Bee

I would imagine the shaft is a bit off centre but I expect the same is true of many boats. I would also guess that the shaft is not rotating in an ellipse or wobbling about and if it was my boat I would reassemble the whole thing and forget about it, there seems to be plenty of packing in there and unless it starts to let in water I would leave it alone, if it ain't broke etc.

With a selection of shafts, poles and string with a couple of old sheets I made a fairly effective shade over Bee a couple of years ago when tied in somewhere v. hot in France. Worked quite well until a gust of wind blew the lot overboard at 3 a.m. Bee is made for heat with every window and roof light openable and doors everywhere but the only thing that really works is shade from trees. Bee's cabin sides and wheelhouse roof are white and the roof and decks are light grey, can't imagine the heat in a dark coloured boat.

Damned hot sitting at the fire end of that seat too. So far as I'm concerned that installation is not safe.

That has got a bit of everything. I wonder if its had a selection of engines over the years. each one with a different cooling system. Does it run? Does it run OK? I think I would try and settle on keel cooling and make it work. You might well find that the keel cooling tank leaks but if you are having welding done then that makes it easier to repair. Raw water (or heat exchanger) cooling should have a decent sea cock that should be off when you leave the boat and a syphon break to stop water syphoning back to the engine and a different exhaust system to be safe. Oh and a water strainer or weed filter of some sort otherwise the system will fill up with weed, shrimps and wriggly things.

My only advice is to make REALLY sure you give the roof a good sanding to make sure the new paint is well keyed to the old. It is terribly depressing to have to re do what looks like half an acre of flaking paint again. Don't ask me how I know......

The conventional way is indeed an upstand of maybe 2" and the sides are then bolted on to this leaving a gap at the bottom so the wood is not sitting in a puddle. As for the roof I would use decent roofing felt, overlap the sides and protect that edge with a wood strip. when it wears out just re do it.

This is a real challenge. There are places where you might, eventually, find somewhere. Bristol, the Western end of the K & A but it will be difficult in the extreme. Apart from that you are looking at coastal marinas. The cost of marinas in the South West is kind of out of most peoples range and that is for smaller boats. A sixty foot boat is up in the superyacht size and that will be expensive and difficult. Falmouth and the river Fal might be possible. Apart from that you will really have to get in a car and spend time travelling around and asking but you might find this a hard task.

Interestingly in France, Belgium and Holland many overnight moorings are alongside camping sites and eveybody just uses the facilities.

People are quite ingenious when it comes to finding a home. There are at least half a dozen motorhome / vans 'continuously cruising' around here and doubtless many more living under the radar, I did the same for a while years ago. Then there are tents in the woods, horrible dark corners in every town and of course boats all over the place. Boats are a bit different though, if you are a canal enthusiast it is OK to live on your boat. If you are looking for somewhere to live that is cheaper or in fact hopefully affordable then that opens you up to all sorts of hostility. We seem to have 'deserving boaters' and 'undeserving boaters' The CRT rules treat them - and us - all the same. Some of us can afford our boats, I think we should back off a bit before criticising people who just do the best they can with what they've got as we run the risk of sounding 'entitled' just because we made a bit of cash when it was easier to do so. There endeth todays lecture.

Too right. Had a metallic knocking that speeded up as the revs rose, obviously something major inside the engine. Big bills, weeks of work. Turned out to be an engine mount needing adjusting. Then there was overheating engine, that was a loose wire on the back of the temp. gauge. And that banging under the counter, that was a surprisingly small branch.

stick a bucket with a brick on top over the thing

You are quite right. Mooring and licence fees are stupidly expensive especially since you are basically just paying for maybe a bit of space to tie your boat and permission to use it - after all you do own the thing. What I would say is that you can't do much about the licence but I have often found that if you are wandering around the system and are fairly sociable you will hear of less expensive moorings, cruising clubs, jobs with a cheap mooring (hire bases) and that sort of thing. If you have skin like a rhinocerous and don't mind being hated you can also continously cruise in the summer and get a winter mooring when its cold and muddy but you do have to think outside the box if you want to enjoy the waterways and be able to afford food.

Crikey! That's not good for the heart rate!

The shaft is probably stainless steel which is hard stuff but it will wear, Bee's shaft is secondhand and has some worn bits but they are right inside the stern tube. If you have a bit of spare shaft inside the Aquadrive or maybe a bit of spare between the outboard bearing and the prop you might be able to get the rubber seal to run on a good bit of shaft . I think you'd be unlucky to get grit in there but I'm a bit concerned that the heap of nylon fishing line that I removed from my prop and shaft has wound its way into and damaged the cutless bearing .

I think you might be in danger of starting right at the most expensive and difficult end of the eatery world. Its hard to make a profit from a restaurant wherever it is situated and whatever niche it is trying to occupy and boats can be horribly expensive - mix the two together and the money could run out very quickly. I would urge caution.

We've been through hundreds of locks with no problem so can be quite smug about our skills BUT three or four times we have been unlucky. Once we were hung up - tied the boat loosely to a bollard to stop it being blown across a full lock then let the water out, guess what happened. Once on a filling lock the boat caught on something sticking out of the lock side and once sharing a lock the pair of us got jammed as the lock emptied, the lock sides tapered towards the bottom. And then there was the time I was descending a lock backwards and got the fore end on the cill. Any one of those events could have been much worse. Oh and that time in the p****** rain the windlass slipped out of my hands and didn't half clout my wrist. There is always some way or other to fall foul of a something waiting to bite you.

Dunno. Are they zinc or magnesium? Zinc is pretty poisonous to algae and stuff so maybe with no current the dissolved zinc is stopping growth above the anode. Not sure if Mg is the same.

Ah, the origins of words, Once you find a few similar words in a different language there are so many examples, French being latin is full of them. French for heat wave is canicule and the origin of that puzzled us but its from canicula - dog days when it was possible to see Sirius, the dog star in Canis Major and it was very hot. and of course 'binnen' in Dutch as in 'binnenschip is an inside ship not a sea going one. As ever, happy to be corrected if I've jumped to conclusions that are wrong. Anyway back to my jam butty.

Good question. It is usually thought that modern narrow boats follow their cargo carrying predecessors. I think its more likely that many follow the cheap and cheerful designs of the early years of leisure boat designs, boxy, built to a price, right angles everywhere, easy to weld 'sacrificial edge' along the bottom and more. I sometimes think that Springers might have advantages with a bit of a chine, slightly 'v' bottom and with a bit of work at the ends might be quite good. Canals usually have a 'saucer shaped' profile and hulls really ought to have a similar cross section and fine tapered ends with a bit of sheer to look good. Thing is of course that it would cost more to build, more to fit out and there's a good chance that without those flat sides it would be a sod to reverse