tehmarks

'It wasn't my property so I don't care'. It's not what-iffery. It's the general principle, applied fairly to all, that people generally don't have the right to damage their property. And it's important that this is unerlined regardless of the licensed state of the craft because otherwise tomorrow it may well be your boat that they're damaging.

Unfortunately the law frequently doesn't line up with what is actually right and moral. That said, I'm not entirely sure you're right. Netflix don't have the right to remove unlicensed craft from the waterways. Going back the car analogy, what the outcome be if someone stole my untaxed car from outside my house? I suspect they would get done for theft of a motor vehicle, and I'd get done for not having any tax. I don't think that they would get out of the theft charge on the basis that I hadn't taxed my car. It's not the perfect analogy because obviously stealing a car is a criminal offence, but I could see it being argued like so.

Just to give a representative example for the benefit of the thread: my boat is about to turn 30 and has just yesterday had a survey for insurance purposes. The majority of the steel has lost, overall, a couple of tenths of a millimetre or less, and there's little pitting but up to a maximum depth of 2mm. I suspect that might be at the better end of 30 year old hulls, but it's not normal for steel to turn to cheese in that timeframe.

How about if it sinks having been moved into the middle of a multiple-boat argy bargy with a load of heavy steel things? Again, just going on the 'facts' as reported — it may have been in poor condition, but it may also not have sunk if it were remoored appropriately. We will likely never know. Ultimately the production company have created the problem for themselves by moving it without permission. If they hadn't moved it and it had sunk on its mooring, this conversation would not have happened. They've implicated themselves in a situation where it will be impossible to prove that they are innocent. Licences and the general attitude of the owner are separate problems. Conflating them only creates confusion. Edit: what if it were your pristine, wooden classic motor cruiser that had sunk as a result of their poor mooring skills? The production company need to be held to account for their actions to dissuade them from taking liberties with other property in future. This is important regardless of whether the boat had the right to be there in the first place.

And they reduce the risk of tripping over the spring line when (dis)embarking. No cratch in my case, but they're invaluable for avoiding that accidental faceplant on to the towpath, especially with guests aboard, as they tend to keep the line outboard of the gunwale and thus not underfoot. I'm otherwise not much of a fan of them on narrow boats though. OP: whatever you do, as everyone has said, make sure they're attached solidly and aren't just there 'for show'!

Thanks all; some useful options to look into there. A trip to Poundland may be in order! Or failing that, a spray does seem like it woul be much more convenient, so I'll probably look into that option. Really not too fussed about the patches not matching in shade or gloss — as long as they approximate the colour it's supposed to be I'm happy. It'll only get scraped again anyway, and the boat is a functional vessel and not a static art display!

I was jesting, of course ?

@Tracy D'arth: I'm not that fussed. I'd rather not patches of red primer everywhere, but if the black is a bit off I can happily live with that. It'll be muddy again within days anyway! The scratches themselves were mostly tiny, but I primed them with a 3" brush because I'd just been doing the gas locker before that, so the primer spots are...a bit larger ?

Absolutely nothing; I just don't want to store a litre of it when I need less than 50ml. I didn't get any further than looking at the cost of boat paint from suppliers of boat things because it seemed like a good place to start. I forgot that boat enamel is really quite expensive.

Some boats just have nice, aesthetic lines. They look nice, they handle nicely, all of the hardware is in useful places. They look like they're meant to be in the water. Some boats look like someone has built a hut on top of a primitive gravel barge. They look awful. Widebeams remind me of this genre of boat quite often because of the square stern and straight lines you often see. They're f'ugly, and I'd say a narrow boat in this genre is a good candidate for being called a narrowbeam wideboat.

Sure you can: squared-off stern, made without recourse to aesthetics or often functionality, look just like the average widebeam but made to the correct dimensions. Guaranteed to be f'ugly. ?

I didn't get further than checking the price of the usual boat-oriented topcoats — about £25 for 750ml. Given that I need about 7ml... However, I've just realised that a pot of Humbrol will probably do the trick quite nicely. 14ml, £2. More expensive per millilitre, but ultimately pretty much exactly what I need. And cheaper than a coffee, so passes the budgetary requirements quite nicely. And maybe next year I'll learn to stop scraping along things allowing my friends at the helm ?

If you are committed to that particular boat (for whatever reason) and envisage both having it long-term and putting the effort in to ownership, then as @ditchcrawler says, it will be a known quantity to you. Any boat you buy for £12-15k is going to need money spent on it, so if the boat is otherwise sound (good engine, fit-out isn't falling to bits, etc) then it may be a better option than buying a sound hull that needs a lot of other work done to it for £15k. I assume the fit-out won't need stripping to overplate? If you may end up selling after a few years, you might find that extensive overplating puts a lot of potential buyers off. Regardless of whether it's rationally worth £28k at that point, you may well not be able to sell it for anywhere near that. Also, if the hull is in that condition, what else is knackered? It could be indicative of a general lack of maintenance or upkeep. Any further problems are likely to be expensive — they nearly always are where boats are concerned!

Long shot, but I don't suppose anyone knows if and where it might be possible to get a small pot of black topcoat for touching up purposes? I've spot primed the evidence of the last twelve months of scraping above the rubbing strake along things. I'd rather not leave a sea of small red bits, but equally I don't think I'm ever going to cause enough damage to get through 750ml of black gloss. And it's the only black area on the boat, and I don't want to repaint the entire 'bootstrap' in a more convenient colour, and I don't want to repaint any of the rest of the boat in black. Any suggestions (other than 'black up to the gunwale', which is a project for future times)?

One would hope that: Any of us on here would have the requisite skills to safely moor a boat. Securing a vessel adrift would be considered a 'good samaritan' act in the same way that first aid is. State of the boat disregarded, I'm surprised at the cynicism on here. On the face of it, the boat was afloat, the boat was moved, the boat sunk. It doesn't appear to have been in the process of sinking prior to that, and so if the facts are true it is the responsibility of the production company to make good the damage they have caused. To take the car analogy from the article; if someone moved my car without permission and it was subsequently rear-ended by a third party and written off, I'd be a bit miffed regardless of the masive dent that was already in the nearside doors. Edit: national treasure does seem a bit hyperbolic, though...

You do realise that, despite the word continuous, continuous cruisers don't actually navigate the waterways 24/7/365?

Somewhat by definition there will be exceptions, but I will let my overall view be shaped by more than personal anecdote.

You're welcome to think how you like, but it's a well-known and very provable fact of our society that those working in the area of law that most directly impacts on the life of the average person are by far the least well remunerated. A cursory Google will lead you to a wonderful world of readin, but in case you can't be bothered.

Just an aside, but barristers and solicitors working in criminal law are rarely rich, and are frequently working for below minimum wage.

Seems like a lot of effort to go to just to be turned around at the portal of Standedge ?

I'm amazed that it's not worth more than £15000 in scrap. Seems incredibly cheap for what is a awful lot of steel (and potentially work to chop it!) when you consider that a duff old narrowboat will still sell for £10000 easily. That said, I suspect there's somewhat more demand for duff old narrowboats.

https://www.apolloduck.com/boat/house-boats-barge/564332 Anyone interested? ?

It always feels a bit strange, but I've had things delivered to me countless times since March at random canal-side locations, both by courier and Royal Mail. If you can get your boat to somewhere you can give an obvious address for, I wouldn't hesitate to go with that. Royal Mail, perhaps surprisingly, are better at the game than couriers. Royal Mail have yet to fail to deliver to places such as 'circus box office, Stonehaven Common', 'rey/red/black boat reg 12345, canal basin' or 'grey/black/red boat reg. 12345, near this house'. I had one courier drop off at the house (whose occupier was really quite friendly, thankfully), and I've had Amazon disappear a parcel outright having made it to the occupier of the aforementioned house and been told to walk thirty seconds down the towpath. No other problems whatsoever.

I'm no intenal combustion expert, but I'd have thought that if you were losing a couple of litres of coolant a day through a knackered gasket, it'd be quite apparent either from a rising oil level or from the amount of vapour (white smoke) coming out of the exhaust? I assume that there's no external sign of a coolant leak — coolant in the bilge, etc? When you say a couple of litres a day, is that a couple of litres each day you run the engine, or are you losing coolant even without running the engine?

My apologies: I think I may have conflated a few different articles in my memory. He did leave BA some time after the incident, and he did write that he had been on the receiving end of negative rumours about his performance in the flight deck during the incident. I'd misremembered that that had led to his departure from BA. I think the gutter press may have reported it as so too. This article seems to cover the story fairly.