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.

No, not real enquiries as listed here, I am not meaning those, I did not specify them in any way, I just make the general thought that they may have in general recieved a lot of email, some of it perhaps not welcome, but I agree with you that it has got them noticed and may have some positive benefit.

Perhaps they have had a glut of trolling emails as a result of the QSS saga and are just fed up with the electronic equivalent of rubber necking.

From Waterscape At last, I can now get away after 2 months delay.

From Waterscape Thats a thought, as the level builds back up there will be very little water flowing downstream for a period - guess thats not a problem.

Thanks for that, water had been down last year by 1ft, so could well have been getting ready to sort that out when it gave way totally.

For anybody interested, some photos after going to have a look. As the collapse was on the far side they are building a "road" over from the right hand bank in the pictures. Sheet piles are being driven in about 12ft upstream of the weir and large rocks tipped into the space to provide the road. This is repeated to get over to the collapse. The road is about 2/3 to 3/4 of the way accross the river at the moment. Because of the way of working, the water levels are still right down with hadly a trace of water in Cooper Bridge cut. Cooper Bridge visitor mooring still completely empty View of the whole weir with the acess road coming down from the right hand side. Close up of the access road showing the method of construction Close up of the end of the access road approaching the collapse. Peterf.

Get the picture open in Acrobat, press the prtscn button (print screen which is normally near the top right of the keyboard near F12) which pastes the screen image into the clipboard. Open an image program such as Microsoft photo editor and paste the image into the program (ctrl-V) and then you can save as a new jpeg file and post in the normal way by uploading to photo bucket or what ever you use. In Photo editor you could also select only the area of interest and cut and paste this into yet another new image. PeterF.

If the water flow past Grindley Brrok is 11 million gallons a day, with a head of 12.2m (40ft) I calcualte that as producing at 100% efficiency 69kW, enough to power 27 average houses at 2.5kW each. Hence hardly worth it. This is why it needs to be on rivers with large flows over weirs. PeterF.

Same source as the table quotes 20ft (6m) of chain is the minimum but that is in a section quoting for rivers up to 20ft deep. Not sure how deep trent, Severn etc are.

Glad to be of help, I have 3 keys on mine so it was worth a shot. Peter.

Work started about 1 week ago, expectation to have it completed by end March. Hoping at some point that there might be enough water depth before end March to get a modern narrowboat through similar to what was managed when ledgard weir was repaired last year. Might have a cruise up this weekend to have a look.

No, I have 2 RCDs, one for the inverter, one for the shorepower and the switch is downsream of both of the RCDs. The power to the charger comes from the output of the shorepower RCD. I can run the charger from shorepower and the rest of the 240V from the inverter if I felt so inclined but can not see the point of this.

From "The Inland Boat Owner's Book" Boat length ....... Anchor Weight ........ Chain / rope diameter ft .................... kg ......................... mm / mm 30 ................... 7 - 10 .................... 8 / 12 45 ................... 8 - 12 .................... 8 / 14 60 ................... 12 - 16 .................. 10 / 18 70 ................... 14 - 18 .................. 10 / 20 The length of chain and rope should be 6-7 times the depth of the canal. When we bought ours we were recommended a 15kg anchor for a 55ft narrowboat. The rope was octoplait type (hope I have the name right) which has better shock absorption than standard mooring rope. I think I got something like 5m of 10mm chain and 15m of 18mm rope as travel on River Aire a lot which is good for about 3m depth. I can not confirm the table is correct but as you asked this question twice I finally recalled where I had seen a table and thought you deserved some form of answer. As others have stated, a 20kg anchor is no good if you can not lift it and use it. PeterF

Do you have an inverter, sometimes these have their own isolation switch in the 12V DC feed rather than being taken from the 12V distribution panel / bus bar thingy. Just a thought.

I have my charger connected to the shorepower feed upstream of the selector switch but after the RCD / MCB so it is still protected ratehr than to the output side of the switch. Therefore, I can only power the battery charger when hooked up to shore power and it turns off as soon as I disconnect the shore power.