koukouvagia

No. I contacted them when they had moved to near Wakefield. They were very helpful.

One of the disadvantages of having an hydraulic drive is that you really need specialists to deal with any problem. I've had excellent service from ARS diesels who were able to recommend a first class hydraulic engineer. He came with full diagnostic equipment and checked and serviced our set up when we needed help.

Just to add my RCR horror story. I am happy to do my own maintenance and running repairs, but I took out RCR when my son and daughter-in-law were using our motorised butty. They broke down at Braunston and the RCR engineer diagnosed a faulty injection pump because the engine would start and then cut out. To cut a very long story short, the RCR fitted an exchange pump but the problem persisted. In the end I said, "Forget it, we'll sort it out ourselves." Fortunately, we had the motor with us so we were able to tow the butty back to base. There a proper engineer, Ed Boden, correctly diagnosed and fixed, a blown cylinder head gasket.

When I was selling Owl I had a good number of what you might call non-serious enquiries. I got the impression that they simply wanted a good old nose around the boat but were not interesting in buying. My solution was to refer them politely to my website which gave a detailed history of the boat and its restoration and invite them to ring me again when they had had a look. They never got back to me. This reduced the potential purchasers to three: one who couldn't raise the money; one who couldn't make up his mind and one who clearly loved the boat and bought it immediately.

When I bought my historic narrowboat, I was under no illusion about the condition of the hull. I knew at some stage large parts would would have to be re-plated. When I had the obligatory hull survey, the surveyor re-assured me that the hull was insureable and suggested that I knock off the internal rust, treat it and paint it. Following this advice my son went right through the hull. Lessons learnt: be very wary about following a surveyor's advice and always have some epoxy putty handy. I certainly never thought of suing the surveyor (who has now retired) and just put the incident down to the hazards of owning an old boat.

I'm sure Blackrose's method is the correct one, but I had perfectly acceptable results on my aluminium-covered slides by using Halfords' Etch Primer - well, it's lasted a couple of years so far. It comes in a 500 ml spray can.

Welcome. You might want to remove your postcode from your location.

That bridgehole is tricky even for narrowboats.

I made plywood slides and covered them with a thin sheet of aluminium. This has the benefit of lightness and durability. I put little felt pads on the runners, thinking that they might not last, but they have now been in place for a couple of years and work smoothly.

I'd question that. I don't remember this happened in the early days of the show. What you have to realise that most boaters come to the Braunston show to talk, to gossip, to catch up on the news, to meet new friends, to natter to old ones. After a hard day's talking to passers-by and sitting for hours going nowhere on the parade, there's nothing better than to have a relaxing pint or two and chat without being deafened by the entertainment.

Good news. All being well Hampton will be re-united with Owl, which is having work done at the moment.

I have a theory that an old boat will cost you £80K. You can either buy it cheaper and do the work yourself; or you can buy a boat that's already had the work done. Believe me, you need deep pockets to own and maintain an historic boat.

I've posted on this subject before, but I would warn against poorly executed overplating. Our 110 year old butty had been overplated on top of overplating! Rust was quietly able to eat its way through from the inside and in between the plates. When removing some of the scale from the inside, my son punched a hole right through. Yes, the water did come in. The only solution was to have a proper job done.

I can recommend KC Covers. They made the cloths for our under-cloth conversions on both our motor and butty. They do all sorts of material. We chose textured vinyl which, though not traditional, is a pretty good likeness. I've forgotten what it's called but Karl will advise you. www.kccoversltd.co.uk eta: They will do all the measuring and templating for you.

This is a good place to start https://www.westsystem.com/wp-content/uploads/Wooden-Boat-Restoration-and-Repair.pdf

I had a very similar problem with the wooden roof on our butty. Over the years I have used all sorts of sealants, but they are, at best, a bodge. Sikaflex is probably the best. The leaks were finally cured by using a fibre glass mat sheet and resin. (Google West System). However, even this lasted only a few years because the underlying wood dried out and became friable causing the fibre glass shell to crack. However, you say your roof is largely sound, so you may be OK. The permanent solution in may case was to rebuild the back cabin in steel. For details of how I did the fibre glass and resin go to https://www.buttyhampton.com/engine-and-hydraulic-drive (scroll down the page).

Here's another example of Dave's work. He's just painted a cabin block for Hampton. We've now a full set of Dave's work: he decorated the back cabin, grained and lettered the boat and also painted the can and bowl. A clever chap!

I’m one of the members here with an ARS hydraulic drive fitted to a butty. See https://www.buttyhampton.com/undercloth-conversion-2005 Pros: Pretty well maintenance free. I just change the oil about once every five years. I've renewed all the hoses after about ten years – merely as a precaution. ARS provide excellent service and will design a system for you that matches your engine. There are also specialist engineers around who will come out to your boat. Very simple to fit to a bog standard engine like my 1.8 BMC. Can be fitted anywhere on the boat where it’s convenient. Very useful if there’s low headroom in the back cabin because of a conventional prop shaft running under the floor. Cons: A bit of a whine. Not really a problem. Expensive when things do go wrong. I had a log trapped in the propellor and for some reason the safety valve didn’t actuate. Blown oil seals resulted in rebuild. I am told that they are efficient, but I’ve never been able to verify this. There's certainly no lack of power on our 70' boat.

I had at various times these two arrangements. The first one shows a feed tee-ed off the day tank; the second one just has a simple reservoir.

We’d owned Owl for over thirty years and the butty Hampton for twenty five. Maintaining two historic boats meant that we were spending more time repairing and renovating than we were actually boating. Crunch time came in 2017 when I was going aground with Owl on the north Stratford every 100 yards and for the first time in over thirty years I was not enjoying boating. We decided to sell Owl and use the money to restore to a very high standard our butty, Yes, I miss the Kelvin, but it’s a joy to boat with the far less deep drafted Hampton. We were very pleased to see that Owl is now in the possession of an enthusiast who will lavish attention (and most likely, money) on looking after the boat for the next generation. Tempora mutantur et nos mutamur in illis.