dmr

You should be learning about buying boats by now! This is a very very old boat, and quite a small one. If the survey finds it needs £7000 worth of overplating and the seller offers to pay the first £1500 this is NOT a good deal, In fact its a very very bad deal, and it sounds like you have to sign a document agreeing to this very very bad deal? £2300 sounds a touch optimistic for a K&A mooring, especially in view of the new enforcement regime. ...............Dave

The old office provided a couple of safe secure moorings outside, I guess these will be lost. This is sad as Wigan has a reputation as not a good place to moor to this may mean even fewer boats stopping their. Last summer was the first time I have ever seen boats moored on the towpath side. I suspect the emergency stoppage forced boats to stop there and started a trend? .............Dave

So when did this Amp (or charge) stuff happen? I was taught the universe had only 3 dimensions (MLT) and not Amps. Volts is not a fundamental unit, neither is power, and W=VI so why can't amps be reduced to MLT dimensions? wow, its all gets a bit technical on CWDF sometimes. ...............Dave

If you like the boat then I would just do it. We were in a similar situation when we got the boat, but we were sure the engine was not healthy. We negotiated a bit of money off to finance some remedial work but before long realised an engine replacement was the only option. I was lucky in that I have the skills to do this, plus a friend who knows how to lift very heavy things. It was a lot of stress but also quite enjoyable. I am now sure we did make the right decision getting the boat. If it all goes wrong and you need a new engine in a years time will this merely be a big inconvenience or the end of your boating world?. The engine might be just a little small so you will have to take a bit more care not to go onto the Thames in bad conditions!!!!, but many people get on fine with boats that are much more under powered, it will most likely make you a better boater anyway. ................Dave

Terminology failure alert! A birds nest is a twiggy thing in a tree where birds lay eggs. A horrible bit of wiring, in a sort of 3 dimensional tangle, is a rats nest! ......................Dave

I was only playing with Nick but I think he's lost interest, or else gone away to work on a very clever reply. ..................Dave

As there are two of you a bigger boat will be better, and a trad stern will maximise interior space. You have expressed no desire to travel to the far North East so you could go right up to 70 foot if you feel confident to drive a big boat. But, everything is "by the foot" so they are more costly to run. You do not want to be moving bulkheads or other major structural mods, so get the right boat to start with. A "smart" fit out is less important than the boat having a nice feel. A few rough edges can actually give a boat some character. You are going to be living in it. The first boat (Chloe) was an owner fit out without much flashness but looked like a nice liveaboard fit out to me. Minimum fixed stuff and lots of space for free standing furniture (table, chairs, sofa, beanbag, rugs, little chest of drawers maybe) is preferred by many liveaboards over the more typical "fully fitted" style. This makes it much easier for you to make the boat feel like your home, and more flexibility as your child grows and life changes. ...................Dave

This is very surprising. What does your "other" hydrometer say and what is the battery temperature?. Is the starter battery in good condition and what hydrometer reading do you get from that? Is the electrolyte level ok in the Trojans? Are all of the cells giving this high reading? .................Dave

There are numerous proper additives designed for the job which should be more suitable than 2 stroke oil. There is real evidence that they work but whether they work enough to justify their cost is another matter. Modern low sulphur fuels are less lubricating than the old stuff so some injection pumps might last longer with a bit of extra lubricity. There is also the issue of removing water from the fuel, lots of stuff on this forum about that. The cetane raising properties of suitable additives are scientifically established. .............Dave

I'm an engineer and I do almost all of the maintenance myself. Last time we were out of the water I had a good visual look at the Hull and a very quick look underneath, but I could not put my hand on my heart and say 100% sure that there are not a few mm lost in some places. I would not worry too much about insurance yet, there are several companies who will give insurance over the phone almost instantly. You will have a hull survey so even if they need one you will be ok. Much more important do confirm that there really really is a "residential" mooring available for you. This should come from the manager of the marina, not somebody who works there a bit, or from other moorers. Strictly you should pay a deposit before the lift out and survey. This is to protect you. You pay for the lift out and survey, if the result is a bit ambiguous and you delay whilst you decide what to do, and somebody else comes along and makes an offer then the seller could choose to accept it! ...............Dave

I am really surprised that battery sellers have not moved to amp seconds as the big numbers would really please the marketing men. I'v got almost two and half mega amp seconds. .................Dave

The voltage on a battery is also variable and related to the amount of charge stored in it, its a moderately linear relationship albeit with a big offset!! You are correct of course that charge and energy are related by an equation, so a battery can be seen as either a charge or energy store. If we consider it a charge (or amp hour) store then the voltage is a big factor, If we consider it an energy store then we can directly compare 12 and 24 volt systems! I stand by my point that amp-hours is a "unit of convenience" though it does work very well. A tank of diesel is an energy store but we find it much more convenient to measure that in litres. ................Dave 6 Trojans in a 12 volt bank so a bit of series and a bit of parallel, surely the best of both worlds. ...............Dave

Surely a capacitor is a charge store whilst a battery is an energy store????? And we are very comfortable talking of the charge stored in a capacitor and that must discharge at a variable voltage! This is why the amp-hour is a "measure of convenience" ... because we don't need to think about voltage. ............Dave

amp hours is really a bastardised "convenience" unit to make it easier for semi-technical people to understand battery capacity (and judging by this forum its obviously failed). Amps per hour just might be used to measure the rate of reduction in charge current and so if its to be another "convenience" unit then amps per hour is probably more convenient than amps per second. It has occurred to me quite a bit of late that all this confusion would never occur if we had correctly used the SI system and measured battery capacity in Joules, but I suspect many people would then be proposing the easier (dumbed down) measure of amp-hours. Miles per hour rather than metres/sec, and rpm rather than radians per sec are two other examples on non SI "convenience" units. ................Dave

I suspect its like going up through Newbury in full flow, not particularly difficult, but just cant be done! Though having to give up and go backwards on a full flow is never a good thing. ...............Dave

As is said, "its the exception that proves the rule". There are probably loads of 30 year boats with pristine hulls. But, insurance companies like to make money, so maximise the number of customers but avoid the ones that might make a claim. If they get the jitters at 30 years then this is telling us something. ..................Dave

Some will argue with me, but the BMC is an old design of engine from an era when spectacular reliability and long service intervals were not top of the list of desired qualities, and cylinder head overhauls and decokes etc were not as scary a concept as they are now. Personally I like them, others don't, but regular servicing will be a good thing. As you plan to be marina based the engine should have an easy life, but an annual service is required, and starting it every couple of weeks or so and getting it nice and hot will be good. Keeping the engine 'ole nice and clean and dry will also be a good investment. There are people on this forum who know much much more about the BMC than I ever will. Boats need a lot of looking after, especially liveaboards, but then a bit of boat maintenance on a sunny afternoon is not an unpleasant duty. If you do go for this boat make it clear that you can choose to have you deposit back if it needs anything more than the most trivial welding. It looks overpriced to me but I have just spent an hour looking at boat adverts and "middle market" boats do appear to have got quite expensive of late. ..............Dave

Sadly 100% on the Smartgage is not really 100%, you would have to go on for another few hours to get right up to true 100%. A means of measuring current would be useful. Smartgage is a good machine but its real use is measuring the state of charge of batteries as they discharge, not during charging. The old rule of thumb: charge for 2 hours every day then 8 hours once each week, is usually not far wrong. ................Dave

Sorry if these things have been asked before..... Have you ever had a holiday on a narrow boat? Have you ever steered a narrowboat? Do you have any DIY skills? Any experience of living in a very small space in the winter? Have you read any of the various guides to living aboard? Its a very attractive lifestyle looking from the outside in, especially in TV programs. From the inside out only some of us still think its a very attractive lifestyle! A lot of new liveaboards only manage a miserable year or two. Nice boat, a bit old so take care, BMC engines can need a bit of looking after. You will be so glad that you chose a trad stern! .................Dave

I believe rack is (or was) the correct term so one would talk of "full rack" rather than "full throttle", but I guess its pointless using words if nobody else understands them. I'm moored in Devizes for a week or two and just up from me is a "winding hole" with a CaRT sign calling it a "Turning Place for Boats". I guess we now have a whole generation of drivers who have no concept of what a throttle actually does, let alone a choke. ...............Dave

Forget about electrons, conventional current is what we deal in and this goes positive to negative. Out of interest, the naming of positive and negative and the concept of a flowing current was all arbitrarily decided a long time before electrons were discovered. It was a 50:50 guess and maybe they got it wrong. A wiring diagram shows how things are connected together rather than the direction of current flow. However it is good practice to have the positive wires at the top of the drawing and the negative ones at the bottom and to draw it in such a way they current flows generally downwards and left to right, though more strictly it actually flows in a continuous loop so is really flowing clockwise. A lot of people, professionals included, draw circuit/wiring diagrams very badly. ...............Dave

Batteries are rated both in their capacity (in amp hours) and how much current they can deliver for a short time (CCA cold cranking amps) measured in amps. For starter batteries CCA is more important, for leisure batteries the capacity (Amp Hour) is more important. Sometimes capacity is rated in "Reserve capacity" which is how long the battery can deliver a certain current for. This is getting less popular (fortunately) but is still used a bit by battery shops. ................Dave

Amps per Hour realistically does not exist, many people use it by mistake when they mean Amp-hours (amps times hours...a measure of capacity). All this forum talk of rate of change of current is really just the forum pedants trying to point out that "amps per hour" is wrong, looks like the forum has inadvertently created a misleading unit. ................Dave

I've not seen Burgfield bridge in full flow but note it is often one of the first warnings CaRT give out. Is it a cross flow above the bridge that makes it bad, or is it a wall of water that has to be climbed (Wallingford style)??? Those bends present a major problem heading downstream in a full length boat even with no other boats in sight. When it goes wrong that bush thing is very prickly! ..............Dave

What a LOT of desulphators, it must be getting really trendy. Interesting and depressing (but hardly surprising) that the DIY kits of parts (even without a box) cost more than the ready made units. I read a couple of articles about all this a while with people claiming good results with restoring dead batteries. They said that a bad one can take several weeks to restore. I suspect that leaving it on a standard charger would have done the same but probably much quicker. ................Dave