John Williamson 1955

I remember one guy in the '70s who mounted an outboard on his rudder, as a sort of power steering device. He kept the main engine for movement in a straight line, and reckoned he could do the Llangollen almost flat out through the bends.

Nah, it's just a typo, they missed off a zero on the numbers. I used a hundred quid's worth of diesel in the engine last year, and mine's a houseboat, Unless they mean each, of course. ;-) ETA, they seem to have a problem with non-working number keys "Otherwise home mooring, typically in privately owned marinas, varies depending on your boat size and the location, but can cost more than £2,000 a year." If you're in Central London, there's definitely a digit missing there. £12,000 or even £20,000 would be closer.

Whatever. If there's a bug that won't let me sign out, as far as I'm concerned, that's a bug that I don't want to get involved with. I've tried disabling cookies for the site, which stops me logging in, and enabling cookies for the session only gives me an error message, saying the logon request is ill formed, then it lets me open the site.

Okay. Cookies here are cleared when I close FF, but it may for some reason only be clearing third party cookies. I don't like stuff running in the background unless I tell it to, and a connection I can't close at will is a definite no-no. Still, as you say it's a known issue, maybe I'll just have to unsubscribe until it's fixed. Unless I can find a way to tell FF not to accept cookies from the site, in which case I probably won't be able to log on.

For me, it's a general security thing. I routinely close all connections when they're not in active use. I've got the browser set to remember all the log in details anyway, so it's just a matter of clicking on the box to connect. Not being able to disconnect from the forum when I want to worries me as it potentially opens a door for malware to be installed behind my back. It also indicates a bug in the system, which leads to worry about what other, more serious bugs there are....

Drat! Setting history to clear all active logins doesn't work either. I need to keep the rest of the history, so I may just have to stop using the Forum unless the problem is sorted out.

Am I the only one having trouble logging out of a session here.? I click on the sign out button, but it doesn't sign me off, just reloads the page. I'm using Firefox 39 on Windows 8.1, both fully updated. I've had similar problems with earlier versions of Firefox. Edit to add, closing FF and reopening does not log me off. FF is set to delete cookies after each session.

I suspect that was what was done by the first rebuilder. The symptoms described after the rebuild suggest at least a scored bore with new rings. The problem now is that the bores may have been too deeply scored to rebore, so the only cure will be a replacement block. Unfortunately, this engine does not have cylinder liners, which make the job of repair a lot easier, though it's possible that an enterprising engineer could make some to fit at an extortionate cost.

I bought my boat while it was on the side, and hadn't been blacked for quite a while. I saw that it would need overplating at some stage, which was taken account of in the price. I looked at the hull in the dry dock after it had been blacked earlier this year, and it still looked as though it would need overplating at some point in the future, but the corrosion and pitting were covered in paint. Two coats of blacking didn't hide the problems. A survey at this point would confirm what I could see. If I was worried about the blacking covering problems, then I'd look at other indicators of the way the boat had been looked after. Has the interior of the weed hatch been blacked, too? Are there dents in the hull or cabin top, is the engine clean, and if so, is it suspiciously clean, as if all the oil has just been cleaned off to hide the leaks?Is the interior in a reasonable state of repair, and so on. If the rest of the boat passed inspection, then I'd look hard at the hull, but new anodes and fresh blacking don't automatically mean a cover-up. They're as likely to show a careful owner, possibly trying to get the best price for the boat.

If all else fails, the block is available to buy new, and the crankshaft is probably fit to regrind. Do that, and the engine will be as good as new. It may be cheaper to buy a new short engine, though. The only real problem will be sorting out the cooling, which, if it's an external keel cooler, may need the boat to come out of the water

I could do that....

Then there was one near here recently, which had been neglected for a while, even though it was being lived on, the rain filled the front of the hull through leaking deck boards (It was a working boat which had been partly converted), and once enough water had got into the front, the waterline reached the engine room vents and down it went over a period of a few hours. People were trying to keep it up, but didn't have a big enough pump available. The boat is now being fully restored to its former glory, as far as I know, but not, I believe, by the owner at the time of the sinking.

If it's any consolation, the long pound from Cowley to Paddington is currently down about 3 inches from its normal level, which puts it 6 inches below the Winter peak. This is the same as it was at this time last year, when CRT were trying to blame it on leaky gates at Camden.

They're in Berkshire at the moment. The advert looks interesting... apolloduck.net/414565