. Some chandlers and other boat-related businesses might close altogether, and who knows whether the fuel boats might struggle to make a decent profit? With so many fewer boats, maybe some marinas would struggle to meet their costs, so maybe some of them might have to close, or put their prices up for the remaining boaters who continue to pay for moorings. It's all guesswork of course, and I'm certainly not claiming otherwise- and a lot depends on how many boats would be priced off the system by a tripling of the licence fee. My wild stab in the dark would be that maybe 30% of the current boats would be lost. But a great reduction in boat numbers and in boat traffic could have other effects that we cant even guess at until they impact. And those effects could result in significantly increased costs and inconveniences for those remaining boaters who can afford to carry on with their boat ownership. If boat traffic falls by enough, some facilities might be closed, and even some of the CRT volunteers might be lost. Some of them enjoy the fresh air and exercise, and they wont be interested in sitting around all day to get half a dozen boats through a lock flight (if numbers fall by that much). I would say be careful what you wish for, before shaking up the current ecosystem too vigorously.

None of us can predict this with any real confidence, but my own guess is that CRT are trying to strike a balance between squeezing more money from boaters, versus pricing too many them off of the canals, and ending up with a net loss in licence income. I would imagine that if they tripled the cost of the license next year (and with an even higher increase for CCers), that would drive thousands of boaters away from the canals. I would probably be one of them, to be honest. So how many boaters would they lose by tripling the licence fee? None of us really know, but my guess is it could easily be in the order of 20-30%. And not just CCers. I bet a few thousand boaters with marina home moorings would seriously consider selling their boat if they faced a tripling of the license fee. But the long term effects might be problematic for everyone. With 10,000 or more used boats on the market in very short order, boat prices would fall, and they might stay low, because most of the prospective new boat buyers would be deterred by the high license fee. Unless CRT reacted quickly and reduce the fee (to encourage more people to buy boats and license them), it might be that the remaining 20,000 or so boaters would have to shoulder the cost that was previously spread between (roughly) 35,000 boaters. In fairness- on paper at least- it would seem to add up. E.g. even in the 'doomsday' worst-case idea that CRT lose 60% of the current boaters, they would be getting triple the fees from each of the 12,000 boaters or so that were left, so their total licence income would seem to stay the same. But looking forwards, will enough new boaters take to the canals to replace the older folks that are giving up boating because of age or infirmity? If they start to lose more older boaters each year than the number of new boaters they gain, they might have to squeeze the existing boaters even harder to make up the reduced income, and you could see the license fee go up to four or even five times its current level (whatever they think their smaller customer base will pay, basically)- so that boating eventually becomes a pastime for the very well off. And with much reduced boat traffic, some sections could fall even further into disuse than they are now, which could lead to a closing of many sections, or perhaps a closing of lock flights. Ending up with a high-paying and affluent (but shrinking) customer base of say 15,000 (whom they may have to squeeze ever harder to meet their costs) would seem to put CRT in a more precarious position that they are now, with a customer base of 35,000 license payers. To be honest, its all finger in the air stuff, obviously- and I could well be way wide of the mark, but I do think an increase of 300% in one year would have a huge impact on boat numbers, and it could send the CRT into a spiral of falling customer numbers and falling licence income, at least in the longer term. And a major fall in boat traffic might allow them to justify making many more closures too.

I absolutely love my lithiums, but you do have to consider the overall costs as we know, and that has to include the charging system. Its not just the price of the batteries themselves that matters. But regardless, I would never consider going back to lead acids unless some kind of brainless BSS rule forces a change. I can set my charging up at say 70 amps, and the batteries will just carry on filling up at a steady 70 amps. With the lead acids, the charging current would start to drop down within about half an hour, and sometimes I'd be seeing 30 or 40 amps (or less) going in. Although they were knackered to be fair. So with lithium batteries and a 120 amp alternator (which you can fit with a vetus 42), plus a bit of solar, you can generate a full days charge in an hour. Or -as you said- three days charging in 3 hours. For full time liveaboards who are planning on going lithium, this is a great argument in favour of getting a battery bank that is maybe four times your daily power consumption.

That does make a lot of sense, even to someone without much engine know-how. My personal take is that it supports the idea of having a decent llithium battery bank with enough capacity to see you through two or three days without needing a charge. As you say, with a big enough battery bank you only need to run the once engine every 3 days- but you run it for 3 hours. It's a shame I didnt get another 100Ah of capacity in my batteries.

I think its really useful to mention that RCD/RCR reg for potential future readers of this thread, but hopefully in this particular case the OP wont have to worry about that, as the new engine HP will be almost identical to his current vetus 42.

I was one of those people who got burned by totally wasting money on a recon engine (for a car admittedly), but stories abound of expensive failures and unreliability. I have no statistical evidence to support this, but personally, after my experience I would never, ever, EVER consider a recon/rebuild engine, unless it was some sort of specialist/vintage thing. Re the options- if its affordable, I'd go for the more powerful engine, because it is more likely to have a decent alternator, or at least a poly V type alternator belt, that allows you to fit a decent alternator afterwards. I do understand that you prefer to charge using a genny, but there will be plenty of times you'll be cruising a for a few hours- and when you are cruising, why not have a strong alternator that can charge at 80-100 amps, instead of the cheapo versions (like mine) that struggle to charge at 40 amps without overheating? I'm assuming that as a liveaboard you'll already have (or will be fitting) enough solar panels to meet your power needs between say mid-February and mid-October. If that is the case, then you only really need to think about engine or genny charging for about 4 months of the year. With a good quality powerful alternator, you will be able to generate almost all the power you need each day with just an hour of engine running, whereas a genny might need 2 or 3 hours of running (so there will extra fuel costs, plus the hassle of fetching petrol from a nearby garage every 4 or 5 days). I'm not a big fan of running your expensive engine for hours every day to generate maybe 120 Ah of power. But if its only running for say one hour each day, and if that is only for 100-120 days each year (because you have lots of solar), then using the engine to charge might be less damaging than it initially seems.

Hi Suzie, I hope you won't be put off by some replies that seem a little brusque. The thing is, the same sort of questions get asked here time and time again, and the members here sometimes get a bit jaded from saying the same things over and over again to new boaters and prospective boaters. But the forum can be a mine of useful information for any new boater, and if you frame your question a bit more precisely, you'll get some really helpful info. At the moment your question is too general for anyone to give useful answers, and people will be reluctant to spend their time typing long replies based on guesswork. If you are looking for advice on what type of boat to buy, then it will help if you clarify things like this, at least to start with: -how many people will be staying on it? -will you be living aboard full time, or part time? -do you intend to stay in a marina or continuously cruise, or a mixture? -what sort of budget range do you have in mind?

That's part of my concern really- the battery box has a wooden base, so they don't sit on the bare metal, and that 20mm or so of plywood might be enough insulation from the steel that they could fall below zero on a really bad night. On the worst night we've had so far the sensors got down to 1 degree when the outside air temp was probably about minus 3. But given there might be an accuracy issue to allow for, that felt too close to freezing for my liking, so I will be doing something with them soon- just haven't decided what's the easiest/best option yet. I never feel like getting involved in laborious outdoor jobs during the really cold months! ETA - there's also that concern that if I leave the boat for a few days their core will get well below zero, and it will take a few hours to get them back above freezing when I return, before I can even consider doing any charging. My hope would be that under the bed it would take much longer for the temp to fall below zero, and it might not fall so far as it would in the engine bay.

I've been wondering what the 'lag' factor is when the batteries get really cold. My working assumption is that there will be a lag during the cooling phase through the night- thus if the temp sensors read 2 degrees at 7am, I assume the batteries will be a degree or two warmer than that. But if the cold has gotten right into the core of the batteries, as it might with below zero temps for say 18 hours, then I assume that there will be a significant lag before the core of the battery warms up to the temp that are initially shown by the sensors, and I avoid doing any engine charging early in the morning if at all possible. I'm still trying to decide whether to direct air from the cabin into the battery box as per your rather nifty idea a while back. The fan only uses about half an amp so it could be left on overnight, and in fact during a lot of the day if needed. Its only a trickle of air really by the time it goes through a 20mm wide and 2 metre long ducting tube, but I bet its enough to keep the batteries above zero on all but the most extreme nights. Or I might just bite the bullet and shift them back indoors and under the bed. My general impression is that they do seem to behave a bit better at room temp, and if we have a really cold dec/jan I don't want to have any concerns about charging them if I go cruising first thing in the morning when they might still be freezing.

I installed LVT planking over 2 years ago, mainly because it doesnt get damaged by water and its very easy to cut. To be fair most of it still looks fine, but in the high-use kitchen area the vinyl surface layer has stripped away in a few spots. Thankfully I made sure to buy half a dozen extra planks, so I'll be able to replace the damaged ones. I would use LVT again, but I would be sure to buy a gloss finish LVT next time. The one I used was more of a matt effect, and I didnt like it when it was down, and so I had to go over it with a gloss coating. I did my installation during a July heatwave in 2021, and trying to organise the placement of planks along a narrow 50ft space was (for a flooring novice) a very character-building experience.

I only wear my auto lifejacket when I am drowning my sorrows

Every time I read one of these tragedies I always comment about installing some kind of rope ladder on the stern. Then there's a 20-page discussion about the best type of ladder, and even the best technique for using a rope ladder (one foot in front, and one behind, allegedly), and I end up forgetting about the ladder idea. If I perish in a freezing water accident I'm going to hold you responsible- all of you.

I had some serious problems with emissivity, but that was after a bad curry. I was a bit preoccupied to measure with accuracy, but it certainly reached level 8 (aka "f*ck, just let me die").

My dear Mr Baj, have you moved that boat to the Bahamas? How is a normal human being able to make 460Ah of battery charge last for 2 weeks? And how is there so much solar? Having had the dubious pleasure of making your acquaintance, I know for a fact that I have twice as many solar panels as you do, and I've had to run the engine to charge on two days out of three recently. All that said, I am one of those decadent bourgeois swine who run a fridge in the winter, so perhaps its that making the difference...

That's a bit disappointing for such a nice battery. A BMV unit might set you back another £150, but I'd get one if I had a bank of these things, so I could keep track of the SoC. The voltage curve is so flat, it's not that much use in judging SoC. I have seen some cheaper current counting battery monitors for half that price, but no idea what the quality is.