MtB

Seconded. I reckon I look forwards along the length of the boat 90% of the time when reversing. I'm looking to see the earliest indiction the hull is beginning to rotate. One can see this far sooner than any actual change in direction or dive for the bank and near-full rudder deflection to counter the first hint of rotation is the key to reversing successfully. For this to work at all one needs a fair bit of way on backwards through the water for the rudder to have any effect. Too slow and it has no effect whatever!

Dave Mayall? @mayalld

A long, drawn out court case will decide!

Ah but then we are back to that old NBTA tosh that there is an obligation on the board to be reasonable in any dissatisfaction it might find. And that this can be tested in court. Then suddenly the whole thing is mired in uncertainty again.

Indeed it is. Apart from completely ruining the looks of any boat, cratch covers are an utter PITA when it comes to changing gas bottles. Don't have one! Unless you need the space and tend not to wear a back pack when entering a boat...

Or more accurately, this demonstrates the heat loss of the whole boat is more than 5kW. Provided of course the Webby has heated the circulating water to the design flow temp of the rads.

Yes, there are quite a few around with diesel stoves....

How about you go out, find it and measure it? You might learn something!

Lots of narrowboats don't have a central heating system.

So where does this distance of "a boat length" that this notional boat must move, originate? Seeing as this is applying the law reductio absurdum, surely moving the boat half an inch would comply too.

My comment that seems to have kicked all this off was only meant as a bit of light-hearted and friendly teasing, but seems to have hit a sore spot! So my apologies Ian. Don't take it to heart.

We have a legal right to return to our home mooring....

This rather illustrates what I was saying about all boats having intolerable faults but all of them different! Show me a boat with nothing wrong with it and I'll show you a boat with no personality...

Oh Jim, you've set him off again, lol!

Hey have you ever considered learning church tower bell ringing? Meshes well with boating. Bell-ringers are mostly barking just like boaters, but in a slightly different dimension!

"Crate", lol! I think them posh peoples calls it a "case" ! I doubt the wine cares though...

And yet I've been told so many times "An engine room is such a waste of space" ! Anyone saying that has no soul obviously. No doubt you'll agree.... Your boat has a sublime charm about it too, prolly something to do with that wine you introduced me to, lol! Cheese. 🍷

This is a good point. People often come on here and express the expectation that buying through a broker gives them some sort of security against buying say, a stolen or dodgy boat. Brokers have no way of checking and proving a boat they are marketing is genuinely owned by the supposed seller, or is necessarily better in any way than a boat being sold privately.

The thing is, when you find a boat that makes you buy it, you end up learning to live with all its criminal shortcomings (like having a Lister rattlebucket), and you'll make excuses and allowances and love it all the same. Then when ten years later you buy another boat with a water cooled lump you'll wonder how on earth you lived with it!

ISTR the same happening with the orchids on one of the centre islands at Hilmorton, about ten years ago and canalchef being incandescent about it!

Yes and my Renogy LFP cuts charging off at +6c, FFS! Just so anyone considering buying a Renogy does so, fully informed. The other thing about Renogy that drives me dippy is the app logs one out every three months, and is incompatible with Apple Keychain. So your password does not auto-fill and you have to either remember it or click on 'forgotten password' and spend 20 mins f-ing about registering a new one. Other than that, Renogy are just about ok....

I used to run winter tyres all year around on the van. Seemed to be just as good in the summer as normal tyres and 20 times grippier in winter. I read that abroad they have "tyre hotels" where they store your summer wheels and tyres in winter and your winter wheels and tyres in summer. Great idea I reckon. Presumably they swap them over for you twice a year, for a further fee.

Rarely used????? They are in heavy use all the time! There is no way the grid is going to be delivering 150kW of charging power to 12 cars all at once. There will be a massive local buffer comprising a few tonnes of lithium cells.

I can see trouble in the future. The boxes are just ordinary fibreglass enclosures like you often see near blocks of flats containing water or sewage pumps. Once the scroats figure out whats inside I can imagine a few break-ins. And with stacks of 400Vdc floating about in there, a few fatalities.

Same at Thames & Kennet Marina at Reading. All 32A bollards.