BenR

Have you looked in your fruit bowl? Last time BW didn't send me my license I found it a month later in my fruit bowl....

Just wait til you've finished the restoration. Then you will be told, as happened in Pocklington and the Basingstoke, that you can't actually motor on it because the prop might disturb the microbes!

I believe technically the offence is failing to display a licence rather than (or as well as not owning a licence), but I have boated for many weeks with the licence safely tucked into the fruit bowl instead of on the window, and suffered nothing more than an ear bashing for not displaying it...

Sharing locks on the Wey is usually a good idea. The paddles are situated on the gates so water ingress can be quite exciting, especially when someone with more enthusiasm than sense comes along and winds them up as far and as fast as possible. Not only is roping up on the Wey 'mandatory' it is actually highly desirable.

I use a pump that fits into the chuck of an electric drill (both Black and Decker and Draper make them). Lengths of hose pipe are fitted to the inlet and outlet, and you can vary the length dependant on from where you need it to pick up. (You need to screw the little pump on to a piece of wood and stand or kneel on it to hold the pump steady, while operating it otherwise the drill simply revolves the drill rather than operate it). Then I use a string mop to finish off the cleaning under the engine.

Personally I always prefer locking through Hatton with boat of youngsters who know what they are doing (or want to learn from those with a wee tad of experience...)

I looked at this a couple of years back and was told to remember that when the wind is blowing and the vanes are rotating a lot of shudder will come down the strut and through the boat, which you may not notice (or find exhilirating) in a yacht in the channel in a force thingummy wind but which might get a bit fractious in a narrow boat tied up to the bank.

The River Wey is handled by The national Trust Navigations Office and Dapdune Wharf, Wharf Road, Guildford, Surrey GU1 4RR Telephone: 01483 561389. Good moorings can be in short supply, because of poor dredging into the banks. Foxglove is not kidding about Broadford Bridge. Make sure all passengers are facing forward so they can see it to duck, and the steerer will need to be bent double or even kneeling. There is a sanitary station at Godalming (Head of Navigation) and a Sainsbury, and Homebase right beside the canal. If you can get moored up by Catteshall Lock the Leathern Bottle (turn left as you walk off the lock onto the road) is half a mile away and when I moored there in the eighties and early nineties usually had a good crew of boaters on Friday nights.

I'm sorry I stepped on your toes and I will know where to avoid for my next boat, won't I?

They were fitted by Warble Boatbuilders, not noted for their cheapness...

Having had gold plated mushrooms (and gold plated ports) fitted when my boat was built in 1999, I have to respectfully totally disagree. They never had the deep colour of brass and have become faded and quite jaded over the years and, of course, cannot be polished, so there is nothing to be done to bring them back to life. I will be getting brass ones fitted as soon as I can find my Round Tuitt, and will certainly be reverting to brass (or even getting them painted) in any future boat.

My last boat was moored on the River Wey, in a weir stream below a lock, and had very little weed build up, I was told this was the action of the current from the weir stream. Now I am out in the system, I try to get the bottom of the boat defouled and blacked every two years.

Here is mine from the blunt end: 3' counter, Beta BV1903 under floor; 4' wet locker/glory hole, through to 10' Fixed double, through to 5' walk through showere loo, through to 6'6" dinette drops down to double (and in other boats I have seen this space used for a kids bunk room), into 9' galley then into 14' or 15' saloon, (I forget) out to 4' or 5' well deck, and 3' nose All sizes ignore space needed for bulk heads but which should add up to 59'6" (the boat was started when the 'break' for BW licences was craft nort exceeding 59'6", but before it was finished they had changed it, so I could have got another foot or so.) The nose is very small but it looks good.