dmr

Stone were pretty organised, they had the huge plastic cover all ready to drop over the boat. Because ours was an unplanned job they had hirers cars parked quite close so had to cover those too. I think they just do one big dry dock clean up every year or two which keeps the costs down a little bit, and have all their own equipment so no sub contractors. Epoxy gives much better protection but you still need to come out of the water quite often to fix the scrapes (unless you are a static boat). I think every 2 years with blacking, every 3 or 4 years with epoxy.

We paid Stone to do the lot, We had done it twice before ourselves so knew how hard and dirty it was 😀 Plan was a standard blacking so the boat was pressure washed and scraped, this revealed some pitting so after negotiation with the bossman they agreed to do an epoxy job. They spent the next day wrapping the cabin in a plastic bag, plus other prep, and told us we had no access to the boat the following day. We hired a car and went for a drive. I think we came back late afternoon and the boat was blasted and they had just started to put the first coat of epoxy on. It might have been cheaper to spend the whole day in a pub but the dog was a lot younger then and less skilled at pub going.

I think the grit blasting might be to "special order only". Its a crap job so I got the impression that they only do a few each year.

I note that Debdale Wharf, who do a posh job, are quoting £26 per square metre which is a whole lot cheaper, but then charge extra to move the boat into the blasting bay, and then £45 per hour for preparation. I think (far from sure) that Stone Canal Cruising charged us about about £2000 to grit blast and epoxy the boat (70 foot) but that was a good price and was a fair few years ago. I think £55 per foot is a bit steep, that's almost £4000 for a 70 footer.

And Marple is pretty popular, as is Devizes, and Hatton. A pretty and busy flight of locks is going to be popular. A small family walked most of Marple with us with the children giving a little bit of help at every lock, you can't do that with a boat lift. Sadly there is no tea room or shop, a missed opportunity from CRT.

Is that the same bit that used to be owned by Kate Bush? It was closed for a year a few years ago whilst they argued about who was going to pay. Some breaches take months to fix whilst others get done in a week or two. That doesn't look too bad, as long as it doesn't get any worse,

Im a member so they can't be too selective 😀

Is that in case a boat got stuck, came back a year later and completely forgot they got stuck before ? 😀

Bet you never did the Huddersfield narrow 😀 and the South Stratford must have been a bit tight.

In general its not shock loads, its the crank going into resonance excited by the firing frequency of the cylinders (or a harmonic of). This causes excessive torsional movement that stresses the crank and as you would intuitively expect this occurs at the front, not at the flywheel because its hard to make the flywheel move quickly (thats what its for) so the damper must always go at the front to take the energy out of the torsional movement. There are a few special dampers that can go in the flywheel but that's specialist stuff. Some dampers will help with crank bending as well as torsion, sometimes by accident rather than design..

I don't know where the tarp came from. I suspect top gates of 36 can be leaky and need careful coaxing into place to seal (like many Rochdale locks) so if it was a 36 bottom paddle that might explain it. They do have telemetry. I once took a lot of water to fill the Littleborough flight and CRT turned up quickly and told me off. Have heard that telemetry was maybe not working. It should be easy? to produce software to detect a slow draining. There have been cases of a paddle lifted and CRT have not responded to they so they certainly do not always detect levels falling. Jims pound has a lot of problems, periodically CRT turn up and put in green dye to track the water loss but never fix it. The feed was turned off when we went to look but must be back on now as theres plenty water coming past us.