Neil2

I've always been sceptical about this "tunnel bands" theory. If you are following another narrowboat in a tunnel you don't pick out the white bands on the stern of a boat in front as your headlight is pointing slightly above horizontal and the bands are too low. In any case the old working boats wouldn't have had a powerful tunnel light would they? So I'm not sure (is anyone) where the practice of painting red and white bands on the stern of narrowboats comes from. IIRC the old British Waterways boats had yellow and blue bands, so I think it's origins are in fleet identification.

Box shaped cabins only really work aesthetically and practically if you have wider than normal side decks, dutch barge style if you like. As for "The finest narrowboat shells you can buy", er, no.

I imagine a lot of folk would scoff at this, but the bowel cancer screening programme is one of the great successes of the modern NHS and I'm told if you have health insurance in the States, regular analysis of your faeces is mandatory. Prevention rather than cure is extremely cost effective.

If there's more pictures like that the book would be worth it just for the photos. It's obviously Airedale, somewhere on the stretch beyond Kildwick I would guess?

No he clearly doesn't build the shells. One of those boats in the gallery is clearly a Liverpool boat. Using poured concrete ballast makes no sense at all. Neither does using kingspan rather than spray foam insulation - unless you are trying to save time/money of course. Check out what "award" he actually won at Crick.

No doubt we all have stories to illustrate how clueless some people are but I think this one takes some beating. I can't remember exactly where it was, somewhere on the T&M, we were queued behind a boat going up one of the narrow locks as a boat was coming down. There was a hire boat also waiting to come down and we arrived to witness an argument between the crew of the hire boat and the skipper of the boat in front of us. I could sense the skipper becoming increasingly exasperated but eventually she got on her boat and proceeded into the lock whilst the hire boat crew went off in a huff. My wife went up to the lock to help, and it transpired that the argument was about the hire boat crew insisting that because they had arrived at the lock before the boat waiting to go up, it should rightly be their "turn" next. In other words, they were proposing to fill an empty lock even though there was a boat waiting to go up. I suspect they may have been drinking, actually they had almost certainly been drinking, but even so that's taking pig ignorance to a level I didn't think possible.

I'm convinced that those who reckon Owatrol doesn't work do not follow the instructions, and/or lose patience with it as it can take some time to cure.

It's not that, it's just that we are all familiar with that feeling of excitement and anticipation that comes with the prospect of your first boat, and that wave of euphoria that will sweep over the first few calamities. But once that subsides, you find you are either hooked on boats/canals for life, or you move on to something else. Dare I say it's a little like getting married... No-one ever thinks their marriage is going to end in divorce but a heck of a lot do. You shouldn't worry about buying a "lemon", to be honest even at the top end of the market you are always buying someone else's problems or someone else's neglect, and no amount of expert opinion will avoid that. What you should bear in mind though is you may buy a boat that turns out to be totally unsuitable. Over the years I've been a member of this forum I have witnessed scores of posts from first time buyers that go into great detail about what sort of boat they want "I need a 57 footer with a semi trad stern and reverse layout with a walk though bathroom " etc etc. Fact is, you have no idea what will suit you until you have lived on a narrowboat for a while and done a fair bit of cruising in all weathers. So the best thing you can do is what Bee said and that is buy something that you know you will be able to sell when you have found out what it is you really want. Whatever you do don't buy something quirky just because it appeals to you and don't buy something on the spot. Even if it's love at first sight go home and think about it for a few days, if someone gets it in the meantime never mind there's always another boat. I was talking to a surveyor recently and he told me there are instances of people buying boats without even physically viewing them, utter, utter, madness, but that's how the market is at the moment. Don't get sucked into it.

I like Owatrol. I know some are sceptical but I've used it in situations like this where it's just not possible to do anything more than remove the loose rust and it works for me. Ever since the demise of Trustan I don't think there's ever been an effective rust converter.

I'll say the term canal "port" should be reserved for places where sea going vessels can, or could, unload goods for further shipment by canal. So, for example, inland locations such as Manchester and Rotherham are ports, Birmingham is not. I don't know about Nottingham - did sea going cargo vessels routinely unload there?

It's my bad grammar - what I meant to say was most (of those who have an escape plan) etc. I wouldn't know about liveaboards in general. Those I have met I would say over half do have a safety net, but that's probably not a representative sample.

I'm not saying you shouldn't go down this route but you have to have an escape strategy. For most people that become full time liveaboards this involves keeping a house/flat and renting it out, say, or making sure there is enough in the bank to buy again when the need arises. Living on a boat is not an "alternative" lifestyle, it's not an alternative because it isn't sustainable as many members of this forum will tell you. You will get fed up with the routine, the weather, the woeful performance of CaRT, the many idiots that populate the canals these days, and the constant pressure of keeping on top of maintenance. But even if you don't. you will get old, that is beyond your control, and there will come a point where if nothing else, the aging process will make living on a boat difficult if not impossible. You have to remember that, on a boat, the slightest reduction in your physical capabilities can create obstacles that simply would not exist on land - especially if you live alone. Of course, you could simply take a chance and when the time comes throw yourself on the mercy of the state, but I wouldn't advise it. Things are bad now in the public sector and I suspect are going to get worse. But you have a while to think about it, and frankly the way prices are at the moment you need to take a rein check anyway. What I would do is wait until the end of October and start looking at boats when it's cold and wet, and the days are darker. This should choke off a lot of the rosy tinted specs buyers but it will also allow you to imagine the reality of life on a canal boat 365 days of the year.

When the broker first saw our boat she said straight away it'll be a divorced bloke that buys this. Now I understand why. She was right, too.

That is the boat I'm thinking of. It's a raw water cooled BMC 1.5 right? I remember some years ago this boat came up for sale and had to be fully overplated, done at Collingwood IIRC. The rudder was loose then so how on earth the previous owners have managed I don't know - unless they never moved the boat. I've no reason to believe the hull will be suspect but it would be wise to have it out of the water and check it.

As regards "difficult locks" the only issue you might have is the deeper ones eg Kings Sutton where the big single bottom gates can be a bit uncooperative, otherwise the South Oxford is about as easy as it gets. Restricted opening times, only during droughts. There isn't, to my knowledge, a vandalism problem on the Oxford well not yet anyway.

If you do need a sparky ask at Bridgehouse Marina at Garstang they have a good guy who does a lot of work there I think he's called Neil, I did have contact details but can't find them.

Hmmm.. I'm thinking it would be useful to have a list of hire bases, & marinas that are easily accessible by rail - is it worth starting a thread on this?

As I said above, I'm 99% certain this is a boat I came across some years ago, it had been surveyed and the surveyor recommended that boat be overplated and the rudder replaced, among many other things. I'm sure the overplating was done but it sounds like the rudder issue wasn't addressed. (If it's the boat I'm thinking of, it's raw water cooled and has quite a lot of ballast in the engine bay, the bedroom is midships and there's a stove up front on the port side.) The boat was almost certainly built by Doug Moore although it was one of his early efforts whilst he was still trading as JJ Crooke. So establishing just how the rudder is assembled is going to be difficult without docking the boat.

Bear in mind by the end of October it will be colder and darker than it is now and the towpaths will be wet and muddy, all in all not a great recipe for a family holiday with two very small children. You could put them off for life... Kids that are into nature and wildlife will be easily pleased, but in the spring and summer, not as everything is shutting down for the winter. Not too many hire bases are easily accessible by rail either. Stone on the Trent & Mersey is the only one that springs to mind that doesn't involve a taxi.

I believe I know that boat and the rudder assembly needed replacing years ago, I'm amazed it's still working. If it's the boat I am thinking of it's been fully overplated so if you haven't had it out of the water I would get it docked so you can have a good look at the condition of the hull, and you can sort the rudder out at the same time.

Yes, but the schedule provides for the licencing authority to making provision for the "use and operation" of equipment etc. and not necessarily on safety grounds. It's a pretty vague statement but, again, what might have been acceptable in 1995 in terms of the "use and operation" of engines and equipment could be completely different today. At the end of the day the current Chief Executive of CRT clearly believes a licence can be refused/revoked on a breach of conditions, so I'll write to him again and ask exactly what grounds in law he believes the trust have.

In what way does the law specifically provide for enforcement of the BSS though?

As I understand it, all the regulations contained within the Boat Safety Scheme rely on the statutory provisions in the 1995 Act. So if CRT refuse a licence application on the grounds that a boat has not passed the BSE, it is acting entirely within its statutory powers. I don't see a fundamental difference between imposing conditions on the grant of a licence via the BSS and imposing conditions through other reasonable conditions in the licence agreement. The arguments restated above all took place a long time ago, I'm not sure they are totally relevant today. The world has moved on and what might have been seen as draconian 25 years ago might be seen as entirely reasonable today. The way society has accepted severe restrictions on smoking indoors is a good example. The point is, our issue of running engines at night might not have been a big deal in 1995, I don't think it was, but public tolerance of nuisance has changed, and the courts might very well take an entirely different view of what is unacceptable in 2021.

There you go then - you have a number of options but whatever you do I'd suggest you need to get that part of the bilge dried, cleaned up and treated with some form of rust converter/preventer. Many of the early wet bilge boats had a very simple arrangement just a wooden shower platform on top of the baseplate, you could do that, gives you quite a lot more headroom than a shower tray as well.