Bee

Personally i would find out what fees Sharpness marina charge, The Severn is not a particularly interesting waterway (in my opinion anyway) but the Gloucester and Sharpness is. Might not be a bad place to CC from. The flooding aspect of the Severn is a real fear.

We are fortunate, our dog has pretty much every walk off its lead from start to finish but we live in a rural area. if a dog is always on a lead it really doesn't get the chance to become properly socialised with dogs and people and in my experience can lead to unpredictable behaviour which nobody wants.

This is still a subject that has differing views. For example overplating is frequently carried out on areas of the hull that have suffered- usually from heavy pitting. In my view this is perfectly OK but some welders just cannot weld overhead and there are some pretty poor repairs going around. Some people would not entertain having overplating on a boat but anything over 30 years old is likely to be less than perfect if you look carefully enough. We are still at a transition stage so far as paint is concerned as well. The most important boat maintenance is to keep the underwater parts painted, bare steel will corrode. Old fashioned bitumen is not as good as epoxy coatings but its better than nothing. Newer boats will hopefully be epoxied. Good luck

If a surveyor cannot get under the boat to inspect the bottom then it really is not worth having it surveyed. There is a reason that there is an industry re bottoming narrowboats and that is because the bottom corrodes. Also, if it is at all possible then the inside surface needs to be checked as that will corrode really badly if it is wet.

Stone the crows I think the chances of getting that apart are not great. It is almost certainly some sort of standard pipe fitting which should be easy enough to find in your local plumbers merchant or even somewhere on the internet.

There was a time before television (yes really) and In this house at least we are slowly approaching a time after television. Being an old git and getting grumpier by the day I no longer have the patience to watch anything with adverts. That kid who is whinging about needing the Fairy bottle to be empty so he can make a space ship needs to be sent to bed with no supper and those women discussing some sort of absorbent pants liners need to get a life. Anyway, more seriously, none of my grown up offspring really watch telly these days, one uses it for kids programmes for his family and watches Al Jazeera for the news, the other two really only use it as a screen for games. On the boat with limited electricity and the need to find the satellite every time we move the thing our viewing drops to virtually zero, news a couple of times a week but mostly Radio 2, 5 and 6. Radio 4 we can get on the normal radio till well South of Paris.

If the engine lives under some sort of deck with boards over it I would imagine there will be plenty of ventilation but yes, there should be good air flow to the air filter at least. Bee has its engine below the wheelhouse floor amidships so potentially awful ventilation but she has a ducted vent from the deck to the air filter and also a ducted blower fan to the outside. Whilst we are talking ventilation the batteries live in a box in the boat and that is vented from the top of the box to a separate vent via yet more ducting.

Considering that virtually all boats are just a hobby or a pastime and are not necessary in any meaningful way I reckon that having a steam loco in a boat that is not terrifically efficient at making electricity is a magnificent example of engineering eccentricity. I might just go and brush the spiders off the old Myford lathe and make an auxilliary steam engine for Bee. Chuff Chuff.

I.ve never really noticed condensation in the engine area. Thing is that you need warm air carrying a lot of water to condense on cold steel. If your engine hole is separate from the living area then you will not get a condensation problem, Is this a 'cruiser' stern or 'semi trad' or is the engine in its own walled off space? My narrow boats were all 'trad', the engine lived in a perishing cold but dry space at the back .

I wonder what will become of the Canal du Nord? Not much point in retaining that and of course there is the original North /South St Quinten too which has been looking a bit battered in recent years (although it looks as though some money has been spent lately) There has been a lot of money spent already in Belgium on the Northern end of that canal around Tournai. Bee has travelled on the new part and we feel very, very small and just a little bit scared. Those commercials are awfully big and fast and occasionally surfing down their bow waves (Yes really!) is not something either we or the boat like very much.

First there was wood, then iron, steel, aluminium, grp, concrete now plastic. All with plus points and some minus points as well. My guess is that steel is still going to be the best material but we need to view it as high maintanence and not just fit and forget but modern coatings can make the stuff last for years longer than before. Good luck to them anyway.

Yeah. It is a lot. Some will argue that it represents good value for money but that argument only works if you can actually afford it. Add that to the astonishing amount demanded for moorings and owning a boat on the UK canals is only a good idea if it is your home - and that is for an insecure lifestyle with an asset of diminishing value. The reason is, as it has been since Thatchers day, that the user pays and the taxpayer is relieved of much of the cost, a nice sounding bit of dogma that puts a heavy burden on the boatowner and makes the canals an exclusive playground of the rich. It is political. The canals are not our 'heritage' except as a cliche on leaflets etc. They are something nice to look at from the towpath but to actually use the things is going to cost you a hell of a lot of money.

Or, go to a breakers yard, get yourself a car rad plus the attached fan and assorted hoses that may be lying around and fit that into the circuit, wire it to a handy 12 volt source and that'll do it.

There certainly is a lot of old tosh on the telly about boats, canals, living on them, moving them etc . but I would think its really hard to strike a balance between an interesting and entertaining programme and a knowlegable and educating one. The world of canals has more experts per mile than the average Saturday morning collection of trainspotters at the Severn Valley Railway and not many of us are going to want to compare e.g. boiler pressures and tractive efforts between Staniers locos and Churchwards then start a hairsplitting argument about the subject. I like the Robbie Cummins progs as he has the sort of boat that most of us have had to struggle with at one time and he manages to live with it without becoming alcoholic or suicidal. I wish he'd get himself a girlfriend or a dog though - dogs are easiest Robbie if you read this.

In my opinion the only way to seal windows in cabin sides is to use that sponge rubber tape that is sticky on both sides but that needs taking the window out and refixing the whole thing - daunting. As for sealing between the window glass and the aluminium (?) frame that is a factory fitted rubber gasket and that could be a really difficult job that needs new rubber gaskets and a complete dismantling of the window, hopefuly cleaning out the channels and inspecting the mitred frame corners for failed joints will help.

Are you sure this is worth it? Its not an unusual or especially historic boat. You will find many similar boats in the Netherlands and in fact all over France and the rest of Europe. Look up 'Marktplaats' and then. I think 'watersports' or something like that and there are usually quite a lot of Westlanders or Kagenaars, small tjalks and other similar vessels, mostly cheap (compared to narrowboats) , quite easily to overplate and so on. As you have found its no longer straightforward to buy something and export / import it between this country and the EU. There are lots of similar boats in the S.E. of the UK, might be wise to look over here first or maybe a better historic vessel of character here (Not wood!)