magnetman

Labour council (H&F who own the bridge) and Tory government it was always going to get political. I forget which forum it was on but apparently a boat went under the bridge recently, authorised passage, and all the alarms started going off so they were unable to get back. It was one of the bunkering barges based down near Tower Bridge going inward bound. Nothing unusually large but it set the alarms off apparently.

I'm wondering how long it is going to take for living on towpaths to be regulated out of existence. Maybe it will never happen but I can't help thinking such an amazing bargain can't last. It will be odd to see what happens with all the boats which have been built specifically because it is possible currently to live in London, including some very "desirable" areas, for under £1000 a year ie CRT licensing cost. No council tax, no nonsense just good old fashioned cheap living. No wonder so many £100k+ wide beam canal boats have turned up in the last decade ! It almost seems to good to be true but it is true.

"Hanson and Wolfe" is quite an interesting way of writing Harland and Wolff.

I think Swallow was subjected to a full rebuilt recently. Or maybe it was one of the other small Thames tugs. It's a lovely boat !

Maybe it was secured using British Waterways type blue split film polypropylene rope which gave way due to windy weather or something.

I think it would have to be written otherwise why would it get changed from the word "awser" to "anser". Mind you there are a lot of dialects and probably even more in the olde days so you could easily be right about that.

I wonder if somebody wrote down 'awser pin and their handwriting was poor so it was read as 'anser pin and the person writing it down as 'anser pin had some sort of seniority indicating they must have known what they were talkin' about. It could be that simple.

There are locks on the River Wey which have a framework below the tail gates to encourage the mitre to align correctly. One of these is the lock where the road crosses immediately below so it might be visible on street view. New Haw lock. The footbridge below the tail of the lock has an arrangement to support the gate mitre. Not a very good picture from Google but vaguely visible. I suspect that's the function of the chains and they were originally rather tighter than shown and perhaps adjustable. Obviously the top gates would have to be supported in a different way to the bottom gates. It's not so much to prevent total failure but to get the mitre to align correctly on gates which are less substantially built than some others.

Maybe it is 3/8 inch (9.5mm) plate not 10mm. Personally I would be concentrating a lot more on the condition of the sides below water which are likely to be 6mm or 1/4 inch (6.35mm). I've not investigated it but I would be incredibly surprised to find canal boats which had failed hulls due to the baseplate when it was 66.7% thicker than the sides.

Cold beer.

I thought this was an internet router not a router as in power tools.

Just run the engine all night. That will sort out any problems with power consumption and is perfectly normal.

I reckon some potential here for diesel electric hybrid canal boats. Lots of daily cycles. Charge discharge charge discharge etc. Use the electric for slow speed maneouvering with a pod motor in the rudder then use the diesel engine for main propulsion and fast charging the batteries. You could even link it all up so the diesel starts up on demand and the electric runs when diesel not needed. Could be a really nice system in theory. Plus of course a 10C charge rate option would mean you could charge the battery from the socket mounted beside the water point while filling the tank. And fines for hogging water points !

I've not been that way for about 15 years but I seem to remember Grant's lock was rather close to the M40. Perhaps a suitable place for a deaf person to live. Or maybe one just gets used to the drone of the motorway. Nice enough house but I would never advocate living in a lock cottage. Boat is okay but lock cottage no thanks !

Noticed my user name was mentioned here. (Edit to add I now realise perhaps this a was a reference to the huge amounts of scrap left on towpaths. My username was created long before the magnet craze and I have not dropped a magnet in the water for quite a few years now so am not remotely related to or interested in the current crop of awful idiots dragging rubbish out and littering the towpaths with hazardous objects.) My original post before I realised what was being commented on : What is it that is "an interesting story". Do you know something I don't? I'd quite like to know why it is not a "watery idyll" as that is news to me and I believe the Guardian is all about news. I'm intrigued now Having been approached by journos about the boat thing on too many occasions I am wary and worn down. However the biscuits was correct to flag me as someone who chooses to live on a boat for the single reason that I like living on a boat and nothing to do with finances. No property ownership will ever happen in my lifetime regardless of money. And yes I can afford to buy property but not interested. 27 years living on boats in 3 weeks time and it's been that good it feels like it's been a July weekend. ETA maybe for the "watery idyll" part you need to get on the GWR fast trains out of the smoke and have a look around Berks Bucks and Oxon where you will find people living lives of untold abundant pleasure and leisure on the wonderful river Thames rather than those of us cooped up in tin boxes on ditches in E9 and E14 type postcodes ?

I can't remember who it was but there is an organised bunch going around telling people their engines are nackered, they can sell you a recon engine to replace it, charge you good money to do so then sell your engine on to the next person as a recon unit. I can't help thinking the warehouse to store the engines must be quite large. Get the Petter sorted out is the answer in this case, or shell out for a NEW engine. Any other option leaves you wide open to unscrupulous people with large warehouses full of "broken" engines which suddenly work fine and have new paint jobs.

Out of interest the engine mentioned in the OP is a D3 which was later marinised, not a DM3. I know the boat and at the time I met the previous owner I had a DM2 in my narrow boat so was rather interested in other boats with RN engines. This was mid nineties when the boat was new and the owner had just fitted an ex industrial RN D3 into it.

The image of the same boat posted previously doesn't come up on my phone that's why I missed it. Had I paid more attention at school I would have noticed that the name of the boat was part of the link text.

The rubbing strakes are a bit of a giveaway. Given a choice of Burland or Headline it's definitely the latter. On the Burland the strakes go further forward. The windows are also the same type as in the blue one below. In fact they seem to be identical windows just arranged in a different order.

What you do is just remove the permission so no public allowed on towpaths.. I suppose this would cause some issues with non commercial boat operators. Maybe it's worthwhile looking at commercial opportunities. Perhaps someone who does an entirely pointless vlog about narrow boats would be able to continue using the towing path for their mechanical horse due to the commercial use of their vessel. Blatant Pleasure Seekers should be banned anyway as that is not a valid use of boats.

Thanks for clarifying that. I sometimes get misunderstood and misrepresented and misidentified. Among other misses this can cause quite serious issues so apologies if it seemed over the top but in this case I misunderestimated you.

I'm andrew not Peter and I was the one recommending buying gel cells LFP is interesting but at the end of the day you need to have the funds. It's easy for people who do have the funds to say it is the answer but if you don't then it isn't. Newer battery tech is always going to be more expensive. Bolinders engines were probably more expensive than horses but there was a business case for adopting them as propulsion units. i still think that a land based traction system like a mechanical horse of some sort might end up being the answer overall for canals. Without sufficient dredging propellers, which rely on water, become less and less effective.. This is sometimes not that obvious but when you are sucking the bottom in a deep draught vessel you do tend to wonder about it.

It was a seagull featherweight. Mother used to authorise me to buy fuel for it but when taking the dinghy out on the River Thames got too boring we (a "friend" and me) used to pour the diluted petrol in the cracks of the collapsing concrete bank at the bottom of the garden and see what happened if you dropped a lighted match in. River police stopped to check a couple of times but mother was always authoritative and told them to clear off ! True story. The one with the scared rower was funny. Burning can of petrol floating down the River towards neighbours boat I had to explain "it's ok it is a 20:1 two stroke mix it will not be a problem" he did seem worried it would burn uncontrollably but it wasn't going to. This was after I had chosen to add more petrol to the concrete experiment and set fire the the container. "Best to throw it in the River" was my thought.

To be fair you could use a non LFP battery system and get away with it if it was done right. I suppose it's a bit risky to recommend it as in a lot of cases it would not be done right. There will be insurance claims around this. Luckily I have work based insurance and it covers everything I post in a professional capacity.

As someone who has experienced a thermal runaway of a "lipo" type which was probably a LiCo battery due to overcharging I agree with you. It was a jump start pack, I had made my own leads as lost the original ones which had a diode pack and I left it connected after engine started. Due to the fact it was a 3S LICo (probably) battery the 14+ volts it received was not welcomed by the device. It started smoking, I removed it from the engine room and hung it off the side of the boat. Thermal runaway proceeded and a quite nasty flame-out. I still have not painted over where it burnt the paint off the boat. So yes the risk is real with these things. It was like setting fire to a can of petrol with a 20:1 2 stroke mix. Something I did a lot of when I was younger.