RichardN

It depends on where you are. We are down south so conditions are perhaps not as bad and we set our timer to run just once a day for 2 hours when we know it is going to be bad. We had a chat with the guys from Webasto at the London Boat Show and they reckoned that running regularly just for 1 hour is not good as it cokes the heater up a bit quicker. Richard

If you are non-residential: We had quite a long debate with Ealing Council about this when we moored at Engineers Wharf as that is how it looked when we got a tax bill. We were the one non residential boat, in fact I don't think we ever slept in the boat when it was at Engineers Wharf, we only slept on the boat when we were on the move and we spent literally months away from the mooring. The Council's first response was to say that we need to give them a schedule of when the boat was not at the moorings so that they could give us a part refund. We went back with a copy of our House Council Tax Bill and quoted from the Valuation Manual: http://www.mycounciltax.gov.uk/instruction...ct670/frame.htm and ended up getting a full refund. You need to be quite explicit as boats seem to be a bit of a mystery to them. This will only work if the boat is not your main residence. If you are residential: Starman's quote is apt ... but .. the first boat at Engineers Wharf was also the first to get a valuation and they were put into a high-ish band - I think the same as the flats nearby. They appealed straight away and very quickly dropped to I am sure they said the bottom band. PS I am not sure if the link works properly or it is just me having too many things open. It is volume 5, section 670 of the Rating Manual. -- Richard

Malcolm at Top Lock Training is excellent, highly recommended. Richard http://indigodream.wordpress.com

Sadly snapfish requires you to login so I only got to see a thumbnail of the first photo. Will have a better look later. I am amazed by your dog's pedigree. Her father had 7300 off-spring!!! We were lucky, Blue knew about stairs but to start with our second greyhound, Lou, was convinced that we were torturing her before she suddenly got it. Then we introduced her to the stairs in my office which have open risers and are quite high. They were regarded with great suspicion and she used to go up in 5' high bounds before settling down and now (normally) sedately walks up. Our boat deliberately has shallow (for a narrowboat) stairs not a ships ladder as our old arthritic lurcher could not cope with ladder type arrangements but I suspect our two greyhounds would not care what we have. We did have to attach some carpet tiles to the treads as Greyhounds don't cope well with smooth marine ply ... Don't worry, stairs take time but your 5 year old puppy will soon get it. Richard http://indigodream.wordpress.com

Love the video, obviously got good hips! She shares a grandfather and great grandmother with Blue aka Druids Classic - next time you are on the boat you need to take a photo and put it up on greyound-data ! The off-lead thing is something we particularly wanted so worked at it, we may have been lucky, you may not be so lucky. The thing with rescue greyhounds (once socialised with other dogs) is that the first time you let them off the lead they are liked coiled springs and head for the horizon, you can gradually settle them down in more controlled areas eg at the seaside, get them used to the fact that there will be loads of off lead time if they behave and the recall gradually improves. We think females are easier in that respect then males but that may be a pure coincidence. You do have to think all the time what is 200m away, watch out for cats etc. We are also lucky in that we have some areas near us which make for real high adrenaline walks where the rabbits are like a carpet moving across a field so ours go mad and try to chase them all in one go, fantastic chasers, absolutely useless at catching anything, it is comic at times but again helps settle them down. You do have some heart stopping moments and the injury count is a little higher (mostly cuts) though the worse injuries have been in our garden, not out on a walk. Towpaths are good as they are generally away from roads, ours now leap up on deck when they work out that we are approaching a lock and (when they are not sleeping) will run between locks in flights, though nowadays they tend to rummage and only do the full mad greyhound sprint for a specific purpose eg when they realise that they are being left behind! Hatton is normally a bit much for them - they dive back onto the boat for a quick rest just before the top. The Hanwell flight is a particular favourite of theirs as there are rabbits about so they shadow the boat the whole way down, it takes both of us to watch them, particularly for bag jobs. The Thames is classed as boring as they are not allowed out at locks but then we stop at some fantastic spots - eg Cookham has rabbits in the fields next to the moorings and pubs that allow dogs. Ah the debate whether to get more. Two is really good, I am strongly resisting getting more! Just had another look at the video .. that is a happy dog.

Ah yes, brings back memories. Honest they do get better but even now we have the odd incident .. So when do we get to see a photo of your greyhound (and Wiltshire Boy's). Did they race, if so what was their racing name, are they related?

You and Fern have done really well, 16 is a fantastic age.

They won't do 4 tins a day - Perhaps 2 tins a day plus a load of dry food plus 2 sausages in any canalside pub that we stop at - we ring in advance when we are trying to work out where to stop for the night and check that a) they are doing food, they allow dogs. On the days that they come into the office with me the routine is a walk round Wandle Park, a visit to Fat Boys for a sausage sandwich (they get half each), sandwich leftovers at lunch time with perhaps half a tin and some biscuits, then at least a tin each when they get home. Boy Blue is quite active, burns up loads of calories and we have difficulty maintaining his weight - he thrives on proper really high protein greyhound food which we get at the local pet superstore, dirt cheap, VAT free as food for a working dog. Unfortunately our Vet has suggested that we try them on a Hills Diet which contains all sorts of supplements for aged dogs but it is eye wateringly expensive. . .

It is hard to generalise with Lurchers but comparing our greyhounds to our lovely old Lurcher, Indie: Greyhounds sleep even more, are even lazier and even more laid back but at the same time manage to be so much faster, so athletic and are very good on the boat. The other difference that you will notice is that whilst some greyhounds can sit, I think that is relatively unusual - neither of ours can sit conventionally - they sort scoot both legs out to one side and sit on the side of a hip. Soldthehouse's Lurcher looks positively alert compared to our two greyhounds! If you have had a lurcher then you will love having a greyhound. Good Luck and enjoy! Richard

Have you had a rescue greyhound before? I assume not so my advice is go for it, they are fantastic. When you first get them they are like 4 year old puppies. Everything is new to them, teaching them about stairs is interesting and the boat is just another thing for them to explore and find out what it's all about. They are so laid back and cope so well that the boat has been no effort. The various greyhound rescue centres are really good at giving you tips. The only thing I would say is find somewhere you can let safely him or her off the lead - they are like coiled springs to start with and you want to get them to relax and know that they don't have to do 100 mph all the time. Ours spend most of their time off a lead, absolutely no problem with getting them on a lead when safety dictates and they are so good on a lead - even coped going round Camden Market the other day, been on trains, buses, the underground (not their favourite mode of travel though). You see quite a few greyhounds on narrowboats. For example Greygal has 5 on a narrowboat! We met nb Treacle Dolly at Fradley and they have 3 - see here. We have a mere two but they feature loads on our blog -click here and they have got used to the boat really easy. We recently did a fund raising cruise and had a spanish greyhound, Duke on board - even on a strange boat with 2 strange greyhounds it only took him about 30 seconds to settle. Hope this helps Richard http://indigodream.files.wordpress.com

How peculiar. The way that they seem to be written is that the under 13m long narrowboat has to contact VTS, but an over 13m long narrowboat (with mandatory VHF) does not. The rules must have been amended by some very expensive lawyers? The BW leaflet says contact London VTS. We have always done so and had a very curteous response. On the last SPCC cruise to the Royal Docks it was interesting to hear how commercial craft asked VTS do you know what those small guys are doing and similarly VTS telling the narrowboat convoy to slow a bit as something a bit big was about to turn in front of us. So if VTS know that you are there ...

Hmm interesting. In the past when we have done anything on the tideway anywhere below Brentford we have always first asked permission from VTS to enter the tideway. Above Brentford we are still careful but the lock keepers have told us that we don't need to contact VTS. This thread is about narrowboaters not following simple, sensible rules on the tideway and it is obviously a concern as we could end up being banned. Going off topic I agree that there may be some issues with communication between BW, EA and the PLA. We tried to go down the tideway in late 2006 from Teddington to Brentford when BW changed the opening hours at Brentford but did not publicise it at all well. The Lock Keepers at Teddington were convinced that Brentford should be open (ie no need to pre-book) and were happy to let us onto the tideway. We had another go at ringing the Lock Keeper at Brentford, got no answer, rung Limehouse and got the out of hours duty Lock Keeper who said "oh no, they have changed the opening hours and Brentford is closed to all except pre-booked passage." The following year the Teddington Lock Keepers had a big notice about Bretford being closed to all except pre-booked passages ...

I have been surprised seeing boats going through the wrong arches. There is excellent guidance published by BW on the tideway: http://www.waterscape.com/media/documents/33 I think it was co-written with the St Pancras Cruising Club who also publish great guidance.

Ohh very nice. Is that how the scoring works though? I thought the bonus is a multiplier? Richard http://indigodream.wordpress.com

We did a course with Malcolm 4 years ago. We thought he was excellent. Richard http://indigodream.wordpress.com/

Tony Brooks has a good explanation here: http://www.tb-training.co.uk/13bfuel.htm#bmn48 Going on one of his courses is highly recommended -- Richard

The reason I originally posted and the point you seem to be missing is that I think your advice to have a room stat is very wrong. Simple point, nothing to do with alternative fuels, secondary tanks, court cases. *sigh*

Hi I did not say anything about running on half heat - I can see the logic there but I do not think that the way to achieve it is by having a room stat. From what I understand that could knacker someone's heater, hence my post. I suspect that all the diesel heater manufacturers don't say anything about filters in their installation instructions. I know Webasto don't and I have even had a Webasto service agent recommend that they they remove our filters. I don't understand that - I would not run a modern diesel engine without a filter. Having had loads of problems in the past with water in diesel, we had agglomerators and sedimentors fitted into our current boat, my thanks to Tony Brooks there. Our heater coked up after 1000 odd hours running. I am told that ideally you should let your webasto get good and hot before turning it off - so a link there to your half heat logic. To get it good and hot, the Webasto guy suggested running it for at least 2 hours. In our ignorance we ran it a lot for exactly 1 hour recently. Issues only started after a period of 1 hour running so I am thinking slap wrist. Roger: I have read most of what you have written about Webasto heaters. -- Richard

I asked about a room stat on a Webasto and was rather emphatically told that it will knacker the heater as it will mean that the heater will keep on being turned on or off at frequent intervals. That makes complete sense to me. Are you sure about getting that information from an authorised main dealer? I talked to the Webasto rep at the London Boat Show and asked him about red diesel. His view was that it is fine when it leaves the refinery. Again that makes sense, we have extra filters fitted on our diesel line to the webasto and have to say whilst it did coke up recently it has otherwise run really well with none of the problems that an unfiltered Mikuni had on a previous share boat. -- Richard http://indigodream.wordpress.com

We have had much the same experience with odorlos. It took 2 or 3 pump outs before all the blue was fully out of our system or perhaps the bugs were fully working but we think it is better than Blue. When we are cruising we get no smell and it works really well. Like Herbie says you seem to get more liquid rather than sludge. Sometimes it is months between pump outs and then we need a pump out as it starts to get a bit smelly. Could be that we dose less? After that it seems to take time to settle down Some marinas don't like you using blue as it messes up their reed bed sewage systems so that is another plus. Big minus is that not many people stock it. The bigger bottles seem very rarely stocked - we always stock up at Thames & Kennet Marina when we are passing. Richard nb Indigo Dream

I understand that hire boats go out on the tidal thames with a portable radio which they are meant to listen to plus mobile phones to talk to Limehouse, Thames VTS etc. They do not talk on the vhf unless they have a licence. So I suspect that you can use your radio to listen to and meet the Port of London rules. That said I would still recommend going on the course and using your radio properly - if you do have a problem on the Thames or Severn then being able to use the radio properly could make a difference. -- Richard

http://www.calor.co.uk/regulators/index.htm is worth a look

Go in the daytime? You still need a lifebouy and life jackets but I did not think that lights and flares would be required when we did it. -- Richard

Useful telephone numbers and web links here: http://indigodream.wordpress.com/2008/09/1...om-sharpness-1/ This guide is very good: http://www.gloucesterharbourtrustees.org.uk/guidance.htm As someone else has pointed out you firstly need to get onto the non tidal Severn and then have the right weather conditions. Then you need to find a mooring .... -- Richard

I have never had much luck with self tappers so would avoid them unless you can get hold of some made by someone like SFS, Buildex or Fixing Point Systems. Those are hard, the ones I got from a diy store where simply too soft for boat steel thicknesses. What works for me is to drill a hole, use a tap then an ordinary screw in whatever material I fancy. Only hint for tapping is remember to reverse by 1/2 turn every 2 turns and use proper lubricant. A decent hardware shop will have the bits. I went to a specialist bolt shop: Capital Supplies Ltd, 87, Boston Rd, Croydon, Surrey CR0 3EJ who were wonderful. Good advice, amazing selection of bolts and all the taps, they will sell you any amount of screws, bolts etc. I actually bought drill bits specifically for the taps from them and have faithfully followed their instructions to keep tap and drill in the little plastic case and not rattling round my toolbox. Now that I have discovered cutting lubricant it is really easy and I get reliable strong fixings. -- Richard