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gatekrash
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Posts posted by gatekrash
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Today, Audlem, SU. Shroppie Fly was very busy at lunchtime, but must have been missing out as the sign on the door said 'no food-staff issues'.
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3 hours ago, Lily Rose said:
Yes to this I think.
My pension from Royal Mail started 6 years ago and is, I think, very similar to the civil service one. It was calculated as 1/80 of final salary per year of service (I only did 30 years so 10 short of the full 50% pension) and there was also a tax free lump sum of, I think, 3 year's pension. It would have possible to convert some or all of the lump sum to pension but I considered the multiplier was not in the employee's favour (surprise surprise) so I didn't
Sounds pretty much identical to my electricity board pension, based on 80ths with a 3x multiplier lump sum, and a scheme retirement age of either 61 or 63 depending on when you joined
I was really lucky in that when they privatised us it was just after the Robert Maxwell pension scandal so they wrote a load of protection into law for our scheme, and the company in its various incarnations over the years really wanted rid of us old 'protected persons' as they couldn't move us onto their defined contribution scheme instead.
It meant that they ended up making me redundant at 48, with one of our scheme rules being that if I commuted the redundancy into my pension then by law they had to pay my full earned pension when I hit 50, along with the lump sum.
It paid for the boat 2 years ago and now I bum around the Midlands network whenever I feel like it, although still got a lot of ties to home with various voluntary work.
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This morning, Arena Birmingham moorings and fuel boat 'Roach'
And the local residents are still being covid-safe and wearing masks despite the rule changes.
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Nobody seems to have asked (or answered) the really important question on this thread though.
Is their beer any good ?
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12 hours ago, Tracy D'arth said:
You suggest that Morso should not be selling stoves for boats?
Or even that 'Boatman Stoves' needs to change his name and target market !
Especially as he specifically sells coloured stoves "to match the colour of your boat".
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11 hours ago, Alan de Enfield said:
Shirley that would make 'propulsion' diesel at over £2, with garage 'white' at £1.69 (full tax and duty paid) its worth taking a couple of Jerry cans to the 'local garage'.
Indeed, we put 50 litres in a couple of weeks ago at our marina on our usual 60/40 split and it was just over £100. We said we'll use the cans next time and just get white.
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I've still got my dad's - he was a TV engineer in the 60s and 70s. Still working, I pull it out from time to time to check it. I do remember him stripping it and fixing it once when I was a kid, but then he was used to playing with fiddly electrical equipment!
Wouldn't use it in preference to the cheap plastic multimeter though, I'd be too scared of dropping it, and anyway the rubber on the probes has perished.
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We keep our boat on the same marina as David. We've a couple of oil filled radiators set on low thermostats and on a timer (not frost stats, just the lowest setting). Last winter we were using about £7 a week in electric off the bollard. This year we went from mid Jan to the end of Feb and had used less than a tenner. Definitely a mild one!
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1 hour ago, Tonka said:
Carry on.
I know someone who reported a body in the canal at Little Venice. The police were called. They dragged the body out and put it on the foredeck of the boat. 4 hours later the mortuary people turned up and took the body away. Needles to say the people didn't move that day.
Not unusual unfortunately. We've literally just done a body recovery this morning. Trawled up by a fishing boat, who reported it in but left it in the water. Lifeboat located and recovered onboard, we assisted with transfer onto the marina pontoon where it was left in the care of the police SOCOs, who were then waiting for the coroner to turn up. We were there for 3 hours, and they reckoned the coroner was going to be at least another hour or so before they arrived.
All that time the marina has been closed, with nobody allowed to their boats.
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2 hours ago, Goliath said:
This has been my favourite pint for a long time now.
And a real treat when I can get it.
Sea fury, AKA ‘Spesh’.
dunno why picture is on side
Unfortunately Sharps beer went downhill after Molson Coors bought them out about ten years ago and pushed Doom bar out to every pub in the country. It used to be a great pint many years ago, now it's just average.
Sea Fury is one of their smaller volume brews and hence a lot better, until MC deems it to be selling well and decide to start mass producing it I guess.
If you can ever find it outside Devon, try a pint of draught Jail Ale from Dartmoor brewery. Properly local brewed nectar. Or a pint of their Legend for a lighter session brew.
Thing is when I go up to the boat in the Midlands then I want to drink local beer brewed there, not something that followed me up the M5, so I avoid anything that i recognise from down here.
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Today, Astwood lock 19 gate replacement, W&B canal.
And Astwood lock 18.
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Down in "sunny" Devon we (HM Coastguard) have got a briefing tomorrow morning to cover off what safety patrols we need to put out. Last time we had a really bad one back in 2014 when the railway at Dawlish washed away I can remember being stood in the street at Plymouth Hoe keeping the public away from wave watching, with the storm surge pushing the sea about knee deep up the road, and we were about 20 feet above the normal high water level. The waves were knocking massive limestone wall coping stones away and pushing them along like little pebbles.
However we're driving up to the boat on Friday morning as a stopover on the way to a friend's wedding on Saturday at Northampton, so hopefully we'll be being blown in the right direction.
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1 hour ago, doratheexplorer said:
The majority of boat owners never move their boats. This has been true for decades. It's nothing to do with the young generation.
Also not specific to canals. The majority of boats in my lumpy water marina never move either according to the marina staff. Think it's just a boat thng !
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6 hours ago, DandV said:
While boating is nice all boats need work and money. Big old wooden sailing boats needs lots of work and lots of money to keep them afloat and doing what they were built to do.
In the case of the 100 year old plus yachts of the Classic Yacht Charitable Trust in Auckland that is to race.
Back to the work. Slipping for antifouling and anode replacement this morning. The two biggest boats of the fleet, 1894 Robert Logan designed and built Waitangi, and the 1897 Arch Logan designed and built Thelma.
Almost identical rigs but half a generation difference in the hulls.
Bit like icebergs nearly 3m underwater on Waitangi.
Think I'll stick with my own anti fouling job. Done in just over 2 litres !
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17 hours ago, MrsM said:
I like Roland's 'investing in life' concept. We bought our boat for holidays not to live aboard. Now that hubby can work from home we get at least 14-16 weeks away on it each year (not counting odd weekends). We reckon a week's holiday would cost us roughly £1k so we are getting good value out of our boat (even with our mooring fee added in) and a much better, happier and healthier quality of life.
I agree with this entirely.
I get where IanD is coming from about buying a boat for holidays being financially daft, but that's not actually the case as long as you use the boat.
We bought because we were fed up with hire restrictions and reckoned we'd get more value out of our own boat, especially as we've both retired early whilst fit enough to enjoy life.
So far we reckon moorings, licence, maintenance and running costs are between 3.5 to 4k per year. But we've had at least 7 full weeks away including 'peak' season weeks, not counting all the odd weekends up the cut to the pub and the Christmas and New year trips out. Even just the full weeks would have been well over 7k's worth of hire costs and without any worry about getting the boat back at exactly the right time, so we're well up on the deal. To be fair we've put more hours on the engine in the last 12 months than the previous owner did in 5 years though !
And for us, living at the bum end of the country, having a boat in the Midlands is a great base to use as a stop off point for visiting other parts of the country, like a second home with the added benefit of being able to move it.
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56 minutes ago, SarahSails said:
Two more questions if I might! Does anyone have any suggestions as to the prettiest canals?
Given the boat's at Saul junction, I'd go up the Severn to Stourport and then up the S&W which I think is a really lovely canal. From there you have loads of choices, up the Shroppie or around Brum and then anywhere north or east !
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I was just looking for the popcorn too !!
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3 hours ago, Captain Pegg said:
As I related on another thread a couple of days ago I have a 53 year old boat which was insured at the time of purchase in 2015 upon the proviso of me supplying an up to date hull survey. I've just renewed for a seventh year with no subsequent requirements for further survey. That's with Haven Knox-Johnston, or whatever they are called this week.
Agree ref Haven Knox-Johnson (or MS Amlin as they were last year).
My lumpy water boat is 1979, surveyed at 25 years old and they wrote to me back then telling me that as long as I stayed with them they wouldn't want another survey done. Boat is now 42 years old and I've never had to re-survey it.
Narrowboat is now also insured with them, and they said the same thing to me for that when I asked them about surveys. Hopefully they don't change their mind !
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1 hour ago, JJPHG said:
Sadly the 3 attempts over the Xmas break (all different recipes) failed to do much 🙁. Didn't come out much different to how it started. It's thick enough to keep its shape on a spoon (barely) but the stuff I remember from the farm round the corner from my Nan's was thick enough that you could put a spoon in it and the spoon would stay upright in the pot.
You're probably using homogenised 'standard' full fat milk.
You need proper gold top channel island milk from Guernsey or jersey cows, preferably straight from the cow, unhomegenised. It's all about the fat content and how it's distributed in the milk.
My Mrs has been making it for years, but we have access to a farm which we can get the milk from direct. She just puts it in a pan on a very very low heat, warm not hot and never letting it boil. After a while it'll form a load of small bubbles, at that point turn off the warmth then let it cool, preferably overnight, it'll form a crust which you can then skim off.
Daft really, being a Devon lad we can buy it cheap locally but still make our own from time to time.
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On 30/12/2021 at 21:03, Philip said:
Are the BCN, southern Staffs and Worcs and south eastern Trent and Mersey canals popular routes for hire boats based on the southern part of the four counties ring?
I can imagine a lot of hire boats based at the northern end going up the Llangollen canal.
The southern S&W from Stourport up to Aldersley can be busy, you'll get the hire boats from ABC at Worcester and Alvechurch, Starline at Stourport, Anglo Welsh at Tardebigge and Black Prince at Stoke Prior doing the Stourport ring.
We did the Black Country ring in August and thought it was generally reasonable from the bottom of the Aston flight round to Great Heywood, but once we got back onto the S&W it was heaving again.
We were chatting to our friend yesterday who did Droitwich, up the Shroppie and on to Llangollen and back in early October (our plan for the end of this year), out of school holiday season and he said it was still busy then.
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1 hour ago, Slim said:
I'll add a quote (from my dad to my sister),
"Getting olds no fun"
And to add the postscript from a mate of mine
'but it still beats the alternative'.
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11 minutes ago, George and Dragon said:
Turbo? Of course. Not that the Series III had anything so sophisticated.
When I started with my 1959 S2 then we just tweaked the carb mixture up a bit and wound off the steering lock stops so that the tyres hit the leaf springs on full lock which made it go round corners tighter 😁
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3 hours ago, George and Dragon said:
some drivers who 'turn the wick down' when it's time for the MOT and then turn it back up again.
This was a standard trick back when I was competition trialling my land rover. The pump was wound up to overfuel from low revs so that the pick up was instantaneous and the turbo kicked in straight away with no lag, but the downside was a big puff of black smoke as soon as you touched the throttle. MOT time it would get wound back off again until the next trial. Having said that the landy probably only did about 100 miles a year and 90% of that was in low range !
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Today at Droitwich.
Electric fishing for Zander control. A couple of very large tubs full taken out, with some huge fish in there.
Easier and quicker than maggot dangling!
Tonic required. Send in your photos of what is nice on the waterways now.
in General Boating
Posted
Today, Nantwich, SU.
Obligatory aqueduct picture.
And public art near bridge 92.