Mike Adams

I think I will buy a new on e. I thought they were about 250 but only 100 is not so bad. At the top of the Basingstoke just now so hoping I can get one from pacer marine in Aldershot only a 20 min ride from the canal. Thanks

My gulper has just failed and stripped the plastic gear. Anyone know where I can get one? Shame to scrap it as the rest is fine. Might make one from brass but it would need a cust cutter

We did it in France/Germany/Holland for ten years. Bought a GRP boat in the UK and crossed over. Very nice all told. My advice is Buy a GRP or Good Steel Boat (Dutch) less than 15m Assume a season May to September You will need ICC and able to speak French at least allow £2K for mooring and about £1k for Licence and Insurance. Be prepared to be alone a lot at the start and end of season. Resist a Dutch Barge. Cruisers are much better and easier to use in so many ways. Sort out the customs issues re import and export first - I left before the possible problems. Look for a boat in Holland Fogot to add We kept boat in Armentiers 1 hour from calais £700 for a marina mooring.

I would go for a kubota based beta, Canaline are probably fine but do they have a strong base in the UK in other areas like plant and machinery instalations? If canaline are the sole importer and they were to pack up where would you go for parts given it is likely to be in the boat for twenty years. I would avoid anything else in that power band just for ease of getting spares.

Distance posts to the lock. The boat than gets to its post first has right of way

I think most use bent axis piston pumps that are very efficient but costly and those with a variable swatch plate even more. The advantage of the variable swatch plate ones is you can go very slowly (like a trolling valve) so if you have a large engine, K2 kelvin for example, with a limited speed range you can get better control and loading and you don't have to keep going in and out of gear going past all of those 'slow down to tickover signs'. You can also get faster acceleration if needed to get to the next sign. A bit like those Vaporettos in Venice that have a two speed gearbox for a quick get away. If you get weeded up you can change the ratio as well.

The spool valve require just a forward or back motion just like a gearbox. You have have a simple system ,like mine, where there is a fixed relationship( reduction or not) between the motor speed and the propshaft speed so for example you have a 19cc/rev pump and 39cc/rev motor the reduction ratio is 19/39 or about 2.1. The latest systems use a variable displacement pump so that you can in effect vary the reduction ratio. Using this system you can get better control, engine loading etc. Have you used a traditional handwheel/gearchange single handing? So much easier to manage a single lever whie trying to do other things.

Easy to do and you don't need a gearbox. You just need to fit a hydraulic pump directly on to the engine and the motor on the tailshaft/propshaft. A spool valve controls the flow and direction. Hydraulic pipes connect the two together It means you can put the engine anywhere and in any orientation. My engine is under the front deck so you can't hear it when you are travelling. You can put traditional controls onto anything but in my opinion single lever is much better. A company called ARS make and supply these systems but you can make your own up with a little knowledge. Otherwise you can use a drop centre gearbox and the run the shaft at a lower level and then connect it back up to the propshaft with belts/chains and pulleys but with that engine you would need a heavy duty set up which would be prone to damage and likely to give rise to all sorts of noise.

I could not decide so I have both. My 55 Isuzu was designed for raw water cooling and I think my skin tank is not quite adequate for the full power so I have the skin tank in circuit all the time and If I need a lot of power say running up the river against the tide I simply bolt the raw water pump onto the crankshaft pulley with the two bolts(takes about aminute) and use raw water cooling as well through the heat exchanger in the manifold then when back on muddy ditches just unbolt it and move it out of the way. I was told this engine doesn't like to be overheated and unless you have big skin tank it is possible. Water temperature makes a big difference too 5C gives much better cooling than 25C.

I would have thought that leaving a boat on the towpath in North London is about as risky as it gets on the waterways especially if it looks like there is something worth taking and not like the typical mess. I would not want to leave mine there for five minutes. Trouble with insurers is that you only find out if they are any good when you come to claim. Perhaps insurers have worked out that this sort of boat use is far more risky that the average boat on the waterways and changed their premiums accordingly.

I see where there was a misunderstanding. What I meant to say was that the max current is only supplied to the battery after a large starting discharge when the EMF is low.

Of course the loads are different in each case. The 'car' load presents an ohmic load while the battery as it charges presents a ever higher EMF as it starts to charge that is why it is so difficult to reach a high state of charge quickly. The voltage/current output curve for the alternator will probably offer is rated output at say 13v but will fall off until it cuts out at say 14.4v. My boat has a 120A car alternator and it never gets the domestic batteries to the charge level that the solar panel does if that left on for a few days yet if the batteries are very low the alternator soon brings them up to a reasonable charge level. The way to go would be with an intelligent controller but then you run in to problems of over heating and I think AGM batteries are prone to that having crossed the channel once flat out and ended up with two very cooked batteries.

Most modern narrowboat engines are marinised plant and industrial engines which would typically not have those loads

My understanding is that CaRT as a charity cannot be seen to be subsidising any individual out of charitable funds and therefore have to be charging a market rate for moorings. I think this excuse was given by the National Trust when they started hiking their mooring rates on the River Wey. I agree many CaRT moorings are overpriced for the leisure market but for someone living aboard below the radar probably represent good value and less hassle than a marina.

I don't think you would actually get much more than say 350Ah useful capacity out of a 440Ah battery bank. When flat at at say 10.5v they probably have 10-15% capacity left according to the manufacturers and most alternators will start to cut out at about 14.4v so it would be painfully slow to get the last bit of charge into the battery with a simple voltage controlled alternator so running for another dozen hours would be a very inefficient way to operate. A 70Ah alternator is not really suitable for that size battery if you are going to use it to capacity. Most are designed for automotive type use where the max current is only supplied after a large starting discharge. A f*cked battery is as much use as a chocolate teapot. Weigh it in and get a new one.

I have never felt the need for RCR but I would suggest for most boaters without a strong engineering background they would be good value for money. I think that they would offer a better service than most coastal boatyards due to their familiarisation with canal boats. You come across so many boats in such a nightmare electrical and mechanical condition I for one wouldn't want their job. Maybe they are the ones who call them out? The business probably only works because a lot of people join but don't claim.

I think you may be being a little hard on Ms Horton. The pedants might want a more technical explanation but she did say flat rather than 50% charged and if they the batteries were that low I think that 3 to 5hours with the alternator running fast would put most of the capacity back in the batteries if they were in good condition. It hard to generalise of course but for someone reading it without much knowledge it at least does mean that they will not think 10 minutes would do it

My understanding is that it was to do with the VNF licence cost. The Brits are used to being charged for use of the waterways whilst they are free I believe in Holland and the Dutch were not used to paying so when VNF introduced charges that cut the numbers down and I think also the increasing cost of fuel. Years ago you could boat down from Holland free spend most of the summer time in France, often with free moorings, free electricity and water from the local commune maybe do some repairs on your boat and so on now you often have to pay for things or face restrictions on your stay. If you are looking for a boat I would go for something less than 15meters. You will find it much easier to moor in the nicest locations.

I don't think I would want to live full time over the winter on a boat in France. Having kept a smallish (40ft) boat out there for ten years everything packs up on the canals in October and they are even more dead than they have become in the summer. Unless you have a large DB in somewhere like Roanne or a City like Paris, where there is or was a bit of a community then it would very cold and miserable. Maybe better in the Med area. Most British boaters seem to come home or go to Portugal in a camper van for the Winter. We found it very nice for several periods a few weeks at a time each summer but with fewer boats coming down from Holland it has become very quiet.

Are you sure the sure the bottom bearing isn't being hit against the ground by changing water levels or wash from other boats. That could push it upwards making it tight or it could be filling up with silt. Impossible to say without seeing it.

Trent 5 and Tycho now on the duck

In my limited experience scale which normally forms inside the hull and depending on the circumstances is a very solid material and forms a strong bond with the parent metal. Any ultrasonic testing uses the reflection from the surface boundaries within the sample. In the case of internal scale the strong refection would come from the scale/air interface rather than the metal/scale interface. Remember that rust, as a uniform thickness of scale without much pitting might be ten times as thick as the metal displaced so losing 1mm of metal slowly might give you anything up to 10mm rust. Depending on how they are set up they can measure things like paint thickness on the outside of the material. If neither surface is flat because of pitting or scale then it becomes quite difficult to get a stable reading. An experienced surveyor will be able to interpret these measurements. Probably on the hull sides internally the worst corrosion is at the base of the sides and very little further up so if you take a reading say 50mm from the base of the side and then another one 200 mm up the side and the lower is higher I would suspect a problem with internal scale. I am sure there are a lot of boats floating around where there is very little metal left and it is only scale stopping the water coming in. You only find this out when you have them shot blasted. I remember a very nice Dutch steel boat being lifted out and the paintwork looked great but when they lowered it on to the blocks the hull colasped but it had been sailing around quite happily no external corrosion but all from the inside. With a survey you are buying some sort of indemnity for your insurance.

I bought this one. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/LCD-Digital-Ultrasonic-Thickness-Gauge-Meter-Depth-Measurement-Tester-1-2-220mm. Couple of years ago now so far worked without problems. works when boat is in the water too!

The problem you have is that for a proper inspection you need to access both sides at least in some places. You could have anything up to about 6mm of scale in my experience on an internal surface and it can show up as metal on some meters. Internally it depends how well it was protected when built and how much water has got into the bilge. I don't think any coating is likely to make a big difference to the measurement. You really need a really big hammer but this is frowned upon now and with that you can soon tell if the scale comes off on the inside and by the noise of the hammer on the plating. If I was buying a boat I would like to have a look into the bilge at a few places especially where water would collect to look at the condition. Some surveyors have been known do the survey on the hull without even looking inside. If the hull is shot walk away and find one that isn't. I chinese meter available on ebay for about £50 is worth the investment if you are looking at buying a boat. Measuring the thickness is not rocket science.