roland elsdon

At the moment the thames will be benign . It comes up quite slowly as the catchment is big. Just bear in mind stopping distance with the river behind. Lock cuts are long mainly and you feel like you are crawling.The ‘fastest ‘ bit is normaly through oxford as its narrower. reading with fresh on is far worse. remember you should moor into the current if you are even slightly worried. So going downstream turn round if mooring in stream.

Park in daventry indusrtrial estate walk down hill. We have frequently walked to dav from Braunston. There is a bridleway to the nelson . 20 mins. We have a rental place where we keep our car very much on the wrong side of dav , still only 45 min walk.

We back off and declutch as the bows go into the bridge, but being a shortened boat she pulls down very early and stern rises late. At notmal speed the red bands 4 inches in and thats with half a ton of ballast in the front locker. I did once think she was going over when ihit a barrel on the cov,

I thought the target was 50 that explains the raging queues of silver aldis ,sorry audis trying to get past me to the next traffic light, when i go for a drive in The country. I replaced my skoda vrs for i honda last week as part of my retirement . It has headroom for a hat. My new target speed is 40

Itll cost a fortune to put in a pump out. You need a space for the tank and to be able to hide the pipe. You have to cut the hull the internal linings and find a big space. Thats why boats are designed early on with them . Its later they get removed as reality strikes 2 it has central heating from gas yes you can change the solid fuel for oil but again you need a tank plumbing and pipework. The central heating while expensive will distribute heat better and you will need it for hw. a deckboard plank and top plank is easy. the electrics appear reasonable if you watch usage but you will be charging every other day off mains especially if you use the central heating

Unless the enforcement officer has been spotted in which case its fatboat carnage as they attempt to swap about

Is ot really still there i went for a look 20 years ago couldnt find it, at the time we used to moor with john forth on the bend by the boat in and regularly poked around the flenis field arm

University vice ( note vice) chancellors were getting more than the pm. Regardless of your views on the P.M that sounds a bit wring. Corporate greed is rife in this country.

If you want the arm dug out just say its still there

The long suffering mrs s and i hadthis conversation only yesterday on a long leicester pound. For living we recon 1980 to 1996 few boats little hassle if you obeyed the rules , and live a boards did it out of desire not as a housing option. But rubbish vandalism and aggressive and sometimes violent anglers. for trundling around now no need to find phoneboxes info easy on tinternet etc .lots of canals opened in those years rochdale kennet droitwich. for signs....now foxton is a sea of blue signs. Screwfix have run out of um screws..

I dont pay ved on my car or my bike ,does this make me a green , a scrounger or a savvy consumer. mind you i do more miles a year on my bike than in the car

To get back to the op given your cruising pattern id spend as little as possible on 800 amp hrs of lead acid batteries and try and look after them when i wasnt on mains.like you have tried to . 800 amp hour would be about 600 quid . thats a lot less than 3000 which you have been quoted for esoteric batteries that you will have sitting getting older 330 days or so a year..

Take my bwb key everywhere cycling boating walking you never know you also do pay tax when you die and if you dont they take from your estate hence probate- pays taxman then family,we hadto borrow from govt for 5 years to pay iht..as funds were in house we couldnt sell I have 3rd party insurance through my bike licence and house insurance

As apoorly paid now retired health professional i am not going to encourage this government to dodge its duties by giving to a govt charity. what they raise on one side they cut from the other . I did my giving in the many hours of unclaimable involuntary overtime forced upon me by their refusal to fund staffing adequately.

I wasnt carrying anything i let the staff do that..havent pulled a paddle at foxton or watford for years now , after 40 years we are deemed inexperienced... Ah are you saying that they (chugger?) didnt recognise an ex waterways 1937 motor and would have left me alone had i been in a grey primered rotten firewood and full elsan base covered 1980s cruiser. He even asked if i lived on the boat.....if that had any relevance to his arguments. That got me going i then got accused of blaming the badgers ( who cant defend themselves for middlewich ) when i explained that a few quid on lengthsmen might have spotted the issue. He then claimed middlewich was vandalism... planet crt must be a very mystical place. Oh and they cant trim trees because of nesting birds. Clearly in the 1930s when the canals were maintained the birds were unsuccesful in raising families , which makes me wonder how in gods name there are so many bashing out the dawn chorus every day, if the 1930s improvements wiped them out... im going to bed the voltage meter says 12.3...

I have a plug in cigar socket voltmeter at one endof the line in the back cabin and a $15 digital voltmeter in the living kitchen bedroom music room library bathroom . (10 foot extension) im rarely out of sight of the voltmeter. If it goes below 12.2 with the fridge compressor on i turn off the fridge and go to bed. high tech monitoring.

Was asked for money today when coming down foxton by “ becoming a friends of crt” personally i find it offensive that crt are targetting boat owners who already pay large sums by stating that by giving to them they will be paying to maintain and protect the canal , Particularly as every sign here has been logo changed already. it wasnt till i got halfway down that i did the maths and realised that in 35 years of boat ownership 17 of them with 2 boats and 2 bwb moorings i have paid ‘ the waterways’ over £40000. What was most enjoyable was hearing a crt worker join in my ‘discussion’ and point out he hadnt had a pay rise for 3 years had to buy his own protective clothing and had better things to do maintaining the canal rather than... putting up new signs. the only comeback the ‘ friend signing up operative ‘ had was ‘ oh its a different budget... and every organisation changed its logo...

I appreciate i am very 1980s in my technological knowledge but are you really saying that a boat with a travel power has no alternator for charging domestic batteries? So you swing a 7 kva alternator to power a mains battery charger, and the charger cannot sense when the batts are low. If this is the case a simple flying lead from the engine start battery with the engine running would allow sufficient voltage if needed to kick in the travelthingy. Or is the start battery on a mains charger too? when you replace the batts a heavy duty 120 amp alternator for domestic charging would help. Then you would use the travelthingy to do the washing and other mains only high power stuff. reminds me of a screwed up new boat i was asked to look at. The batteries went flat every night after about 5 hours. The builder had saved money and chrged the bow thruster battery off a charger hidden in the front and run a mains lead under the floor. This was wired to a permenently on inverter. The bow thruster batteries were about 6 years old. All that was generated was heat and the merry sound of inverter alarms. I disconnected the inverter and told him to go buy a shaft. Course the builder had gone broke...

Its a shame you have to base your mooring on the need to run an engine late at night. A gas cooker would help and your inverters will be fine you just wouldnt be using their full output.

Cross posting sorry. You obviously are highly aware of the situation. I guess its time to make a decision based on future usage plans. Ie if mainly marina minimise battery purchase but if spending time off grid then try and minimise power needs, maybe by thinking about 240 systems

Not if its been pluggedin for 14 years 364 days. without being any more flippant your electricity demand is massive. If you fail to meet the capacity the system demands you will simply kill the new batteries, by discharging them too deeply I cant understand why the travelpower will not charge if batts are at a low voltage i thought a travelpower was a fancy name for engine driven mains alternator which then powers a battery charger. presumuably there is no engine driven alternator other than to start the engine. im with mr s. All electric cooking is a bad solution .

One each side on the butty to centralise rudder when towing solo on cross straps

Canvas on top is pretty vital. It also means you can countersink and fill screws through your ply layer rather than relying on bonding. When we did our butty in 1996 we used 8mm ply alone on top of the boarding , on top of roofing tar and mastic. Not sure why you need 18 mm on the roof unless you have no boarding. Then canvas then handrails ( well they arnt handrails) as no gunnel. We set the canvas down with fibreglass resin. its still on there three owners and 22 years later. old fashioned but practical. Get the end grain well treated too.

Ive always fastened the tiller string to the ticket drawer side ,always use it after getting rib broken in a narrow lock when rudder hit sill that the fenders missed.

We have a 2 Stirlings. Never seen flames. On the other hand 3 months after we sold one boat the heart interface inverter charger caught fire while inverting...