Grassman

Thanks for your helpful answers. I have boated the canal on two previous occasions (1996 & 2009) so I know all about it's beauty and stunning scenery, hence my reason for wanting to do it again. Having spoken to a few others who have tried the fully electric and the hybrid options, it seems that the huge weight of the batteries on what is already a heavily silted and bendy canal can at times cause problems with regular grounding and especially so with the hybrid ones, something which you others have now confirmed. Perhaps both methods are rather 'old hat' nowadays, and I wonder why they haven't changed to lithium batteries and solar panels. Perhaps this is because lithiums are more unforgiving if damaged by an inexperienced hirer, and therefore more costly to replace, and that solar panels would be fairly ineffective because of the canal being mainly tree covered? It's good to see that the charging points are reasonably well located, but you'd still miss out on the spontaneity of being able to moor virtually wherever you like, although the possibility of being able get away with not having to charge every day would certainly help. At the maximum speed (2.5mph) does the noise of the motor increase? One chap told be that there is a significant 'whirring' noise at that speed. If this is the case then I wonder if it's any quieter than some diesel engines at the same speed. The reason I ask is because mine has a hospital silencer and sound insulated deck boards so it's fairly quiet anyway.

Interesting reading JoeC. Thanks. I believe that the cost is currently running at around the £35m mark, all of which has come out of CRT's general maintenance budget. If this is true then it's no wonder the canal system is under such decline. Admittedly it's not the only reason of course, but it can't have helped. Given the fact that the substandard and poorly designed spillway modification was carried out in the days when it was government run (BW) I think the government should have pitched in with a contribution towards the costs. But sadly this was never going to happen!

Knowing this is a common problem, when I had a new engine last year I got them to fit an old fashioned 'barrel type' (I don't know the technical term) on the same circuit but inside the boat cabin, in addition to the LCD one on the instrument panel. At least if ever the LCD one gives up I will still know what hours my engine has done.

It's 15 years since I've hired a boat on the Mon & Brec Canal and I'm thinking of doing it again next year. I notice that some hirebases do fully electric Nb's and there's one which does hybrid ones. Before I decide, I'd be interested to find out from any of you who have hired either type as to how you got on please, and whether or not it's worth considering as something different from conventional diesels.

Aquavista are very often more pricey than other marinas for their diesel, gas, coal, pump outs etc. I believe they're owned by a hedge fund so it's hardly surprising really. I've heard their moorers say that even with their 10% discount they are paying more than most other places charge.

This is good news. Hopefully the locals will now discover and appreciate the chronic funding issues CRT are facing and do something about supporting/lobbying the campaign to get the funding increased.

Yes CRT are far from perfect but years of cronic underfunding and neglect have resulted in the chaos we have now. I'm so glad that after 40+ years my boating days are nearly over.

Some valid points made about lack of preventative maintenance and CRT wasting money etc, but with regards to the point I made about the Toddbrook Reservoir, whilst regular monitoring and maintenance would have helped to prevent the near disaster, the fundamental issue was the poor design and substandard materials used in it's modification during the time when it was government owned and run. Therefore even though the government had no legal obligation to help with it's re-construction, I think they should have pitched in with some financial help. Perhaps I'm being naive, but I think they should have done.

Yes definitely. We were 2nd in the queue at Colwich Lock when that beam snapped last year. CRT arrived an hour later armed with one of those braces, and had the lock open again an hour after that. That's a couple of hours to sort what at one time would have been a major stoppage. Apparently most of their workforce carry a set of these nowadays so they can get a lock up and running again quickly. Not ideal when a quick fix becomes a long term one like this, but without the funds what can they do? Some people forget that it's not just the reduction in the government grant that's hitting CRT's finances but the astronomical cost of the Toddbrook Reservoir work which is currently heading towards £40m since it happened 5 years ago. All of this has had to come out of CRT's general maintenance budget for the rest of the system. Following the near disaster of Toddbrook they've also incurred additional costs at their other 100+ reservoirs in making sure they are up to scratch, all of which has also impacted on their general maintenance programme.

My wife has had a minor heart condition for the last few years, so wherever we moored for the night we'd always make sure we got the what3words location so the emergency services could pinpoint exactly where we were if needed. Admittedly if we were in a remote place it probably wouldn't have been much use though, but most occasions we weren't. She had a heart attack in May but thankfully we happened to be in a marina and she got to hospital in time. This won’t stop us narrowboating though, just a case of tweaking it a bit. We will continue living on the boat which we’ve done for 12 years, we now have a marina berth, and when we go off cruising in future we will just have to make sure we overnight near a road rather than in remote locations. These things that life throws at us don’t always mean we have to stop doing things we love and enjoy, but we may just have to do things slightly differently that’s all.

Some of you are missing my point although admittedly I could have conveyed my points better. Of course Aquavista (or anybody else) should make a profit on the fuel they sell, it's just the amount they charge compared to most other boatyards and marinas. And yes I do realise that petrol stations make very little profit on the fuel and it's the stuff they sell which is where their profit is, but you can't compare petrol stations and marinas on a like for like basis as they are two completely types of business. And as for MTB’s comment that I’ve ‘clearly never run a successful business in my life’, I started my own business from scratch, ran it successfully for 20 years with latterly a £4m turnover, before selling it and retiring!

I remember in the 1980's when those Welsh arson attacks were prevalent, there was a small derelict barn in a field behind the caravan site we were on near Bala. No electric, no water, and access was via a path 200 yards from the road. For a year a couple from Liverpool spent their weekends renovating it and making it habitable as a little (1 bedroomed) weekend retreat. Within weeks of it being finished it was trashed and set fire to by the local Welsh Nationalist yobs because in their eyes the couple were depriving locals of affordable housing. It had stood derelict (a crumbling shell) for years, and with no services to it there was no way any locals were ever going to buy it.

Scary stuff Alan, and thanks for your explanation. It's a beautiful location but like any similar waters it comes with some issues of course.

This is true, but having boats on the move is a huge part of what makes visiting a canal attractive to the public and are therefore part of the attraction and amenity for them. Also boats on the move help to stop the canals silting up, weeding over, or drying up and becoming the dirty smelly ditches that they were in the early 1960's, places where most of the public would never want to go near. Most of you are probably aware of the 'Fund Britain's Waterways' campaign petition, and here is the link below in case you wish to sign it. The aim is to try and persuade the government to re-think the decision to reduce the funding. https://www.change.org/p/fundbritainswaterways

In 2022 we holidayed in one of those waterfront apartments in Ffordd Glyder near to your marina entrance. Does the water level ever over-top the wall that's in front of them? It struck me at the time that they could be vulnerable to flooding.

The difference is a petrol station's fuel sales probably make up about 80% of their turnover whereas a marina's core income is from mooring fees, so they shouldn't need to make a massive profit on fuel sales. It should merely count towards one of the benefits of boaters mooring in a marina. A small profit by all means yes, but Aquavista are being greedy and taking the p*ss. No doubt other marinas will now follow suit like they have with the huge increases in mooring fees.

Are you in Dinorwic Marina?

So in that case CRT should finance it and then get paid back by Anochrome. I know these things can take time, but the company have admitted liability so I doubt it would be a long drawn out legal process before they were reimbursed.

Why should they need fundraising to pay for the clean up? Surely Anochrome the company who polluted it should pay for everything.

A mate who had been at Kings Bromley for years finally had enough and recently moved elsewhere because he was fed up with the way Aquavista in the 2 years since they bought the marina, were trying to seize every opportunity to screw more money out of moorers and visiting boaters. He said their diesel, coal, gas, and pump out prices are amongst the most expensive in the country and that was with his 10% moorers discount! But the group is owned by a hedge fund so it's not surprising I suppose.

You don't of course usually know beforehand if a paddle is going to be stiff or not and the beauty of the GW is that if it is fine you can just use it as a normal windlass but if it's stiff you just start ratcheting it, which is obviously slower than winding, but much easier to do. Often my wife starts off ratcheting a paddle and once it eases she winds it like a normal windlass. You do need to remember to flick the catch over when doing paddle on the other side to change the winding direction, but you soon get used to that. I bought my wife hers in 2018 and having worked over 1,000 locks since then, the teeth of the cog aren't worn at all, proving that it's a robust and well made windlass. It's only slightly heavier than a standard iron windlass, and a 'sea magnet' managed to retrieve it on the one occasion she dropped it in the canal.

Somebody told me yesterday that Kings Bromley were making changes along these lines. Perhaps Lily Rose is also in an Aquavista marina?

The CRT engineer told me they tend to fail during the final few years leading up to the gates due replacement date, so on the basis that they appear to be a good and long lasting temporary fix which would last until they are due for replacement anyway, there wouldn't necessarily be a backlog. I can't remember the due dates for this particular lock but I think the gates were fairly old. It's not ideal, but given the state of CRT's finances I think it's a good solution, and to be able to have the navigation back open within a couple of hours was quite impressive.

I spent the day with our local CRT regional engineer last week and he told me that there was a poor batch of Oak delivered to their Bradley works a while ago. It had been specifically 'farmed' which I guess is a way of helping it grow faster? Apparently it looked fine/normal when they received it, but they are now finding that the lock beams with this oak are splitting prematurely. Here's a 'before and after' of the one at Colwich on the T&M