agg221
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Posts posted by agg221
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10 minutes ago, john6767 said:
Will the swimming section be taking place at the bottom of Ryders Green
Last time we did it, we followed Spey up that flight. Certainly the way to go if you need a good depth for swimming.
Alec
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Oates has a J2 with a hydraulic drive. We took it off the Trent on Saturday, on to the T&M which was our first real outing with it. The rod hydraulic drive transition works very well - to the point where stopping was surprisingly quick even allowing for letting the engine revs drop. It doesn't half shift in reverse too! The wheel geared approach would require a bit more planning and thinking but I don't think it would take long to get used to.
Alec
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24 minutes ago, MtB said:
Yes. The gear change on the reversing gear is a Reynolds chain gearwheel around the output driveshaft, which needs rotating approx two whole revolutions to go from fully ahead to fully astern. If you can easily devize a push-pull mechanism to do this, you're a better man than most boatyard engineers!
Other than take off the gearbox and replace it with a hydraulic drive you mean...!
Alec -
Thank you for the further thoughts - I agree the ones with the midway opening would look wrong. The ones I was originally referring to are linked here:
This is the inside view - from the outside they look like a standard porthole with a choice of what they term Grand Union or Tug style. They are pretty much indistinguishable from static ones from the outside. As such, they look like an excellent option but a 13" overall frame size is considerably larger than the 9" or so frame size currently fitted. So far as I can see, the way they work is to use a conventional porthole frame but rather than clamping the glass against the hull, it is clamped against the seal with a couple of turnbuckles at the top and brass section at the bottom, against which it pivots. If any water runs in around the edge, it runs out again because of this brass pivot section. All it then needs is a slightly larger liner, the size of the glass rather than the aperture.
Thanks for the thoughts on Davey and Trinity. The marine type from Davey (which I have run across before) and most of what Trinity Marine (which I hadn't) list are what is currently fitted. The problem with them is that if fitted conventionally the thickness of the cabin side is too great, leaving a deep lip on the outside (rather like fitting a conventional narrowboat porthole the wrong way around). This results in a recess approximately 2" deep which fills up with water, which is what is currently happening. I can temporarily resolve this by filling up the lower part of the rebate with Sikaflex to make the water run out, but then of course they can no longer be opened so a solution will be needed using a different type of porthole. In theory, I could cut a large hole in the lining and mount a marine porthole through the hull only which would remove the rebate, but it would be rather an ugly solution from the inside.
I am heading towards the view that if P.R.O. Cast can make an opening version of their 7" porthole that would be the ideal answer. If yes, problem solved. If no, or the price is too eyewatering, it will be a choice between static 7" portholes or 9" opening ones. I am making up some paper templates to put in place along the boat next weekend and the decision can then be made.
AlecEdit: Bee - thank you for the offer. Our children have already been discussing which of them inherits Oates when we are dead, so I fear you may be out of luck!
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We do have a very unusual boat. The current portholes are around 6" glass for scale (I haven't measured them yet as it was a bit of a rush yesterday in the rain).
Cutting will be a slow job but fortunately it is something where I can do one at a time. A jigsaw will get there and minimise the impact on surroundings.
Alec
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Thanks for the comments.
The main objection to fitting the marine type inside out is exactly that - you have to go outside to open them, they are very insecure (and invite fiddling with) and look odd.
We technically have enough ventilation without them, but it would be nice to clear condensation and not be reliant on opening doors in the rain when it gets a bit warm inside (one of the consequences of an engine room which is great in the right weather but less so on a warm, rainy summer's day).
Cutting bigger holes is not a problem as such - they will have to be cut bigger regardless so that doesn't worry me. It's more about the aesthetics - it's a very small boat so I'm not sure whether we can get away with 13" frames without it looking out of proportion.
Thanks for the pointer to Black Country Metalworks - hadn't realised they had them but if they are re-selling then it is a different range - some missing and some additional. Their half-opening porthole is certainly not one I had seen before in brass. It's a good thought to talk to P.R.O. Cast - it does look like they make one-offs. What I have also realised from looking closely at the design is that the only part which is different between their fixed and opening portholes is the actual opening part at the bottom, which is a relatively small and simple separate casting that screws on. As such, if I can sort out a pattern for that it should be straightforward to add it to their standard 7" fixed portholes which look the ideal size. Aware this is not going to be cheap but one thing that works in our favour is that we only have six windows in total!
I will be making up some templates in different sizes and sticking them along the boat to see what it might look like and make a decision (well it won't be me making the decision, but I will do as I am told!)
Alec
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The portholes currently fitted to Oates are going to need replacing. They are the marine opening type, fitted to the inside of the cabin and hence creating a 2" deep recess on the outside of the cabin which fills up with water - only a matter of time before that runs into the cabin somewhere. So, I need standard narrowboat type portholes which mount on the outer face of the cabin.
The ones from P.R.O. Cast in Nottingham look ideal. Drop-back opening would be perfect to get some ventilation through on rainy days. However, Oates is small and the smallest size they do is a 9" opening which is 13" overall, although their static ones go smaller.
So, the question is, is there anyone else who makes decent brass opening portholes? If not, has anyone managed to modify a P.R.O. one to make it opening?
Cheers
Alec -
3 hours ago, Alan de Enfield said:
Your lack pof knowledge is showing - with the majority of boats there is no insurance requirement to have a survey.
This 'insurance survey' will only (normally) apply to boats over 25 or 30 years old.
Fair enough - I did state my knowledge was limited, in this case to three experiences, one v.old, another 40yrs old which would explain it, the third was under 5yrs old so not sure why that was needed.
Alec
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One point I do find notable here is that, as the facts are presented, the broker has broken the contract but not immediately returned the deposit. That would appear to be questionable practice at the least?
Alec
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9 minutes ago, Alan de Enfield said:
WAS a common practice, but now much less so as sellers don't want to be messed about and have the price knocked down so they are happy that the market is so buoyant and sellers will even buy unseen as well as un-surveyed.
This is, in my view unfortunately, the case.
A house, a boat, or in some cases a car, are purchases of significant financial value with complex systems beyond the experience of the average owner to assess in full with a simple visual inspection. This means that both the seller and the buyer may be unaware of issues which are not immediately apparent. If priced at the market value based on only the known issues, it is self-evident that the value is lower with the issues present. That presents the choice of the seller rectifying the issues which have now been brought to their attention, or reducing the price in line with the lower value. Neither of these are actions based on unreasonably driving down price.
There is nothing to stop someone looking for a quick sale from guessing how much might be wrong and offering for sale at a lower price without survey, and similarly the buyer guessing and making an offer accordingly. This will result in some wins for the buyer and some for the seller, but it is random guesswork and I don't feel it is a desirable way for the market to go as it encourages unscrupulous sellers to hide problems and hope they can pass them off on the unwary. Having a survey as the norm discourages this.
There is also a practical point. My (limited) experience suggests that anything other than 3rd party insurance is difficult to get without some form of survey, so in the end it is going to have to be done anyway.
Personally, I would like to see the standard approach to boat sales go down the 'sales pack' route, where when a boat goes on brokerage it will automatically have a survey which is available to all buyers and accepted by all insurers. That would add a lot of confidence to the process and help to fix prices in the minds of both buyers and sellers. It would also make the whole process more streamlined all round. It won't happen though while the market is like it is.
Alec
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1 hour ago, Rob-M said:
I'm sure it will fit through Dudley tunnel looking at the photo. There are bonus points for legging through the tunnel but when we did it a few years ago the experience is worth more than the few points you get.
I've found the tunnel gauge profile - will have to make up a template and check. Thinking about it, assuming it was always based on the same route (and the indications are that it was) it must have been through the Dudley tunnel before in its pre-cabin days, as it pre-dates the Netherton tunnel.
Alec
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2 minutes ago, Captain Pegg said:
I go through Gosty Hill with very few revs as there's no point trying to fight with the 'rubbish soup' that passes for water in there. It's very slow.
Yes, I've gone through a few times on various boats (the first time the remains of the shed which used to house George the tunnel tug were still standing) and it isn't a quick route, but I do like the section through the old Coombeswood Tube Works the other side.
Alec
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3 minutes ago, Captain Pegg said:
Where's that?
The ice boat route map c.1952 gives its route as from Windmill End to Gosty Hill, so a trip down to Hawne Basin will need to be included I think, plus it should sound great through Gosty Hill. I am seriously tempted to try the gauge at Dudley Tunnel as it may just fit.
Alec
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I have assembled a crew and requested a form. Just need to plan a route which allows Oates to visit its former home.
Alec -
One thing which you can do that might address one of your questions is review the number against the name through the link here:
https://canalplan.org.uk/boats/boats.php
(a much appreciated feature of the above linked site run by @StevenA of this parish).
Alec
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33 minutes ago, StephenA said:
15.75 miles and 10 locks in 6 hours ... that's quite a run.
It wasn't bad. We have had a few memorably good runs over the years - Teddesley Road Basin in Penkridge to Gas Street in 11hrs and picking up a hire boat from the S&W at Aldersley on a Saturday morning, going up the 21 and on to the Wyrley & Essington, then the gearbox packing up (hire base had just bought the boat secondhand and not got round to checking it), somehow locking it into forwards, winding it, taking it back down the 21, picking up their other boat, up the 21, back round the Wyrley and Essington, down the Walsall to the main line and back down the 21 to return the boat by 5pm on the Sunday are two of the more memorable ones! It helps a lot that the SU was built by Telford rather than Brindley but really it is down to the fact that Phoenix (Norbury hire boat) was built to cruise rather than be a static caravan. It swims beautifully so it cruises along comfortably on that stretch at 3.5mph with minimal water disturbance. The locks took about 5mins each on average and the rest was down to passing moored boats and going through Woodseaves cutting.
Alec
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15 minutes ago, StephenA said:
Norbury to Audlem in half a day?
Not quite.
Left Norbury at 2pm, tied up at Audlem top lock at 8pm. This was the last week of August so it was still light until around 8.20pm. We walked down the flight to the pub (20mins).
We went down the flight the following morning which took 1.5hrs from the top lock to the bottom. Only 2 locks were with us.
Alec -
Yes it is an ice boat - Oates (formerly Esquimaux). Built for the BCN circa 1855 with a counter conversion in the 1970s I think by Andrew Milward.
It would be a poor choice to live on I think as it gives less accommodation space, but for relaxing/leisure it's fine. It depends what you enjoy I think. We enjoy boating. That means travelling a fair number of hours a day, at the speed that conditions sensibly allow, working locks as efficiently as possible. I am aware that this seems not to be what many people do these days - Youtube videos of people talking about a hard day when they have travelled for 4hrs and gone through 5 locks; complaining about people in a hurry by which they mean wanting to do more than 2mph on a deep, open stretch etc.. Everyone enjoys their boat in their own way and this one should suit us.
Haven't taken any of our own photos yet but here is one from the advert.
Alec
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We have just bought our first boat, this week in fact - it's the third I have owned and I still own one of the others, but paying a nominal pound for a rotting wooden hulk isn't quite the same thing.
I suspect we don't fit the typical profile. We are under 50 with children living at home for the next decade at least. We also have a mortgage and no inheritance. However, where we also appear to not fit the profile is in having a longstanding involvement with canals. We have rebuilt two wooden boat hulls and have both served a fair amount of time with the Waterway Recovery Group. Priorities have been different for a while, but we can now get back in to it and having a boat that actually floats is a big advantage.
Unusually in the current market it sat for quite a while. However, I think there were a number of reasons for that. It's short (38'), old (1855) and narrow (6'6" overall) with a round bottom so it is not going to appeal to a fair proportion of people. It has 8' of the space taken up with an engine room to fit the Kelvin J2. This list is going to put a lot of people off. It is not quite completed on the re-fit either and unless you are prepared to get stuck in, the additional cost of getting from where it is now to finished is going to be more than it will add to the value.
There was also some pretty poor advertising. The photographs reflected the previous owner's pride in what he had done, rather than focusing on the key points. Even a day spent finishing a few things off would have made it look a lot better; a week and it would probably have sold nearly instantly for a bit more than it went for. He also initially listed it at a very optimistic price which he then dropped considerably, but by that point it was buried well down the listings on Facebook and Apolloduck so people who might have bought it at the price it went for would have been put off and not noticed the price drop.
I don't think we have a bargain, but we do have something unique and breaking down costs we probably haven't paid much more than it would cost to get to where it is now - ie there isn't a lot of profit on it. There probably isn't much more that can be added in value either. It's like houses on certain streets where however many extensions or jacuzzies you add, the postcode sets the ceiling on price.
But we like its quirkiness, its history and its overall looks, so since the intention is to enjoy it. We will have had our money's worth if it doesn't drop more than say £5k in 5yrs, and I would be surprised if it did. The point is, in the £10-30k bracket, there are still some boats around which are not what the current stereotypical buyer is looking for so the price has not gone up ridiculously. FWIW the same is true with classic cars - massive growth over the past decade but my wife's rubber-bumpered Midget is still a viable proposition to own and run, and just as much fun.
Alec
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2 minutes ago, Simon Pooley said:
We've booked /Meadow Dew/ from Norbury https://www.facebook.com/norburywharfltd/posts/4868434433209525
Looks like being a smart new boat, and the stove well be useful if the weather continues to be much the same as this week!
Did you go North or South from Norbury?
Simon.
We had Phoenix which is one of their older boats but tidy, with a stove and diesel central heating, neither of which was used as it was too warm. It came back with very shiny brasswork courtesy of my elder daughter. They will have to put a tin of Brasso on board from now on!
We went North round the Four Counties and also up the Caldon to Consall Forge. Not possible at the moment it seems. If it's relevant to your plans, we arrived early, at around 12.45, and had lunch at the cafe. They had us on the boat by 13.30 and we were underway by 14.00 - we were meeting friends for dinner at the Shroppie Fly so the extra time helped.
Alec
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On 25/09/2021 at 20:19, Simon Pooley said:
It's good to hear that Audlem is open again...we're hiring from Norbury Wharf next weekend with the intention of getting to Ellesmere Port.
(This is our somewhat delayed spring 2000 trip!)
Simon.
21yrs would have been a considerable delay! Funnily enough, we were last up near Chester around 1996 and hired from Norbury a few weeks ago. Not sure whether you are following us or we are following you!
Which boat are you hiring?
Alec
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21 hours ago, Alan de Enfield said:
Go with the Morco for hot water.
A blown air diesel heater uses a lot of electricty - mine use a continuous 10 amps when it is running, so at least 100Ah per day - how are you going to charge your batteries ?
You will need to run your engine for 3 or 4 hours per day just to replace what has been used by your heater.
It doesn't worry me as we have twin 70a alternators and cruise pretty much everyday for several hours, have a 1200Ah battery bank so can survive for a few days without moving and have a generator to run the battery charger if needed. When on our mooring we have leccy 'on draught'.
Your simplest way would be to use a small solid fuel stove such as the 'pipsqueak' it is designed for small spaces (boats) and is 3.5Kw. We had one on a 30 foot NB and didn't need any radiators so it only took up a space about 2' x 2'. The tiles are 4" squares.
Thanks for that. I hadn't appreciated the electrical power requirement for the blown air heater. We have 900Ah of batteries (nominally, although condition remains to be seen) however using something which does not drain them would be desirable. It's a single alternator and I have not yet investigated what it delivers. I intend to add 100W or so of solar to trickle charge when we are away from the boat but that is just to keep it topped up and make sure the pumps can run if necessary - it's hardly going to make a meaningful contribution when the boat is occupied, although it might slow down the drain rate on the batteries a bit if we have days when we are immobile, e.g. when the engine is in bits for servicing or painting.
The stove idea looks good but we don't have 2' x 2' of space without removing something such as a bed, which is not a popular idea! There is also the challenge of finding somewhere to put a Morco but that may be more achievable with some creativity. Continuing the idea of stoves further, I have been looking at the smallest Refleks gravity fed diesel heater. We have a day tank so fuel feed is not a problem. I can't find any definitive installation instructions for the distance from non-flammable material. It requires 12" from flammable material, but the flue, which is the hottest part, is only specified as needing to be 100mm from non-flammable material. There are indications that the twin wall design actually keeps the outer surface cool enough to touch, in which case there may actually not need to be any gap for safety reasons, but it would still need to comply with the BSS. I found reference on another post to BSS section 8.4 and 8.5 but I can't find an online version of installation requirements. Even if it does need 100mm of gap, at only 160mm diameter it fits within 260mm square (with the corner chopped off too) which is achievable I think. I need to find out whether that is both safe and compliant. There appears to be a version with a heating coil which could be fed to the calorifer, and a more attractive version with a window, but not a version with both, although it looks like a coil could be added, given how simple the design is, just slightly less efficient as the coil would have to go around the window. That would enable hot water and could use the engine block as a heat sink which would keep the boat warm and would do the engine some good on start-up.
Any reasons why the above would be a bad idea?
If the discussion continues further on this I will start a new thread around my own boat and move it there - it's going to need one anyway!
Alec
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This thread appears to be developing into a fairly in-depth discussion around heating systems, so I might as well ask here as the question will be very similar to the requirements for a GRP cruiser or a steel narrowboat in the OP's price range.
30' of cabin, split either side of an engine room which takes 8' of that, and below standard width, so space is at an absolute premium. The whole inside is spray-foamed to 50mm.
There is a single coil calorifer fitted to the engine and also a stove in the back cabin but that's it at present.The boat is for leisure use rather than liveaboard but it would be nice to be able to do that all year round without freezing. The main enjoyment is cruising rather than just sitting on it, but like any lower priced boat with an owner who doesn't have infinitely deep pockets, there will also be time spent working on it so static for a day or two at a time. Since it is not liveaboard, the mooring costs have been kept down by not having a shoreline, so it has to be self-contained.
There is therefore a need for heat and hot water which is ideally not dependent on running the engine, through a compact system which does not break the bank.
Options so far appear to be a diesel water heater (Webasto type) plumbed into the same coil in the calorifer, running this on to twin pipe fin/tube radiators with thermostatic control. The heater and the engine would either need to be parallel with either a manual control valve or thermostats between the two, or series and accept heating of the engine block by the diesel heater which may not be a bad thing as a heat store/reducing wear, particularly since the skin cooling thermostat would then function as an overload switch.
Other alternative would be a Morco water heater and then heat either with bulkhead mounted marine stoves (difficult to keep in? expensive?, need somewhere to keep fuel) or a diesel air heater which seems to be way cheaper than the water heating version for no apparent reason, but this approach means sacrificing more of the very limited space and cutting extra holes for exhausts.
Thoughts?
Alec -
Have you tried playing a MAPP torch over the rust and then brushing it off with a normal hand wire brush? I have found that quite effective as the difference in thermal expansion between the steel and the rust causes it to ping off. It can take a few goes, and obviously no good around anything flammable, but I used it for de-rusting some heavily scaled 6mm thick steel parts to good effect, and of course it doesn't need electrical power, and it does leave the surface dry so you know you are not painting over any residual wet rust.
Alec
BCN Challenge 2022
in General Boating
Posted
We went up that one one year before it was prohibited. Last time we tried the nearby Gospel Oak branch and got further than I think anyone can have done in years, but bog snorkelling would be the only option to get further than that.
Alec