roland elsdon

Ive always found the watford lot a great bunch, but then they have real responsibility, not assumed importance

Probably fishermen, this kind of crap used to happen on the leicester in the 1980s, you would wake up to empty pounds on a sunday above silly matches.

Yes one from horse boat days with full family detailing, as a home, the other built by a company for its workers, and maintained during a period of austerity. There is no right or wrong only period induced modifications. i think the Raymond copy one is lovely, mines a bit more like sun being in a woolwich boat.

Just to observe there is a world of difference between cabin in post 58 and post 60.

You talk about a dipstick and an oil gauge. you talk of an oil gauge dropping. i assuming you mean oil pressure not level. it is of course normal for the pressure to drop as the engine gets hot but not the level. does it share oil with the gearbox and did you drain that?

How addled are their tiny brains, its ok to hurle rocks at you, but not okay to take an image of them. Where do they get that from?

The half paneling and bookshelf on the steel bulkhead is sensible and unusual. Thaxteds steel bulkhead used to be a misery on a damp cool night

No its a small scaled animal which someone has cunningly put in a black box. After 15 mins running it injests bad lazy volts and excretes bigger volts. After 15 minutes it gets a bit hot and sleeps for a while. After a short nap it gets going again and excretes more bigger volts. It does this for a while and then goes back to sleep. When you start the rotating noisy thing again it wakes up and starts again. thats what they told me in the shop. mine got a bad stomach one day after too many volts, but it was fixed free.

13.8v is only the start of charging. Float is 13.2 to 13.6. Unless the are charged to 14.2-4 it will either take for ever or they are not charged. Thats why ardvarcs circumnavicate the regulator after 15 mins and push the volts up to 14.4, and do this at least 3 times in an hour. When our ardvark goes live it pushes the doubles the reading on the ammeter, and you can hear the load change. we have a very simple system and low power needs but it still takes circa 3 hrs to recharge at 12.3 rested state, which i try not to go below. solar makes a massive difference. The batteries are getting something almost from first light and even if it doesnt start to charge properly it raises the voltages, and slows the decline, and its automatic...

Im also not sure if you are better with less capacity fully charged or more capacity partialy charged ( which rapidly becomes less capacity through sulphation). I tend to the second so only have notional 200 amp hrs. But we go the land of sun in uk winter. certainly on our last living boat in the uk (800amp hrs advec 120 alternator) and good but 1990s monitoring we killed one set of battery in 2 years whilst off grid. really you need a silent plumbed in genset

13.8v is only the start of charging. Float is 13.2 to 13.6. Unless the are charged to 14.2-4 it will either take for ever or they are not charged. Thats why ardvarcs circumnavicate the regulator after 15 mins and push the volts up to 14.4, and do this at least 3 times in an hour. When our ardvark goes live it pushes the doubles the reading on the ammeter, and you can hear the load change. we have a very simple system and low power needs but it still takes circa 3 hrs to recharge at 12.3 rested state, which i try not to go below. solar makes a massive difference. The batteries are getting something almost from first light and even if it doesnt start to charge properly it raises the voltages, and slows the decline, and its automatic...

Im red green colourblind thats why my boats are blue and grey

Our honeymoon in 1987 was to take Motor boat Thaxted from our wedding in Aylesbury basin to Ellesmere port, pick up josher butty Gosport and return to the Warwickshire Fly.via the curley wurley and a iwa campaign rally. Then back to marsworth to pick up our own butty Atalanta and return to our mooring in Ricky. It was just over 2 weeks total . We did a lot of boating and not a lot else.... in aylesbury our ‘friends’ filled the exhaust manifold with confetti and wound down the compression levers, so starting up ( hand start was delayed , i fixed the engine while they gathered the crowd ( we were trying to sneak off) . Once i got compression the engine fired blowing flaming smuts all over me, the cabin top and everyone in the vicinity. There were various other misdeeds performed the worst being the fish on the counter we discovered ‘later’. we are somehow still married but there are bits of the grand union that bring smiles to our faces when we pass through. Oh and congratulations if you can honeymoon in a back cabin...

Whats with the flag? do i need a quebec flag to wave back?

Shame they were very helpful and went the extra mile i always found.