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Sea Dog

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Everything posted by Sea Dog

  1. Or simply a very pleasant afternoon...
  2. They've just opened the Elephant and Castle in addition the Bottle and Glass. What are you trying to do - turn the place into an historic pub crawl?! (Let me know if you succeed and I'll buy you a pint!)
  3. Oh good, I hope that's at least ruled something out. That's still very odd curing behaviour for Ballastic Black bitumen (or any other brand) even if it does somehow eventually "dry up". I'm not sure I'd be happy to put the boat back in the water with that as the final coat.
  4. I blacked my boat last month with SML's bitumen-based Ballastic Black. I did a coat a day over 3 days, every coat was completely dry before the next went on, and the 3rd coat was dry next morning too. That's in line with the manufacturer's advice and what you expected. Now, somewhat confusingly, SML also do a 2 pack Epoxy which, for reasons best known to them, they also call Ballastic. So, it may be worth checking if somehow the tin used for the final coat was the epoxy Ballastic which, if not mixed with the hardener, would give the non-setting result you speak of.
  5. Dunno, I bought my boat from someone who put 12 hours on the engine in 5 years from new, yet the boat was his pride and joy. Different strokes, I guess.
  6. In my experience of marine leisure boats (reasonable, but far less than my military seafaring), I've rarely moored near a vessel I thought looked as if the owner has absolutely no concept of boat safety as I have on canals. The odd one, yes, but this is perhaps the distinction. @Alan de Enfield has more leisure cruising experience than me though, and has done extensive cruising in both inland and marine environments, so may well be able to comment more definitively.
  7. Well, "you can't take it with you" and they got 500 hours of boating enjoyment they might never have had if they'd played safe and kept their monetary "loss" in the bank. I'd say you both had a "win-win".
  8. They're known as broad beans down our allotment, or have I misread that?
  9. Do they need a control experiment? Clearly a boat with (insert name of realistic BSS failure here) is less safe than one without the hazard. There are plenty of hazards identified in BSS checks which would otherwise have continued unchecked. (I'm not suggesting that all BSS passes or failures are infallibly correct) A lesser justification of a greater imperative which would otherwise be outside of the remit, surely? As I think you also allude to when you say "Far fetched?"
  10. Remember that the BSS is not there to protect boaters from dangers on their craft - it's to protect other boats and the general public from someone mooring a potential hazard nearby. This potential risk to others, rightly or wrongly, is seen as a greater risk on inland waterways than in the marine environment. Only the recently added CO alarm requirement explicitly targets boat owners' own safety.
  11. Particularly since it appears that there aren't any SIBC members on this forum. Perhaps issuing their bollocking here might be less than well-targeted.
  12. Ah, I see - your earlier post appeared to be in answer to @Alan de Enfield 's question about Tom Keeling being good. Hopefully that's cleared up rather than Tom being given a poor review he didn't deserve. I found the income from marine surveying to be leaning in that direction too, not least due to the high cost of indemnity insurance everyone thinks their "get out" clauses mean they wouldn't need. The more surveys they do, the more the insurance costs... and the liability doesn't stop when they stop trading. The cost/reward ratio also explains why Gas Safe chit for boats is less common than one might imagine, I expect?
  13. Matt black is a unique boat paint scheme? You need to get out more!
  14. This ^^^^ in my (singular) excellent experience of Tom Keeling, but which was also similar to the experience of others around me at the time a couple of years ago - and two of those were given failures! I had just changed my gas hose (on age - me being thorough, not cos it was tired) and although it was identical to the old one and met British Standard, it was the wrong British Standard! No problem: Tom had some in his van which he supplied free of charge. He also found the tiniest of pressure drops on the gas test, tracked it down and fixed it, again free of charge. Thorough check by a thoroughly nice bloke. I'd use him again and wouldn't hesitate to recommend him to others - in fact, I most recently did so this weekend! Since this is completely the opposite of my experience, did you mean former rather than latter? Or do you need to expand on your own experience for balance?
  15. Although this hasn't seemed to work well for striking doctors, Just Stop Oil, et al, who's cries appear have fallen on the deafest of deaf ears. Let's not stray from General Boating into politics, but sad to say that a few more narrowboat horns, commendable though our cause might be, are probably not going to push doing a U-turn on CRT's long established tapered funding agreement further up HMG's current options list.
  16. I've noticed a significant number of dogs (not all, obviously) have trained humans to follow them around bagging up their waste - for free too. Perhaps we could extend the system?
  17. In the 70s my mate's grandad was a TV detector van man. He was quite a bright bloke with a telecoms background, not the sort that I'd have thought would have been content to spend his days idly driving around in a dummy* van, pretending to detect naughty folk's tellys. Maybe he was? * It may have been a Bedford
  18. Hmm, are you sure that particular newspaper is a reliable sauce? I think the once dependable Independent may be rusting on its laurels...
  19. Yep, I wondered how there could possibly be an agreed universal standard for that. Thanks Mike.
  20. A quick Googling found me "universal" fridge thermostats available for a little more than a fiver. Do you have any idea whether this brand of "universality" extends to Shoreline models? I've long wondered whether my own fridge is performing quite as optimally as it should and throwing a fiver at a new stat is definitely a reasonable first step check. However, when Shoreline themselves want £48.90 plus p&p for a specific stat for the RR47 fridge, that purchase really needs to be as a result of accurate diagnosis.
  21. I've had a few very nice breakfasts in the little cafe by the top lock, but I'd have given those occurrences a far better than one star rating.
  22. Ah, of course - those with macerators would miss this bonus. Also those with boats on flat calm canals, I suppose...
  23. I've heard this often but I've never really understood how sleeping above a completely sealed tank that most rarely even see is somehow worse than the horrendous interactions described in your post and others above.
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