Bee

Bloody wildlife! Over the years I've had hibernating bees, one rat that lived (briefly) in the insulation around the oven, a hornets nest whilst building Bee, a moorhen that the cat dragged in and several mice. We have rescued a young hare from the K&A that jumped straight back in again, used the boat to drive a deer to a bit of bank that it could climb up and also a grass snake or two. We also woke up one morning to see the underneath of a red squirrel that was sitting on the roof above the bed doing something with its nuts.

If you are absolutely certain that the shaft is spinning at the same speed as normal and not just slowly rotating then the problem is not the gearbox (or the coupling becoming loose) which only really leaves the prop. The prop being loose on the shaft is extremely unlikely so something like weed or maybe leaves is pretty much all that is left. It only takes a bit of weed or something to mess up the science of propellers, I spend a lot of time on weedy canals pulling strands and lumps off the prop in summer.

The temp gauge on Bee started reading hot a while ago, turned out to be some awful DIY connections at the back of the gauge. Note to self - do it properly next time.

Seems to be 4 - 5 lived in motorhomes within a dogwalk of here now, No doubt there are some sort of rules and regs being broken and they are "getting away with it". "It" being council tax and all the other things that ccers are "getting away with". What is it that gets boat owners so upset about people buying boats to live on? Those boats are still floating around the system somewhere whether there is someone on board or not. Why should a boatowner have a mooring? We only have a winter mooring and nobody turns a hair that we are entirely without a mooring for the summer and we might end up in Holland, France or Belgium for the winter. There are more insufferable rules about how long you can stop for on CRT waters now and the more expensive it gets the more those who can pay hate those who can't and the more those who can pay demand more rules to keep the rest in line. If you encourage authoritarian organisations they just get worse until there is no pleasure left in anything. The boater with a battered Springer is not the enemy, leave him alone.

Magnetman has it about right, it is Dutch, there are umpteen types of Dutch boats built to suit the networks of small canals, very occasionally you will find one that will fit UK narrow canals. Some are very simple flat bottomed and flat sided punts, some are more boat shaped ≥ Kagenaar werkboot platbodem bierboot — Platbodems — Marktplaats If you dig around the various Dutch sites there are all sorts under Schuit, Westlander Kagenaar etc. and I for one cannot tell the difference between most of them

It is just a narrowboat but styled to look a bit different, I quite like them but others don't.

Must say that the stern of that boat is very much prettier than the vast majority of "Cruiser sterns" which are full of right angles. The fore end needs a bit of adjusting with a sledge hammer though

Yes, I think so, it looks as though there is plenty of packing still in there. Ideally it shouldn't need to be tightened very much, overtightening can cause the packing to wear the shaft, sounds unlikely but it really will, the shaft on my boat is a second hand one with some quite deep grooves but they miss all the vital bits. One cause of drips is a misaligned engine, this will cause a shaft to run in an oval or something that is not a true circle, this means that the packing, which is quite hard stuff, cannot press equally all round the shaft so it drips.

Better known as "Start you bastard"