MoominPapa

Yes, and no. Turn a hot tap on to provide a second path into the system. On my installation this very conveniently lets air in via the drain plug hole and the water exits via the tap.You may not be so lucky. MP.

And much of what goes down the S&W towards Stourport is tapped off into a local river at Dimmingsdale. The bywashes below there have not been expanded to take the extra flow. MP.

Ah, yes. Stoke. Where our boat and its occupants were stoned and I nearly lost an eye as a consequence. MP.

We once did something similar of the River Stort. Arrived late in the evening and extemporised a mooring; not realising how high the river was. What didn't help was that the local CRT bods opened the flood paddles that (Friday) evening and then buggered off for the weekend, so by the time we woke up the next morning the water level was a lot lower than usual and we were well and truly marooned. Several other boats were in the same state, but we all got together and freed the easiest NB, which then started snatching others. Being deep, and because we weren't on a regular mooring spot, Melaleuca was by far the most stuck; sitting pretty flat on the bottom with a good eight inches of normally wet hull showing all round. I was very sceptical that she'd ever move, but we used one NB roped to the front and another roped to the back and both took a good snatch at the same time and she came off very easily. So what you need, Andrew, is not one, but two passing boats MP.

Yes. My experience is that an A127 mounted high on the engine in an engine room which runs flat-out for at least half the day is that one lasts three years or so and then fails a diode. Something buried in the depths under a cruiser stern would be hotter and might not survive. MP.

When running the alternator geared up like this, consider adding a switch to disable the field during cold starts. A cold low-revving diesel will quite possibly fail to accelerate at all if it's a loaded by an alternator producing that best part of a kilowatt at normal idle speed. Starting without load avoids that and allows the oil to circulate before adding load. On my FR2 with a 70A A127 and belt around the flywheel I always start from cold with the field off. It's not necessary with a hot engine. MP.

There are towpath moorings in the village opposite the boatyard and a bit further North. MP.

I have suggested, to R. Parry himself, that all Elsan points should have a shelf or storage place suitable for caps, to reduce the incidence of blockages due them being lost. Our Thetford cassettes have doors over the dump hole which have become pretty loose with long wear. You have to be careful not to lose the door when tipping the cassette up. MP.

Emptying the land based bins is no better when they are (inevitably) over-full. I have. MP.

My suggestion for rubbish facilities was hoppers, located on the offside and only accessible by boat. Something similar works in Northwich, where the bins are in a pontoon next to the CRT yard. To do the same thing where the location is not accessible for emptying, you'd need to arrange to remove the rubbish by water, probably by replacing a full hopper with an empty one and taking the full one to somewhere where it could be discharged. MP

That's a scary prospect as well. I wonder did something like that happen to the chap who fell asleep on the M62 and dumped his Landrover into the path a a train on the East Coast Mainline? Probably, and they could have gone after the uninsured owner of the sunken boat, in turn. It didn't seem wise or fair to go after a fellow moorer who had already lost a lot for our small losses, if it risked coming from him rather than his or our insurer. MP.

The road traffic act(s) contain clauses that prohibit insurers from denying _third_party_ liabilities if the policy holder breaks the insurance contract. If you drive down the A1 pissed and crash into another car, the insurance company will refuse to pay for your car, but they can't refuse to pay for the one you hit. The waterways acts have the same clauses, word-for-word, requiring insurance, but not the stuff about third parties. I found this out when a boat sank in our marina and the insurance wouldn't pay up because the sinking was caused by corrosion and lack of maintenance. They insurance wouldn't pay for damage to the blacking on many boats caused by leaking diesel from the wreck either. So, negligence in a boat can land you with a liability of millions that's not covered by your third party insurance in a way which is not possible with a car, at least under UK law. MP.

https://www.itv.com/news/anglia/2012-11-01/narrow-boat-sinks MP.

Sounds like a plan. The only problem will be finding out if you've succeeded. I can tell cause the light in the (240v) fridge takes a few seconds to come on if the compressor is not working, or the angle grinder takes a couple of seconds to start after you press the trigger (which is bloody dangerous, BTW, I do not recommend this.) MP.

On ours your can activate it just using the power switch, but it's not obvious. You switch on, wait for the display to say "Powersave off", switch off, and then switch on again. Now it'll say "powersave on". Beware that there's a small time window somewhere in the startup sequence during which, if you switch off and on again it gets mighty confused and then cycles between powersave off and powersave on forever without starting up properly. If you get to this state you can recover just by cutting the incoming 12v with the isolator for a few seconds. The jumper/dipswitch changes the default state at power up, so you don't have to go through this malarkey every time you switch on. I can't remember the details and I can't get into mine to look without undoing all the connections and mounting nuts. As far as I can remember, I never found anything online about it, so it must have been fairly obvious from the markings on the PCB which jumper for switch does this. If I were you, I'd try the on-off-on technique first, to test that the powersave mode works ok with your gear, and if it does, isolate everything, remove the cover and look for a set of jumpers or dipswitches one of which is marked in some unambiguous way. HTH MP. ETA. Page 10 in here https://www.donrowe.com/v/vspfiles/pdf/prosine_1000_1800_owners_guide.pdf

The only time I've used our Danforth "in anger" was waiting for the tide to turn during a passage across The Wash. (We didn't beach, which is most common tactic, but stayed floating the whole time.) We had no problem. A shorter NB in the flotilla which had a collapsible grapnel anchor suffered dragging, and had to run their engine in ahead the whole time to hold station. MP. ETA. When we first started narrowboating, I would have retrieved the anchor from storage and set it up with chain and warp connected on any river; the Soar, Nene, Gt Ouse, Severn etc. These days I only have it ready under all circumstances on the Trent, Severn below Upper Lode, and the Salter's Lode to Denver tidal crossing. Summer river boating on canalised rivers, I wouldn;t bother.

We're planning to head from Bunbury towards Beeston today so I looked up the Shady Oak's website to see when we could go for a meal. They closed on last night until sometime in the spring. I can't say I'm enjoying the Sunlit Uplands of Brexit very much. MP.

The indian is good. Don't over-order, the portions are generous. MP.

Since the piece cites vandalism is of buildings as a problem, I suggest making more Elsan points of the outdoor variety. They are by far the most pleasant to use anyway, since they're so well ventilated. MP.

It's crazy that there's no elsan facilty in Middlewich. With the loss of Hurleston, a boat coming from the Bridgewater or the Weaver onto the Llann doesn't pass anything between Anderton and the top of Grindley Brook unless they direct to Calverley or Nantwich. MP. ETA. Also, It's a pain that the only Elsan in Chester is the one below the Staircase. There's a disused Elsan by one locks on the way in (maybe Chemistry?) but ideally something in Christleton would be best.

The water and elsan at the top of Tyrley flight on the shroppie has been out of use for at least a couple of years. I don't know if it's been formally abandoned. MP.