[hull survey]

Just as a point of interest regarding surveys, I quite like the idea of purchasing a copy survey from the surveyor himself as an earlier poster has mentioned (the half price option). I'm not particularly well up on Civil Law but I would suggest that if you purchase the survey from the surveyor himself your are entering into a legitimate contract with him which could be subject to Civil Redress if he has got it wrong. On the other hand if you just take a survey from the vendor you have no contract with the surveyor and if it all goes wrong he will say that his only liaibility is with the person who commissioned the survey, the vendor.

 

Obviously this is only of value if we are talking about a reputable surveyor, and that would be where we go back to an earlier post I submitted!

[Boat Title/Surveyors?]

Hi Pentargon

 

It seems that you are well ahead of me in terms of information in the race for the water, thanks for the suggestion of Jim Shead's site, I looked at it sometime in the past then lost the link to it, the information contained in that site is truly awesome!

 

I am interested in your experience of surveying the boat though. I'm not sure about the bit "..You have to sign up to purchase..". I'm willing to put in a bid 'subject to survey' but then I'm not willing to give any 'agreed price' until I have the results of the survey tucked in my hot little hand. The result of the survey I would have expected to affect the offer that I am willing to make on the boat.

 

I would think that a boat would have to be pretty dire to 'fail' a survey but there may be many things that a survey may uncover which would not necessarily render it 'uncanalworthy' (I know, no such word!) but would discourage me from wanting to buy it, if the boat had already been plated would be one factor. My insistence would be on the deposit being refundable which may not necessarily fit in with the broker's terms (solution: try another broker?).

 

Since the surveying of the boat is entirely my responsibility (the contract is between me and the surveyor) I don't quite follow why I would be expected to pay a broker any substantial amount of money. I'm quite content to pay a reasonable amount of money for the broker to arrange for the boat to go to a suitable slipway, but since I'm looking at boats in the region of £50,000 I don't think £5,000 is reasonable! (I could hire a boat for 6 weeks for that AND get it surveyed!). I certainly would not want to go through the broker to the surveyor.

 

Perhaps I am being naive in my expectation of what I will need to do to get a boat surveyed. I was aware of the cost of surveying (about £600) and got a quote of about £200 to get it out of the water and I am as content as you can be in writing that off if the boat has any major faults. It has always seemed to me that, as with any other big purchase (house,car, etc) you have to be prepared to walk away, otherwise you get a lifetime of regretting to do so. (I did say before that I'm a natural pessimist!)

[Closest to disaster....]

I've just seen this one in a link from 'Retirement with No Problem' blog:-

 

http://waterwaynews.blogspot.com/2011/08/bw-recover-stricken-boat-photos.html

 

so you dont even have to have closed the lock gates before you can get into trouble, scary

[Closest to disaster....]

Working on the principle that it is far cheaper to learn from other people's mistakes than from your own (and can be far more entertaining!) how close have you ever come to disaster? and how did you avoid it?

 

To set the ball rolling I'll relate my own pratfall which dates from a trip with family along the Trent and Mersey. Always aware of the risks of cilling a boat we always pushed the boat as far forward in the lock as possible when going down. On this occasion my son was steering the boat whilst my wife and I operated the lock. All going to plan, wife closed rear gate of the lock as I opened the paddle(s) on the front gate. What I had failed to notice was that the bow of the boat was touching the lock gate and as the water drained from the lock the bow was not going down (the stern was!). Instant panic and shut all paddles to see what was happening. Rather bizarrely for some reason my first thought was that something had sunk in the lock and we were resting on top of it. The rather more prosaic reason turned out to be that the bow fender was caught on one of the cross beams of the lock gate. Solution was straightforward to refill the lock and push it off the gate but I learnt the lesson that if you are not watching what you are doing things can go wrong very rapidly. I would like to think that the fender would have broken before the boat began to sink but I wouldn't like to bet my house on it!

 

Having exposed myself to the expected ridicule, what is the closest YOU have come to disaster?

[warning about burning Yew logs]

I've had a look around the ole 'tinternet and it seems to me that burning Yew wood is probably no more dangerous than burning any other wood.

 

The active ingredient in Yew is Taxine, this apparently doesn't do your heart much good. On the other hand it is probably very inadvisable to inhale any wood smoke in a confined since they all contain a variety of carcinogens the worst of which seems to be dioxin (I'm old enough to remember the Seveso Disaster!) most of the toxins found in tobacco will also be found in wood smoke. I would also suggest that if your boat is being contaminated with wood smoke then it is probably being contaminated with carbon monoxide and you really should get your chimney looked at!

 

I am also curious since you say that your friend became ill from cutting and burning Yew logs, perhaps it was the cutting that did the damage? Was the wood dry or damp? Most wood dust will cause respiratory problems which is why wood turners use respirators.

[Boat Title/Surveyors?]

Thanks for the replies so far, it was principally the problems highlighted by 'Dor' that I was thinking about:- part owner of a boat trying to sell the whole boat without telling his boat partners or buying a boat with finance still owing on it.

 

A bill of sale is good but it is not beyond the wit of man to forge one. It would certainly support your case if it all goes wrong and you find yourself in a Civil Court trying to prove that you bought the boat in good faith, I want to try to ensure that I don't find myself in that position (like I said I'm an eternal pessimist!!). It sounds as though brokerage is the way to go.

 

One other area I was considering is what records do British Waterways (or whatever it is called now) hold of licence holders? and is there general access to this information? My thoughts are that if the same person has bought the licence for the boat for the past couple of years there is a good likelihood of him/her being the genuine owner.

 

I think that handing over £50,000 in banknotes in a pub somewhere would make me VERY nervous!!!

 

In terms of what area of the country I'm looking for a surveyor, I would be looking principally at the Midlands (Coventry,Birmingham,Leicester,Rugby etc) but if there is a really good surveyor somewhere else I'm sure they could be tempted to travel.

[Boat Title/Surveyors?]

As the time that I hope to purchase a Narrowboat to CC in retirement draws closer I am starting to look at the options and necessities. One area that I am unsure of is how do you establish ownership of a boat? Unlike a house there are no 'deeds' nor are there registration documents like a car (or at least I haven't heard of them yet, perhaps someone can enlighten me). Does everyone take on a solictor to carry out the transaction? and if so how does he establish that the person selling the boat is the true owner? I don't suppose that fraud is a particularly big problem in a community like canalboaters however if there is only an occasional victim I would rather that it wasn't me!

 

And as a sort of Two for One on my first real posting looking for information, can anyone recommend a good surveyor? I don't need to know about the bad one's (those posts will be edited out anyway) I just want to know of those that have carried out a good job for which you as a boatbuyer have been really satisfied. I have got the list of surveyors from here:- http://www.canaljunction.com/boat/surveyors.htm but that doesn't tell me which one's have given good service. And how much comeback do you have on a surveyor if the job is badly done? Do they carry liability insurance if they fail to spot a significant defect? If only some do how do you know which one's have?

 

As I go on I think of more and more questions as I'm a natural pessimist (but at least we are never disappointed, if all goes well it is seen as a bonus rather than the expected disaster) but I'll leave it at that for the moment.

[Moorings on Private (farm) land, K&A]

Luctor

Borrowing your 'Pedant's' hat for a short time if I may? regarding the accuracy or otherwise of GPS compared to an on-board speedometer you need to understand Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. If the GPS can give an accurate fix for your location it's estimate of your speed will be dubious, if it can give an accurate speed then it's positonal fix will be dubious. I have seen a GPS used in an aircraft showing a speed of 520mph, at that speed there is no way you could get an accurate positional fix! However your means of speed measuring is done it has to give an average between two (or more) points.Your on-board speedometer however is also not the fount of all knowledge since this will be subject to mechanical inaccuracies which is why the 10% allowance was first introduced. Under European legislation however NO speedometer is permitted to under-estimate your speed (read 60 when you are actually doing 70) so what you will actually find is that ALL speedometers will read less than the actual speed of the car, so the 10% allowance is now unnecessary. (now removing pendant's hat and returing it to it's owner!!!)

 

On a thread about Moorings, why are we discussing speeding???

[Folding Bikes]

A cycle that I have bought with a view to carrying on a Narrow boat in the future is a Dahon folding Mountain bike (http://www.cyclemotion.co.uk/dahon/zerog.htm). It doesn't fold as small as the Brompton but give an excellent ride on the towpath having tested it on occasions riding the K & A from Bath to Bradford-on Avon. It is a pretty robust bike having also used it for off-road riding on Dartmoor. Basically the bike folds in half so I would accept that it will still cause some space problems within the confines of a narrow boat.

[It was only a matter of time]

"I drive 2 tons of Toyota 4x4. Gives me the edge."

 

Fireproof is it??

[It was only a matter of time]

"I'd like my life not to be ended prematurely by the actions of others, ta very much."

 

Do you drive a car? Could happen any day then!

[It was only a matter of time]

If we are talking about risk, I suppose that we had better get all of the tunnels on the system closed and filled in, after all the consequences of a fire in a tunnel doesn't bear thinking about (remember the alpine tunnel fire a few years ago?). This thread seems to epitomse everything that is wrong with this country these days, everything is risk assessed and everyone becomes risk averse trying to remove all risk altogether from life.

 

Life is a risk and I don't know of anyone yet who has got out of it alive!

[It was only a matter of time]

Perhaps I'm not particularly well read on the subject but can anyone give me some examples of a fire on one boat spreading to several others? From my limited experience of the subject the resulting damage is usually limited to paint damage on nearby boats much the same as if your neighbours car catches fire in the street. Surely one of the 'bonuses' of life on the cut is that there is always some water nearby to help extinguish the fire and cool your own boat!

 

I also think another poster has also raised the perfectly valid point that if there were minimum mooring distances who on earth would police it. I suppose the only real solution would be that when you pay for your mooring you also have to pay for the additional 25feet either side of your boat in which you can have your 'exclusion zone', I'm sure BW would have no objection to doubling your mooring fees for this minor comfort!!(you don't think you'd get it for nothing surely???)

[how to work a lock?]

I just love this animation:

 

http://www.canals.com/lock2way.gif

 

Be nice if they went that fast - but a bit splashy![

 

 

I don't want to be pedantic, not with this being my first post and all, but don't both of the gates on the animation open the 'wrong' way? (Like the top gate should open out of the lock and the bottom gate into it). I understand what it is supposed to show but for a newby it would confuse a bit,no?

 

It's still a neat animation though!!