Bee

On our boat we only use gas for cooking, one gas pipe from the gas locker to the cooker. Cooker has flame failure shut off. Pretty safe. Or you could have hundreds of amps in batteries, hydrogen gas given off when charging, huge expense and lots of heavy cables that could possibly chafe through. We always turn the electric off when we leave the boat even if its just walking the dog for 10 minutes. I am much more fearful of electrical fires than gas leaks and I would reckon that there are more car, house and boat fires caused by electrical fires than gas (And don't even mention solid fuel stoves) Anyway, you could always turn the gas off at the bottle overnight.

And saints days, bank holidays, bastille day, most of July. Oh and lunch can start at 10.30 and finish at random times. We carry a couple of tins of Spam and some horrible sterilised milk, that way you can guarantee it'll still be in the cupboard 'cos nobody will ever eat it except as a last resort.

I used Jotun 87 on my boat this spring, All seems OK, Some of the paint with no hardener added to it found its way onto the handles of a couple of scrapers - its still sticky. It needs a really good stir to mix it properly.

Building narrowboat hulls is very competitive, profit margins are tight, they are not 'commercial' craft, just leisure things really, narrowboats are immensely strong and lives are not usually at stake, they are more than adequate for the job they are built for and the bit that we worry about - corrosion - is really up to us to address. Keep the inside surface dry and hopefully painted and the outside painted with proper paint and drag the thing out every 3 or 4 years and check it over and most problems will disappear.

Bah! That's nothing. I used to bung my boiler suit in a bucket next to my neighbours Lombardini diesel when he ran it. Made the buttons fall off but cleaned it a treat.

Well I'm not an expert but that all sounds disappointing, epoxy is hard stuff, rubbing strakes will soon lose their paint but you really should not be able to shift it with a fingernail and I think you might have to take a deep breath and return to the boatyard, my guess is that they used the wrong hardener or the wrong ratios. It might be a good idea to get in touch with the paint makers and get an opinion as to what has happened, they will not want their paint to get a bad reputation. Good luck - keep us posted.

Proper ships, a whole world that I know nothing about. Must be quite 'handy' though as some of those bridges and bends are a bit tight and as we all know a bit of wind can be a right pain in tight corners. Wonder how it gets reverse? great big gearbox? Thanks for posting the pics, fascinating stuff.

I have a camshaft driven Jabsco on my Beta, doubtless a different model but maybe the same principal, started leaking a lot so with a bit of googling found a replacement bearing and seals, stopped the leak and is as good (and a hell of a lot cheaper) as new.

Hmmmph. S'all right I s'pose. (Just a bit jealous)

You will get a lot of heat from the flue, in fact you need to be v. careful where it passes through the ceiling as many installations are quite good re. heat shields around the stove itself and not so good at the top of the flue. Coal / smokeless would be my choice of fuel to avoid tarry deposits in the flue and in my experience it is more controllable.

I've got one, its tiny and doesn't have firebricks which could lead to cracking and burning through eventually. Also the doors are not a good fit so shutting the air off is a bit iffy and that is important. The flue is tricky but your local steel supplier should be able to sell you a piece of steel pipe the right diam. then it needs to be cut and welded to the right angles. It gets hot obviously so it needs a length of outer pipe of a couple of inches wider dia. fitted round it. In fact I don't like it much and I would sell it to you but its in France!

I think you may just have to cut away some foam, it won't make any difference to the tanks efficiency, just stick some more foam back later. I had to cut foam away from a blanked off immersion heater opening, took many attempts and different gaskets to fix it. Can't think there's any other way really.

Now that is interesting, This summer we travelled on the top end of the Rhine out of necessity to go from the Rhone / Rhine canal downstream to the to the Marne / Rhine, not a frantically busy bit of canal / river but I would not want to take our boat past Strasbourg as its quite bouncy enough on that section when you meet big things but travelling on a Rhine size boat could be something to put on the bucket list. Thanks for the link.

Some are terribly stiff and are really uncomfortable for the dog.

Diesels do need to crank quite fast to compress the air in the cylinder and get it nice and hot so the thing fires. Petrol engines in old cars with old batteries will start with slower cranking as there will be a spark to fire the mixture, that is a very broad generalisation and only a little bit of science in it. I reckon if you turn it over nice and fast your problems will vanish.