Jen-in-Wellies

No more worrying about if you'll be able to get the anchor back when you know it is gone forever.

I've played one on TV. Yes, very applicable to the semiconductor diodes in the alternator. Not so to the winding varnish. Dr Bob should drill a small hole in the baseplate directly underneath the alternator. The water spray will cool the alternator, increasing its life and efficiency, allowing it to generate more electricity to power the bilge pump and keep the boat afloat. The clouds of steam from the engine room will convince gongoozlers he has one of them there steam narrowboats. 😀

For the same reason. All the fault of Mr Arrhenius.

As a rule of thumb for most things electrical and electronic, a 10C rise in continuous operating temperature halves the life. 20C rise, drops life to a quarter and so on. This is provided a new failure mechanism, like the solder joints melting, or the winding insulation catching fire doesn't intervene first and finish it off. Jen

Pour in concrete. Allow to set. One mud weight.

Yes, roll flat hose. It could be used for the anchor too, but I'd worry about getting the river silt out of it afterwards, so got some chain and rope instead. 😀 Jen

Steeper steps make it more like a ladder, which people will instinctively approach by coming down backwards. You stoop more easily in that direction to get under a closed hatch while staying balanced. Much safer. Another consideration is the depth of any sliding hatch above the steps. It is better to keep the steps within the profile of the hatch opening, or it is more likely that a tall person will hit their head on the ceiling, or the edge of the hatch going up with the hatch open. Again, this will make the steps steeper. The only limitation is having enough depth of tread to safely get a foot on. Instead of a bannister I put vertical grab rails on the cupboard and control panel to each side of the stairs. Visitors often use them. Not yet fitted in the very old pics I posted earlier. Just read your first post again and you are looking at bow, rather than stern doors. The rise from the floor to a well deck is generally less than to the stern, so more height is available for people without stooping so much, but then again, most (not all) boats don't have a sliding hatch at the front. Exceptions tend to be tugs with high front decks, rather than well decks. All other considerations still apply though. Jen

Like this:

The steel on boats is a lot thicker than that on cars, so there will almost certainly be good metal underneath. A bit of rust is not the disaster, needing serious welding that it often is on cars. It can get to that stage with pitting on the hull at and under the water line, but that isn't your problem. As others here have said, remove the rust back to bare metal inside and out and treat with an anti rust product, then repaint and put the windows back in with new seals. Should be good for many years afterwards. Jen

There is a good diagram on the Pennine Waterways site on how to get a 60' boat through a 57'6" Calder & Hebble lock. The replies in this thread suggest that the same technique works on the Rufford Branch too for correspondingly longer narrowboats, making use of the curve of the cill. A picture is worth a thousand words. Jen

Only noisy bots.

Didn't realise that was a possibility now. Makes a bit of sense. The latest reCaptcha is very frustrating for actual humans. Pick all the squares with annoying Californian web coders on fixed wheel bikes. Jen

Didn't spot that. Thought I was logged in, but wasn't. Will double check in future. It is very American. Need to know what American streets, signs and urban areas look like. Been 15 years since I was last there. The audio version is even worse for me as I have trouble parsing American accents. Welcome back MtB! 😃 Jen

I didn't spot that. They can definitely lift some quiet big boats. It was a wide beam I saw. Don't know about bots.

Google reCaptcha has been introduced on the mobile version of CWDF, but fortunately not on the desktop version yet. Please don't. I spent a very frustrating never ending loop trying and failing to post on the mobile version before giving up. Utterly impossible. The mobile version is now unusable. Jen the robot. Meep Beep Trundle Exterminate.