Slow and Steady

Other question about the new rudder would be - were the holes for the pinch bolts welded internally to the tube before the nuts were added? It would seem the logical thing to do to prevent the rudder filling with water at least up to the bolt level. If they were and you drill through the other side without that welding, you'll be letting water in. Apologies for the cruddy drawing.

In all honesty, unless your through bolts will crush the rudder onto the stock to clamp the two firmly together I'd stick to the pinch bolts which you know have worked fine since to bought your boat. Any loose fit anywhere on the through bolts, either in the stock or the holes either side of your rudder will introduce slop that even if it's tiny to begin with will get worse on an accelerating scale. Doing this job (through bolt) by hand, well, I think I'm pretty good but I wouldn't attempt it, it needs clamping and a pillar drill to drill through all parts in one go. If you try and use say those nuts as a guide you WILL end up with them being a loose fit. Do you know how much clearance there is between your stock and the tube through the new rudder? Unless it's a very tight fit, which I doubt or you'd never get it off again, IMO the through bolt idea is more trouble than it's worth. Love the new rudder BTW, I'd want to fit it too but it's a shame the stop part of it wasn't built in when it was fabricated. I wonder if this would be a good time to re-think the whole Liverpool boats style steering. I believe you're having to go to all this trouble due to the impossibility of changing the top bearing without first removing the rudder? Madness! And all to save LB machining a couple of tapers. Talk about passing the buck to the customer... This job is a piece of cake on mine. The rudder is welded to the stock, the stock has a taper on the top and a simple bolt clamping the tiller onto it.

I'm too unknowledgeable to draw conclusions as to the reasons, but all this steel was bare metalled at the same time and the next day... IMO you can say that technically, composition-wise, steel should be better these days but that's not my experience. OK the rusty bit is 1.2mm car panel, not 8mm rolled plate but rolled steel is rolled steel? I genuinely have no idea about this other than what I see. The old shelf material was also much more rigid and shrank less with welding despite being the exact same thickness. Interestingly 50's-60's VW campers were a joy to weld compared to 70's ones for those reasons and the even later after-market panels worse still in terms of rigidity and shrinkage. It's hard to avoid the conclusion that steel is slowly getting worse and worse over the past 50+ years.

I posted one post, please don't make it sound like I've been harassing you.

Maybe read is post again. he's looking for a crew, not a date. and being polite enough to put his gay card on the table... maybe to avoid being stuck with someone who can't get past that.

In 1978... no one died. In 1979... no one died...

I'm not so sure. MOT has the same effect - it's there to force basic safety maintenance once a year. In between times many people assume their vehicle must be safe but it's not the case or none would ever fail. Both MOT and BSC are good in that they force this basic safety check, but bad in that people do rely on them as "proof" that all is well when the fact is that both are only good on the day of the inspections.

I remember going to one of the first McDonalds in that there London in the late 70's. Have to say that compared to Wimpy and the burger van they were fan-flippin-tastic huge well cooked burgers that caused every burger outlet to up their game to compete. Since then however, they've got steadily worse until I agree they are almost inedible.

The obvious answer is switch it off and see!

As a side note, got to love the desperation of swinging on that joint in an effort to stop the leak to the extent of splitting the fitting! Never going to work. This was a GAS pipe joint in my gas locker to a bulkhead connector. Desperate pipe crushers R us Tut-tut. I wonder how many times that was nipped up a bit.

Maybe, but I also have two tanks (though I have two fillers as well), with a smaller external pipe connecting them in the engine hole. There are no visible exterior signs anywhere like welds. The op has cut an access into the top of one of his tanks so I think he knows where they are, at least I think he has!

I've moved from the area 5 years ago after 25 years in Ely, but yes I read that too but wasn't surprised. Any evening I went there (a club meet) there was basically us and two or three other customers rattling around in there. Quite busy for Sunday lunch but I think that was about it hence me being surprised it hung on for so long. Nice little Marina moorings out the back though. Maybe without that and I think some kind of camp site propping it up it would have closed long ago. The petition to keep it open, baring in mind there was never anyone in there, made me chuckle. I remember another petitioned pub in the area called The Dykes End in Reach was actually successfully taken over (maybe even bought) and run by the villagers when it was under threat and that one is still open so it can happen, but that one is in the middle of a village so locals can walk there. It's nice when you hear about a success like that. You can't get at it by boat though.

Me too, the trick is to watch everyone else playing the same game and make sure you're not letting it race just as 3 more do the same! 'tis what you pay the trainer for after all.

Nice to see 5 miles from anywhere got a revamp, it was a bit of a dump 20+ years ago. Lazy Otter I always wondered how they survived, a huge pub you had to drive to. Fish and Duck was a dive too but in a nice spot and that was demolished. Pubs you have to drive to can't really exist as pubs, they have to be eating places these days, it's a wonder these above 3 lasted as long as they did/have and IMO that was largely due to there being absolutely nowhere in Ely where you could go for a pub meal up until 20-25 years ago. Apart from the Cutter where you also had to be ready for a fight! Ely was a real backwater in the 90's, the town centre was almost closed, nowhere to eat - we could walk through town to the pub on a Friday/Saturday evening and see nobody at all on the way.

It's a game isn't it? A game most if not all trainers play - hobble your horse for x number of races to get your odds up then let it fly.

You have to be careful with big bets to win. We were working on a building site, 6 of us. We all went to different bookies, it would have been a tad suspicious if we'd formed an orderly queue!

I've only ever put one bet on a horse, the only time I've been in a bookies apart from to collect my winnings. £50 at 40:1, it was a "red hot tip". Horse racing is fixed but obviously it's great if you get the nod.

Even more likely, given the silly siting of panels of 12V circuit on/off switches (like mine) he brushed against them and switched them off. Happens all the time here.

I've been looking at prices and I think you have found a pretty good one for the money and your vision but it won't be easy while CCing around London. Hate to say it but as others have advised, it's a wide boat for that lifestyle. I imagine the easiest way to live like that, apart from being cramped into a cupboard, are the 30ft narrowboats. It's a balance of luxury v practicality. I look forward to hearing how you get on because people who actually live like this in London seem to paint a far rosier picture re community than those looking from the canal side.

Great for you and I who don't work and can't sign on due to our enormous wealth.

I used to pick hops for 3-4 weeks, then apples and pears for a month every year for 5-6 years. They set me straight onto a tractor with zero experience and the advice to "take it steady". But that was 40 years ago. At that time there still were proper working gypsies and others that followed the seasons doing farm work and they worked jolly hard too. Nice people living a simple life. There was also a cider drinking tramp who turned up every year to pick hops - he lived in the hedge, ate about 10lbs or meat every Saturday and lived purely on cider the rest of the week. I learned the hierarchy of street living alcoholics - cider drinkers looked down on wino's who looked down on meths drinkers. Interesting times for me as a young 'un, I loved it. But times have unfortunately changed over the past 40 years, there are probably no apples that can't be picked with a machine, hops are all gone. The farm I worked at the Oast house is now converted to homes. It's a damn shame TBH, the farm and farmer were ace, the work was hard but it got me fit every year.

I don't know of anyone who has lived through a winter in a fibre glass boat who hasn't been saving and looking out for for a steel one. To spend that and then plan to rip out the interior to insulate, and replace the heating system is surely nuts. You're even planning to keep your bricks and mortar while you do it so why not be a little more patient and look out for a boat that actually ticks the boxes?

Gotcha. I might have to take mine out one day to find out why it's dead so all this discussion is interesting. I had thought I could do it in the water but it seems the legs and tunnel "t" are shorter than I'd thought.

That's good to know! I don't think I'd sink as I have a bulkhead but it wouldn't be ideal to fill the front with canal water - definitely a Doh! moment. So, the seal for mounting/tube must be below the water line?