Bacchus

I googled it and found a five page thread on here about them... https://www.canalworld.net/forums/index.php?/topic/26919-dis-markers/

It goes on eBay as "an easy summer project"

If you put the shorter boat on the inside as above it will be secure, but the gap will fill up with detritus and dead things.

Does seem to be starting then failing which could well be the slow-running jet as @Mad Harold says @bigfatmatt can you try starting it with a little bit of throttle? There should be a button on the throttle controller that allows you to move the throttle forward without clunking it into gear; I would try giving it a little bit of juice which would sidestep the jet or help clear a dirty plug

It is an old story that goes round every now and again

Looks as if there is a meeting of the Linssen Owners club on the Thames somewhere - I have seen upwards of a dozen going upstream today, mainly French, Dutch, and German flagged, and these are the big shiny buggers, not the little 30-40' jobbies that "only" cost £2-300,000.00. I would be surprised if any of them were less than half a million, so there are definitely some rich man's playthings out there. Also a young bloke on a little Shetland who looked very happy and waved, so not just a playground for the rich.

That sounds about right. I am a moderator on another forum, and a tool that I use to detect AI generated text reckons there is a 90% chance that the about us page was created by an AI. That doesn't necessarily detract from their business model -- there is nothing wrong with using the tools available to you -- but just confirming the suspicions of the new user (who, judging by the username, isn't entirely impartial) 😎

Just noticed that the same post appears twice in my "new content" list - possibly due to two additions being made in close proximity?

😬

I have often thought that Councils could provide the aquatic equivalent of social housing; basic, functional marinas where people could live on boats and pay a small/token/subsidise rent. It can't cost an order of magnitude more to provide and maintain what is essentially a hole in the ground than it does to build and maintain a council estate?

From the article (my italics) -- "George Ward, 62, is camping on the canal towpath close to Smelly Bridge near Bradford on Avon."

Also GRP boats like the Starley Sundowner. I like a nice beaver,

Oh man. I live in a wooden house (within an hour or so of @system 4-50 ) that needs painting... but the prep involved to use a "proper" gloss like Dulux Weathershield is not insubstantial, whereas I can use something like Sadolin Superdec pretty much straight out of the can with a good hose-down... and in my experience the superdec outlasts proper paint. Bugger. Free paint with loads of work, or loads of money with less work... how lazy am I...??? (actually, also, do I want to live in a pea-green house??)

Fun facts... The decimal system is not based, as most people would (probably) say, on the numbers one to ten, it is based on the numbers zero to nine. The Romans couldn't use the decimal system, or anything like it, because they had no symbol for zero - zero was "invented" around fifteen hundred years ago in India.

I quite like the concept of what three words, but I can see the problems too, especially as it uses plurals. The w3w that identifies my front gate can also be a place in Norfolk (Norfolk Virginia!!) or Quebec depending on which of the three words is pluralised, which does seem a little vulnerable, and also the 3m squares can easily put you inside or outside of building, or on the bridge/in the river! I did offer three words to a courier who couldn't find my address recently... they couldn't find it with w3w either. I suspect the eBay seller rather than the courier, but at least I tried. Interestingly, although the company have used 40,000 words, they could have made do with 4,000 which could open up the possibility of a numerical equivalent that might be better? 1234.5678.1234 - people tend to be able to remember four digit numbers, it would be easy enough to remember three of them.

I have a little Victron AGM which I use for bench-testing pretty much anything from inverters to blown-air heaters. On the table right now as I try to fathom the workings of a cheap dash-cam which came complete with Chinese instructions... (there is a translation, but the Chinese probably makes more sense!) Mine is 8AH, I think it's for a mobility scooter or similar, extraordinarily useful thing to have sitting around.

Ah, well here lies a problem with the interweb, because this London stone wiki page does mention it... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Stone_(riparian) which also has a picture of the Staines stone complete with grooves worn by tow-ropes! Also, another interesting thing about St Aines (you knew there was more than one, right?) is this little bollard There's another one buried in undergrowth by what is now Regus offices, and another by the towpath near Halfords. They are excise markers. If you passed these markers going into London carrying coal or wine, you were liable to pay a duty which, I believe, helped pay for the bridges across the tideway! (I have passed the Halfords one on the way back from Sainsbury's many times, but I think my wine was duty paid...) Ah, now there you have me. I thought they owned it as part of the port, but it isn't a hill I am willing to die on. Sorry for the thread drift, but when you live somewhere as dull as Staines, it's good to find some interesting bits that don't involve Sacha Baron Cohen...😁

Port of London Authority. Before the locks and weirs were built, diurnal tides would slosh up as far as the London stone (just about perceivable by all accounts) at Staines so it was considered the limit of tidal navigation, therefore under the jurisdiction of the City of London, then the PLA

I am torn between hating those things...and thinking that they look quite fun and wanting to be young enough to annoy people of my age!

An interesting project and a lot of work! Not sure whether you want spelling mistakes pointing out, but the pop-up for the Stour in Kent says "Rive"