Tony Dunkley

If that was the only problem he had with a York engine, then he wasn't just tight fisted, . . . he was extremely lucky.

. . . . . or cracked where it emerges from the fitting just inside the tank.

If you want an answer to that you'll have to be a lot more specific about what you mean by 'refurbished' in the context of an engine overhaul/repair. If your engine has developed some minor oil or water leaks, and has become difficult to start, then the remedies may not be much more than some routine maintenance and repair jobs. At the moment you're asking the mechanical equivalent of the length of a piece of string. Saying what your engine is either doing or not doing that makes you think it needs 'refurbishing' will help to get you a worthwhile and meaningful answer. Knowing model/type, total hours run, maintenance/repair history, and current symptoms/performance would be useful information to have.

Low rpm and the biggest diameter that can be swung under the counter are unquestionably the way to go to make the best possible use of relatively small horsepower outputs. The performance of most modern day so-called narrowboats is really quite pathetic. Some of the poor performance is due to the crude and inefficient underwater lines of the hulls, but high revving small diameter propellers are by far and away the main cause, and the origins of those on canalboats can be traced directly back to the early 1970's when British Waterways successfully conned the boating public into believing that the ideal draught for a narrow canalboat was around 2 feet.

The motor in the photo is a big Northwich, . . . so it can't be 'Bilster'.

Over the last few weeks it has been established that since revoking Andy Wingfield's Pleasure Boat Certificate [ the phoney and misrepresented 'Rivers only Licence' ] and obtaining a Court Order/Injunction excluding him from their waters, C&RT have siphoned almost £900 from his bank account in the shape of 'Licence' and Mooring fees. Following representations to what passes for management within Enforcement and Licensing, C&RT have agreed to refund, in full, the sum they have misappropriated, but have yet to honour their promise by actually handing over any money. If the stalling and failure to pay persists, then Andy W. will be serving a Statutory Demand on C&RT for the admitted sum owed. Under the terms of a Statutory Demand, which will be served on Parry in person, the Trust has 21 days to either pay up or apply to the Court to have the Statutory Demand set aside, or to apply for an Injunction to prevent the creditor from applying for a Winding up Order.

No idea what 'Google Street View' is, but that is a photo of Newdigate Arm taken from the towpath side with Bedworth Hill bridge just out of the picture to the right. The boats will be a pair of either British Waterway's or Willow Wren's loaded for Colne Valley, sometime in the 1950's or 60's. Colne Valley [ otherwise known as the 'Stink Hole'] burned slack from Newdigate with dried sewage sludge to make fertilizer. The slack had to be kept dry to work in the furnaces, which is why the boats are clothed up.

Are you really sure the engine needs either replacing or a major overhaul ? Engines in pleasure craft rarely wear out, . . . they just don't run enough hours or work hard enough for that to happen. What usually does happen is a combination of deteriorating through living in cold damp engine compartments without sufficient regular and frequent use, and 'mucking' themselves up internally because they don't get worked hard enough when they are used.

Back in the 1960's there were still 2 rings set in the cobbles along the front of that pub, . . . . are they still there, or have they now been concreted or tarmacked over ?

Tied up, pulling static on a line from ashore, . . or underway in relatively deep, clear water ?

No, not a silly question at all. There is always an adequate depth for pleasure craft on the pontoons below Cromwell Lock and in Torksey Cut at any state of the tide. From what you said in your post #9 you will be coming upriver from Keadby, so the build-up of sand/mud at the outer end of Torksey Cut won't cause you any problems even if you do cut across the turn-in. The build-up of sand/silt occurs only on the upriver side of the Cut entrance, and is due to the slowly circulating 'slack' at the Cut entrance dropping suspended sediments over the 10 hours of ebb that runs down there. The greatest depth in Torksey Cut entrance is to be found by keeping closer to the steep downriver side edge of the bank, rather than the upriver side, as you turn in when coming from Keadby. If you make the same sort of time/speed as most narrowboats seem to, then there won't be much tide, even on Springs, left under you by the time you get there, so you can turn straight in and whatever is left of the slowly circulating 'slack' there is on the flood won't hinder you if you keep plenty of way on.

Encouraging boaters with little or no knowledge, and very limited experience of a tidal river such as the Trent to attempt to work out their own tide timings is foolish and irresponsible, and likely to result in the sort of situation illustrated by this [your] captioned photo in an earlier topic of your boat waiting to float off on the next tide after grounding in a potentially dangerous location near the outer end of a shallow/drying ness between Mere Dyke and Burton Stather Jetty :~ . . . . . . We slowed to a crawl before deciding it was no longer wise to carry on and dropped the anchor before the beached the boat. It was a peaceful enough spot and with no water in the channel we were not causing an obstruction to navigation so we brewed the coffee, broke out the cheese and crackers and listened to some music whilst waiting for the tide to lift us back off the bottom."

In the latter years BW increasingly neglected to keep the lock tail at Keadby cleaned out, and now C&RT seem to be letting it get even worse. The effect of this is to reduce the length of time after local HW that boats can get in or out of Keadby Cut. This now makes it even more advantageous to time arrival at and entry into Keadby for close to local High Water, when there is little or no tide/current and plenty of depth over Parry's mud banks. This topic from last year explains how to do it :~ Down the Tidal Trent ~~~ Why not do it the easier way ? Started by Tony Dunkley, 20 Aug 2015 05:56 PM

The 'legal' process refered to takes a maximum of 28 days before they can remove a boat which is abandoned or sunk, but the same piece of legislation gives them the power to move, immediately and without notice, any boat that is an obstruction or a source of danger. This 'legal' process is the very same Section 8 of the 1983 BW Act which is in regular use against selected boaters to steal their boats as a form of reprisal for allegedly not moving far enough whilst 'cruising', or staying in one place for too long.

There are probably many such similar photos in existence, but one obvious boat that comes to mind would be the Willow Wren owned Station butty 'Dabchick', when Jack Monk had it. Boatmen were paid on tonnage carried so everyone would always load to the maximum the cut would allow, but Jack always tended to load just that bit deeper than most did. Station boats had virtually no 'dry side' [freeboard] with a decent load on because the hull sides weren't quite as deep as either a normal 5 plank wooden boat, or an FMC boat, or a little Woolwich/Northwich.

The AoS paperwork had been 'inadvertently' omitted from the Court papers [Claim] that C&RT served on me in July 2014 with only 2 days of the 14 day time limit remaining. The Claim was issued on 13 June 2014 and Shoosmiths hung on to it until 30 June when they served it, minus the AoS form but with a covering letter dated 19 June and only 3 clear days before the hearing which was listed for 4 July. The service date [19 June] indicated on the covering letter enabled me to file my AoS Reply, within the 14 day time limit, but only a few minutes before the Court Office closed on 3 July, the day before the hearing, and far too late for it to be forwarded or notified to Shoosmiths. When the C&RT/Shoosmiths contingent arrived at the Court the next morning, the 4th, they seemed to be under the impression that no AoS paperwork would have been returned to the Court and that the granting of the Order/Injunction was therefore, 'in the bag'. Such was the level of confidence that they were about to wrap up another successful, unopposed 'rubber stamping' exercise the Shoosmiths Solicitor/Advocate spent a few moments waving the draft Order/Injunction form under my nose and rather patronizingly explaining that, . . "this is what's happening today". All the sickening smugness quickly evaporated a few minutes later when the Judge asked if they had seen my AoS Reply, with the brief handwritten Statement/Submission attached, and handed them a copy of it.

That isn't how it works, Alan. Anyone who is served with one of C&RT's Part 8 Claims can attend Court and argue against it provided the Acknowledgment of Service form has been filled in appropriately and returned to the Court within the given time limits. It's mainly a box ticking exercise with an empty box for the Defendant to put in a few [handwritten] lines by way of a brief explanation of why the Claim will be disputed. Putting in a Counter Claim is something which can be done in addition to returning the AoS papers, but it is not a prerequisite to disputing the original Claim. I don't know how to make a link to it on here, but Nigel has published my AoS Part 8 Reply of July 2014 on Scribd. The Court's reaction to it was to reallocate the Claim to the Multi-Track and give me three weeks to prepare and file/serve a written Defence. If the Defendant doesn't fill in the AoS paperwork and return it within the time limits, then whether or not they are permitted to speak in their defence becomes a matter of the Judge's discretion. Worse still, if they don't attend the hearing either then CRT's Claim/Injunction draft is simply 'rubber stamped', and they walk out with their Court Order.

By way of an update on C&RT's current futile proceedings against me, . . . they blew something in the region of another £1500 at Nottingham County Court yesterday with an Application to get the Declaratory and Injunctive Relief Claim, struck out on 1 June 2016, restored to hearing. An Order was made as follows :~ IT IS ORDERED THAT 1. The Order of HHJ Owen QC made on 1st June 2016 is set aside and the Claimant’s Part 8 claim is restored. 2. The Defendant shall file a witness statement in response to that of the Claimant by 4 pm on 29th July 2016. 3. This matter shall be listed before a District Judge on [fad from 15th August 2016] for directions. Time estimate 30 minutes. 4. There be no order for costs on this application _______________________________________________ The date for the directions hearing will take this pointless farce to, at the very least, within a day or two of the first anniversary of my refusal to buy a PBC [C&RT's misrepresented 'Rivers only Licence'] whilst my boat is laid up out of commission and moored to private land outside of the main navigable channel. With yesterdays costs added to the cost of Shoosmiths initially preparing and issuing the Claim, I would think that C&RT must already have squandered something in the region of £5000 on something they know full well that they can't get a result from.

C&RT take boaters to Court for the sole purpose of firstly, duping the Court into believing that the boater in question is a Licence dodger and must therefore be compelled to remove their boat from C&RT waters, and secondly to obtain an Injunction [C&RT's lawyers draft the Injunction] worded in such a way as to have the boater believe that they are, if C&RT so wish, exiled in perpetuity from all the waterways under C&RT control. As to the question of why C&RT waste enormous quantities of money simply to deprive themselves of a source of [Licence/PBC] income, . . . God alone may have the answer to that one, but I don't, because like most things that C&RT do, it is totally beyond all sense and reason. I know of no occasion when there has been any legitimate attempt by C&RT to recover unpaid charges/fees via legal action against any boater they are seeking to banish from their waters, and in fact their routine neglect of the powers that Parliament gave them specifically for the recovery of unpaid charges coupled with the habitual use of powers [1983 Act S.8 and 1971 Act S.13] which make no provision whatsoever for debt recovery, precludes this in any event. C&RT's lawyers are only too well aware that in revoking or refusing boat Licences/PBC's on the pretext of non-compliance with Section 17(3)[c] of the 1995 Act they are doing something which is very difficult to argue for and justify to a Court, which is why they invariably avoid doing so, and elect instead to present the unfortunate boater to the Court as a Licence dodger. I can't answer your question ~ " why is CRT taking the owner to court - what for.?", but I can state quite categorically that they are NOT taking boat owners to Court to recover unpaid charges/fees or to seek damages.

Whilst that is unquestionably the intention, and the rationale behind C&RT/Shoosmiths habitual use of the CPR Part 8 procedure, anyone finding themselves subject to this abuse of process can negate this effect by filing [with the Court] an appropriately worded response to the Part 8 Claim for Declaratory and Injunctive Relief that will have been served on them. Provided the response paperwork is completed appropriately and filed within the specified time limits, the Court will re-allocate the Claim [usually to something called the 'Multi-track'] and make an Order requiring the Defendant to file and serve a written Defence. A well constructed Defence, coincidental with a valid and non-refuseable Application for a new Licence/PBC will leave C&RT with no viable option other than to back off and discontinue the proceedings.

There isn't much point in trying to follow or understand anything that C&RT say or publish, because the factual and truthful content will be either non-existent, or minimal and obscured by drivel, and you certainly won't find anything in any C&RT publication that is genuinely intended to protect, or be in the interest of boaters. It's well worth bearing in mind that ticking the box that says you agree to their T&C's doesn't in reality, or law, bind you to any such thing.

I'm afraid it doesn't make any real sense at all, and the reason for that is simply that C&RT have become litigation junkies addicted to costly, inappropriate and pointless legal action in preference to the quicker, inexpensive, financially beneficial, and lawful remedies available to them to employ against genuine wrongdoers in both statute and byelaw. Their much loved and misused Section 8 process makes no provision for the recovery of unpaid Licence/PBC fees, and nor did it go on to the statute books for that purpose, whereas S.5 of the 1983 BW Act and S.7(2) of the 1971 BW Act, both of which they studiously avoid the use of, were intended specifically for the recovery of unpaid charges/fees.

If it's sounds that used to be heard around the Regent's canal and London area that you're after, then the little 9HP Bolinder isn't what you need. They weren't really powerful enough for a pair of boats, which is why they were used by FMC in the boats built to run as single motors in the North. The motors that were built to work with a butty in the South all had 15HP engines.

Cromwell to Keadby isn't quite 45 miles, . . . more like 43, and assuming your boat is capable of achieving and maintaining 5 knots, and assuming you don't 'park it' in/on any of the shallows/shoals, it's 'doable' [on Tuesday] in just over 6 hours, without the need to stop at Torksey. Leaving Cromwell 2 hours before High Water at Hull, as you would be at 0530 on Tuesday 5 July, and running at around 5 knots you will probably meet the Flood around Marton, HW around Lea Marshes and have the ebb pushing you along again by Gainsborough. You'll be at Keadby about 3 hours after local HW, with plenty of depth still left over the heap of muck in the lock tail. Round up towards the ness [East side] as soon as you've got Keadby Light [West side, halfway between Keadby Bridge and the Lock] on the beam, drop down sternfirst to the lock and come to a standstill very close [less than a boats length off] to the wall with your fore-end level with the lock, then go ahead and turn in under full rudder and [briefly] full power, gathering as little way as possible.

Depending on what maximum rpm the HA3 is governed to, a 26'' x 19'' may be just a little on the 'heavy' side, but not by much, and it WON'T cause a correctly set-up engine in good condition to stall when clutching in at idling rpm. If it is stalling, then either the idling rpm is set too low, the governor is worn or not set-up correctly, or the engine is down on power due to the cumulative effects of wear some or all it's components. Thanks to something called a propeller law power curve, the effects of a slightly over 'heavy' propeller don't cause a problem a low rpm, but if the propeller is significantly over diameter or over pitched for the installation then it will prevent the engine from reaching full governed rpm under load. The fact that the HA3 in 'Sickle' can cope with towing an [approximately] half loaded motor round a few locks isn't really anything to write home about, . . . . the HA2 in the 'Mingo used to get it about alright, . . . with a full load on, and towing a butty with even more weight on it.