MoominPapa

The switch should be break-before-make, and never connect both source at the same time. I'd go further and say that it _is_ break-before-make. If it wasn't, you would have blown up your inverter and tripped your show power by now. MP.

It's only a few feet. The existing high current cables all terminate in a cupboard in the engine room on the bulkhead between the engineroom and the back cabin, so the cables just have go through that bulkhead to reach the batteries on the other side. Long cables have to be fat, and long, fat, cables are expensive. MP.

+1. Our Thunderskys are very content under the bed. The space in the engine room where the LAs used to hang out are now extra tool storage. MP.

MoominPapa is aware, and cogitating. These days, such plans have to start with getting the crew back into the country and proceed with getting the vessel to the start line. MP.

I seem to remember coming across a pipeline crossing of the S&W downstream of Dimmingsdale Lock in the form of a self-supporting arch over the canal. It was possible to hear the liquid flow if you put an ear to the pipe. At the time a wasted an hour or so on the internet and worked out where it was likely going from and to, but I can't remember now. Infrastructure like this is fascinating, but scarily unprotected. MP.

The bridge over the tail of Wharton's lock on the Chester line carries a GPSS pipeline. The markers are easy to see. I guess its immediate ends are probably Stanlow Oil refinery and the wartime oil depot beside the railway at Beeston, opposite Chas Hardern's boatyard. I remember as a kid in the sixties going along there on my Grandad's boat and the grass mounds over the oil tanks were all mowed and maintained. Now it looks pretty derelict. MP.

This came up in my youtube feed today. Not strictly boating, but the S&L connection gives a bit of an excuse, and I'm sure many here will be interested. Most will have heard of PLUTO, but there are lots of fascinating details in the film which I didn't know about. MP.

Good points. I'd still rather do Northgate staircase than Grindley Brook. The later always seems to land me on the bottom of the middle chamber and require faffing with water levels, no matter what I do. MP. It may have been December, but we still managed to get hit by an out-of-control dayboat. MP.

There's nowt wrong with the locks on the Chester Line. The locks on the Llangollen were no fun at all during the Big Freeze. MP.

The Llangollen is clear. It took the first boat through Grindley Brook staircase two hours to clear the ice and there were still a few bergy bits clogging behind gates when we cam through later, but apart from that there's no ice to be found. There are a couple of fallen trees, now the wind has got up. MP.

... and this is what canal water looks like after a night in a lock at -9°C MP.

Oh noes. You'll be stuck in a cottage in North Wales and unable to return to work. Woe is Monkey! MP.

Not sure that the winning photo really captures it, but that stretch around Newton Harcourt is one of my favourite anywhere. The canal runs along the side of a shallow valley and you look down towards the river and small, old, isolated church. Great mooring. MP.

If the shower head is lower than the water level in the tank the water can siphon out. MP.

This can be dangerous advice, at least one boat I know did this and the water tank emptied slowly, by gravity, into the shower tray, overflowed and filled the bilges. Twice, before the owners worked out what was going on. MP.

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.