Southern Star

Overnight parking in lay-bys is only prohibited if there is a sign prohibiting it. If there is not, then there are no laws regarding the times that vehicles may park in lay-bys, what type of vehicles may park in lay-bys or whether the occupants of vehicles may sleep while parked in lay-bys.

Indeed there are, I normally spend at least one night a week and often more parked in Cornish lay-bys in my truck and I've never been asked to move on.

Food, drink and personal washing items is about all I can think of. You'll be able to buy all of that on the way to the boatyard I should imagine. Maybe a book to read but other than that the boat should be fully equipped to cruise.

Welcome along Jim, that is an enormous question! Basically, it's a perfectly doable idea but it will be a step change from how you are probably living life now.

Ah yes, I remember them now. I also seem to remember tubes of chocolate dressed up as cigarettes with a paper wrap, sold in mock cigarette packets, confectionery boxes of matches, and liquorice smoking pipes complete with red sugar strands to represent burning tobacco. How times change.

I seem to remember they had a word (possibly the manufacturer's name, possibly something a bit random) stamped onto the flat bit?

I give it near full throttle, and the starter motor absolutely whizzes the engine around. It seems to start in pretty much the same way as the diesel engines I remember being fitted to 1960s cars and vans. I will check the glow plugs next time I'm up, although the last owner did replace them according to the paperwork. I would also tend to suspect the injectors, except that on a 350 mile cruise last year she only averaged 0.7 litres of fuel per engine hour which I gather is better than the average reported for this engine, and runs very smoothly once started.

I suppose it depends how you define "knackered". It takes about 20 seconds of cranking to fire up after a long lay-up in cold weather, subsequently it fires up pretty much straight away, it doesn't smoke after a few seconds of running, makes no untoward noises, uses less than a pint of oil between oil changes, doesn't leak oil or water and has run perfectly covering around 1,000 miles in the 18 months I've owned it. I certainly wouldn't dream of having it rebuilt or replaced just because it takes a bit of coaxing into life once or twice a year. It doesn't start as readily as the diesel engine in my car, but then I wouldn't really expect it to.

We're doing the Warwickshire Ring next month, here is the general plan.

Leave the breather as it is, there's nothing better for preventing corrosion in the engine bay than a light misting of oil.

At this time of year, with temperatures just above zero and with an engine which has not been started for several weeks, how long do folk normally leave their ignition switch in the glow plug position? I normally do a timed 20 seconds but it still takes about 20 seconds of cranking for my engine to fire up (BMC 1.5). I can't find anything in the user manual about this, so what is considered "normal"?

Yes, it is said that a clean car runs better than a dirtier car, it was something I was told in my earliest days of driving and although there is no possible logical explanation for it, it has held true for my entire driving life.

The bottom line is that is doesn't matter if it is 50' or 60', it is still a boat and it is still going to be a small and restricted space, and the fact that one boat may be longer than another boat by less than the length of a Fiat Panda isn't going to make any significant difference. The boat in your link looks good to me, the only criticism I'd have is that the bath is a complete and total waste of space.

Possibly, although they were replaced not very long ago according to the paperwork I inherited. Testing them is on my to-do list but I rather think that on a freezing day when the engine hadn't been started for seven weeks, that it's pretty much how I would expect a fifty year old diesel engine to behave.

Me too!

I put a dose of Miller's Ecomax diesel treatment in when I fill up but I really don't know if it makes any difference.

Yes, all equally true, I wasn't disagreeing with you.

It doesn't necessarily follow that a 30 year old boat has a time-wasted hull, my boat is 30 years old this year and I have both the survey I commissioned and the one commissioned by the previous owner and there is about 10% degradation of hull thickness at the thinnest point. (Base plate, originally 8mm, thinnest point 7.2 mm). At this rate I estimate that I will be around 300 years old when she finally springs a leak.