Denis R

Well it seems that some plucky individual has just bid and won at £600 over the guide price for the 21metre mooring at Gayton. Blimmin' great, that works out at £50 a month over the guide, which pro-rata on length works out at £38 a month for my boat..... Multiplied by the number of boats at the mooring.... Perhaps with that extra income they'll properly secure the car park and lay the hedges rather than just cut them and leave the thorns over the towpath.

Not been down our stretch of the GU then

Yep, sure is! My 14 year old son is too young to drive a car but is a pretty competent boat handler - weekends casual working trips on the local coal delivery boat may have more to do with that than anything to do with cars.....

I've written to my MP (again) too. Tim Boswell must be getting fed up of hearing from me!

Oh, I thought that was the point I was making. And that an improvised directional is still far better than my engineered omnidirectional...

Wandering off topic a mo, many years ago when we hired boats, a 'boffin' mate who regularly crewed with us was working at GCHQ at the time and turned up once with his own satellite system - literally an old umbrella, some metallised foil (no idea what, something he 'borrowed' from Marconi) a couple of coat hangers and some Gaffa tape to hold the LNB in the right place. B****r me if it didn't work a treat! Based on the above 'Blue Peter approach'....

Blimmin' right. My boosted omnidirectional gives a very modest performance and that's being kind. Neighbour has a dirt cheap B&Q job strung on an old broom handle and gets a far better picture than me. And he was still whining 'cos it had cost him £9.99 and that was a rip-off for a bent bit of aluminium....

A Victron unit will work as a charger, if not in power boost mode with a cheap generator. My Phoenix Multiplus works with the s**t waveform from my Briggs and Stratton genny. In order to make it work, you have to disable the 'UPS Function' (called AC Waveform Check in older versions of the Victron software). You can do this using VE Configure.

Mine did - even down to checking which mill had rolled it before he confirmed the order! I'd wonder under what conditions 43A is deemed to have poor impact resistance - Impact resistance is not going to be an issue with certified 43A in a canalboat environment. Maybe withstanding mine detonation in the North Atlantic? Come to think of it, does that equate to messing up a bridge-hole approach during a winter cruise?

I had a similar conversation with Pete Nicholls when I had my boat built and he asked me whether I was commissioning a boat or a power station!! He knocked the 3kW inverter off my list straight away because he patiently pointed out that there wouldn't be enough space in my boat for all the batteries I'd need to feed it.... The one item you missed off the 'apparently need' list is the granite work surfaces in the galley.... Edited to add - I ended up with a Victron 1600Watt inverter and it runs everything I need fine.

They came past us at Gayton (in both directions so they must have winded not much further south) the other day and luckily were running slowly past the line of moored boats and didn't hit anything. I believe there were at least three crew members on board, two middle aged gentlemen and a younger guy if I recall correctly.

Carl, I think this is getting to the crux of the matter. Around our moorings it's a feeling of 'here we go again'. There's a kind of benign resignation that moorers will have to be on their guard for a while until the inevitable happens and both Mr Finch, the 'authorities' and we all go round the loop once more....

Sure thing, only my Victron unit is a 70 amp charger - same as my alternator. I think it was a c**p battery. Either that or the (now disconnected) Sterling alternator to battery charger was the culprit (not sure how), but then again it was only one battery - the others were/still seem to be fine.

Wish I had your good fortune John! I've just had one battery go down in a big way after only 18months - and that was with it spending its first 6 months on pretty much continuous float courtesy of the Victron unit when I was shore-line connected. I now categorise batteries, as advised by Gibbo some time back, as consumable items!

Keep an eye out for Mike Partridge on Jubilee - You'll often see him in that area. He passed me heading north this morning, Long Buckby tonight and Braunston tomorrow, so he should be up that way later on in the week.

Worth replying just to confirm that the Jeff Healey track certainly does rock!