Bargebuilder

ASAP Supplies or good old eBay.

The advantage of the Chemco product is that it is designed to cover, stick to and arrest the development of rust. It will stay put, not flake off and rust won't push its way through. Other epoxy products can be excellent, but their effectiveness depends on a very much higher standard of preparation. Unless all rust is removed before application, the job will look great initially but in time the rust may emerge. Either product should be tough enough to resist abrasion, but a mat under your bottles will give added protection. The concern is, will both still be protecting the steel from corrosion in a couple of years time.

All the problems and concerns that you have mentioned would not be issues at all if your surveyor had recommended the correct coating for such a job. You are making life unnecessarily difficult for yourself! Cup brush preparation is good enough and in many cases an ordinary wire brush will be sufficient and being solvent free it shouldn't kill you either! Get 5Kg of this stuff: Epo-chem™ RS 500P is a unique solvent-free, wet & rust tolerant epoxy primer or primer/finish protective coating. The system’s long-term performance is based on completely sealing the surface and arresting the rust totally.

I did have the 'o' ring. I have seen them used many times in sailing boats and they are fine for dollops of green water. A friend of mine too used one as an inspection hatch on a water tank and suffered the same problem as I had: we both had to watch during filling that we didn't fill quite to the top to avoid spilling water into the bilge. Eventually I sealed mine with mastic, but that defeated the object of having it. That particular tank was supplied by CAK Tanks pre- installed, so I was a bit disappointed with my purchase. In fact, I bought two of them and linked them and both hatches were leaky. I'm glad yours were successful, but would urge caution to others just in case my two and my friend's were not the exception.

If the plastic hatch shown by Alan De Enfield was in a fuel tank, then it looks identical to one I used in a water tank. My one couldn't be made fully water tight, no matter how hard it was screwed into place. The moment the tank was full and the water partly filled the filler hose, the head of water would force water out from the lid. I'm sure his was a better product, but the one I had wasn't fit for that purpose.

I've seen it from both sides, as before we got our narrow beam, previously we had a replica Dutch barge. Some 15 years ago we navigated between Bristol and the Thames along the K&A and found the entire trip to be very stressful. Firstly, at 12'6" the barge was just too beamy to comfortably cruise, never knowing if there'll be enough waterway width to allow passing around the next bend. Moored boats weren't such a problem then and wide beams to my memory were very rare, but we still struggled to squeeze through. Even at tickover, the volume of water displaced made moored boats move a little and there are some very angry folks on the K&A! We got stuck in two lock entrances because poor maintenance prevented the gates from opening fully and we were halted by a low slung pipe that was under a foot bridge and wasn't documented. The trip wasn't fun and we never ventured onto another canal with our barge. In our narrow beam we do 4-500 miles each summer and we rarely meet a cruising widebeam, although we pass many dozens of them. They may on paper fit a canal, but in my opinion they are no fun to cruise and understandably are unpopular with narrow vessels. As a static floating home they may be okay (if rather ugly) but in practice, having bought one, the owner is probably unlikely to want to cruise anywhere.

You'll probably agree too then, that a Schilling rudder is simply an improved rudder design, it has no additional moving parts, it just offers better performance. A bow thruster is a bit different, it can fail and although it makes life easier, a competent and practiced helm is able to handle his or her vessel without one (our sort of boat anyway). If one always relies on a bow or stern thruster and it fails, then the lack of practice/expertise in manoeuvring at close quarters is lost, just when you need it most, perhaps when in Portishead marina and surrounded by shiny grp gin palaces worth many hundreds of thousands of pounds. That may indeed be true, but clearly if they need a bow thruster then it isn't!

I couldn't agree more: I've tried many wood-burner/multifuel stoves over the years and our Morso Squirrel is far more controllable and in my opinion better engineered than all of them. I had a Villager stove once which had doors that fitted so badly that it was almost impossible to control. My Morso's air vent is so precise that I can elevate or lower the flames almost as accurately as one could with a gas stove. I can extinguish the fire completely just by fully closing both air vents, most unlike less well engineered stoves Although a tiny crack in theory could release carbon monoxide into the room/cabin, it is very unlikely, no more likely than the much larger front or rear combustion air vents would. Such stoves operate under a very slight vacuum created by the flue, so air will enter the stove, not escape through a crack, in the same way it does through the combustion air vents. Of course you must have a CO alarm, but so long as it's not structural, a tiny crack could safely by plugged with a squeeze of high temperature mastic until your spare part arrives.

Perhaps they had their rudder modified to a Schilling type design as I did. For not a lot of money, a good welder can dramatically improve the performance of a flat plate rudder which starts to lose effectiveness at around 35⁰ each side, to one that gives dramatic lateral thrust at a full 70⁰ each side. Having a Schilling rudder is very much like having a stern thruster, allowing one to move the stern sideways. It makes manoeuvring much easier and turning within ones own length a possibility. They have no detrimental effect on directional stability in either forward or astern, but make reversing easier as they provide lateral thrust more effectively when needed for correcting ones course. I'm surprised that more aren't fitted; they are excellent!

I've had a Chinese knock off of an Eberspacher diesel heater for the last 6 years. It is in a cupboard in a living area and it's fuel tank is in another locker. I've had two BSS examinations since it's installation, by two different inspectors and neither looked in any of the lockers or found either the heater or its tank or examined it's hoses. They didn't even spot the warm air outlets to the two cabins it serves. Neither inspector looked at the sea toilet to check it had a sea cock on the outlet and neither checked the fuel hoses on the diesel engine for the correct markings. I am happy that all is as it should be, but question the effectiveness of the examination process.

This year, 2022, the cost of hiring a pilot for the trip from Sharpness down the tidal Severn to Portishead, Avonmouth is £240, but that's not why I didn't take one. Whether you take a pilot or not, exactly the same safety checks/equipment, engine, fuel, anchor, life jackets etc etc are required, because a pilot won't get you out of trouble if the engine stops! A pilot won't set out unless he or she is totally happy that the forecast is for a stable period of light winds of no more than force 3, but this should be the case too if you go it alone, possibly even aim for a force 2 if you can. If you have comprehensive insurance then they will make stipulations that may include engaging a pilot, but if not, there is no requirement for you to have one and I didn't find the trip particularly difficult or demanding without one. My wife and I in fact found the voyage in our NB exiting, exhilarating at times, and most of all, thoroughly enjoyable. The passage is very well marked for navigation with very obvious leading marks that are also brightly lit in gloomy conditions, making steering an accurate course easy. The one thing that makes the services of a pilot far less critical is the availability of chart plotter apps for ones smart phone or tablet. Much like a car's GPS, they show you exactly where you should be and exactly where you are, so you can steer accordingly. The best app (in my opinion) costs about £37 for the entire UK, but you can use it free of charge for a two week trial if you only need it for a single trip. It is simplicity itself to use and removes the mystery from navigating unfamiliar routes. Every skipper must make their own decision depending on their confidence, ability, experience, vessel and conditions, but for me, at no point did I wish I'd taken a pilot and we had a very enjoyable trip, both from Sharpness to Portishead and then up to Bristol. We experienced wind speeds between 6 knots and 18 knots, but they were offshore so wave height didn't exceed about 0.6m. I've included a screen print of the app we used as we went under the 1st Severn Bridge, showing at the top the time taken from Sharpness, our speed over the ground and the distance travelled. The deepest water corresponds to the white areas and our course was recorded with the curved thin yellow line with us being the red arrow at the end of it. It's a fantastic trip, so with or without a pilot, do try it.

I understand that councils advise against the composting of either dog or cat poo; apparently it contains more pathogens harmful to humans than does the poo of a healthy person. General household waste bins, not recycling of course, are recommended by councils for pet's and human waste, provided it is double bagged. When specific dog poo bins are unavailable, councils seem to be recommending the use of street litter bins instead, presumably because it all ends up in the same place. Partially dessicated/pre-composted human poo to my knowledge has never been mentioned specifically by any council, just adult's and children's soiled incontinence pads nappies etc, which may be somewhat less pleasant. I suppose once double bagged, it's all similarly disgusting. I have no idea if councils are happy for incontinence pads etc to be deposited in dog poo bins or street bins if the former is unavailable, or what happens to it once emptied, but once double bagged, nothing is going to compost aerobically.

Just out of interest, apart from cosmetic appearance, does antifouling actually help? I've had years of ownership of grp cruisers on the cut and never antifouled any of them, any more than one would with a narrowboat.

Another huge advantage of using a glass flake coating on one's hull, is that when the time comes to advertise your boat for sale, it stands out from almost every other vessel, is more desirable and commands a higher price; well it did with my barge.

It was eleven years ago, but I'm pretty sure, now you mention the product codes, that that is exactly the system and number of coats I used. I followed the advice of their technical team which proved to be excellent; give them a call. A friend of mine used a competitors glass flake product to which he had to add solvent to make it workable and it was more difficult to apply and it didn't perform as well either. It tore apart any rollers he used and he eventually used an airless spray at considerable expense and faff with cleaning between uses, whereas the Chemco products for me went on easily with a short to medium pile quality roller and of course no solvents at all. I was aiming for a 500 micron depth and achieved that with 7 coats. I purchased if I remember correctly 80kg between the two products, plus a different coating for the inside of my built-in steel tanks.

Try these guys. I've used them and found their quality to be excellent and their price the best I could find at the time. https://falpropellers.co.uk/ They will also offer sensible advice.

Another advantage of Chemco's product is that it has zero solvent and VOCs and is 100% solids so no fumes. Not a real issue when outside in the open, but they do equally excellent coatings for the inside of steel water tanks that are drinking water safe and working in confined spaces this feature is much more important. This is lifted from their website for anyone interested. Solvent-free Wet tolerant – Can be applied on soaking wet surfaces Excellent chemical resistance and abrasion properties Glassflake-reinforced for added protection Can be applied in any environmental condition No operational shutdown; nearby work can continue without disruption 100% solid / Zero VOC NSF certified for potable water applications User-friendly with high flexibility and ease of application No recoating limitations No humidity or dew point restrictions Health & Safety risk and Fire Hazard significantly reduced Quick back-in-service times

The best anti-corrosive property of a coating is the ability to exclude water and oxygen from the steel. Glass flake is much harder than aluminium flake, so perhaps it would be less likely to erode or be scratched. Presumably the people who chose glass flake over aluminium flake for the Fourth Bridge evaluated both coatings. Chemco will despatch sample 1l tins of their products if you need confirmation that they are easy to apply, adhere brilliantly and give an excellent finish. If you buy enough, Chemco will even mix it to any RAL colour. Give it a try, you might just be converted, especially if it is cheaper.

Chemco RA500M is in fact a two pack epoxy and it is a moisture tolerant, surface tolerant primer. The chap in the yard next to my barge was applying it to his boat when half way through the job it started to rain. He continued to roller it onto wet steel and in the end, the 'paint' in the tray had several mm of rain water on top of it through which he pushed the roller to charge it. That boat sat there for the next 4 years with nothing but that original coating of RA500M and it held up brilliantly. I wouldn't use a non-epoxy primer before an epoxy top coat either. The glass flakes align to the steel surface forming a glass hard barrier which logic suggests is a lot harder than aluminium, plus, glass is inert which aluminium certainly is not. I applied 2 coats of 2 pack epoxy primer followed by 5 coats of glass flake epoxy top coat, all with a 9" roller, and it went on very nicely indeed, one coat each day for a week. An airless spray is the alternative if you have one.

That was my conclusion after much research. It is used commercially on oil rigs, ships ballast water tanks, power station cooling water intakes and the Fourth bridge, because they got fed up with painting it: they expect it to last for 25 years. My barge has spent its life in sea water, arguably a more aggressive environment than fresh water and it's doing very well after 11 years. Surely resistance to abrasion is exactly what one needs and having tried to get it off with an abrasive wheel I can vouch for that. Mine came from Chemco International in Scotland as it was much cheaper than products from 'yachtie' suppliers. They also do a surface tolerant primer that can be applied to poorly prepared surfaces and even to damp surfaces for example immediately after wet blasting, even if the steel has 'gingered'. It is a superb product, easy to apply and very little smell unlike some other coatings. A little more expensive perhaps, but only in the short term. Another spin off is a saving in anodes, as there is no exposed steel to protect. Apart from the stern gear, the hull anodes are only protecting the steel studs with which they are attached.

I suppose it depends on the coating: I used a two pack glass flake epoxy and applied it with a 9" roller. I only had less than 2 feet of clearance so I was laying on my back but the stuff didn't drip, hardly at all and went on very nicely. The product is incredibly hard because of the included glass flakes and it's suggested that it should last for 25 years; only time will tell but that was 11 years ago and it is showing no signs of coming off yet. Have fun!

I did and I'll repeat that I'm sure that your reasons for neither going faster or letting the boat behind pass were good ones. My point was, that skippers who like to travel slowly, are in a position to force others to travel slowly behind them, whereas skippers who like to travel faster cannot force others to speed up, even if they get too close and become annoying. I have heard it said by slow boaters that their speed is quite fast enough and use this rather selfish and self righteous excuse for imposing their speed on others. Speeding is of course even more of a menace and I'm certainly not condoning that.

It sounds as if he was as annoyed with having got stuck behind a boat that was happy to travel at 3mph, as you were with him trying to get past. Whilst a particular style of cruising may be perfect for one boat owner, it can be very frustrating indeed for another; either way. A boat traveling at 4mph where it is safe and acceptable to do so does not interfere with a skipper who wishes to travel more slowly, it passes, if allowed to, and is often never seen again. A boat travelling at 3mph will often impede the progress of a faster boat, sometimes deliberately, even when passing would be safe. I'm sure you wouldn't do this Peter, but some do. I would suggest therefore that skippers of boats wishing to travel at the speed limit are more adversely affected by boats travelling slowly than the other way around. I'm sure having a boat creeping up on you and trying to get past is very frustrating, but the answer is, where it is safe to do so, let them!

I didn't: he was utterly convinced he was right and I couldn't be bothered to argue for the price of a CO alarm. He said, but what if another boat had a faulty appliance and their CO came in through my window. As has been said before, it's all getting a bit silly.

I thought so and quoted the section from the manual, but he stood his ground and refused to issue a certificate until I could prove I had bought a second CO alarm. Not just any alarm either, he took the back off to check that it didn't have a symbol of a sailing boat with a slash through it, indicating that it wasn't suitable for use on boats. I assume that boat carbon monoxide is different from caravan carbon monoxide🥴 He didn't know the difference, but insisted anyway.