magnetman

I'm still processing the idea that a cc er who takes a winter mooring is not a cc er. They are a cc er. In terms of licence banding but they have satisfied the bored in reasonable circumstances.

If, for the sake of argument, a cc licence was £2500 and a licence with a mooring was £1000 (small boat) people would look at ways to present as having a home mooring at renewal time. Similar to the 5 yar BS ticket thing. I've got a 5 yar BS ticket on one of the boats. Just counted it out on my fingers.

I was just idly wondering how this status would interact with licence renewals given that you can do things to change the renewal month on your licence.

If there has been a previous cilling incident I wonder if the bearing below the centre part was damaged. Is it possible the balls could have dropped out? This is assuming it is a ball race bearing and not a plain bearing. The greaser seems to imply it is a ball bearing. Have you tried pumping grease into it with a grease gun? It seems plausible that when the cilling event and subsequent sorting out took place some damage to the bearing might have been covered up be ramming the whole thing full of a lot of grease which has now come out revealing the problem. One of my boats was originally fitted with a ball bearing at the top which over time failed and the balls fell out. It now flaps around a bit at the top but is not a big problem as one can still steer the boat. When I get a round tuit I'll probably fix a piece of nylon with the right size hole to it as don't like ball bearings for this job.

I reckon they might do away with winter moorings.

I want a picture of the starting handle.

That makes a lot more sense.

The cc option is just a tick box on an application form. It is the same relevant consent (Pleasure Boat Licence PBL) as someone who has a home mooring. However, over time the cc question has become more interesting and it is now an officially recognised tern on .gov websites. If you are saying that by having a winter mooring you are not a cc er how does this work if the CRT are intending to charge cc ers more money for their licences? Its obvious there will be a problem here as unlike places like the Thames the boat licence is not related to the calendar. My Thames boat registration runs from January to December whatever happens. On the canals you might have a February renewal or a November renewal or any other month. The winter mooring arrangements IF they move you from being a cc er to having a home mooring are in conflict with the proposal to have tiered licence costs based on 12 month contracts. It can't work. @Paul C was claiming that if you have a winter mooring you are not a cc er. I agree with your analysis but he was suggesting something different which could cause problems when the licence is renewed if the renewal date happens to be during the time that you have the winter mooring contract.

How does this work now that cc er licences are different to those with home moorings? This seems to be the proposal. Is this the end of winter moorings I wonder. Most canal boat licences are issued on a 12 month contract. I feel for this to work and for other reasons the CRT are going to have to pull the plug on towpath winter moorings and require adherence to the '95 act all the time. Of course if you go for a marina winter mooring but cc the rest of the time the CRT will presumably be charging you a cc licence fee and it is up to you if you want to pay a 3rd party for a winter mooring.

The million dollar question is will the CRT clobber cc er and wide beans very badly or will it all be a bit of a damp squib. I reckon damp squib. 50% increase or something rather than proper clobbery.

Too many idiots these days I'm afraid. God help you if you do icebreaking in the winter. The last time I did that was about ten yars ago and people were looking at me as if I was engaged in some sort of disgusting act like defecating orf the side of the boat. I've been living on boats on the cut and the Thames since 1994 and things have certainly changed. Too many idiots. I'm not sure what can be done.

Presumably the winter mooring idea was based on revenue collection so if the licence cost goes up for people without moorings there would be no need to offer winter moorings any more. The legality of taking money for people to live on towpath moorings while the CRT waive the requirement for bona fide navigation seems slightly intriguing.

How easy is it to do it on the website? Surely the CRT can just remove that facility if it is causing problems. It seems to me that a cc er is a cc er and a mooring is a continuous contract rather than a temporary winter arrangement. Maybe it will prove desirable to no longer provide winter moorings. I'm not sure when they started I think it was around 2000. Certainly not a long term thing and I noticed they stopped doing winter towpath moorings in central London quite a while ago. I don't think there is a right to have a winter mooring so if this conflicted with the new licence 'bands' it seems it would be easy enough to knock it on the head and require year round adherence to the cc ing rules/law/guidelines.

It would be a good setup. I suppose how to keep the fans clean would be a bit complicated. Maybe nice little elbows bolted to the floor blowing air out horizontally. But then you lose floor space. It seems enormously sensible to somehow use the cold bilge area as a heat exchanger. Pipes led up from the bilge sections to near cabin top level. Fan draws air in on one side and pushes it through the bilge areas via air to air heat exchangers then back out as cooler air. In winter the fan draws hot air from the top part of the cabin and sends it under the floor via the heat exchangers thereby warming the bilge area and keeping it dry. On a new build boat this could be feasible but an awful lot of sorting out on an existing boat.

I'm not convinced about that. I suspect being unlicensed is an attitude thing not a financial constraints problem. There probably would be a blip in the number of unlicensed boats but I doubt it would be a lot. I know nothing about it and this is supposition. On the other hand we have a situation where boat values have gone up. This should be a basic economic impossibility because a boat is a depreciating asset. OK you can buy and old one and do it up but what has been happening is boats which were bought many yars ago are worth more with no material improvements. If the licence fees go up a lot some of the existing boats will be sold at a discount which will allow people who are cash poor but have wages and a disposable income to own nice boats. There is something wrong about boats going up in value over time and I think it is related to the cost of ownership being too low. I don't see mass scrapping of boats. I suppose some people will leave CRT water but it you have a narrow boat the CRT water is where you go because otherwise it would be pointless constraining yourself by having a narrow beam boat in the first place. I can imagine an influx of wide beans on the Thames though which should adequately irritate the already irritable gin palace owners. Just look out in winter as the River goes up and down and gets hungry.

Is this the same engine from the other thread ? It seems to have the wrong fitting.

There was a narrow boat with the same name written like that they were always racing about. Used to be down the southern GU in the 00s. Probably the same individual. Maybe needs a bit of netting or rope on the prop.

Presumably the decisions have been made and everyone is on tenter hooks. Firstly they say inflation then they mention the cc and the wide beans. One wonders if some of the detail will leak or if someone will form a strong enough rumour to set social media alight as the nights draw in.

More rigorous checks on moorings definitely needed.

It would be even better to charge 3 grand a yar and continue with the current status around moving every 14 days and satisfying the board. Why introduce the idea you can stop moving? People have chosen to do this knowing it is cheap and knowing in life things change. Looks like a pretty handy cash cow to me. I reckon the CRT can milk this if they want to. People will pay up because even at 3 grand per annum it is massively cheaper than renting some hovel from a slum landlord. By targeting cc and wide beans the CRT have correctly identified that this is a housing topic. Housing in every other way of living involves a lot of money coming out of your pockets. Perhaps time the canals were taken out of some sort of protective zone and people required to pay. It makes an awful lot of sense.

Its a nice design. Clever to put the bearing under a weatherproof cover. Not a lot of makers do that. Very common to see them exposed. Its either the top nut coming loose or the whole thing has been lifted out of the skeg cup as described above. Did you run over a motorbike under a bridge hole or something? Of course it is possible but unlikely that there is a horizontal grub screw somewhere in the top round part which has come loose. It could be out of the picture. Depends how the base of the swan neck is fixed on. There are various different ways to do this.

Is it because we are all* going to die in a terrible inferno if we don't replace all combustion systems with electric ? *except for the ones who escape to Mars and they will probably be violently dismembered and eaten by Martians.

(video is not new but interesting that there have been news stories relating to the K&A). Is the game underway perhaps.

16:14 in this video is interesting. The CRT man is pointing out to the interviewer that the CRT is not a public body and therefore does not have to behave reasonably with regards to management of people living on their waterways. Quite eye opening I think. Maybe they are going to hit hard.