Col_T

Thanks for the info, @nicknorman. Tackled this job to-day and it seems that adjustment at the gearbox end of the cable has improved things. I haven’t taken the boat out or tried any real manoeuvring yet, but it seemed a load better just nudging back and forward on the mooring. That’s it for now.

Ah, thanks for that piece of education, @Tracy D'arth. I’ll have to get back to you on whether they are running in the bottom of the groves - probably sometime over the weekend.

Our boat has a Beta Marine BV1505 engine, which has these two alternator drive belts fitted. Each alternator belt is sitting below the top of the pulley which, I think, means that the belts should be replaced, as they are too worn. Firstly: is that correct? We bought the boat in July 2015, and it came with two spare belts, which have been stored as in the picture below all the time that we have had the boat. I have no idea when they were new. Second question: are these still usable, or are they likely to fail prematurely because of how they have been stored? Thanks in advance.

He probably did, as Leslie Phillips was in the radio show.

Ground effects - same as the latest F1 cars, I think.

I thought that lead carbon batteries were supposed to have good life expectancy and be much more tolerant of partial state of charge that ordinary lead acids. Have you found that to be not true, or is there another reason that you changing your batteries?

Google the dry dock company in Newbury. Used them last year; seemed pretty good.

I think you may want to connect the solar charge controller to the leisure battery, and only then connect the solar panel(s) to the charge controller. It's to do with charge controllers needing to know what voltage they're connecting to before getting solar input, apparently. Hope this helps.

Just walk on by.

Buy it and use it - you'll acquire the skill!

Oh! Was he a continuous cruiser??

I don't understand batteries at all, but I remember being told that a battery doesn't 'see' any incoming charge if there is a load on the battery at the time. More accurately, the battery would only see a charge if the incoming current exceeded the outgoing current, and it would only see the 'marginal' current - the difference between the two. Presumably a shunt based ammeter would also only register the difference. Which raises another point - the shunt based ammeter on our boat will happily tell me it's put many tens of Ah into the batteries over the winter, which makes sense as the boat is not being used, therefore no loads, so anything the solar panels sends down the cables to the batteries is a charge. Might a BMS 'remember', or take account of, these excess amps? As I said, I don't understand batteries at all, so feel free to regard the above as a load of bollo if appropriate!

Go with whoever you have confidence in.

With apologies for splitting hairs, but development of software is the actual writing of it. There is also a pretty good chance that a good chunk of the testing will come under the heading of 'development'.

Spoken like a real teacher.

I didn't realise that canal boating had celebrities

We don't even try to leave our multi-fuel burner 'in' over-night e.g. we just close it all right down and let it burn itself out. The result is cold ash in the morning, which goes straight into the tippy. Hopefully there are no dangers with this approach!?

Grenfell highlights / exaggerates the problem that too, too often existing rules and regulations are ignored / not enforced, rather then the effect of relaxing laws too far.

Okay, thanks for that.

May I ask why you would do this, as surely the Lithiums would get more than adequately charged just by cruising? Note - this isn't intended as a criticism; I don't have lithiums, and probably never will, so am just curious.

Thanks, chaps. More useless info to replace stuff I really ought to try and remember!

Genuine question - how many instances are there of pairs of locks on the network, like those at Hillmorton?

I have the Impression that it is not a problem using Lithiums over the range of 10%=>90%, even 95%, percent. Indeed taking them up to 100% is allowable, though perhaps difficult to gauge, you just don't want to leave them that highly charged for any length of time. Beaten to it by Nick!