koukouvagia

Not according to BW's Long Term Mooring Conditions "The Mooring agreement is personal to you and you may not assign it to any person."

The problem with motorised butties is that you have to get a propshaft through the hull somehow. There is usually very little room for this. Also I don’t like the idea of cutting into an historic hull. An alternative is to have a hydraulic motor in the ellum. You get fantastic handling – it’s just like a giant outboard- and you preserve the hull. http://tinyurl.com/5a9tk4 http://tinyurl.com/5nla2g

My advice is to find a marina where the owner knows and understands boats and boaters. The present owner of your marina, Alan, makes no secret of the fact that he would really have preferred to have invested his money in a caravan park because “caravaners are less demanding than boaters.”

I can’t do the maths, but I know empirically that if I fill up my water tank (250 gallons) which is at the front of the boat (70'), the stem post sinks 4” in the water. In fact, I use the this phemonenon as a primitive tank guage – 3 inches out of the water – time to fill up.

We’ve all had that sinking feeling. I came back to the boat and found a considerable volume of water in what are supposed to be the dry bilges under the main cabin. It took a certain amount of detective work to figure out the cause. The previous weekend I decided to drain the water system. I turned on the taps in the bathroom and kitchen. On my way out of the boat I went into the engine room and turned off the battery. This meant that the water pump was also switched off, so that now no more water could enter the system and all the water was drained. So why the water in the bilges? Answer: In turning off the battery I also immobilised the gulper pump which drains all the grey water, including bath and sink waste, from a one of those small grey-water holding tanks. Thus all the water that was still draining from the sink and the bath when I switched off the power was still entering the holding tank but was not being pumped overboard. Instead it overflowed and found its way into the bilges.

I don’t want to sound churlish, but I don’t think a medal from BW or the Waterways Trust would be much to write home about. These women deserve recognition from the British Government on behalf of a greatful nation. My mother, now in her nineties, has just received with great pride one such medal and citation for her work in the Land Army. Her only slight reservation is that it was signed by Gordon Brown, not the Queen!

First look carefully at the angle of the rudder – if it is not perfectly vertical the rudder stock has probably slipped out of its locating socket and is wedged to one side of the skeg; secondly does the rudder seem a bit lower than usual? As Chris says the trick is to lift the rudder back onto the skeg and manipulate it backwards and forwards until it drops into the socket. Assuming you haven’t got jacks available you can still do it without them. I was taught this method by an old boatman. Put your back under the tiller bar and by straightening up your legs you can lever the rudder back up onto the skeg. Once you’ve got it there you can move it backwards or forwards until it drops into the socket. It really does work!

I still find it difficult to believe I actually experienced the following incident. Coming towards me in Blisworth was a boat hugging the wall on its left hand side – i.e. on the wrong side of the tunnel. “At any moment, it’ll move over,” I thought. It didn’t and there we were, stationary, nose to nose. An angry steerer on the other boat shouted, “move over.” “But you’re on the wrong side of the tunnel,” I shouted back. “The hire firm told me always to pass on the left,” he replied. It wasn’t until much later that I realised the boatyard was referring to passing when overtaking, not passing another boat in a tunnel! Hey ho.

I think you did absolutely the right thing in walking away from the so-called bargain. Unless you have deep pockets and specialized knowledge and experience of restoring wooden boats you would have been asking for trouble. I was once offered a wooden boat for nothing. It was Sir Peter Scott’s butty “Beatrice”. “Aha,” I thought, “a chance to own a piece of history.” However, when I worked out how much it would have cost to restore I reluctantly decided it was more than I could handle.

Try this: http://www.laurencehoggproductions.co.uk/plans.htm Lawrence Hogg has copies of original plans and drawings of most of the original working boats. I found them very useful when restoring our Josher.

It looks as though the boat is trying to wind with its stern end in the winding hole. Surely it’s better to stick the stem into the winding hole and drive the boat round in forward gear. (Granted, the boat in the picture couldn’t very well do this with the idiot moored in the hole.) The boat will then turn and will need the minimum width of the canal. My mooring is opposite a winding hole (on a part of the canal that’s a good 90’ wide) and have lost count of the number of boats clonking me as they perform the stern-in-the hole manoeuvre. BTW, I’m dead against BW’s proliferation of useless signs, but a simple notice saying, “Don’t moor here, boats turning” would be a lot clearer than the symbol BW presently favours.

On the Today Programme this morning there was an interview with Philip Pullman. http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00cx5xv/ It's 2 hrs 37 mins into the programme on the BBC I-player.

Bought a cheap Springer shell in 1987. Spent two years doing it up. Swapped it for a sunken josher in 1989. Spent next 15 years restoring it to its former glory. No fancy holidays and slave labour from the rest of the family. Result? A much admired boat. I do get annoyed, though, when people say, “You are lucky,” as if the boat somehow restored itself.

Here we go again – Canaltime bashing. Recently I was moored in the basin at Market Harborough for a few days and had the opportunity of observing how the Canaltime handover works. Frankly, I have nothing but admiration for the care and attention paid to the hirers. In some cases several hours of instruction were given to nervous first-timers by the very experienced and knowledgeable boaters used as Canaltime trainers. Canaltime also has a formal arrangement with the lockies at Foxton to give hirers training on the use of locks – so they are certainly not let loose on the system without a reasonable understanding of how to use locks safely. Admittedly I did see some complete idiots who simply wouldn’t listen to the careful instruction and others who were too jet-lagged (having just arrived on long distance flights a few hours earliers) to absorb very much. Also I spoke to one American couple who were expecting a timeshare in a London hotel, but because of some administrative error found themselves on a narrowboat. They nevertheless enjoyed the experience and are planning to return. On the whole, the Canaltimers I met were keen to learn but they were baffled by the hostility of other boaters, some of whose behaviour was simply arrogant and boorish.

Frankly, I’d much rather meet a boat showing no light than one with a dazzling million candlepower search light. My own rather dim headlight will always pick out a boat coming towards me without a light, but I have real problems with the boats belonging to the blinding light brigade.