PeterF

I believe that there was a similar sinking at least 5 years ago with a hire boat. This was related to me by the boat yard we moored at up until early 2009 before we journeyed along the Huddersfield in 2009.

Last year on the Huddersfield Broad we saw a large orange goldfish / carp or such like, must have been 12-15" long, first time I have seen one, seen several terrapins in the Midlands canals over the years.

Do not forget that you will need a Calder & Hebble spike to operate the locks on the journey from Wakefield to Sowerby bridge if you have never travelled that route before and do not have one. See C&H spike and Skipton to Sowerby Bridge Should also have said that there are many spots for mooring above Calder grive and up to Sowerby Bridge including but not limited to Above Figure of 3 locks Shepley Bridge Opposite Sought Pennine Boat Club Cooper Bridge Above Kirkless top lock Brighouse Above Cromwell lock Eland Salterhebble Never had trouble at any of the above.

I went through tunnel both ways last year and that was 6 months after a full repaint and not a scratch in the tunnel. Pilots were great had a different one for each trip - they always told me when to beware of projections so I could avoid them all. Went over the Rochdale both ways this summer and that was quiet. Recommend both canals, but perhaps I should not as a pennine boater I enjoy the quietness, it is a rare day when you have to queue for even 1 boat in a lock.

We went through Tuel lane a few days ago and all is fine, no water shortages within 3 days of Sowerbey Bridge. We met lots of Shire cruisers on the Rochdale last week, some up as far as lock 33 in one week round trip so you should have no problems. Peter.

Well, Set out for my 2 week holiday Sat 17th (soon after St Swithin's day) to go from Brighouse, up the Calder & Hebble then the Rochdale, over the top and then back again the 2nd week. We seriously considered if we should go up or not with all of the restrictions on summit passage, water shortages the previous week in Sowerby Bridge etc. I have a couple of things to report. on returning from my journey. 1. St Swithin appears to be better at predicting rain than the BBC, there have been few days we did not see rain over the past 14 days. 2. There was water applenty on the Rochdale up to the summit apart from a couple of leaky pounds on either side, perhaps helped by reference to point 1 above. 3. On average there is only 1 boat movement a day over the summit and chatting to several walkers on the towpath they have all commented on the small numbers of boats travelling. Due to the small number of boats travelling we have only managed to share locks some 16 times out of 120 lockings, but at least on the whole the Rochdale locks are easier to work than the Calder & Hebble ones (I have at last found the advanatge of the C&H being our home water - everywhere else then feels easy in comparison). 4. Tuel lane is working well now with the back pumping system in place. 5. For those that have not ventured onto the Rochdale the scenery is truly amazing. The view of myself and my wife agrees with this is that it is better than the HNC. The hills seem so much more immediate on the Rochdale, more intimate and up close and I thoroughly recommend a trip on it. Perhaps not within 40 days of St Swithin's day though if it rained then. Peterf.

Have used epoxy to glue these previously, and also cyano (super glue) with a spray activator.

Here is a link to one of the topics http://www.canalworld.net/forums/index.php...&pid=242379 Also text from my post There have been reports of liquids in regulators on caravans / motorhomes, but I believe this is linked to remote gas regulators with HP hoses between the bottles and resultors rather than the bottle regualtors. See clicky and read the pdf document for details Edited to correct the clicky

I'll second the comment re Shepley Bridge Marina, we moored there for 2½ years until earlier this year without problem and he often has moorings available. We were in same situation of buying boat and trawling around for mooring and Brian came up trumps.

Just to confirm whgat has been written above, I bought a gasket kit for the 2 gaskets between the burner and combustion chamber, watched the Youtube video until I understood it, followed the details and cleaned everything out and have gone from an EB that took 3 goes to light and produced lots of smoke for the first 5 minutes of oepration to one that lights first time without smoke, all for about £15 and a couple of hours work. Peterf

At work when the marketting people ask the engineers and scientists for something great sounding to psh products they ask for PSB - Pseudo Scientific Bull***t. Here is some propellor PSB - please note I have nothing to do with Axiom but in my job I come accross fluid flow a lot and use of comupational fluid modelling and I am just thinking out loud here. In an ideal world, you want all the water leaving the propellor to be travelling perfectly backwards, but in reality the jet exiting the propellor will have some spiral action and will also have some sideways motion so the jet is in the fom of a cone. If you go to the extent of a really bad propellor, mst of the water ejected from the propellor flows sideways away from the propellor in a disc of moving water rather than flowing backwards. The prop is still demanding lots of power to move lots of water about but the boat is not going anywhere. The prop has to suck this water in from somewhere, so it creates a suction in front of the propellor and the boat squats down. A more efficient propellor, but reducing the amount of "wasted flow" may be able to generate more forward thrust from the same shaft power whilst actually moving less water about, because what it does move it moves efficiently and usefully. Therefore, the boat squats less because the propellor is moving less water. As I said PSB but it sounds good and it may have some grain or nugget of truth in it.

Weir collapse earlier in the year put me in the position of not being able to move to my new mooring (BW tendered) for 6-8 weeks and had to stay at my old mooring - so paying twice for mooring. BW stance was tough, sh*t happens, although they were polite about it this was the essence. There was at least one other boat in the same situation.

B&Q sell a special remover for Danish Oil, much less powerful than nitromors type which is suitable for removal of natural oil type finishes. The trouble is I can not off hand recall what it is though, it is on the shelves next to the Danish oil etc. in my local B&Q. It might be a Liberon product rather than Colron. it is more expensive than Nitromors types. However, I did not try it because when I have recently removed some dark stains from my side hatches using oxalic acid that seemed to remove the oil as noted by another poster. Also, I used some very fine sandpaper on some areas to remove oil further to enable the oxalic acid to work better. When I applied new danish oil the original colour has almost come back. As the oil remover was quite expensive I thought I would try without it first. Peter F.

I had a starter that was flooded and it got some rust into the contacter (or whatever it is called) so that when the key was turned, the solenoid pulled the start pinion into engagement with the flywheel BUT the contactor did not energise the starter motor properly. This was on a Barrus Shire rather than BMC so not sure if the same could be true. Stripped the starter, cleaned off all rust and dirt etc. from being immersed and it has been no trouble over the past 2 years. Worth a check anyway. PeterF.

Farce, I am afraid that is an understatement, but how much of this is due to it being an out of the way part of the system. When we went through recently the paddles on the guilotine gate no longer worked, one of them was stuck about 1/4 way open and the other stuck closed. Damm difficult opening the top gate to get the boat in with the bottom gate paddle part open and then had to wait an age for the lock to naturally empty enough so the chain hoist could then crack the bottom of the gate to speed the emptying. Edited to add latest update from Waterscape

I will try and spell this out simply, many others have alluded to it, especially regarding the K&A. Moorings can be difficult to find and can be harder to get than the boat itself if you have a specific location / type you want. It is often advised to get your mooring sorted first as you could otherwise buy a boat and then can't find a suitable mooring, or you can only find a mooring you are not happy with.

You need to make sure that the seller does own the boat, which is not as easy as with a car as there are now official ownership documents as such. If the current owner bought the boat from new, can they provide the original receipt from the builder, or if bought second hand can a paper trail be produced showing the sale details etc. Is there a marine mortgage or other loan on the boat, or are there any other charges on the boat, not sure how you can check this out but you do not want to buy a boat to actually find that the "owner" did not have the right to sell or that debts were secured against the boat. I do not know if dealing with a brokerage would ease this situation any.

I joined when I bought the boat as there was a special offer for the first year, and last year we had a problem, engineer got to us in less than one hour and fixed us up no trouble and we were on the way in less than 2 hopurs after phoning. I am well pleased and will keep the member ship up.

Over the weekend I found a new meaning to "Do you mind if I share the lock with you?", to which I reply of course not and then find what whas really meant was "We are too F-ing lazy to do anything so can we come in the lock with you and watch you do all the work". Luckily, there was one boat waiting at the next lock so we joined them and shared the lock and the work from then on and left the other boat to find out what paddles and balance beams are for.

With a charging voltage of 13.8V it would be worth your while considering an external regulator to increase the charging voltage. Read through the Smartgauge website and that clearly states there will be a good increase in charging rate if the voltage is increased. Also, is the alternator geared highly enough to actually deliver the full 160Apm, that may be worth checking from pulley diameters. If the engine pulley is twice the alternator pulley then you will probably not get full output. If it is 3 times you probably will. I have a 150Amp alternator which is geared 3:1 and the voltage is typically 14.3 to 14.5V charging into 4 x 120Amp wet cells. I do not have an external regulator because the internal one runs at this higher voltage already and charges very well. I can get the batteries well charged in 4 hours running with charge current down to <20Amps.

Peter, Thanks.

I have booked tunnel passage in the summer and mentioned this to someone where I moor and immediately had 2 boats tell of bad damage, front roof corner being bent on one and tiller coming off on another. I know boater's tales can be like fisherman's at time. As we have just repainted I was told I should avoid it. I have searched the forum and recognise that there are mixed experiences of being towed, some people report no damage others report some scrapes. I was wondering if anyone who took their boats through in the self drive tests have any experiences to relate and if the self drive is more or less likely to cause damage. btw our boat is 55ft fairly standard modern cruiser stern nb but it does have flatter oof and less tumblehone than some but is OK vs the table of BWB dimensions. Cheers, Peter.