MyLady

Greeny!

Here's a picture of Milady: and another, showing her name: If you see us, shout, so we can chat Roger Edited to do what I wanted in the first place, thanks to David - greenie for you David

In my limited experience (cars) all the alternators/dynamos I have come across had a centrifugal fan, so blew air away from them, sucking air from behind... Roger

Or heading northwards to civilisation? Nice boat, but I'm jealous of those hand rails on your roof: not just Milady, but many others just have a ridge (?) along the roof edge, not only do yours drain better, but you can grasp them properly and tie a rope on almost anywhere. I wish milady had that kind! Roger

As far as the mattress supplier's expertise goes, the following quote from the previous post on their blog might give a hint: "Making sure your propeller is the right size for your engine is key to fuel efficiency. One of the ways to check this is to test your rpm. When you’re at full throttle then the motor should be running at its top rpm. So if the revs are not reaching the top of the counter, then this probably means your prop is too small. Equally if the engine is over revving then the prop might be oversized. Ensure that your boat is not overloaded before your try this." 1. How many rev counters fitted show maximum RPM as the end of the scale? On my car, there's a red line at the maximum safe engine speed. It's well short of the end of the scale. (That comment may just show my ignorance of boat engineering, but having the rev counter specially engineered for a particular boat design seems to me less likely than specially tailoring the printing on the dial. I may be wrong.) 2. Surely a prop that is too small will load the engine too little, so give over-revving, and one too big will overload the engine, so giving low revs? 3. I believe the pitch of the prop blades is also relevant (akin to the final drive ratio on a car). If I'm right, greater size of prop is just one factor amongst several, just as wheel diameter is just one factor in maximum speed of a road vehicle - compensated, in a well designed vehicle by the gear ratio (gear box plus final drive, to match engine design). 4. Their comments may have some relevance to particular types of boat, but since that article refers elsewhere to a top speed of 50 knots, I don't think it has much validity for canal boats. I would take their comments on diesel tax with similar reservations! Roger

Hi Katleen, Still no contact from Matt - is the new phone working? Roger

And my apologies to you too. I'm afraid I've been building up a 'head of steam' on the problem of units for some time and your misquote triggered my 'safety valve'. In fact, you're even less to blame: I tried to copy'n'paste the square sign myself and failed, the code to give the superscript (whatever that code is) inserted a line break when I copied it so I couldn't make the "2" look right; that's why I used words instead of the conventional typography. The point that I was trying to make remains in general far too often for my composure, I've seen or heard mm instead of square mm and amps instead of amp hours - that isn't your fault! Just out of curiosity, let's see if the HTML markup works on this forum: mm2 Ho hum, either it doesn't or my memory isn't good enough to remember the correct tag. We can always revert to the early computer notation, like Arthur did, and use "mm^2"... Roger Edited to use the form that Nick pointed out below (so now it does work) - thanks Nick R

I've been on both sides of this: Morrisons once asked me to install a tannoy system in one of their warehouses, I didn't want the job, so quoted a price "I couldn't refuse" - they still booked me, it seemed I looked cheap to them (and I was late going on holiday with my family, which earned me lots of penalty points, maybe I should have charged more?); on another occasion my car door lock failed, so I took it to the garage, but they couldn't fit me in for several days and that would have meant the car, or contents, was highly likely to get nicked, so I bought the bits and fixed it at the roadside outside the garage. When I'd done, I asked to use their facilities to wash up, then asked what their price would have been to do the job (I wondered how much I'd saved), they told me - and justified the amount with the time for the job out of their official manual. That time was slightly more than I'd taken, working with minimal tools and facilities at the roadside, including washing off afterwards. Their was no charge for using their wash room. Pounds per hour is subject to many variables, but I still maintain that: "the labourer is worthy of his hire." The Chinese apparently had a principle: if the price is fair, both customer and seller feel that they've made a good deal; if either feels they've been ripped off, then the price wasn't fair. Sounds good to me! Roger

Please check your quote. The original refers to square mm, not mm. 25 mm is cable measuring roughly 1" - 25 square mm measures rather less than 1/4" (5.6mm). Posts that quote the wrong units are highly misleading: mm instead of square mm; amps instead of amp hours are the ones I see most frequently. I was told that my fridge drew about 70A per day which, I guess, is wrong. I guess that what was meant was 70 amp hours - slightly less than 3 amps for 24 hours. If I had believed that what had been said was literally true I'd have thought that the fridge consumed over 20 kwh per day, more than my alternator could provide if it ran at full output 24 hours per day! I was also told that one or two 165W solar panels (times daylight hours minus overcast losses) would supply the 840W (x 24 hours) demand from the fridge - as stated, self-evident nonsense! Correcting the units makes the statement believable, but why should the listener/reader have to supply the correction? It's very hard to discuss technical issues like this sensibly when the wrong units are used. </pedant> Roger PS I'm not sure about the answer to the original question, but the battery is likely to be able to supply much more current than the alternator (in the short term) so it is reasonable for equally much larger cable to be used to provide a safe system... R

Are you suggesting I should be forced to sell/abandon my boat? I have no home mooring and no desire to get one. I'm want to keep moving on, staying nowhere more than 14 days (or paying for a temporary mooring). I pay for a license to use the network and am proud to do so. I do cruise continuously. Do you mean that I should be denied the priviledge of paying a license fee - or that I should be forced to pay for a 'home mooring' that I don't use? Or that I should be forced to sell up?

Get a survey done before buying (you know it makes sense!) If you do, the survey'll be brand new, so acceptable to any insurer (if it isn't satisfactory, either get the vendor to rectify the problems, or don't buy a rotten hulk). Once the boat is yours, you'll want to maintain it properly, so a hull survey is something YOU'll want periodically as a tool to prevent the boat sinking, won't it? Incidentally, a FULL, rather than just a hull, survey can potentially reveal other problems that you will need to know about before spending those tens of thousands... If I'm any guide, you'll want to spend far more than the cost of a survey on 'tweaking' things that you want to improve, so it's false economy to try to save the cost of a survey, which can reveal things that would make you run screaming away from buying that boat. "Look before you leap." Roger

All the best to Matty. I hope he's online again soon. Roger

Very recently, we navigated the HNC, West to East... No disasters, but 'king hard work! The last but one lock before the tunnel leaked so badly that we had to call out the CaRT lads to bounce the gates open (the cafe owner there came out and made several unhelpful comments). The two pubs after the tunnel that we'd hoped to eat at weren't helpful: one first told us that the 'offer' on the menu was an offer from the pub chain and they didn't do it, then, when we said we'd pay full price, said they hadn't got soup and ham and eggs (or whatever it was) so they couldn't do that at any price; then when we walked to the other one mentioned in Nicholson, we found it had closed down. Coming down at the other side we found (guess how) that at the exits from least two were so narrow that the boat jammed - if it hadn't been for a pair of helpful gongoozlers pulling on ropes, my wife and I (64 & 65 years old) could have been there still. Descending, we fairly soon (after being left aground in 1 pound) discovered the trick of opening the top paddles on the next lock before emptying the current one, so that the current lock-full went into the next one, rather than just flowing down the by-wash. Leaving Slaithwaite, we found access to the towpath on one pound was only via steps onto the boat between two immediately adjacent concrete bridges (Nicholson erroneously showed a land route) so I had a long reverse, steering by poling off the banks, to go back and pick up the crew. To cap it all, one bridge/tunnel had an old stone arch in the middle so I managed to mangle our chimney (yes, I know that was my fault, going too fast, at tick-over, to stop in the distance between realising there wasn't enough clearance and hitting it). Extremely good news that CaRT management has the HNC under observation, with a view to tackling at least some of the problems next Winter, but I still won't cruise that canal again in a hurry: we boat for pleasure, not for a challenge! ("Wonderful scenery" - maybe ... if you have time to look at it while still taking enough care not to wreck the boat! It was wonderful to reach the HBC and the C&H and A&C navigations with room to breathe - and electrically controlled, hydraulically operated locks. Roger

Please, let's all agree that this is a complex issue, with persuasive arguments on both sides. I think we two would find it easy to agree, but his point of view has it's supporters. I think we should agree to differ, despite the evidence (which is also complex). You and I will never convince him, so is it worth trying and, inevitably, failing? It is possible to convince people with open minds, but not everyone. (I'm not accusing him of having a closed mind, just that everyone is entitled to their personal opinion. I'm an atheist, but accept that I won't, "win friends and influence (at least some) people": by forcing my opinion down their throats.) But that's off topic... Roger

Some, but others agree, to some extent. There's a case for legalising ALL recreational drugs, to take them out of the reach of organised crime and allow them to be taxed so that they will, at least, help to support the NHS, social benefits, and so on. I only use alcohol and tobacco (but did smoke cannibal's raisins a couple of times in my youth), but can see a credible argument for legalising heroin, cocaine, etc.: prohibition of alcohol in the US did more to promote organised crime than it did to keep people sober. That's why, I understand, that law was repealed... Roger