Sea Dog

Mine are on 4 very small and neat bolt-on brackets stuck to the roof with (slightly flexible) Stixall. Never a movement, never a noise, and flat.

This may be true, but you're listening to good advice, your knowledge is increasing fast and your skills will doubtless do the same given your attitude and application. Good on yer, and the best of luck with sorting this issue.

You would do those routes as a ring in either direction, either as a smaller or larger loop depending on time and/or your progress.

One reason might be that the ladies enjoy doing the lock wheeling - mine does, so apart from assisting once the boat is in the lock, I just have to get my fix whenever she feels like a change. Another reason, possibly why many ladies take the above approach, is that when the bloke scrapes the boat on the way into a lock, he shrugs it off, claiming its boating and that's a thing that just happens sometimes. When the lady does the same thing, probably less frequently, the bloke has a dickie fit!

A dollar and a half won't get you in the BCLM to see 'em though!

Some good advice above. Having been based at Droitwich Spa Marina for a few years so knowing the local routes pretty well, I'd throw in that you really should do Worcester. The route down to (or up from) Worcester on the B&W is easier than Barge Canal anyway, but Worcester is worth a visit for the history alone.The best of the River Severn lies between Worcester and Stourport and it's an easy half day run. Whether you do the Staffs and Worcs from there to he Stourbridge above Stewpony or carry on to Autherley and the Wolverhampton, that canal is a delight. Definitely do the Black Country Living Museum - it's one of the finest days out in the land and has good moorings. Don't let nay-sayers put you off an overnight stay in central Birmingham. Obviously you can do this either clockwise or anticlockwise.

Much as such courage is to be applauded, I think you'll have to make do with the pork medallions...

Or simply a very pleasant afternoon...

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!)

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.

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.

I got mine in a carrier bag...

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.

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.

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".

They're known as broad beans down our allotment, or have I misread that?

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?"

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.

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.

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?

Matt black is a unique boat paint scheme? You need to get out more!

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?

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.

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?

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