lifeintheslowlanes

Hi cheers for all advice, definitely some very good points raised that have made me question possibly wasting a lot of time and effort for not much gain. Haven't got very good signal at my current mooring so will respond to everything when I get somewhere with better reception.

Kind of covered this with my other response. Hull was originally designed to be an unpowered barge. Has about 3ft draft, and about a foot ish up to the gunwhales. So should be able to take a fairly big load given the size of the boat. Wheelchair user is just a family member who visits once a month, and theres an adjustable ramp for loading it. I did possibly think I could add a couple of large water bladders up front to use for water ballast maybe? Allowing me to put say 800l of water in the bow would give quite good control of how it sat without much other weight in it.

Yes, have my mca boat masters and various other qualifications, crt have accepted an in principle operating proposal.... Hence now I'm at this stage. The boat is quite heavily ballested, originally this was to pull it lower into the water to make getting a chair on and off possible without a ramp. But in practice you need the ramp every time anyways. Oroginally the person building the Hull was going to use it as an unpowered skip type barge, ran out of funds and the person who bought it added an actual bow, the cabin etc etc before it ever saw water. So a lot of this ballast could be removed to raise it some in the water. It has around 3ft of draft due to its original intended purpose. So I have no doubts that the hull would be suitable for use, just removing the cabin that I need some advice on. Did look into the butty option but more license fees, more blacking, more maintence, plus purchase cost. Not bothered about it making loads of money, I have my business which is going fine, I just like the idea of being able to offset some of my cruising costs, as well as add a bit of purpose to me wandering around constantly.

Yep good point. I'd thought about the well deck ones but had overlooked the old sink drain.

Hi... Boats a 45ft cruiser stern, hull is quite solidly built, 16mm base, 12mm sides etc... I'm wanting to remove the forward 20ft ish if it isn't a stupid amount of work, to create an open cargo hold for trading coal from. As far as I can tell, I'll need to weld in a new bulkhead for the front of the cabin, add a door etc. Remove everything from inside. Adjust electrics and plumbing to accommodate. Cut the cabin off. Finish all the edges nicely. Repaint. Probably want to board the floor, fit some extra pumps etc too... Am I missing any huge jobs? Would this require any structural reinforcements to the front of the hull after the cabin has been removed? Has anyone had this done somewhere before? Could you reccomend a boat yard to carry this kind of work out? Don't really want to sell and replace the vessel with something else as its wheelchair accessible for a family member which would be next to impossible to achieve with a trad stern motor. Cheers for any advice.

Ah that's odd i'm on a gold license too but haven't recieved anything as of yet. That does however answer the only question I had which was the situation with hermitage and denver... guess i'll be staying put for a little while longer. Whats another couple months when i've been stuck for the last 4 haha. Might be a good excuse to get out on some wild moorings for a while though so it's not all bad I guess!

Cheers, explains most of what I wanted to know! Did think they were just going to leave us in the dark as per usual lol.

Does anyone have any clue if the Envinronment Agency have released a statement for liveaboards on the Anglian Waterways? There's a fair few boaters on the lower half of the Great Ouse, none of us can seem to find any information about it online, nor get in contact with them on the phone to ask if such a thing has been issued or not. Would be nice to know what's going on... whether the lock maintenence will be finished on time still and whether Earith sluice is remaining open? If anyone knows anything at all please do enlighten me haha. Sorry if this is the wrong sub-forum...didn't know where was best to post it.

Does anyone know if the Environment Agnecy / Anglian Waterways have realeased a statement? There's a whole load of boaters on the lower half of the great ouse waiting for the lock works to be finished (april 6th). No idea if this is still happening or whether Earith lock will be open?

Going back up north from St Neots on the Great Ouse, need to stop at Denver for a week or so to sort some stuff out... my question is, does taking the New Bedford River up to Denver shave enough time off of the journey to make driving in a straight line the whole way worth it or not? I find the run via Ely to take what feels like forever. I assume all I have to do is phone up Denver with an arrival time the day before then just wait on the lock landing if I’m a bit early? Any advice appreciated, cheers.

Yeah as above it's hydrophonic noise I have been noticing. Gearbox itself is fine, just always had boats with outboards/drive legs in the past so haven't experienced it in the past, hence my slight worry which went a bit as I noticed loads of other boats doing it too.

One thing I would suggest if you're using a macbook, I know for the older original magsafe charger you could buy a cigarette lighter style adapter for them... think it was called the apple magsafe airline adapter, not sure if you can get them for the newer style magsafe connector or not though. Would reccomend going down this route if possible as you're not stepping the voltage up to mains, to then drop it back down to whatever voltage the laptop wants. I never really got on with the smaller cheapo inverters in the past, always had similar issues of them giving low voltage warnings constantly... I have a bigger 5kw unit on my new boat and it's much better as things like the low voltage warning and cut off etc are all user programmable with a display on the top of the unit. Plus it's handy as you can get away with running mains vaucuum cleaners and electric chainsaws to name a few lol.

PRM120 if I recall, deffo a PRM though, only a 2011 box with 1000 hours so not too old... Ahh this was what I thinking of... interesting cheers!

Can someone explain why my reverse gear is noisy? I've noticed quite a few boats also make an odd sound when in reverse, so assume it's just how most gearboxes are designed? But what causes it to actually be like this? Changed my gearbox oil a while back concerned there was something wrong with it but It just seems all narrowboats do a similar thing....

Ah right interesting, done it a handful of times with my mppt controller and not had an issue, the other one I used for the 100w panel is just some £6 ebay special and that's had it done almost every day for 2 years lol

Right okay, some points noted, basically just give it ago and see if it works, i've ordered a step up converter so I can experiment lol. Previous points about the charge controller noted, didn't realize that was a thing to be honest, surprised I haven't killed a controller yet knowing that! Your suggestion about using a 6 volt battery and then stepping up to 12v for any accessories isn't a bad one actually, my old man (used to teach electronics at cambride uni in the 80s and worked as an aircraft electrician for the raf prior to that) said exactly the same thing about running a 6 volt battery to stabilize the voltage better... As for the 100w panel, I know it's overkill, I had it kicking about from my old boat and just stuck it on the starter battery to give it a use. If I do go down the 6v route I guess what I could do, is buy a 2nd starter battery (i've wanted to fit one for a while now), have the 100w panel charge both those batteries, have them connected to the engine by a 2 way isolator switch so i'm only using the main battery for starting and the backup one for redundancy, then use a 12v to 6v battery charger off of the second battery for powering the dinghy etc... Need to get a few bits and have an experiment as to what works well I think...

Haha no, the panel is on the roof of my narrowboat isolated from my main 600 watt bank, runs into a seperate charge controller on the boat, that then feeds into a 2 way switch, one output will then charge the starter battery, and then the 2nd output goes to a waterproof socket outside which I can then plug my dinghy into outside when not using it to charge it up... if that makes sense lol

So, building a small dinghy to replace my current one and to use as a prototype for a larger version... Anyways, question being, the dinghy is going to have a small 12v system (to run a small bilge pump, little flood light and 12v socket) but the outboards (tomos 4.8hp) charging output is for a 6v system at 17 watts (so I assume 7.2 volts at a little under 3 amps), could I get away with using a small dc step up converter (for example https://amzn.to/345Ay1E) and setting its output voltage to 14.4v to charge the 12v battery with the outboards 6v output? or is this a horrible idea for some reason? The battery is only going to be a little 7ah unit, and will mostly be charged by a cable connected to an outdoor socket on my boat which is just connected directly to a 100 watt panel on the roof, so the small power output of the outboard isn't a concern, just figure it would add a little bit of run time to the battery as it would at least be getting something back in.... Thoughts? Is there a much better way to do this? Sorry if i've explained it stupidly or rambled lol. Cheers for any advice....

Yeah a few people have mentioned the wider stuff isn't as fun in a narrowboat. Shall Investigate that option too then cheers Everything noted, will mostly be single handed, guess that's just something you pick up with time handling the boat in some of the deeper locks.

Kept the front end just clear of the bridge so I could leave the chimney and bike on the roof, but the back had maybe 4 inches or so under it, there was one coming down after me and the lockie had him disassemble his cratch cover and the boards to fit under lol

Are you heading upstream at the moment? Just got back up to St Neots from Ely yesterday and the last few days from Earith up to St Neots have gotten consistently more interesting lol. The Brownshill lock was completely flooded over even 5 days ago, both gates may as well of been completely up... Had a couple hairy moments to say the least?

Cheers for that! Must admit when I had my old Fairline moved from Oulton Broad up to near Kings Lynn after the engine died the only movers that were significantly cheaper were the ones who weren't willing to send over proof of insurance... pricing was within £30 of the 6 people who were actual legitimate businesses with insurance and the likes...

Coming from a sailing background the thought of taking the thing across the channel sounds absolutely horrifying lol. Do they not even have a vhf set for in case of emergencies? I figure i'd rather rely on a vhf set than my mobile playing ball. Would be interested to know more! Shall give the article a read... The few people i've spoken to about it have said a similar figure, around 4-5k seems to be the general consensus as far as i've heard... Going to get in touch with a couple of shipping companies and get a quote within the next couple weeks just to be sure of a rough ball park figure... Link doesn't work, tries to redirect to a local iP address... assuming it's a file you have stored on a network storage device at home? Could you try and share the pdf via filebin.net or a similar service as it sounds like an interesting read? Cheers

Would rather go down the line of a new regulator anyways as less joins/adapters in the gas system is probably the smartest thing to do... I'm fairly lucky in that i've got 600 watts of solar on board and a reverse osmosis setup for filling the water tank (which at 6 euros a tank for a fill up it sounds like i'll be using a lot more than currently where I normally use a tap to save the filters from getting hammered considering it's free lol). Didn't realize that Belgium operates like that so i'll do a bit more googling on the subject, cheers. I think there was a mention of the phase-reversing adapter / socket tester in billy bubbles' blog, as i'd already added it to my list of things to make/buy...