Giant

Edward, Consider whether a larger class of boat might suit your needs better - some original or replica Dutch barge, or possibly even an actual Sheffield Keel (61'6" x 15'6") as we have. You would not be able to fit up any of the London canals, but you would have the run of the Thames (we can go as far up as Oxford), the Medway, the whole of the estuary to explore, and even the potential to cross the Channel and enjoy the vast European network. Even if you never make that trip yourself, having a boat suitable for the European canals means that you always have the potential to sell to someone who wants to do that. Limehouse can take such things, indeed one of our sister ships is there, and your budget might be sufficient to buy something in that class already on a London mooring somewhere - there are a great many barges of all kinds to be found on moorings all along the Thames. There is a whole other community to be found around barges, the DBA is a good starting point - http://www.barges.org/.

Ooh, that is lovely.

Indeed! Best of luck with it all.

Interesting news - I'm curious what sort of boat you have in mind for a liveaboard. Will you be joining the narrowboaters or looking for something bigger and/or more seaworthy?

Ah OK - I figured it was either the reverse band or the forward clutch being not quite free, but couldn't quite work out from MP's description which was indicated by a forward rotation in neutral. Oil pressure is OK so I don't think it's a lack of that. I'm not sure anything could convince me to touch a rotating propshaft. It's turning a 29" prop so must have a decent bit of torque behind it, even if only turning slowly. There probably is something wrong with it, but there are plenty of other things wrong too, so it will all be getting done at some point.

You didn't post a link, but I assume it's this one: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Lister-Petter-DIESEL-TR1-/132008467737

Our box turns the output shaft gently forwards when in neutral - I've not got into working out why yet, but I guess from this description it could be the brake band not quite fully releasing the carrier?

I wonder, from a historical perspective, how often this was pursued and with what results. As owners of a Waddingtons boat we have heard many times how Victor Waddington was in a more or less continual battle with BW over their duty to keep the North East waterways maintained to a usable standard for carrying, right up to his death in the 1990s. He was due to speak to Parliament on the topic, the week he died. Presumably this was one of the legal avenues he would have been pursuing.

Depends on the banjo bolt. We have used Dowty washers very successfully on all the ones on our JP3.

Rents in Edinburgh are a fraction of those in London.

Yes, he had her partially overplated but with large parts replated, a seriously impressive job. Photos starting here and continuing down the page, make sure you don't miss the "before" photo on page 4 of her almost completely sunk. I understand that replating of parts was essential in that case because there wasn't enough of the old plate left to take the doubling.

Your local library may have some access to the BSI standards database. I'm involved with product testing for work so I look at this sort of thing quite a bit. I was curious about this question myself so I had a look at EN 50291-2. In short, the key differences for boats are: Construction must be resistant to corrosion in the presence of salty air, gases and vapours. The device must pass specific tests to show tolerance of vibration, shock, static and dynamic orientation, and acceleration. Electromagnetic compatibility tests must be done to the marine standards. These differ quite a bit from the domestic or vehicular ones, and include e.g. tighter limits on unintended emissions in the marine VHF band. Some of the requirements are overkill for a narrowboat on an inland canal, but the standard doesn't attempt to differentiate between classes of vessel or usage. Given that universal approach, the requirements look fairly sensible to me - i.e. I would have some confidence that if a device had passed these tests that I could safely put it in a messy engine room on ocean-going vessel in rough seas and expect it to work. There's certainly enough there to add significant extra time and cost for testing, and lots of ways to fail, so it's not at all surprising that some products have not been certified for the boat category initially or at all.

Mild steel and wrought iron are about equal in the galvanic series.

And 35 years later:

Does anyone know what the electric start option used to cost on the JP when new? No surprise that we don't have it, given the legendary thriftiness of Victor Waddington, but I wonder how much he saved by doing so.

Mainmast are the company operating Exol Pride, you could try asking them about the schedule.

Hah. I keep thinking "that must be the last unconverted Sheffield size around" and then a few months later another one comes out of the woodwork.

That's an option but it would have to be a pretty thin bead, the overhang at the sides is only about 20mm including the thickness of the glass & gelcoat on the edge. By GRP/GF tape, do you mean woven glass fibre tape for use with resin, or something self-adhesive? Do you have a particular product in mind that you think would do it?

You may well be right, but this is the roof we have and we'd rather not have to completely rebuild it unless we really have to. Fortunately this roof doesn't get walked on, so the requirements are a bit less demanding. For what it's worth, I don't see any evidence of damage from mismatched expansion so far, except in this one spot where the plywood obviously got wet.

That's a good idea, and would be reasonably easy to cut down the long edges after setting up the right jig. A bit harder for the short edges, which are curved, but should be doable. Still leaves the question of how to protect the bit of wood that forms the outer part of the groove, though. I guess whatever one paints a wooden windowsill with, although I expect those are usually hardier wood than this tongue & groove stuff.

Although we've now patched up the main problem area with this roof we're still not quite happy with it, so I'm throwing this one open to the CWDF nitpicking brigade / peanut gallery. This is our wheelhouse roof, from outside and inside: It is in three sections which lift off to allow the wheelhouse to fold down, with two aluminium drainage channels sitting under the joins. The roof construction is tongue and groove laid over an iroko frame, then ~5mm plywood glued on top of the tongue and groove, then the whole top fibreglassed over and gel coated. One corner had developed a crack: It's not clear whether the crack came first and let water in, expanding the wood and worsening the crack, or if water got in first and caused the crack. Either way it was wet in there. After cutting further along the crack and peeling back it was clear the plywood was wet and rotten: I had to cut a long way back to get back to sound material: Fortunately, the tongue and groove didn't seem to be much affected and dried out nicely with some time in the sunshine. I cleaned things up, and we cut and glued in a new section of ply to fill the gap: Finally we glassed it over, which turned out to be a lot harder than expected and was looking pretty messy, but eventually cleaned up sort of OK: It still needs gel coated, but I guess it will keep the rain out for the time being whilst we figure out how to do that (advice welcome, never touched the stuff). Our main worry with the whole thing though is the overhang under the edges of the roof. The fibreglassing comes down the side but doesn't extend round the corner to the overhang, and I think it would be a bugger of a job to make it do so. The underside of the overhang is basically just painted with what I guess is more gel coat, and there are a lot of cracks in it: My best guess for how the water-damaged area started is that water was gathering under the overhang, and propagated up a knot in the tongue and groove which appears just under where the crack started, eventually getting into the plywood. So even assuming this repair holds, we still have an open question of how to seal under the overhangs better. Hopefully with a solution that isn't be too labour intensive, as between all three sections there is 30 metres of edge to be dealt with. Thoughts welcome.

Blimey, if that's still worth money then for a small fee I'll tell someone where to find this one too:

In the centre of each cover should be a domed nut or some other retaining fastener. Just undo this and the whole cover will come off. The decompressor levers are only attached to the covers, and will come away with them.

What we have is a wage slip for a week. Basic pay is £31.75, then there are a few extras like that £5.50 for specific work. Doesn't say how long they took. After deductions the total pay for the week is about £40 - so about £300 in current terms.

David, Thank you for your writeup and especially the above section. Our Sheffield size boat Goodwill was built in 1953 and worked for Waddingtons. We knew that she did carry wheat but I had little idea how this fitted into broader patterns. Steve Waddington told us that she would take wheat from Hull to Mexborough, Rotherham and Sheffield, and then on the return trips take coal from various pits to the Hull gas works. We know from a 1976 payslip found under the forecabin floor that the skipper got £5.50 pay for loading 100 tons of wheat!