alan_fincher
-
Posts
38,278 -
Joined
-
Last visited
-
Days Won
81
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Events
Gallery
Blogs
Store
Posts posted by alan_fincher
-
-
On 01/10/2025 at 22:11, MtB said:
No connection under the deck to crawl through?
Not unless you can crawl through a 1000 litre steel fresh water tank!
I actually struggle to get either 12V or 230V cabling between the original engine room and the "new" front accomodation cabin. Even an anorexic person has no chance of being fed through.
-
1
-
-
An old extensive thread about this boat here.
-
1 hour ago, MtB said:
Yes a water cooled HRW3 will be FAR nicer to live with.
Once the full length cabin is fitted and a proper shower room, galley, central heating system etc all installed...
With the added advantage you should be able to tow water skiers!.....
-
There's quite a difference between an HA2 and an HRW3.
I would suggest the HA2 is very sensible in this sized boat, whereas the HRW3 is over the top.
The reduction ratio of the gearbox fitted to either is not stated. However I'm not sure the 25" x 16" blade fitted would be a good match to either, and you might well need a greater pitch. -
36 minutes ago, Stroudwater1 said:
Wondering where the picture was taken. One other picture is labelled Cassiobury so presumably somewhere round there.
Not a lot to go on there.
Definitely Southern Grand Union, I would say.
Most likely in the Boxmoor to Cassiobury length.
It has the feel of somewhere near Kings Langley, (but it maybe somewhere else entirely!) -
4 minutes ago, NB Alnwick said:
Getting back on track and referring to the image in the first post, we have an identical shut-off valve in the supply line to our new cooker.
It was manufactured by Quality Couplings of High Wycombe and is sold by several trusted chandlers - the images below show a close up of the valve and what we believe is the manufacurer's drawiwing. Our BSS inspector expressed some concern with the design of this component even though it was gas-tight and functioned properly. As a result the inspector is carrying out further research to confirm that it is compliant with EN331 etc.
Getting back on track and referring to the image in the first post, we have an identical shut-off valve in the supply line to our new cooker.
It was manufactured by Quality Couplings of High Wycombe and is sold by several trusted chandlers - the images below show a close up of the valve and what we believe is the manufacurer's drawiwing. Our BSS inspector expressed some concern with the design of this component even though it was gas-tight and functioned properly. As a result the inspector is carrying out further research to confirm that it is compliant with EN331 etc.
Getting back on track and referring to the image in the first post, we have an identical shut-off valve in the supply line to our new cooker.
It was manufactured by Quality Couplings of High Wycombe and is sold by several trusted chandlers - the images below show a close up of the valve and what we believe is the manufacurer's drawiwing. Our BSS inspector expressed some concern with the design of this component even though it was gas-tight and functioned properly. As a result the inspector is carrying out further research to confirm that it is compliant with EN331 etc.
How bizarre.
That kind of valve is exceedingly common.
If your inspector is querying it it does make me wonder how many inspections they actually do.
-
16 minutes ago, MtB said:
I find myself wondering why the eels need surveying. But then I suppose until we get the results of the survey, we won't know if it needed doing...
Any eels that don't have an unperforated outer layer of at least 4mm thickness will be uninsurable surely?
-
And a scrubbing brush, of course!...
-
31 minutes ago, Richard T said:
This one also claims to have a historic hull but you can't tell from the photos.
[QUOTE]The vessel is an ancient butty and is one hundred and twenty years old with its solid iron hull this means it qualifies for classic boat status and is half price on the canal license.[/QUOTE]
Complete bollocks, of course! By my reading of the rules on historic boat discounts, it fails to qualify at all. The maximum discount any fully compliant "historic" boat can get is only 10% - fairly insignificant compared to the cost of maintaining a 100-ish year old boat.
As an aside I knew RENOWN back in the 1970s, at which time it was a "wooden top" with a "cruiser"style stern.
It is actually of a well recognised type being an LMS "Railway" horse boat, dating from the 1920s44 minutes ago, ditchcrawler said:I wonder where that is actually sitting
It says it is at Southam, Warwickshire.
Note a previous sale didn't go through due to the width of the boat.
I'm not exactly sure what "Please bare in mind this boat is slightly wider foot 3 inches" means.
It could mean it is 7 foot 3 inches? That is perfectly possible for a BCN boat that has spread, and if so would seriously limit what narrow canals it could navigate.
It is usually a major job to reduce the width of an historic boat that has had a top welded on whilst it is still spread.
I'm not familiar withe the "Pelaphone" engine but note there threads on the forum which discuss them. -
16 minutes ago, Alan de Enfield said:
I realise that is the normal situation for bank-side moorings in the South - move and you lose it, BUT, surely when you have a paid-for Winter mooring it is yours and you don't lose it if you go to fetch water etc ?
Otherwise, why are you paying C&RT 'protection money' not to enforce the movement requirements for several months ?
Unless things have changed recently a winter mooring permit was supposed to guarantee you a place somewhere in the total length allocated for all winter mooring permits at that site.
In other words, although you were supposed to be able to find a space to come back to, it was not guaranteed to be the space you had temporarily moved away from.
As some winter moorings have been on lengths of towpath that are veritable mud baths, some individual places will mean trekking through far more mud than others, each time you want to get to the nearest road.
-
7 minutes ago, Mike Hurley said:
Joseph 1898
Columba 1936
Gort 1939, all 3 at Norton Canes
Columba looks to have potential but is, at best, the historic boat version of what might be called a sail-away with spray foam insulation.
I know nothing about a 3 cylinder B series Petter engine, but the fact John Knill fitted it in 1952 must give is some kudos. There is no real electrics beyond an alternator and a single starter battery, so quite a bit to spend to bring it up to what might be expected in a live aboard boat. I've a feeling that parts for the Parsons type F gearbox can be a problem, though I'm not sure of that, I admit.I can't decide what I think to the price. On the one hand it seems a lot for a completely unfitted boat. On the other hand completely unconverted "Grand Unions" have until recently been advertised for less that £10K short of £50K, making the asking price here not sound that excessive (to me a least!)
-
Hopefully " Cabin Sides: Ply" means internal cabin side lining, not the outside cabin sides!
It's an odd thing to put into those terms though. What about cabin ceiling or internal lining of the hull.
Looks to me like a self fit-out by someone somewhat lacking in knowledge or skills.
-
1
-
-
31 minutes ago, carlt said:
No boat I would consider buying would ever have a RCD/RCR.
What Carl said.
I would be highly unlikely to buy anything that new.
-
50 minutes ago, MrsM said:
According to Google, Viking was set up in 2008. The boat in the OP is surely much older than that.
That's a very key point.
Perhaps I'm being misled by the "down at heels" state of the boat in the initial pictures, but my gut feeling remains tat this is more like a 19xx year boat than a 20xx year one.As I said previously knowing the baseplate thickness might help in deciding what it is actually
-
1 hour ago, mark99 said:
Here's a randon Viking, fat boat but similar rear/front. Just a suggestion.
The boat originally pictured in this thread has no cants to the front deck, (and no obvious evidence of any being removed.
This, I suggest, is a fairly rare simplification for a hull produced by a regular boat builder.
The example of a Viking boat you have included shows the much more common arrangement with fabricated cants.If the originally posted pictures do represent a standard shell from one of the regular builders of the time then I reckon this significant deviation from the norm probably represents the biggest clue as to who that builder night be.
-
5 minutes ago, MtB said:
I took them to mean the only wooden historic with a fore cabin.
Possibly, but that's definitely not what they have said.
-
On 02/09/2025 at 12:26, Ray T said:
If they think Hardy is possibly the only boat with a fore cabin they really have not done much research...
-
5 minutes ago, MtB said:
By "deodoriser", I was imagining the stuff people spray under their arms!!
You would need a great deal more than an underarm deodorant to overcome the odour of a typical Glastonbury festival "toilet".
-
Yes, I'll concede that the boat may in fact be quite a bit newer than I initially thought based on the limited images originally posted.
It's a strange one, as in most other respects it looks far more like a 1980s boat that the 2008 to 2009 that has been quoted.
A base plate thickness of 10mm has also been mentioned. If this is correct, (and of course it can be measured) then a date of post (say) 1990 is probably right. If (say) 6mm, then I think something like 1980s is probably more likely.
Obviously some boats, perhaps not built by one of the easily recognised builders, do not necessarily meet the usual ways of dating.
-
1
-
-
All exactly as discussed above...
Our Sickle is index number 501286. Its build date, however, was 1936.
A relatively recent index number gives no real idea of the age of the boat. -
To me the boat has some similarity to Hancock and Lane builds.
However I'm not confident that that is what this one is.It is surely from a time before the RCD - I'm amazed at the number of threads that get hi-jacked by the RCD topic, even where it is pretty obvious that it is a complete irrelevance.
-
4
-
-
4 hours ago, TID Tug Tony said:
Not having looked at the criteria for CRT historic status previously, I noted one or two things:
1. Boats not originally from the UK don't usually qualify at all, no matter how old or original they are.
2. Despite all the references to originality and "Britishness", the primary option for providing dimensions is in metres.
3. The emphasis for ex working boats seems to be on cabin length. I presume, and sincerely hope, boats such as Tycho that were shortened in their early working days qualify as historic, but would they if the cabin had been extended at the same time?
If a boat has to be 50+ years old to be classed as historic, maybe there should be an extra question along the lines of "Has the boat's appearance changed in the last 50 years?".
I appreciate the CRT is a charity and needs every penny it can get, but the discount does seem small when you consider classic cars pay zero road tax (at the moment, no doubt the Government will be looking into that).
Tony
I think had Tycho's cabin been lengthened at the time the boat was shortened and converted to an ice boat, (it wasn't of course!), then it would easily meet CRT's "historic" criteria. However if it were to have a cabin extension added now, it could be argued that this could disqualify it.
You are quite correct that the 10% discount really goes nowhere at all in helping fund the maintenance of a 60 to 120 year old boat.
Even so CRT have in recent years only ever suggested removing this discount. There has never been any suggestion that the could increase it. -
10 hours ago, Stroudwater1 said:
There’s one Springer too. It’s a bit surprising as don't historic boats get a CRT licence discount? https://www.nationalhistoricships.org.uk/register/3776/tara-rose
No. The fact that National Historic ships lists a boat in no way guarantees that a boat attracts the CRT Historic Boats discount.
There has been suggested that one should give rise to the other, but as far as I'm aware it has never been progressed.
One of the main conditions laid down by CRT is that an ex working narrow boat cannot have a full cabin conversion.
Our FLAMINGO fails that test, although annoyingly I am aware of several boats with full cabin conversion that do get the discount -
1 hour ago, MtB said:
(Very) sadly, I believe T. Norris packed up shop and took their ball home a couple of years ago.
I don't think we have any propeller michine shops left in the UK now, doing re-pitching and similar work to existing propellers. Unless someone here knows of one perhaps?
T Norris appears to still be trading in 2025.
What is the situation with Crowthers?
Historic Boats for sale online
in History & Heritage
Posted
Now that's a proper project!
Congratulations.