agg221

That appears to be the modern meaning, but evolved from the original superstition. Owners tended to add the stars for luck whereas companies did not, so it came to be a sign of an owner/operator originating out of the superstition. I found this information in Dutch and had to translate it, and can't now find it again. I agree. Mine (which does not yet have stars as it needs a lot of repair first):

True - could always shorten it... Alec

To an extent it depends on the hull as well - both lines and draught and various other factors. Funnily enough, I was talking to @tom_c about a related subject last weekend. Tom reckoned that it's mostly about .cc of the engine. I think he reckoned you need about 3l capacity for an engine to work well in a canal boat, assuming reasonable lines. I reckoned that was about right for the days of trade, so was fine on deep water, but when the bottom is nearer the top than it should be you probably want a bit more - for a standard canal boat shape at near full length it would be more comfortable with 4.5l. Vintage engines want a bigger prop, which is whey the deeper draught is needed. Prop size comes from rpm and hp, which relates to torque. If you look at early semi-diesel engines such as a Bolinder BM9 it's a 3l engine (the BM15 is 6l). The later full-diesel engines, both those originally used such as the National and Russell Newbery versions of the DM2, Lister JP2 and the various Dorman, Petter and Ruston alternatives they all hover around the 3l, as does the Kelvin J2 (not the K which is the larger size one you are probably thinking of). Being higher speed (1000-1200rpm) they have higher rated hp, typically 18-25, so run a smaller prop. This means you don't need quite so much draught which helps. The Gardner 2L2 and 2LW sit in the same general bracket. Having steered The King, which is a former FMC steamer now fitted with a 2LW, on the southern GU on deep water, I can say that if I wanted to take a full sized boat out onto faster flowing waters or shallower canals I would probably want something a little larger as an engine. The engine is perfectly capable of taking it anywhere a canal boat would historically have gone, including the Thames and the Severn, but it would be slow against the flow and I would rather have had a bit more to play with. We had it wound right up and it wasn't that fast. It used to have a 4LW fitted which was reputed to be over-powered. Personally, on a boat that size I think a 3LW would be my choice. At the other extreme, our boat is round-bottomed and 38' long with fairly fine lines (being a former ice boat). It is deep-draughted (around 3'1" stationary) because of the design, but that means it has space for a large prop - it was first motorised with a Bolinder BM15 and I am guessing the prop is a legacy from that. Most boats can only be engaged in forwards or reverse and have a straight through mechanical drive, so the prop has to be small enough that the engine will drive it whilst stationary at low revs when setting out, which means a bit of a compromise on prop size. We have an infinitely adjustable hydraulic drive so get away with being severely over-propped. The engine is a Kelvin J2 so comparable to the other 3l engines mentioned above (although not historically used on canal boats) and because we can slowly step up the fluid pressure, we can gradually increase engagement without labouring/stalling the engine. This allows the boat to punch ice or flowing current in a way that would not otherwise be possible. In summary, I would take ours on the Ribble Link but would not take The King on it, despite the slightly larger engine, as the combination would not give me the confidence to keep the speed up to get through with the tide. Alec

There is a similar tradition for five pointed stars (pentafoils?) as good luck symbols on the bow of boats in some regions. They are still made by Davey & Co. https://davey.co.uk/pdf/fullcat/full_cat-023.pdf and I am aware of them being relatively commonly fitted to opduwers (canal push tugs) in the Netherlands: Alec

I do not own the copyright on the photograph below but I hope @max's son doesn't mind me posting it here in this context. The photograph was taken by Max Sinclair in March 1963, on the towpath at Darlaston by James' Bridge during a lunch break. It is an incredibly lucky chance that it exists and is known - chance that Max was there just at the time the ice boat was passing, chance that he had his camera with him and chance that I spotted it in Waterways World on someone's coffee table, following which I got in touch with Max and we pieced together what it actually shows. What it shows, so far as I can tell, is the very last occasion that an iceboat was taken out by company staff for the express purpose of breaking the ice to enable the passage of boats. The records from the time indicate that the ice boats were taken out in December 1962 when the canal first froze, but by Christmas, all attempts at keeping passage clear were abandoned and freight was collected and went by road. This was the big freeze of 1962/63 and the ice did not begin to thaw until March, by which point traffic had necessarily moved to the roads, never to return. However, families who lived on the boats were still stuck, so unofficially, once the ice was thin enough, the ice boats were run once more to allow the trapped boats to get home. By sheer luck it appears that the photograph below shows one of these runs. Coincidentally, this with the other two associated photographs are also the only ones I am aware of showing ice breaking in colour. Horses had already begun to be in short supply by the 1930s, with the BCN Company minuting that they no longer had sufficient horses, a fact which they addressed by hiring from companies such as T & S Element and by trials with motorised icebreaking tugs. These were largely successful, but the surviving fleet of horse boats still needed to be used, so trials were run with towpath tractors and push tugs, as seen here. The tug in this photograph is Walsall and the ice boat is Samson, originally built by the BCN as North Star and sold to the Stourbridge in 1904. It came back to Bradley for repairs during WW2 and never returned, eventually being patched up and returned to service along the Walsall. This is probably the last time it ever worked in service. Alec

Oops!

Just catching up with the forum - last Saturday, we did take one of the boats BWB used in the 60s out. Oates having been built for the purpose c.1850 for the BCN and latterly worked for BWB, it seemed fitting to find out how it behaved, and we needed to wind anyway, and to test the newly repaired engine. The main challenge was getting up to speed. At low speeds we got big cracks, formed huge sheets which we pushed out of the way and had very little choice over direction as it tended to follow the cracks. Rocking helped break the ice faster, into smaller pieces so we weren't pushing sheets about and were able to get up speed. Once underway we could cruise quite happily and normal speeds through ice just over an inch thick. We had to pass two moored boats. One commented that it was interesting to see a boat breaking ice and good that our boat was still fulfilling its original purpose. The other shouted something about 'one day I'll do that to you' but since that would require him moving at all which he doesn't seem capable of, I am not too worried on that score. Having made something of a study of ice boats, including collecting copies of the photographs, records and articles relating to the subject, including records of the various boats, I can say with some confidence that this is still pretty mild compared with what they originally got used for in the days of trade. Until you have 22 horses dragging the boat so hard that it gets pulled clean up out of the water and sits on the ice, I don't think you are rivalling some of the winters of the 1920s and 1940s. Alec

Having bought our boat privately just over a year ago, a couple of things to add/reaffirm. Finding the seller on Facebook is a good idea. Depending on what they do/did for a living, you may also be able to find them in other ways - searching by name on Companies House (free), cross-referencing on LinkedIn and then a simple Google search. If they show up on Facebook with relatives' names, you can check them against the same location which is an alternative way of confirming the address. Even a Google Streetview search can be useful as it will show the address. This isn't a full-on stalking operation, just 10-15mins of searching to confirm that they are who they say they are and live where they say they do. This is of course a bit more difficult if they live on the boat! Private sales of inland boats are surprisingly lax. You don't technically need anything at all, I have bought four boats, none of which had any paperwork relating to previous owners. I created a Bill of Sale from the RYA template, deleting the lines which did not apply. This is a useful document as it basically states that the seller has the right to sell it to you, and that anything which happened prior to your purchase is their problem (such as unpaid loans secured against it) and anything that happens after the purchase is your problem. Separately, I created receipts for all four boats, two of which were for a nominal pound. This was a hand-written receipt from the previous owner stating that they had received the sum of £1 in full payment for the boat XXX, with a basic description. Again, it's not foolproof but it does give a certain level of protection in demonstrating that you were acting in good faith. There is no electronic record of this information, unlike say Land Registry or DVLA, so the documents are quite important to keep the original physical copy safe and take a digital record. If the boat is more modern there is a whole load of documentation which should in theory exist in respect of the Recreational Craft Directive but I can't comment on that, given that the newest boat I have bought was built in 1938! Alec

Having just read this entire thread (whilst putting off going out into the dismal weather outside), most points appear to have been made, and gone over several times, Nonetheless, there is perhaps a slightly different take on the situation which could be considered. CaRT has a primary revenue stream from government which will, in the current economic climate, be decreasing in terms of buying power. This makes up a large proportion of its total income, so it has choices. 1. Do less. 2. Increase its income from the sources it has control over (where it makes a charge which is not regulated) to make up the shortfall. 3. Take lower cost approaches. There is a limit to 1. but, as we approach 2027 there would certainly be the possibility that those in decision-making positions could adopt a different strategy depending on what they thought their own future held beyond that date. For example, if you believed that there would be a generous increase in the available funding from DEFRA but management of the waterways would be put out to tender, you would have a strong incentive as the incumbent to demonstrate your competence over the next five years to secure the next contract. However, if you believed that your own future was doomed anyway, you would have no incentive to invest in maintenance and every incentive to take what you could personally in salary and pension contribution before you were kicked out. My own experience in similar cyclically funded businesses is that the approach does vary in this polar fashion depending on the prevailing mindset. 2. This is the big one. CaRT has commercial freedom and market forces will prevail. Boaters are a semi-captive market (there are alternative waters but they are not without significant consequence) so it is able to claim market forces and increase charges as far as it thinks will achieve a net increase. That means if the total number of boats decreases because of increased costs but enough continue to pay that the total income increases it is worth doing. I suspect that whilst licence and mooring fee increases will be justified against inflation, they will actually bear little relation to it in real terms - being based on what they think enough people will stand. I suspect we will see a series of stepped increases continuing the pattern of the last year and in the background CaRT will be monitoring the effect, with the increases stopping when the number of unpaid licences means a net decrease in income (taking into account the increased cost of policing the system). There are also options for new charges. The principle of paid for visitor moorings has already been established and could easily be extended to other honey-pot sites. Ultimately, you could extend the principle to all short-term visitor moorings - anywhere where the towpath has been improved and rings fitted could become chargeable. Payment by app against licence number requires no infrastructure and if the fines for non-payment are high enough then that covers the cost of policing it (the model used by NCP for car parks). One person with a car working a round as an evening/night shift could cover a lot of areas. There are other facilities which could also be made chargeable - changing rubbish and elsan points to key-card entry for example, in the name of monitoring abuse but actually to allocate a charge to a card. These all increase charges for boaters but with some correlation between payment and use which makes it seem 'fairer'. There are specific boating user groups which I sure CaRT would love to find ways to charge more - particularly continuous cruisers, especially those who are actually tied to a single location for work and school reasons. Legitimising their pattern of use in a way which enables charging them significantly more has to be more attractive than playing a cat and mouse game of trying to prevent it. However, the big potential income sources are those relating to non-boating users. The direct customers who currently pay CaRT for the use of their facilities currently include ground renters for networks (gas, electricity, data) and water abstraction and discharge. These are very much a captive market who can expect substantial rises I suspect, because they really do not have a choice. There is another set of beneficiaries which I am not sure where the current cost assignation goes, but I suspect is assigned to the DEFRA grant. This covers the intersection between waterways and transport/developed land, for example road bridges, aqueducts, areas where the canal acts as a flood defence or where its breach would result in flooding of something other than farmland. Maintaining this infrastructure has an assignable value related to the access it enables or the damage it prevents. Whilst the DEFRA grant will not increase, there is clearly a case for engagement with landowners and local councils around shared costs - relying on insurance is not going to cover the real cost of disruption and people generally know that so it becomes worth considering the value as an affordability question. Coincidentally, I witness this regularly on a non-navigable waterway at the end of our garden where a Dutch ford crosses a river. Debris flows down in time of flood and hangs up against the railings. If the council clears the debris (maintenance) then in a major flood the water overtops the railings and flows freely. If they decide not to undertake clearance then the debris builds up over successive minor floods and when there is a major flood the water pressure carries the railings away, the road is closed and a substantial bill for completely renewing them ensues. Clearly there are different budget holders for maintenance and renewal and you can tell who has the upper hand at a given point in time by whether the debris is/is not cleared in time. A few floods over residential areas and long-term closures of major transport routes across waterways would probably shift the position significantly. Water management - both inflow, outflow and flood prevention all require some level of dredging so that cost is relevant to them as well as boaters. 3. Volunteers. CaRT has already woken up to the use of volunteers and has realised that increased training allows more work to be done, e.g. cutting back on the offside for example. If you look at the WRG model you can see that, with training, there are few activities which cannot be undertaken by volunteers. The UK has a very high labour cost so increasing the range of tasks which volunteers can undertake makes financial sense. They tend to work more slowly than paid labour, partly because they don't tend to want to work full-time and partly because they are not obliged to work or get fired, so extended tea-breaks etc. are their choice, but there is a large potential free workforce out there at the moment in the category of active and able-bodied retired who may have time on their hands. Thinking radically, why can't volunteers build lock gates, undertake the lengthsman role, clear debris, fell trees to reduce cutting closures, undertake minor masonry repairs during a stoppage where a pound is drained, etc? Reduced cost alternatives (provocative this one). What is the priority - function or heritage? When the Avon was re-opened it had lock chambers rebuilt in reinforced concrete. You can pull out a damaged lock chamber with an excavator, shutter and pour and have the whole thing rebuilt in a week. You can do the same thing with a main line rail bridge - see the Stroudwater. There are welded steel lock gates from the 1970s which are still perfectly serviceable, considerably longer than you can expect from a wooden one. In the days when wooden gates were repaired then you could get comparable lives but now they are generally left to deteriorate until they need replacement this is no longer the case. Is it acceptable to end up with concrete and steel locks, bridges and spillweirs? Is that preferable to closure or inability to navigate for extended periods? Prioritised activities. Can you reasonably state that because boats now have engines there is no need for a connection between the towpath and the waterway except at dedicated moorings? The towpath is no longer a towpath, it is in fact a parallel footpath which is not actually required by boaters. This would mean you don't need to carry out any maintenance in the way of mowing except a single strip for walkers, and trees could grow along the water's edge except where they impede navigation. It seems to cause a lot of complaints but, say there are 100 boat movements a day on a particular stretch and they all travel 10 miles on average (very modest). That means you only need 10% of the towpath to ever be cut - and if you want to moor somewhere else, what if it became the assumption you would have to carry our own equipment to cut back your mooring? How about if in parallel, dredging was focused on maintaining a proper depth channel 14' wide across the whole narrowbeam network, with no expectation that you could get in to the sides? It would increase the mileage dredged, at the expense of width - aligned with better navigation but not with better mooring (go back to an assumption that you will use a gangplank). In summary, ,my point on all the above is that there are combinations of options, some of which users can vote with their feet over, others which they will have no choice over. I think we have to accept that there will be a compromise - we are going to pay more and get less, but whether the 'more' and 'less' are acceptable will be very much down to the individual. Alec

Do you reckon you could put in at Wells or Blakeney? If so, it might allow for hanging around until the weather was stable. Would make an interesting sight in the estuary for people on the trip to see the seals! Alec

That pipe has been seriously abused. If you look inside the nut, I suspect you will find it does not have a tapered female cone but is flat instead. Note the nut does not have a round section at either end but is hexagonal all the way along which generally indicates a nut designed for a soldered on nipple, which does not need to be crushed to seal, just pushed up against the fitting end hence is internally flat to mate with the outer end of the nipple which has a single cone and a flat land on the back. This would be a likely part of the problem as a flat internal face will distort the olive rather than evenly crush it (which looks to have happened here). It's one of those situations where you can get it to work but it is very sensitive to how tightly it is done up. If there is no cone internally then you either need to use a solder on nipple or replace the nut with a new one which does. If you do decide to go down the soldered on nipple route then it needs to be silver soldered and you either need the short type nipple which does not have a back tube (available but not easy to find), or a nipple and nut, commonly sold together, as that nut looks to have too small a hole to allow the brass tube (socket) to pass through it. I would guess that one is designed for 1/4" tube and was replaced at some previous point. Replacing with a standard compression fitting is much easier, Alec

This is a good place to start on maintenance. The parts are a sensible size with easy access - not small and fiddly or large and heavy - and you can see what you are doing. Success is pretty self-evident and you are unlikely to set yourself up a whole series of later problems by not quite getting it right. Also, they are fairly cheap if it goes wrong! Some other points which might help, since you can't necessarily assume that the correct fittings have been used to start with. It has been mentioned above that this engine was originally all imperial but is currently a mix of metric and imperial. There are three dimensions on a compression fitting - the OD of the pipe (and the corresponding hole through the top of the compression nut and the olive), the thread on the nut and the dimensions across the hex which determine what size spanner you need. The pipe can be metric or imperial, typically 1/4", 5/16", 3/8", 8mm or 10mm. Bigger fittings are likely to be found on the cooling water system but don't worry about them for the moment. The thread on the nut is likely to be 1/4" BSP or 3/8" BSP. If you measure across the outside of a 1/4" BSP thread it is just over 13mm whereas a 3/8" BSP thread will be just over 16.5mm (I am assuming you are measuring with a ruler rather than verniers so the numbers are approximate, but they are close enough to be confident in what you have). The copper pipe and the corresponding other holes are fairly close between imperial and metric. 1/4" pipe is 6.35mm so you can get 6mm pipe to fit through the hole but you have to excessively crush the olive to create a seal and it doesn't work well. You can't get 1/4" pipe through a 6mm fitting but fortunately these don't turn up too often as they are generally only found in microbore gas plumbing. 5/16" pipe is 7.94mm which is so close to 8mm that it is within the pipe tolerance. These can therefore be interchanged, which is good because genuine 5/16" pipe and fittings are quite difficult to obtain whereas 8mm is relatively easy. 3/8" is 9.5mm so this time you can get it to fit 10mm fittings but it doesn't seal easily. What is more common is people trying to get 10mm pipe through a 3/8" hole which doesn't really work and often ends up with scratches/gouges on the pipe end, causing it to leak. As an aside, in an extreme need this can be dealt with by drilling out the hole in the back of the nut to 10mm and it will then fit but the data imprinted on the nut will then be wrong which could cause a headache for someone down the line. You can't bodge a 3/8" olive onto a 10mm pipe with any hope of success. Another key point to look at is how the seal is actually supposed to be created. There are three distinct options. One is to seal on the olive/nipple - these have a male cone on the outer end, fitting in to a corresponding female cone on the part or the adaptor - check that there is a female cone present otherwise it's the wrong type of fitting and won't seal (note, the other seal on these fittings is to the pipe - an olive seals by compression whereas a nipple is brazed/silver soldered on so the internal of the nut is a female cone for an olive to compress the olive whereas the internal of the nut for a soldered nipple is flat as it just has to push it on to the fitting, the seal having been created by the filler metal). The second option is to seal on the thread. Parallel threads have a leak path all the way up the spiral so fittings designed to seal on the thread are tapered - you can see the slight taper on the male thread and it is easily measured. They can be identified by trying to screw them in and finding they only go so far. Tapered threads are simple but not very efficient on sealing area, so are usually used with PTFE tape. Three turns of tape CLOCKWISE on the thread before insertion is ideal - clockwise because then it winds it tighter as you insert the fitting, rather than trying to unwind it and balling it up. Alternatively there are PTFE pastes such as Black Swan which are easier to use and can also be used on other plumbed parts to make the threads run smoothly. Taper threads act like a wedge so can crack thin castings as has been mentioned above so the third option is a face seal. You can spot these because there will be a flat face on the part, designed to seal with a fibre or copper washer. The face could be either at the bottom of the thread or on the outside. For this to work you need a fitting which has a corresponding flat face - if it is internal the thread needs to be long enough to reach the bottom; if it is external the thread needs to be short enough to not reach the bottom. For an external seal you usually need the hex section to be a bigger size to create a flat area between the hex end and the thread. This third type is a good option on things like the adaptors for your your fuel filter and lift pump for example, although it doesn't look to be what is currently fitted. That's probably enough on fittings before you are bored to death, but it's actually quite simple, there are just several options which have been available over the years and when they get mixed and matched it causes problems, so knowing what you have helps. One other observation - your lift pump has AC visible on it, which I suspect means it was made by AC Delco. Your fuel filter unit looks like it might be a CAV one (check the code on the filter element if you can't find one on the unit itself as that will pull up the unit type the other way around as the filter description will include which units it fits). If they are damaged beyond repair then this should give you a starting point in finding replacements. Alec

Agreed. My suggestion to helicoil was a solution to a stripped thread rather than a split boss. Alec

Many older engines end up with a mix of fittings as things get changed, or slightly damaged and bodged back together in a hurry to get moving and the bodge holds up so never gets changed. It does help to take them all back to the same standard over time as it makes work easier, but it isn't impossible to work with a mixture and sometimes it is nearly impossible to do otherwise (try finding 5/16" fittings for example when 8mm fittings are a near-perfect match). With regard to the current leaks, some good advice has been given. A few things which I would add from my own experience. Diesel creeps a long way. That can make it difficult to work out exactly which joint it is coming from. Cleaning and drying everything and then checking which end gets wet is a good start. So, for example, on the filter fittings you need to find out whether it is leaking from the joint between the filter body and the adaptor, or the adaptor and the copper pipe, or both. If it's just one then for now you can leave the other alone. How practical are you? If reasonably so then damaged threads are fairly easy to repair. If you can get the thread to hold with a tap then great, but otherwise there are cheap helicoil copy kits on Ebay which work perfectly well. The challenge is to then get a seal - the original metal to metal won't work round the helicoil but you can seal it effectively with various things - a couple have been mentioned, to which I would add Wellseal as an alternative option. If you are not so practically inclined then finding a replacement filter body would be easier. It is likely to have the part number stamped or cast on it somewhere and a search on Ebay, Midland Chandlers or L&S Engineering are all good bets for finding a matching one. Any filter body will work, but the mounting and the pipework are designed to fit this particular one. Replacing olives - copper pipe is pretty cheap - measure the outside diameter to find what you need and buy a short roll. Olives come in packs from either a plumber's merchant or Ebay. They are handy to have around. I tend to use brass olives on fuel pipes. If you haven't installed an olive before, it's very easy. Cut the pipe end square across, clean off the burrs on the inside and outside (there are tools for this but it can be cut with a hacksaw and deburred with a craft knife, or even a kitchen knife, with care) and check that the pipe and the olive do not have scratches or other damage on them. Slide the nut up the pipe, then slide on the olive. Push the pipe firmly into the fitting to make sure it's properly in, slide the nut and olive up against the fitting and screw on finger tight. Check it's aligned squarely in the fitting and then tighten up with a pair of spanners (one on the nut, one on the fitting), making one full turn. Check whether that has sealed and if not, add a quarter turn. It should not be gorilla-tight! Things not to do - tightening the nut with a single spanner on the nut when the article the other side of the fitting is an aluminium casting as it will probably strip the threads. Hope that helps! Alec

I completed it and found it pretty straightforward. The answers are reasonably good. One question I couldn't answer properly is the date when the fit-out was completed, as it isn't (I entered the completion date as 2022 which is after the purchase date but it isn't actually done yet). Buying a part-completed project is a relatively common situation so that might be worth capturing as an option. Alec

If you care to add dates back to 1850 and 'iron' as a construction material then I will add ours. Alec

We have a Kelvin J2 which is about the same hp as a Lister JP2 and pretty similar on revs. It is fitted to a remotely mounted 160A alternator - yes I know this is ridiculous but it's how it came and that particular bit hasn't broken, and enough other things have to keep me busy without interfering with something that isn't broken. It runs on v-pulleys and I am currently running a single standard v-belt. The reasons we get away with this are 1. It has switches to switch out the connection from the alternator to the batteries when starting. Bear in mind this is a petrol start so it runs for a few minutes on petrol and then a few minutes on diesel before I switch on the alternator and in theory I can switch on the starter and domestic batteries separately if I needed to keep the load down and 2. We have never let the batteries drop significantly. I couldn't tell you the percentages but the starter battery runs at very low duty due to the petrol start which fires on the magneto within one revolution and I always rotate the flywheel back by hand before starting to give the maximum 'run up' to compression to keep the current to a minimum and the boat has minimal electrics, only using 10 LEDs and a water pump for the taps on the sink. This means the batteries do not drop by more than natural loss so whilst I can't read the charging current, it is never going to be anywhere near the capacity of the alternator. Once I get the solar panel set up to trickle charge it will do even less work. The point being, if you fit a very big alternator because you need one, you need to figure how to drive that much power in to it, but if you never have it working very hard then you may be OK (or you could just fit a smaller alternator, if you have nothing else in need of more urgent attention...) Alec

When I am repairing stripped threads on cast iron, which seems to be an all too common occurrence (not because I have stripped them but because they have already been stripped and bodged and I am trying to sort them out properly) I tend to drill an oversize hole to the next common size up (so for M8 that would be M10 etc) and either use a bolt or thread a piece of bar part way, and screw it in hard enough to jam where the thread ends, or use some Loctite, and saw off flush. If the original hole was central I pre-drill and tap the internal thread to the original size as it makes sawing and filing it off in situ easier, but if not I leave it solid so I can correctly dot the centre (if that's too far off then I might need to go bigger than one size up, so say M12). Unlike helicoils, this gives a solid thread which is far less prone to damage, but if it needs to be unscrewed and replaced it can be. It is also much cheaper than buying various helicoil kits. If the material is a bit thin but with space behind, I would do the same with a top-hat shaped insert, either a turned one or a cut off set screw. That way it won't pull through. One other point on tap drill sizes - I find if I go for the smaller drill sizes for near full thread engagement then on softer, more ductile metals it tends to flow a bit both up and down the thread, rather than just cut. That leaves a slight upstand of material so things won't sit flush to it without either filing off or countersinking. I tend to use a countersink, rotated by hand, to just clean off the lead in. Alec

If you do go that route, glue it to boards in reasonable sized panels that can the be lifted by removing a few screws.

Good news if the hull was scraped. It’s particularly the baseplate I would be concerned about- these are often not painted and that blistering is something I would want to remove, understand how deep the pitting really is and address accordingly. You don’t have a lot of steel thickness to start with so you want to hang on to what you’ve got. Pad welding over the cleaned pits would be an option here if they are localised and there aren’t too many. If your budget allows I would be inclined to blast clean the baseplate and 2-pack epoxy it, although you have time to save up and do that later. That would really help extend the life of it. Really good news that the inside has been cleaned and painted properly. Firstly, it’s a tedious job you don’t have to do; secondly, it means there are no nasty surprises lurking (2mm pit on the inside meets 2mm pit on the outside is really bad news on 4mm steel) and thirdly it tells you something about the current owner - that they have focused on getting the basics right rather than doing a cosmetic job that has to be taken out to fix what’s wrong behind it. I would say this is a very well priced boat. It is always going to be the budget end of the market but for that price you would often find it hadn’t had the survey, the repair work, the blacking, the exterior maintenance and the inside cleaned back and painted. There is a lot more value in this one than many in this price bracket so if your survey is OK it looks promising. one observation on the bedroom (and the rest of it as you go through). Make sure you can get the floor up without destroying the fitted furniture. If you can’t, I would modify it now so that you can. Various things can happen that mean you need access in a hurry, from a water system leak to a shower pump hose breaking and emptying water into the bilge, to a broken toilet or a leaking hull (hopefully not the latter but it might). In our case it was a failed gasket on the engine coolant system. Being prepared saves a lot of remedial work if you have to do it. Alec