dmr

As said, this has been done before but in order to get a cheaper licence. Another avenue to explore is to declare the second boat as a butty to the first (if you can satisfy various conditions) and then CRT just might be more flexible about the mooring. This will also reduce the licence costs a bit.

For a few days away its a day down to Hebden, then a short day on to Sowerby. Salter Hebble is not very inspiring but its a nice walk into Halifax. The other way its a day up to the Summit, then best part of another day down to Littleborough. Not much point going further unless you plan to go all the way to Manchester (though a few do). All canals are closed more in winter because winter maintanance kicks in at the end of October, though last winter (for example) much of the Rochdale was open for much of the winter. Water shortage stoppages are most likely to occur late summer. Rochdale has a lot of locks and they are wide and deep and some people do not like doing these, if you are not an experienced boater then do make sure that you are happy doing these locks before you buy a boat..

We've had problems but nothing like what some have experienced. We have had good transits, bad transits, and in-between transits, but I can only try to give impartial advice based on what we have experienced, and from talking to lots of other boats who often have a bad time. Manchester is hard work and there is a significant probability of having some difficulties. Last time we came up we did New Islington to the Ship (top of Slattocks) in a single day with only two minor groundings and one weedhatch visit, so I could say its all really easy. I know a young lady who got stuck in Newton Heath so left her boat unattended and went for a drink in the pub at lock 69 (the one behind the big steel fence) and had no trouble so I could say that Newton Heath is a really good overnight stop with a great boozer, but that would be giving bad advice. 😀 A recent occassional poster here headed down towards Manchester, gave up, and was asking if the forum could recommend a boat mover.

I can't see into the future well enough to answer your question. The Rochdale has had a lot of stoppages over the last couple of years, its condition is slowly improving but then the CRT money is running out. It has alot of locks and a limited water supply so there will always be a much greater probability of stoppages. You can get all the way down to Sowerby easily, and could go as far as the Salter Hebble locks (use top lock as a winding hole). If you want to go further then that means going down into Manchester which is not for the feint hearted, lots of locks through a housing estate where you will get prop fouls from all the rubbish in the water. If you do this once and decide you hate it then you have a problem 😀 Do you need to be based in Todmorden? and where is the boat? Realistically you should allow 5 days to get from Tod to Manchester (though it can be done in considerably less if nothing goes wrong) so thats a 10 day overhead on any trip that you do.

Thats a big boat so a mooring would make life a lot easier. Engine hours no problem but a much bigger water tank would have been nice. Don't be taken in by the "top end fit out by master craftsmen", this is pretty standard speak in most widebeam adverts. Price looks quite good, but such a big boat could be a liability which might make it harder to sell. The big issue is that buying the boat is the easy bit, finding a mooring might be much harder than just popping down to Brentford and finding one, you might get lucky, or might end up spending years on a waiting list. There are loads of people doing the same as you and only a finite supply of moorings.

I half remember reading somewhere that CRT have said that the Lancaster is not suitable for CC'ing ????? The OP really should not factor in the Ribble link as a means of increasing a limited cruising range. Its a tidal crossing suitable for experienced boaters in good boats with good bigger engines. It has limited passages that have to be booked well in advance and might be cancelled at short notice due to bad weather. If things go wrong it might be months before the OP could return to the Lancaster. CRT are actually pretty good at granting a limited cruising range in response to genuine medical needs but I suspect will then require the boater to play their part and stick to those relaxed rule, and they can be quite harsh with those who continue to break the rules. Having a chat with those nice CRT people on the towpath is a thing of the past, rule enforcement is now ultimately controlled by people in the office who are obliged to apply the rules fairly and equally.

The late and very well informed Nigel Moore did have a slightly diferent interpretation of this. CC'ers are not required to move every 14 days (as you have suggested), but are allowed to stay in one place for up to 14 days (or longer in reasonable circumstances). So the subtle difference is that the 14 day rule is not specifying something that you must not do, but something that you are allowed to do. The inference is that Home moorers do NOT have permission to stay anywhere for up to 14 days (except on the home mooring). I think I remember that CRT did not say that any interpretation of the 14 day rule actually applies to home moorers, they said that they "request" that home moorers obey the same conditions as CCers when out boating.

That don't look like a JD3 to me so I assume a BD3 but hopefully somebody will confirm this. I suspect that hose/elbow is a Beta special. BD3 is now a very old engine so can't really expect Beta to have all the parts.

The JD3 has been out of production by Beta for a while now and the man who had all the parts Knowledge has long since retired. I reckon that tapered hose was a handmade/small production run part wound from a tape of some sort of amalgamating rubber, I have seen similar things elsewhere. That hose on my engine is also looking not too new and sorting this out is on the todo list. A big rework of the copper pipe might be the way to go to get the diameter change done in copper rather than rubber. There is a very small chance that one of the oil cooler end caps might just fit but that would still likely need modes to the copper pipe. A specialist rubber company could likely make a similar hose but it might be costly.

There are lots of pictures of the JD3 and BD3 on the www and they are very different engines so it should be easy to identify which one you have. Assuming its a JD3.. The little hoses connecting water pump to oil filter cooler will be John Deere parts. The big tapered hose from water pump to copper pipe to oil cooler will be a Beta special. The short connectors either end of the oil cooler will be supplied by Beta but are standard off the shelf parts for the oil cooler. Try ASAP. Longer hoses from water pump and header tank to the cooling panel will be supplied by the boat builder but should be available cut to length from a hose specialist. Hoses to calorifier will also likely be semi-standard parts obtained by the boat builder. John Deere have a goodish online parts catalog.

Just to put a spanner in the works..... Fossil fuels are also carbon neutral, its just that the timescale is rather long 😀. and talking of spanners.... Get a big battery and put it on trickle charge for weeks and weeks till it is absolutely fully charged.....then drop a spanner across the terminals....that is what we are doing to our planet 😀

The Tunnel leading up to Tuel Lane Deep Lock (Sowerby Bridge, Rochdale Canal) had some sort of comms system so the Lock keepers could signal to waiting boats (as boats should not enter the tunnel while the lock is emptying). It broke. Now the lock keepers have a whistle, they bend down towards the tunnel and blow the whistle and the sound travels through the tunnel quite well.

I think this might be a good year for the Rochdale, we have been seeing a boat most days recently. The rumours that the Rochdale is about to close (from this forum?). have possibly inspired a few boats to do it while they can 😀. We are down in Tod for a week or two (cheap beer Tuesday at the Lion) and I suspect there are a few more boat movements here than the summit suggesting that some boats turn rather than risking Manchester. Of the boats that I have spoken to at the summit most said that the Manchester 18 was hard work and unpleasant, but few have said it was a nightmare, so maybe things are improving.

I suspect boating is changing and there are more boats not moving much and less boats moving a lot. I also suspect that hire boating has seen a sharp decline in the last couple of years, bad weather and too many "boating season" stoppages have likely put people off, plus its an expensive holiday compared with cheap overseas stuff. However I suspect that out of season hire boating has probably increased. Except for the main runs into central Birmingham I think the BCN is not popular. If you want busy then the North Oxford and Braunston area, plus much of the South Oxford, Trent and Mersey through Stone, Llangollen etc. will please you 😀

But thats the problem and thats why our government is copping out on their carbon neutral plans, claiming that the UK makes only a tiny contribution to the worlds CO2 total. The world is in big boi trouble and we all need to do our bit to help. Just maybe if Europe makes a big effort then China and the USA just might feel pressured to fall in line, though China is actually doing pretty well in some ways. Like us, you already lead a fairly low impact lifestyle, but if you make just a little improvement and tell somebody else about you might just nudge them into action.....go on, buy that extra solar panel 😀

I suspect that there are two main sources of opposition to HVO 1, many boaters are tight fisted and resent paying an extra 20p/litre to save the planet (though rather more if forced to use 100% white HVO), and rather than admit to this like to find some other excuse. 2 The eco warrior purists/electric advocates who will accept nothing less than 100% electrification and 100% abolition of all liquid fuels. Its a liitle bit Like CAMRA who maintain 100% opposition to any keg/pressure dispensed beer and so have totally missed out on the revolution in excellent quality "craft" keg beers that is happening all around us.

Has anybody actually said HVO is carbon neutral? Most www sites that I have looked say it reduces CO2 by up to 90% (I think). I suspect 90% is still optimistic as I believe the production process is quite energy intensive, and I really don't know if all the transport "costs" are also factored in. To me there seams little point in producing HVO by cutting down the rainforest as this must give an actual increase in CO2, but then everyday I watch a diesel hauled train go past full of wood pulp that I believe has come from Canada and this counts as green energy. 😀

and I read somewhere that every wind turbine has a little diesel generator inside it, plus they get maintained by people driving diesel LandRovers and even Helicopters, lets get rid of them and go back to good old Britixh Coal 😀. There appears to be an argument "HVO is not perfect so I will just stick with dinodiesel". As a boater I am pretty much stuck with hydrocarbon fuels, but I reckon I have more than halved our boating carbon footprint over the last couple of years.

The main/only source of HVO in the UK is Crown who state their stuff is from 100% renewable/sustainable sources. Most of our food could be produced by slave labour in rain forest clearings but that doesn't mean that it actually is. HVO is only ever going to be available in small quantities for Niche markets, I just hope that boating is one of those markets. As long as it is from a good source then its much better the dinodiesel even though its still far from perfect. Electric cars are also not carbon neutral because they run on electricty made from gas. Yes, the .gov site does say that private electricity generation can use red diesel, its a bit confused/ambiguous about boating but essentially says its ok for boats as long as we don't go to Northern Ireland.

I will do a bit more Googling. I was trying to get HVO and at the time red HVO in drums was more than white at the petrol station, but I suspect the cost differential between HVO and diesel does vary a bit.

I thought this was the case too, but I spent a quick few mins on the www and could find no mention of it. Do you have a link? A 1000litre IBC is an alternative to 205l drums but both work out MUCH more expensive than bulk delivery, and unless you have a forklift on site there are significant unloading and handling challenges, though you can maybe invent a way to handle the drums. Some companies might be able to deliver with a tail lift truck....but might charge extra for this.

Its all interesting, in a frustrating sort of way. If I am correct that red can't be used for generation then boats must be an exception because we can use red for everything as long as we pay the extra duty for propulsion. I wonder what the situation would be if we put red in a separate generator out on the towpath rather than using the main engine? It is because we often only have one tank that this whoe 60:40 propulsion thing was invented. The ideal outcome would be to let boats use red HVO for everything, including propulsion, without any extra duty. I will keep my fingers crossed.

That would be a very interesting court case, but as you say, I think you would loose.

I think I was wrong, www says red can no longer be used in a generator, I had got confused between generation and non commercial heating. I think that currently HVO can not be used for heating so this pretty much prevents using any red HVO in a boat. This all relates to various subsidies on HVO which were devised without any consideratiion to boating. There are people working hard to get this changed as HVO makes a lot of sense on the Inland waterways, but paying full duty for propulsion, battery charging and heating is not attractive even if it was legal. Red diesel is currently pretty much limited to farming, forestry and boat heating. (and I think domestic heating though this is normally done with kerosine/ heating oil). A possible loophole is to get a trading licence so that your boat becomes a commercial boat......but this has more costs 😀

If you want to go to HVO then this project maybe makes a little bit more sense, but you still have the diffcultities are delivering to a boat. There are currently technical/legal issues with boats and HVO but some of us hope these will be resolved soon. Red HVO will cost significantly more than red diesel but still less than DERV. An advantage of a tank is that you can fill it up when the fuel price is good. Lots of second hand heating oil tanks on eBay for a good price but usually collection only and usually not bunded. A new installation must be bunded, and will also need an approved concrete base. Plastic is probably better than steel. I suspect the EA thing is more a formality rather than big issue. I think a new diesel tank installation needs to suck the fuel from the top of the tank with a pump rather than having a tap at the bootom like a heating oil tank, you need to find out how strict this is. You could maybe get a standby generator to justify buying in the red but this might be on the edge of legality. A nice old Lister might look good in the garden 😀. I do not know if an oil company will deliver to a bowser, and taking the bowser to a boatyard might or might not work, and as I said will negate the cost saving. Also you can't get red HVO this way.