BilgePump

Possibly it doesn't look like it's worth the asking price, to those of us who have had boats for years, but this year, next year, who knows? You've done the biggest thing though, that will have an enduring effect on the value of your boat relative to similar craft, by putting a new turnkey engine on it. That's a known value to buy and replace and on a smaller GRP boat is a significant part of its value. With a lot of used small boat, trailer and engine packages, the engine is the most valuable bit, followed by the trailer with the hull lagging way behind. However, a Viking 23 isn't in this category. Just shy of 50k for a new one with 15hp Mariner (https://www.tingdeneboatsales.net/boat-spec.php?BoatID=4956431) Very popular and respected boat with strong demand for used ones, especially this year, I suspect you could still struggle to find a good one even at the upper end of your valuation.

With you on this. The huge attraction of a boat is the freedom, the potential to go anywhere, even if you rarely do. Knowing that you can't would ruin it. Widebeams stuck in narrow canal marinas can't go anywhere without help from a crane and truck and that doesn't come cheap for such craft. If you want to be on a narrow canal, but need the space, then two narrow boats would seem to make better sense.

The final post in this thread has some information about Staffordshire Boats from another member A quick search for bridgeman boatbuilder threw up a Staffordshire company set up in 2004 and dissolved in 2020, D.P.Bridgeman boat builders ltd.

Time for the classic survivors to boast their heritage. "Built by Springer" should be getting some kudos. Who wants a near new off the shelf shipped-in hull with a posh fitout when you could have a boat that is made of old gasometers, is 40 odd years old and still going strong for a fraction of the price.

A lot of patience (i don't have) making those licence holders in your video. They look great.

GRP boats are low maintenance. I've never antifouled one floating in saltwater, let alone the canal. Any cr@p that accumulates can be brushed/scraped off easy enough. I'm quite sure that the foam between the double skin on my boat is soaked through. No way it would "dry out" if I put it on land for a few months.

Yes, based at Poynton on the Macclesfield canal. They do seem to be finished to a high standard so hopefully the hulls are of a quality to match.

They do work okay and can be picked up cheap enough, still now. I sold my Hobbies saw earlier this year for £30, in a lot better condition than that. Was bought by the craft teacher at a school for kids with complex needs, it's ideal for making simple jigsaws. I liked the fact that you could slow or stop it whilst keeping both hands on a piece of work. Downside is that it takes up a bit of room and you need a stool/chair to sit at it. The only reason I flogged it was to free up the space.

Bought one of their universal router tables on a markdown at £13 from £30, then found out it wasn't universal enough to fit my dad's chunky old 1980s Stanley router. Needed to make a plywood spacer for it. Bandsaw to the rescue. Don't feel bad about the unused biscuit jointer. I know a neighbour whose garage looks like a warehouse of boxed Aldi branded tools, most never having seen the light of day. I've also got a few that I never really found a use for despite being convinced at the time of purchase that I'd use them all the time, like the little cordless Dremel type thing. I've been using a little Aldi detail sander a lot this past week as my Black&Decker orbital sander broke. Detail sander hadn't had much use in the previous two years but did okay as a stopgap and was less than £15 full price.

Not the most frequently used machine in my workroom but definitely handy. Only have a cheapo Nutool one that's really my dad's, it's about 20 years old but does the job. My sister recently bought a perfectly reasonable one for just over a ton. It comes into its own when even a small bandsaw can't deal with the curves in a bit of thin work. (Even the old treadle powered Hobbies saws will be adequate though and working ones can be found cheap on fleabay, but they do take up floorspace, hence why I got rid of mine). The bandsaw definitely gets a lot more use though. Again only a cheap table one but incredibly useful. Made myself some nice new cleats on the bandsaw recently, out of inch thick afromosia. The other day I needed 50 or so one inch rough squares of 6mm ply. They took two minutes on the bandsaw. You can do quite detailed work on a small and cheap bandsaw if you use multiple cuts from different angles to complete some of the more complicated bits. Of course, some things will be too fiddly for anything other than a fretsaw/scroll saw. My most frequently used bench tool is probably the compound mitre / chop saw. Someone above mentioned Aldi stuff. Always worth keeping an eye on the centre aisle. Like their item, my Aldi bench sander is a rebadged Scheppach, in Toolstation was £140, Aldi originally £90, red label markdown £40. Bargain! Before anyone says that you get what you pay for, I have no delusions that Aldi and other budget brands are great tools but De Walt, Makita etc are simply way out of my reach price wise. Aldi had a cordless drill in last week for £25, picked one up for my dad. It seems adequate for a bit of light work.

I'm afraid that single handing with no offside space to moor on the canal here, I need to hand over the bridge and can't just wave everyone through. My boat is blocking the canal until I can move it. It's also only a small tupperware with low clearance so I tend to only open the manual ones as much as I know each needs, certainly wouldn't be enough for a following narrowboat to get under. Had to do the same and handover a bridge when single-handing the NB, but if two of us were oon it, the one operating the bridge was always happy to let following boats come through and leapfrog us as we shut it. There is an electric towpath operated lift bridge on the stretch of canal I frequent that is fine for allowing following boats through, even if single handed. It lifts it fully open for you, you're on towpath side all the time, pull boat through, wave anyone else through. I can't see that there is a universal etiquette, just good manners and common sense.

Methane from the composting toilet? Offer customers a free coffee for every tenth deposit.

Truly lovely boat. Was fortunate enough to see it a couple of years ago at Hebden Bridge, at the historic weekend so all were encouraged to gawp up close. If only I had the cash, if only my mooring was a few feet longer and and if only the canal here wasn't more shallow than your waist, that would be a boat I would keep until they took me out in a box. Some history, elegance and practical on most canals/rivers. Whoever buys it should count themselves lucky to own such a boat, and they will hopefully give it the enthusiasm and maintenance that the current owner has done over the years.

Yes, a bit, even since I was a kid, and still occasionally. Probably half psychothingummy and half genuinely trying to compensate for a rocking motion that is no longer there. It's just your way of telling you that you really, really need to get back on the water. Oddly, it affects me no more after sailing on the estuary, bouncing everywhere, than it does gently rocking away on the canal. It affects none of your faculties, reactions etc, but there is no cure except for playing boats again.

Just looked up the figures for Symphony of the Seas and its length (361m) and gross tonnage (228,000) aren't dissimilar to those for Ever Given. (approx 400m long and GT of 221,000 tonnes). She carries more than two thousand crew, around six thousand passengers, across eighteen decks, and is over two hundred feet high. Ships like these are small floating towns. Moored alongside in port, they tower over the quayside buildings. When the smaller Costa Concordia partially sank in shallow water, still 32 people sadly lost their lives. The prospect of a modern cruise liner having a major incident at sea, out of reach of rapid assistance, is certainly terrifying.

Sure, plenty still do in all major trade routes, but no single boat was ever capable of spewing 20,000 at one time, until recently.

Possibly just a reflection of the world today, so going to have a go at paraphrasing 🙂 'a fascinating insight into the way Egypt (our governments etc) runs the show. A ship with a cargo (Nations with a load of medical/security/ etc contracts) worth perhaps a £1bn (shed loads of billions) being under control of corrupt and incompetent pilots (politicians) who routinely expect to be bribed with a few hundred quids-worth of cigarettes (m/billion quids, a seat in the Lords and free entry to Ascot)!' These ships just seem way, way, too large. An eight foot boat pole short of a quarter of a mile long (399.94m v 402.34m), over a quarter of a million tonnes, 20,000 containers capacity (ish). When one of these monsters eventually fails in open water, like many new and old ships always have done, it won't be a simple cleanup operation.

All the boxes of NHS lateral flow tests proudly state China as the country of manufacture, Fujian province listed on the one I'm looking at. Edited to add: they're not 'Lateral flow', they're 'Rapid Antigen Test' kits. We've had to learn a whole new lexicon. Who had ever heard the word 'furlough' before March 2020?

It's been rising in price again. At the start of lockdown 1, back in April 2020, unleaded round here fell to only coppers over a pound per litre. Now, it's up in the 130p+ range, but that's still less than the peak I remember paying in 2013? of 140p+ per litre for petrol/diesel. At that point a 250 mile round trip to the Lakes took nearly a hundred pounds worth of diesel in an old Landy. Ouch! iirc prices were in the 40p+ per litre range in the very early nineties. It wasn't unusual to see a young lad on a moped putting precisely 50p worth of fuel in the tank. Nowadays, the pumps seem pretty fast and the price obviously higher so it's become near impossible to hit a nice round amount. Hence, my receipts tend to be for sums like £20.02 or £30.01

Why would it have any need to go back loaded. What do China need that they can't make locally for a fraction of the price here?

The Epping stove linked looks a wee bit big and have the flue on the wrong size for that cabin. Would it fit? A friend has an old small Boatman he put in the front room at his house. Great stove and even new ones aren't a king's ransom.

At the moment the unobtainium list seems to include such mundane products as plywood and plaster. No chance for vintage engine bits 😞

Recently been sprucing up a little 16' sailing boat that has sat on a tidal mud berth in a creek for the last twenty years or so. It's GRP but has steel bilge keels. After hauling it out this year and scraping the keels down it was pleasantly surprising how little rust there was on them. They looked a real bubbly rusty mess but once scraped back, only a very small amount of material came off before they were back to bare metal. Have just painted them with four coats of bitumen paint but for a NB hull, I'd imagine epoxy from new would be eminently sensible and a better option. My only worry would be damage to the coating from the repeated settling of the boat on the bottom. Although the steel keels hadn't suffered much, the same couldn't be said of the aluminium (or some alloy) skeg and rudder. Corrosion had eaten through the things and when they were cleaned off a couple of big holes emerged that needed filling with ally plate core and polyester filler. It does seem wise for the OP to be considering some way of breaking the suction effect. Mud's sticky and there's a lot of surface area on a baseplate. Would it be possible to sling half a dozen big sleepers under the boat with ropes so that the boat lifts and then settles onto them? They could even have a wedge shape to them or have them different sizes to suit the particular permanent mooring spot so the boat is as level as you can get it when it takes the ground. A lot of tidal moorings leave boats sitting at odd angles when they dry out. As long as it's not a swinging mooring (which it isn't for the OP) it should be possible to improve this with things under the boat and reduce any suction effect at the same time..

Unless they are good at welding I wouldn't suggest the OP starts cutting/drilling anything themselves. Araldite, filler, sikaflex, epoxy, gunk, whatever will not be up to this job and when they fail the box section handrails will rot from the inside. It will always look and degrade like a 'bodge' job, okay for something trivial in the shed but not great on a valuable asset like a reasonably modern narrowboat. The solutions in the photos posted by owners look to be what OP is wanting to achieve and well integrated at build stage. For this kind of finish as a retrofit, finding a good welder for a bit should be the first port of call. The cutting, forming, welding and finishing shouldn't be a massive task for a skilled professional with the right tools, leaving the owner with the prep work and painting bits of the job.