Bargebuilder

You are quite right of course, but it's odd that they won't fail you with ventilation so inadequate that you are very likely to die of CO poisoning if your alarm runs out of battery. I was failed for having an aft cabin separate from the main accomodation because it didn't have its own CO detector/alarm, even though it didn't contain any form of heater or cooking appliance or engine or anything that could produce CO. No ventilation, risk of death = pass No detector but no CO producing equipment so CO poisoning vanishingly unlikely = fail.

A couple of months ago I was chatting to a recently qualified BSS inspector and he told me that all in, the training process had cost him nearly £9,000. The whole gravy train is self perpetuating: more staff dreaming up more rules, the need for ever longer training courses, better qualified trainers, higher salary bills, more expensive courses, examiners that need to recover the higher training costs, needing to spend longer over examinations resulting in the need to charge ever higher prices. Everyone has their hand out and it's the good old boater who pays. If coastal vessels, yachts, motorboats etc don't suffer from any more fires or explosions than inland vessels, then there is a very strong case for BSS reform, to only include a handful of safety crucial items. In my experience, some examiners have already done this, only checking the gas system for leaks, the fuel system, fire extinguishers, ventilation and a few other bits taking less than an hour, but still charging for 3 hours work.

But we have more boats that are not BSS certified in the form of coastal vessels than we do inland waterways certified craft, so a comparison would be simple and accurate. A much simplified test wouldn't be a bad thing, but ever adding more and more regulations, in my opinion is unnecessary and unproductive. All the time the C&RT and the EA make money from running training courses and high administration charges, why would they change things.

Far from being ridiculous, some people are happy to occupy a boat the safety of which is unknown to them, doing so in the blind trust that a BSS inspector has performed a good job. Far better to read the requirements, understand your own boat and ensure yourself that it is maintained to a safe level. A nuisance alarm is a siren sounding that happens when, in this case, CO is not detected. If a CO alarm keeps going off erroneously it is 'crying wolfe' and may not be believed when CO is actually at a dangerous level. Hydrogen from battery gassing can be a culprit. This doesn't meant that the CO detector is itself a nuisance, but simply that the nuisance alarm soundings are. I apologise to everyone who didn't need this explanation.

What a ridiculous comment and not in any way what I wrote. In fact I mentioned that my CO alarm detected the hydrogen from my charging batteries. Why would I have one if I didn't wholeheartedly believe in them? The BSS certificate allows people to abdicate responsibility for their own safety, needing to be hand held and told by others to check their gas system for leaks and to have smoke detectors etc etc. We all have to pay around £200 every four years to ensure that these people don't kill themselves or others.

Agreed, but be aware that nuisance alarm soundings can be a problem: the hydrogen produced from my battery bank would regularly set off my CO alarm.

What's exceptional, is that your boat is in a nearly 2,000 square mile area with only a single BSS examiner; clearly not the Midlands. You really think that a BSS examiner has the same degree of legal responsibility as an MOT inspector? I haven't been impressed at all with the knowledge of the BSS inspectors that I've had, they've not been able to discuss technical matters in any depth at all. They have certainly not been experts in gas or electrical installations. As I mentioned previously, I think £50 an hour is plenty plus travelling expenses for a BSS examination and one hour should be easily long enough to ascertain that a boat is not dangerous. My last BSS inspector advised me that smoke detectors are being considered for including as a requirement, as are the cable entries for solar panels. Obviously we can't be trusted to look after our own safety. Next it will be methane detectors in the head😁.

Agreed, but we can compare inland where boats are certified to coastal where they are not for a very good area of lives saved. I agree that a simpler, cheaper inspection would be preferable, identifying the really dangerous faults. No exorbitant residential training for inspectors, just what is necessary, no £57 to the scheme organisers for entering 'pass' onto a computer, and no more than £50 an hour for the inspector plus travelling expenses.

Seriously? For my last inspection I contacted six inspectors all within 5 miles of the boat. What mileage rate are you suggesting? Have you any idea how much training and retraining is necessary to be an MOT inspector or how much car garages have to pay in insurance, far more than BSS inspectors I'm completely sure.

Which begs the question, how much difference has the BSS inspection made?

A BSS examination should be much cheaper than 4x MOTs, as the inspector hasn't had to buy or rent a garage/workshop or equip it with very expensive rolling road, car lifts, gas analysis equipment etc, or pay for ongoing maintenance and calibration of the same. My last BSS inspector wasn't vat registered and he didn't even have a bank account dedicated to his business, it was very much a sideline with almost zero overheads apart from fuel for his car. £200 is expensive for less time than it takes for an MOT for ones car.

Any idea how many accidents on each, that would indicate if the BSS made a difference, or is it more gravy train than a safety scheme?

I couldn't agree more. Not for one minute am I saying that the BSS hasn't saved lives and injuries, but it also feathers the nests of the companies that train the examiners, the examiners themselves and the C&RT who charge for each completed examination, particularly when the examination takes less than an hour and costs around £200 which applies to my last three, the shortest of which took 25 minutes. Of course, some boat owners really do need a qualified 3rd party to advise them on safety matters, others are more competent and don't. If you don't know where and how to run a gas pipe etc, etc. best you pay £250 and get a long and comprehensive inspection. Not so many years ago Arthur Ransome wrote: "Better drowned than duffers, if not duffers won't drown." An attitude that still exists for the many thousands of boats on tidal waters around the country where there is no requirement for any sort of safety inspection at all, or licenses for that matter and I look forward to someone offering the statistics comparing the number of accidents that have occurred on these boats with those on the boats that are required to have a BSS certificate.

I've always assumed that certain people (we all know the type) deliberately moor badly with no springs and breast lines so slack that their boats surge both back and forth and into the waterway just to give them an excuse to bellow abuse. Rattling chains are also popular for those wanting to highlight the movement of their boat. To spend every night of the year aboard and not to have grasped the importance of mooring properly says a great deal about the individual, as to does the sort of language used by them.

Given these figures, perhaps one answer is to reverse the trend towards ever bigger diesel engines. I suspect that a 20hp diesel engine pushing a boat at 3mph might we'll only require 4hp of its maximum. If one then compares the cost of diesel consumed with the cost of running an electric boat, the difference would be even smaller.

That was exactly why I wrote: "unless you buy everything pre-used and are competent to design and install everything yourself" You are too modest, you are in a tiny minority of the boating fraternity who would think about designing, obtaining second hand and installing an electric system from scratch. You compare the cost of your second hand electric setup to the price of a brand new diesel engine and gearbox which isn't really fair. If you want to go second hand, you need to compare your electric installation to a used diesel of which there are dozens available, in great condition, and with a very long life ahead of them for a few hundred pounds. Like for like I'm sure the diesel direct drive wins on price and you can travel at 4mph all day and more on rivers where the speed limit permits. I say again, a slightly higher fuel bill for a diesel boat over an electric boat for a few weeks of summer cruising is such a tiny proportion of the cost of ownership of a narrowboat that it's hardly significant.

You stated the above and used the statement to put others off from being courteous and letting boats who wish to travel faster go past. In my experience the statement is wrong and to discourage people from allowing others to pass is definitely wrong, so for me this was the most important message in your post.

You should not feel forced to speed up any more that a boat that follows you should be forced to slow down, unless of course it isn't safe to pass.

In all my years of boating I have never experienced what you describe. Could it be your attitude towards boats that catch up with you that irritates them and results in the behaviour you describe. Do you perhaps slow right down when passing is impossible to annoy them and when the waterway opens up and passing would be possible, do you speed up and position yourself such as to prevent the manoeuvre? When I am just pottering and another boat catches me I acknowledge them and indicate to them that I will pull to one side. As they pass they invariably wave and thank me and disappear into the distance, never to be seen again. They are happy and I don't have a boat right behind me getting increasingly frustrated, so we both benefit; try it sometime!

It is indeed, but how much could you save in a months cruising by having an electric boat as opposed to a diesel boat and how much extra will an electric boat cost to buy? This figure will move gradually in favour of electric boats with time, but I'm guessing that any current savings are tiny compared to the additional cost of buying an electric boat and that the figures won't look favourable for many, many years. For many, it makes most sense to save a lot of money by sticking with a diesel engine for propulsion, by all means one with excellent sound attenuation and silencing, and spending a small amount of the money saved on a bit of extra diesel. You'll have an uncomplicated, relatively inexpensive and easy to maintain setup and bags of power for cruising at the speed of your choice for as long as you wish within the regulations; fighting against rivers in flood etc. You'll probably still have enough saved money for several exotic winter holidays to warm sunny parts of the world. Don't get me wrong, one day electric will either make perfect sense or be the only allowed option, but when that day comes, boating may only be the preserve of the very well off, which would be a great shame.

Sure, there are plenty of noisy diesels out there, but some of them are wonderfully quiet. Of course not as silent as may be possible with electric, but a gentle 'purrrrr' that is not intrusive at all. Electric will give you a slightly quieter experience than with a well silenced direct diesel driven NB and it may save on fuel consumption, but unless you buy everything pre-used and are competent to design and install everything yourself, how much more will it cost than a simple diesel driven boat? How does the price of a cocooned super silent diesel generator compare to that of a propulsion diesel engine? That aside, the main reason why I wouldn't consider an electric narrowboat is the thought of having to go slowly everywhere. People who can only manage a few weeks each year on their boat and who want to experience as much of the canal network as possible during that time, want to travel at 4mph when it's appropriate to do so and over a months motoring, any saving made by going electric would be inconsequential when compared to the other costs of ownership. For people with deep pockets who spend most of the year aboard and have the time to pootle slowly and silently everywhere I can see the attraction, but that's not me I'm afraid.

Interestingly, try as I might, I've not been able to sustain any dripping at all with my new PTFE packing, one reason I suspect why it runs much hotter than my previous graphite packing. I've even removed the packing whilst afloat and re-done it a second time ensuring that it dripped enthusiastically once installed. Once the shaft started spinning, after 15 minutes or so, the dripping slowed and stopped and the temperature increased and this was without tightening the 'pusher' at all; very odd characteristics indeed. It's settled down now, but at 80⁰c or thereabouts it was unnerving. I do turn the greaser every few hours of motoring as I did with the graphite, so perhaps I shouldn't.

Electric boats (without a diesel engine) might struggle on a river when going against the current, not for thrust of course, but to replace the hugely increased electrical consumption. Electric canal boat owners have mentioned that 3mph through the water is the optimum for efficiency and to make the battery last a reasonable length of time. There are many times on a river when 3mph would see you not going anywhere against the flow. Perhaps that's why the diesel generator is essential.

It might be misleading if you think it's the drip of water that does the cooling, it seems to be the reduction in friction that the film of water produces at one or three drips a minute that reduces the build up of heat.

Coincidentally, I've just changed from graphite which I've always used, to PTFE, but only because I couldn't get graphite in the size I needed at the time. I've repacked many a stern gland and with graphite based packing I've always found it easy to adjust to get a drip or two per minute whilst motoring and a barely warm stuffing box, but I've really struggled with the PTFE. Even with the packing 'pusher' just hand tight with almost no friction on the prop shaft, the stuffing box temperature climbed to about 80⁰c: I couldn't keep my finger on it! I unscrewed the pusher by two full turns and it made no difference. I changed the grease to a lighter one and that made no difference either. After 30 hours motoring to settle in, it's a bit cooler now. PTFE packing, for me at least, ran hotter than graphite base packing, even when compressed less.