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Neil2

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Everything posted by Neil2

  1. Pay attention at the back there... Yes - I hadn't really considered that but the OH does like doing locks, so killing time up and down the Peak Forest might not appeal, and it's been a while since we last went to Stalybridge, good thinking.
  2. A few weeks ago there was a lengthy thread on the issue of inconsiderate boaters running engines after 8pm. I said I would contact CRT to seek their advice on this issue, and to suggest that as it seems to be an increasing problem they might like to put some measures in place to monitor it. I sent the letter on 1st Sept. I received a reply this morning signed by Richard Parry, and I don't doubt that he wrote it. So, first point is, if you bother to write to the Chief Executive direct, the chances are he will read it personally. I must admit this took me by surprise as I fully expected to get a reply from some customer relations person further down the line. So credit to Mr Parry. The relevant parts of the reply are: As you might expect, CRT "take breaches of licence conditions seriously" and will make contact with any boaters who have been reported as being in breach of their conditions. The offender is reminded of their conditions and if the matter persists there are processes whereby CRT will ultimately terminate a licence. Mr Parry advises "...others should not take the matter up with the offending boater themselves and potentially put themselves at risk." Instead they should report the matter via customer services either by phone or through the "contact us" part of the CRT website, giving the location and index number of the boat concerned. Not surprisingly CRT would not want to risk any liability issues by advising boaters to tackle boat licence culprits, though Mr Parry doesn't actually say that. Finally, on the issue of monitoring, Mr Parry states that; "We now have a new customer relationship management system in place and can track all cases to identify if there are repeat complaints. It is helpful to receive any reports of boats running their engines or generators outside permitted hours, so that we can monitor the scale of the problem and respond accordingly". Make of that what you will, but the least we can all do is take Mr Parry at his word and assiduously report future incidents as he suggests. We might then find out what "respond accordingly" actually means.
  3. That boat wasn't built by the Gilberts, according to this thread The boat I saw is a 47 foot all steel boat called "Jenny Wren". Quite an odd thing with a BMC 1.5 in its own engine room, and no shower! But it does have classic lines and clearly was built by someone who knew what they were doing. Boats for sale UK, boats for sale, used boat sales, Narrow Boats For Sale 47ft Trad Stern Narrowboat - Apollo Duck
  4. That's pretty much what Shire Cruisers are suggesting. I'd already made the assumption that it would probably be Sunday morning but it would have been nice to get a flying start. The way things are going on the Rochdale with stoppages etc though I'm not taking it for granted we'll get through to Sowerby Bridge. This is the down side of hiring, when you have to keep to a schedule.
  5. We have a commercial property and when we had the recent five year inspection our sparky took me to task for the way I had fitting a ceiling light. It was one of those where the wire ends are "push fit" ie there are no securing screws. He was adamant the wire end still needs a ferrule. What do you think?
  6. Thanks - I imagine we can probably get that far.
  7. Sorry I should have been clearer - this is a hire boat so it's a 2pm start. I reckon the two of us about five hours, so it's a bit tight if it's going dark around 7. I wouldn't bother if it was our own boat but I don't want to get dobbed in to the hire company..
  8. It looks like we'll be heading that way at the end of the month, but the other way, from Ashton under Lyne. I suspect we won't have enough daylight to get to Manchester, do you know of anywhere else on the Ashton it's safe to stay overnight?
  9. I know the Gilberts and Charity Dock are part of canal folklore, but I wasn't aware they actually built complete boats, I thought they were just in the repairs business. But I came across a boat recently that is described as built by Gilbert Brothers of Coventry in 1980. I'm curious as to whether the boat could have been built at Charity Dock or if it was the product of another builder and maybe just fitted out by the brothers.
  10. RCD like the Building Regulations is nothing to do with safety, it's to do with liability. We stopped being concerned with safety quite some time ago.
  11. Never seen anything like that on the inside of a baseplate but if it really has been wet for some time - and that initial photo does look bad - you might expect to see more than the "flash rust" that is typical of most narrowboat bilges. I can't work out what's going on with the ballast - was this depression covered up by concrete/brick ballast and was the ballast resting directly on the base? Whether it needs attention depends how deep it is, with a 12mm base you have a lot of headroom. I like Owatrol for bilges, you can get it into spaces where there's poor access and it because it purges moisture you don't have to completely remove all traces of rust.
  12. Have to agree - if you are going to all the trouble of stripping back to bare metal why not make the most of it.
  13. I've done a fair amount of canal boating now, I've bought and sold a few boats and though I don't have on at the moment, I do keep an eye on the market. I was drawn to a 55' boat recently, enough to make a phone call to the broker and ask a few questions, one of which was to clarify what work had been carried out on the hull. It has been fully overplated to the waterline, ie the baseplate and hull sides. Maybe not unusual for a 30 year old boat, but when I suggested to the broker he was asking rather a high price for an overplated boat entering its 4th decade he replied that yes, it is a little optimistic but in the current market it's not far out... Now unlike others on this forum I don't have anything against buying an overplated boat especially if it's possible to establish exactly why it was done and who did the work, but £50k..?
  14. My only experience with bowthrusters was having to replace one on the Sea Otter I used to own. I tried to live without it but it's almost impossible to handle an Otter without a thruster. It was an electric "Max Power" and though the motor could be heard whizzing away there was no drive to the propeller. I hoped it was the shear pin that had broken but it wasn't so the thing had to come out and as I only had limited time on the lift out it was a case of replacing it with a new unit. I got the old one back home and dismantled it, now I'm no engineer but it was very obvious the drive mechanism was very poorly made. There's a shear pin to protect the transmission, but it was obvious that this pin was far too strong and in my case I guess at some point a foreign object had got caught in the tunnel but instead of the shear pin breaking, the transmission itself had disintegrated. I guess the bigger heavy duty thrusters are more durable, but I was very surprised at how fragile this thing was considering the environment they operate in.
  15. Crikey that's a piece of work (courtesy of Covid-19....?) But really, really useful now there are so many options. I was trying to do a comparison based on weights a while back but gave up. Many thanks.
  16. Those who are suggesting more draconian measures remember the OP says his requests have been answered with "threats and abuse". We don't know who/what we are dealing with here. In my professional life, among many other unpleasant duties, I have had to attend evictions from property and on one notable occasion I had to remove someone from my own. It is not something to go gung ho at, people at their wits end often have nothing to lose.
  17. That's really interesting. The motor being submerged would help with the whining noise, IIRC most of it comes from the motor..? I would have though Hampton was a lot more efficient through the water than a modern narrowboat, so you would have no issue with power, and I do like the idea of having a "big outboard" on a narrowboat, it must be a lot of fun!
  18. I would have thought that would be ample even taking into account the possible power losses. I would certainly want to have a proper "sea trial" before buying another hydraulic boat, you need to get the engine under load in order to be able hear the whine, and remember you have to listen to it for hours on end. One other thing is I suspect such boats are going to be slightly lower in value just because they are different. So a good thing when buying, a bad thing when selling.
  19. We came through Bosley locks during that really hot spell in July and one of the two vlockies confined himself to the bottom three locks simply because they were in the shade. I suppose you couldn't blame him really.
  20. There at least a couple of members on here that have hydraulic drive boats. I had one and like everything there are pros and cons. When I first got the boat there was no information with it on how to maintain/repair the system, so I ran Peachments (I think) who installed it. Simply, the guy explained that these drives are designed for hard working commercial craft so in a leisure boat are usually effectively maintenance free. He said to just keep an eye on the reservoir level, but the indicator on the filter would probably never get to the stage where it needed changing. The boat also had a PSS stern gland, so virtually maintenance free transmission. I wouldn't be at all concerned about these horror stories of pipes fracturing etc. The other big advantage is you have a free hand where to put the engine, but on some of the other boats I've looked at this created as many problems as it solved. One, for example had the engine right up in the bow compartment which obviously made it very quiet for the steerer, but because of the restricted room it looked like an absolute nightmare to maintain, I couldn't even see the fuel filter let alone get at it.. The whining noise from the pump/motor can be really annoying, depending on how you react to noise. My main concern would be the power losses involved. When you research this you get all sorts of estimates and some say you can lose up to 30% compared to conventional shaft drive. So I would only consider it on a narrowboat if the engine was plenty big enough.
  21. I think what depresses me more about incidents like this is that if, for example, they had parked up, come round to the back door and politely asked if we would mind them blocking our drive while they just nipped to the shop, I would have doubtless have agreed. In fact I would have thought what nice people and they would have though the same. Instead of which the encounter left us both thinking the worst of each other. This came up in the recent thread about running engines after 8pm. It's not so much the noise, it's the lack of consideration, the rudeness, and it's so avoidable.
  22. It's not just on the canals, we are inundated with motorhomes these days and last year one of these things the size of a blue whale parked right across the driveway to our house, completely blocking it. The occupants calmly got out and walked off down the street. I couldn't quite believe what I was seeing but I sprinted after them and politely asked what the bloody hell did they think they were doing. They protested that they wouldn't be there very long and "it's so difficult to find parking in this village". The people who tell us that Covid -19 has brought us all closer together and made for a more considerate society are not living on the same planet as me. Whether it's a sense of entitlement or just plain rudeness I see this type of behaviour everywhere at the moment.
  23. Rightly or wrongly I don't tend to use "Aga" as shorthand for these appliances, but it did lead to a very odd conversation with a friend of mine who has just bought his wife an electric camper van. He said it was ok but he wasn't too happy with the "range". We got quite a long way down the road before I realised he was referring to the miles travelled on one charge...
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