Bargebuilder

In my experience, some, but not all boat safety inspectors can be really picky, failing a really well maintained boat quite rightly because of a tiny but important infringement. If a BSS certificate is needed to get a licence, I would suggest that there are a large number of boats that haven't seen a BSS inspector for years and therefore couldn't be licensed. Of course, looks can deceive.

Apart from no, or out of date licences being displayed, I have no idea as to which boats aren't licensed, but you have a look and see what you think. If the CRT inspector I spoke to is to be believed, it costs so much to go after a non-payer and ultimately remove a boat from the water, they just don't bother. Inspectors aren't even encouraged to challenge a non-payer, they simply apply a sticker to the offending boat.

The western end of the K&A certainly isn't exclusively a playground for the rich, although the rich will pass through it occasionally.

Then they have worked really hard since last year, which if true is great news. I'll let others who have travelled from Bristol to Reading this year comment.

To describe many of the lock gates and paddles on the K&A as being in a poor state of repair can't really be argued with, as demonstrated by the amount of warning tape adorning the said equipment; at least it did last summer. I feel sad for the volunteers who gave generously of their time and money to restore the canal to the high standard that we enjoyed when we first navigated it some 15 years ago, only for them to watch things slip in more recent years. C&RT may have no option but to neglect the maintenance due to a lack of money, but that doesn't stop it being sad. Perhaps they could afford to do more repairs if the many, many unlicensed boats paid their fair share.

Perhaps you didn't read the link.

We did the entire length of the K&A last year and it is amongst the most poorly maintained canals that we've travelled. Pump failure held us in the Caen Hill flight for a week and there were numerous broken paddles and leaky gates and gates that wouldn't open fully. One lock just above Bristol took just shy of an hour to fill! Of course boats do cause damage, but the problems we encountered were mainly due to neglect and repairs are done on a 'fire fighting' basis.

Is it really that cut and dried? How much rent could you get for your house? Then there are costs involved, house insurance, gas and electrical inspections, ongoing maintenance, rent arrears, deliberate damage, capital gains tax when you eventually sell. The boat you live in has to be paid for, so interest is lost on your savings to that amount (opportunity cost). Boats generally depreciate so you lose more money when you sell. Plus all the usual costs, marina fees, licence, insurance, fuel, pump-out, dry dock and blacking, general maintenance etc. For those living in a modest house, renting it out and buying and living on a NB may not be the wisest choice.

Perhaps then, the dramatic price inflation of used NBs during the pandemic is about to be followed by a price crash, given the rise in the costs of ownership.

On the canals, I still find it unusual to encounter a grp cruiser that is underway, and we do a lot of miles. If there is an increase in the numbers of yoghurt pots then it's more licence money for the CRT which must be good news. I've seen no more antisocial behaviour or inconsiderate mooring from cruisers than I've seen from a few narrowboaters. I'd hate to think some prejudice was creeping in.

Marinas are currently full of boats that never go anywhere, wouldn't an additional cost for navigating keep even more boaters on their home berths?

I do about 400 miles each year and have travelled most of the canals south of Manchester, so yes, I can confidently say that on the canals, steel boats vastly outnumber plastic ones. We did the Cambridge rivers, the Nene and the Trent (via The Wash) this year and as you would expect, grp boats dominate in these areas. It's also fair to say that one sizeable NB overstaying on a visitor mooring may be depriving two plastic cruisers of somewhere to stop.

There are certainly concentrations of yoghurt pots on the rivers, but one can travel for days on end, sometimes weeks without coming across one on the cut. Sure, you may not want to socialise with many of the people who own plastic boats, but on canals I'd suggest that there are more tatty, unloved steel NBs with occupants with whom you may not wish to socialise and it is these that often hog short stay moorings; the K&A is a good example but only one of many. Dare I add, that some of these don't pay any licence fee at all.

A rather expensive hobby yes, but every week spent aboard is perhaps saving you the cost of a holiday elsewhere. How much might one save by not going abroad for 4 weeks, if that is the alternative to owning a boat? In our case, owning a boat is cheaper than going on a couple of cruises each year which for us would be the alternative.

Consider overcoating your existing epoxy coating with Chemco glass flake epoxy. Because of the flakes of glass, it is much harder and so less prone to scrapes and scratches than standard two pack hull paints and far, far tougher than ordinary blacking. Have a look at the RA 500M pdf It's easy to apply with a 9" roller and mine is fully intact after 11 years and looks good for another 10 or 15! TDS - RA 500M (1).pdf It is a bit more expensive than the Jotan product though.

I sail on the East Coast as well as owning a NB and I agree that lumpy boating can be far cheaper than canal boating. It's easy to buy a really nice 2nd hand cruising yacht for under £20k, often well under. Yachts tend to be shorter and therefore cheaper to keep in a marina and I know of mud berths in Essex where one can moor a boat for £50 per year! There is no annual licence fee, no boat safety scheme costs, no requirement for insurance unless it's required by your marina and no pump-out costs. (but that's for another thread)

You are quite right to say that getting all the strands of a 70 or 95mm² flex hot enough to flux and tin adequately is difficult. There is a risk also that in doing so the heated strands may become more brittle and liable to fracture in time. Not only is a properly crimped terminal, as you say quicker and easier than soldering, it is also mechanically preferable. I'm not aware of any UK equivalent standards for boat wiring, but in the good old USA, the American Boat and Yacht Council in their standard E-11, state that solder should not be used as a sole method of connection, whereas crimping can, and is indeed the advised method.

To start the avalanche: solder after a good crimping is okay as a belt and braces approach, but I certainly would rely solely on solder alone on a boat.

Actually, I bought a brand new 8t hydraulic crimper from eBay for less than £30 and they are still available from a number of retailers. It came with a wide range of interchangeable heads and it produces a very neat, strong crimp for cables up to 70mm². Superb value for money! I now use my MC4 crimpers for all my crimping of thinner tri-rated type cables, because the profile of each crimping hole grips the strands better than does a standard crimper: if you look closely you will see what I mean. A pair of these will also cost £30 from eBay.

I completely agree: we had more wind than the books advise and from the worst direction, wind over tide out of King's Lynn and it was choppy. What surprised me was how well a 70' NB coped with such conditions; no water over the bow, just spray and even the rolling motion wasn't unsettling. We always felt safe and in control and felt a huge sense of achievement and satisfaction having done the trip by ourselves.

Despite the BBC, Willy weather and another online weather forecaster agreeing on the morning of the adventure that winds would be less than 10mph and broadly from the south, we were surprised to find ourselves exiting the Lynn channel with 17mph NNE of true wind over a couple of knots of tidal current, making short, steep, choppy seas. When we turned the corner, the wind eased to 15mph and the deeper water and lack of tidal current reduced the swell greatly, but it was on the beam so the splashing was exchanged for rolling. I should say though, that long, heavy, narrowboats are relatively stable vessels and at no point did we feel uncomfortable and certainly never unsafe. At low tide, there is so much sand about that the fetch is very short, so the waves we experienced weren't large, perhaps 50cm trough to crest at their worst. Entering Boston, the wind was then behind us and in the same direction as the current, so the sea was almost flat. You can't feel unsure of where you are, or where you should be going with the Navionics app: see the screen shot showing our track below.

We only have 3rd party insurance with Basic Boat, so I doubt that they would care, but I confess, I didn't ask! Neither did I ask last year when we did Sharpness to Portishead. Denver to Boston is more complicated than the Tidal Severn navigation wise, but in my opinion less risky. The tidal flow under the Severn bridge is impressive and if caught in a blow out there, wind over tide, the wave height could swamp a narrowboat. The navigation app I used makes both trips doable without a pilot, plus, in The Wash, the navigation buoys are plentiful and on the Severn, the leading marks are excellent. Neither trip is particularly demanding, providing the breezes are gentle and the seas calm, but don't try otherwise!

I thought it worth reviving this thread for anyone considering crossing The Wash from Denver Sluice to Boston Grand Sluice via King's Lynn without a pilot; with a little planning it isn't that complicated and is hugely satisfying. I should stress that waiting for the right weather is critical for a comfortable and safe crossing in a narrowboat. We did the trip with southerly 9mph winds forecast, but what we got was 17mph NNE winds causing nasty steep waves, but the NB coped very well, taking no water over the bow, just a little spray. My advice would be to aim for winds of less than 10mph, but certainly our boat felt reassuringly safe with a lot more wind than that, even when we turned and took the swell beam on. We did have on our phone the Navionics navigation App which is simplicity itself to use and can be downloaded for a two week free trial if you only want it for a single trip. I personally wouldn't have done the crossing without it, in fact we used it last year when we did the tidal Severn, also without a pilot, from Sharpness to Bristol via Portishead. From kingslynnport.co.uk one can download up to date charts and tide tables and the very helpful lock keepers at Denver and Boston will tell you exactly what time to arrive at their locks for safe passage. In order to arrive at Boston at a respectable time in the late afternoon/evening, you will need to lock out at Denver in the morning. We left Denver at noon and locked in at Boston at 8.20pm that evening. High tide at Denver is about an hour after high at Kings Lynn, and on a big spring such as we had, it was necessary to set out an hour after high at Denver, to allow the water level to drop enough for our NB to pass safely under the low bridge at Downham Market. The leg down to King's Lynn takes about 90 minutes with the boats through-the-water speed of about 4.5mph, plus a tidal current of 3.5mph, the distance being about 12 miles. There is plenty of water for the trip down to King's Lynn, but impressive sand bars mean that one has to stick to the outside of all bends on the way. It's useful to have previously taken your boat down the Great Ouse relief channel, mooring at the excellent Heron pub at Stowbridge and walking up the tidal Ouse for 1 mile towards Denver to where the worst sandbanks lay, to see at low tide the best route to navigate. Having navigated down to King's Lynn, you are already 3 & 1/2 hours after local high tide, so there should be no commercial traffic about. There will still be plenty of water for a boat drawing less than 3 feet and a useful ebb current of about 1.5 - 2mph. The Lynn channel is very well marked with large red and green buoys that are kept accurately positioned to protect the fishing fleet. The navigation app is also very useful, showing exactly where you are, tidal heights and speed of current and direction. It is also useful once you reach deep water and turn to cross open water towards Boston. Once in deep water, one might as well slow right down to avoid having to anchor or wait around, waiting for the tide to make enough for the approach to Boston on the other side. If you do arrive early, grounding a narrowboat on the flat, clean sandbanks and hopping off for a walk is a safe and fun thing to do. Again, using the navigation app and navigation buoys, the approach to Boston is even easier than the Lynn channel was on the other side, plus, the tide will be rising, so there is no concern about grounding and getting stuck. From Roger's Bank, where you anchor or play on the sand, to Boston Port where there is an excellent waiting pontoon, is about 11 miles and will take about two hours with the flood tide current helping to push you along at 5-6mph. This is where you await instruction from the Boston lock keeper to proceed for the final 20 minute leg to his lock. Once through, there are very good and secure 5 day CRT moorings just a few hundred yards beyond. A useful website for wind and swell forecasts is: www.willyweather.co.uk and a live webcam looks out over The Wash at Hunstanton to see the sea state at: www.hunstanton.webcam/south-prom Certainly having a guide or pilot can be reassuring, but for us it wasn't necessary at all and we enjoyed the full satisfaction of having conquered The Wash by ourselves.

...and is sensitive to UV light and degrades/discolours in exposed locations.

Has anyone ever tried the attachments that turn pressure washers into DIY wet blast machines? I assume that they are better than water alone, but will they cut through blacking, rust etc? Are they slower, faster, better or worse than a Tercoo? I'm guessing that they use a lot of grit and that may be expensive, but a professional grit blasting company may charge many thousands of pounds, so if it works, a fortune could be saved.