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Momac

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Posts posted by Momac

  1.  

    I recently did  a wash while the boat was  ashore with assistance from various brushes , a mop and microfibre  cloths .

    I also used some  Demon Foam  mixed with plenty of water  which worked very well at dissolving muck from being ashore near trees . Brushing into the slip resistant surfaces  was necessary but the foam had done it work and the dirt lifted easily.

    Some folks may worry about the  foam in the aquatic environment in which case the cleaning product may be used sparingly.

     

    If you use  a jet wash then be prepared to clean the adjacent boats in the marina of all the muck that you may blast onto them. 

     

     

  2. 45 minutes ago, Onewheeler said:

    Found it! I hadn't realised that I'd had it done about six weeks before the due date (and the examiner didn't post date it to the due date as he should have done 😠)

    As you have found the  surveyors details perhaps you could  ask the surveyor to amend the expiry date. 

    Assuming you do have the previous certificate of course.

    • Greenie 1
  3. 40 minutes ago, ditchcrawler said:

    Go searching in your mail system, you should have had an email with the details 

    Good suggestion. 

    The surveyor should have emailed the certificate to the OP

  4. 1 hour ago, Mad Harold said:

    Also you could get your boating "fix" rather cheaper with a small,trailerable sailing boat or dingy on inland lakes and reservoirs.

    Don't know what club membership fees are, but Probably a lot less than £15K.

     

    Yes there are multiple options whether boaty or otherwise .

    17 minutes ago, magpie patrick said:

     

     

    I fear that we either pay up or canals will close

    If paying up means £15k a year as suggested  it is  obvious that folks will look elsewhere .

    It is already possible to make a donation of £15k a year if individuals  wish to do so but I doubt most boaters feel obliged to donate when they are already paying fees. It does seem a historical under charging of licence fees is being blamed on the present situation while the real problem is that government doesn't appreciate that the canals are a national asset that deserves to be  maintained.

    4 minutes ago, Bobbybass said:

    It worries me.....if they start to close some canals, can you imagine the pressure on the rest of the system with all those displaced boaters ?

    That could be an issue but not a reason to avoid closing canals to navigation as an option. Let say its done initially on a phased/trial basis so the impacts  can be monitored. 

     

     

     

  5. 1 hour ago, MtB said:

     

    Go on then, list a few! 

    Conventional holidaying in hotels/ b&b'sh/package holidays abroad

    Cruises 

    Camping/caravan/motorhome holidays

    Inland waterways boat hire holidays abroad 

    Owning and keeping a boat  in the EU (eg Netherlands /Belgium /France)

    Coastal boating in the UK

    Owning a holiday home abroad eg France /Spain

     

     

     

     

     

  6. 5 minutes ago, MtB said:

     

    If boaters stopped being such tightwads and paid for their licences what it actually costs to keep the canals running (i.e £15k a year each - the same as rent on a three bed house), most of the canals could stay open. 

    There is no way that would work as other options/activities  would become much more financially attractive . 

     

  7. 20 minutes ago, MtB said:

     

     

    Hardly. Nobody other than boaters cares about that. Provided the unused canals still have 6" of water in them and a towpath, the saving in money from closing them to boats will have been worth it. 

     

    Just playing Devil's Advocaat....

    I dare say  nature will fairly quickly take over  canals that are not used by boats . But that doesn't necessarily prevent the canal from being restored in the future.

     

    Giving the Grantham canal as an example  there  have been very low bridges built over it and at the R.Trent end the canal was built  over. completely , cutting off the connection to the river . This sort of thing shouldn't  be allowed  but most of the general public don't understand that and don't care .

     

    Unfortunately the  end of some canals as navigable waterways may well be in sight.

     

     

  8. 1 hour ago, Jon57 said:

    To us maybe. But the program hopefully will raise the plight for better funding by the government. We live in hope 😁

    Which is not likely anytime soon.

    There are other priorities that are far more important than the canals.

     

    C&RT simply have to work with the budget they have. It does seem likely that some canals will need to be closed to navigation. The challenge will be to do so in a way that that would allow the closed canals to be restored to navigable  status at some future time.

    • Greenie 1
  9. On 07/01/2024 at 13:27, Naughty Cal said:

    I'm guessing the pontoon and bollards are working their way downstream somewhere by now.

     

    Same with the pontoons from Torksey Lock Cut!

    We were at Torksey  today (by road) .i am pleased to report  the  former tea room has opened as a coffee shop. Open Wednesday to Sunday .

     

    The pontoon on the tidal side  is  still there 

    There were sandbags  with plastic covers placed in lines as if to defend against the gates over topping but they looked clean so perhaps the water remained just below the gates. 

    The water level is still  fairly high but nothing like it would have been in the floods.

     

    Even now the fields are saturated so the slightest rain causes the river to rise . We need a dry spell.

     

  10.  

    On the canal oil thing clearly some commercial operation is putting waste oil into a drain which they should not be doing at all (even if its a foul sewer) . The sewer may  be blocked by the fat and if its a very old sewer there may be an overflow into the canal. Or maybe they are using a surface water sewer which is even worse.

     

    Any oily contamination like this will easily be spread by the wind and by any flow, however small that flow may be,  in the canal. 

     

    Hopefully the source of the oil will soon be discovered  by the relevant authorities.

     

  11. 18 hours ago, Stroudwater1 said:

    I didn’t think antifoul was necessary on a canal boat?
    Friends  had a wooden cruiser boat for years and just painted standard spirit based gloss paint on every third year with usual prep. 

     

    Steel narrowboats commonly use bituminous blacking which is toxic to the aquatic environment so in theory should act as a form of antifouling.

    But  bituminous paint on a GRP hull is not appropriate.

     

    Bituminous paint on a narrowboat hull is easy to touch up . Narrowboats tend not to use fenders eg when going through locks so the side s get scraped  while GRP boats do use fenders  and boating is much less of a contact sport  for the vast majority of GRP boats.

     

    An epoxy coating could be used on both steel and GRP hulls but antifouling paint below the waterline  is commonly used on GRP. Epoxy paint alone has no antifouling properties apart from being a smooth surface that may be cleaned.

     

    Really a GRP hull should be epoxy painted below the water line  when new to create a surface that is less permeable than the polyester gel coat but this seem rarely to be done in practice.

     

     

  12. That will be 9m2 per litre.

    At the weekend I applied a coat of antifoul with the same coverage rate  to my 33ft boat and  2.5L was just sufficient.

    So you can be confident that 3 litres will be sufficient.

    image.png.5919616313ce2a769e837357f77c3043.png--

     

    • Greenie 1
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