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Gary Peacock

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Blog Entries posted by Gary Peacock

  1. Gary Peacock
    Well our unpaid for boat is now on the market whether the customers like it or not.
     
    Just spent an hour putting it on Appolloduck HERE and you can guess who's going to be paying for an hour of my time and the advertising fee can't you?
     
    Anyway I think this is probably the best way forward for all concerned if it sells quickly the customers stand to recover some of their investment at least.
     
    So work tomorrow then 3 days of with no boats or customers!
     
    Probably be bored by Sunday.
  2. Gary Peacock
    No I aren't talking about that pink stuff that looks like cat food!
     
    I'm on about email spam the scourge of my life! Or at least it was until I found a solution that seems to work.
     
    For the last two years we have been deluged with spam email mainly down to the large number of email addresses we have forwarded to one another from various websites most of which were harvested from the sites prior to the addresses being disguised or just the plain stupidity of people subscribing to things on the net that then sell the info to the spam merchants.
     
    Anyway I had tried loads of methods of trying to block it, the mail servers were filtering it we were paying for spam catchers on the recipients PC and I was also continually updating filters for outlook to try and block more while recovering the useful stuff.
     
    But we were still getting hundreds of spam messages a day while the aggressive filtering was loosing more and more of the real mail.
     
    Anyway I think I have found a free solution that works using the services of Google Mail and if your email provider is flexible you can use it too.
     
    The basis of it is that Google Mail incorporates really excellent spam filtering and is a free service.
     
    Step 1. Create yourself a Google Mail account the name you choose for the email address isn't important no one will see it but something like fred.bloggsspamcatcher@googlemail.com makes it easy to remember.
     
    Step 2. Create yourself a new email address with your email or ISP provider the name isn't too important because you can tell Outlook to still use your old address on the mail sent using the new account so replies etc will go back to the old email address. Then configure your PC to use this address only. (Delete or disable your old address/Account on the PC but don't actually delete the account with your provider!)
     
    Step 3. Setup a forwarding address on from your original email address to your new Google Mail account when you know that everything is working it will better if possible to just change your original address to forwarding only without it actually being a true mail account. (If your provider allows this.)
     
    Step 4. Configure your new Google Mail account to forward mail it receives to your new email address on your PC.
     
    And that's it no more at least very little spam!
     
    What actually happens is that all mail to your old address is sent to your new Google Mail account where it is spam filtered and then resent out to your new email address on your PC.
    If you need to check the spam you do that via your Google Mail account using your web browser you will also (without you turn the feature off) have a backup copy of all your mail accessible from any PC when your away from home!
     
    When you send mail it is sent using the new address/account you have setup on your PC without involving Google Mail if you set up outlook using your old address but new account details the mail will still appear to come from your old address so you wont cause any confusion or need to tell anybody that you have changed things.
     
    It would be possible to do a simpler version of this by missing out creating a new email address with your email or ISP provider in step 2 and simply configuring Google Mail to allow POP download, you would then configure your PC to receive email directly from Google Mail using your Google Mail email address.
    The downside of this is your mail is now sent via Google Mail and if like us you need to send large attachments Google Mail might prevent this but using this method you don't need to create a new address/account with your email or ISP provider which makes it simpler.
     
    Obviously you need to keep your new email addresses secret but there isn't really any reason to use them when it's all setup anyway.
     
     
    We now receive about 10 spam messages a day compared to several hundred previously and very rarely is a real message spammed.
  3. Gary Peacock
    We were still charging our absent customers loads of interest and storage fees and we still haven't seen any more money from them, but fortunately we should be at a point with our other builds where we can shift the boat outside in a couple of weeks to try and get back on track.
     
    Meanwhile I am still on with our new catalogue and rapidly realising that this is probably going to become my main project for the next 6 months. The suppliers are helping but I am still having to do a lot messing about to get the information together.
     
    I am trying to be sensible with it and rather than duplicating some of the existing very good suppliers catalogues I intend to just include in the interactive CD based version of the catalogue when I get to it.
     
    I could really do with some help on this project but that would cost another wage so it's going to be down to me, the only plus side is I am getting very good at knowing what is available and where to get it from!
     
    If you would like to look at what I have done so far you can view the catalogue so far HERE it's a fairly big PDF so it might be better to save it to your PC if you intend having a good look. There isn't a price list to go with it yet but if you do spot anything that interests you just drop me a message and I will look it up.
     
    It's still miles away from being finished, most of what is there already was the easy bit and I still have quite a bit of the electrical section (21) to complete before moving on to the rest of it.
     
    The one thing I have been finding again is how much the prices and qualities of products vary. I keep thinking I wouldn't pay for that rubbish and then find myself remembering that we were actually asked to get hold of it for someone.
     
    So when it's finished there should be things for all from the penny pincher's to the gin palace owners!
  4. Gary Peacock
    I have now spent a week working on the new catalogue for www.canalboatbits.co.uk I did have a bit of a head start because I decided to use our main suppliers trade catalogue for the basis and that gave me the first 200 or so pages and 5,000 plus products but hardly any of these products are currently on the site already so I now have to add all those by hand.
     
    I am trying to keep the new catalogue as informative as possible with plenty of technical details and pictures, to do this I have drawn up a basic page template in Corel Draw which I then complete with product details from the various manufacturers either taken from the web or directly from the information they have supplied to us, this is then converted into PDF for the catalogue.
     
    It as taken me nearly a week to get just part way through the electrical section and I haven't even got to the lighting section yet so this is going to be a very long and boring job. When it is finished the intension is probably not to print too many copies because it is going to be literally massive but rather to offer it by download or on DVD combined with quite a few of the more specialised product catalogues we can supply items from. The DVD will also contain a lot of technical and installation manuals that we have been asking the suppliers to assist us with so it should provide a good reference both for what is available and also how it is done.
     
    On the subject of our non paying customers they chose to remain vanished even though they were signing for registered mail up until the final notification of our intension under the terms of the contract to sell the boat, at this point they decided to drop the Ostrich act pull their head out of the sand and started screaming and carrying on on the phone.
     
    Anyway screaming was all that they did and no payment was received so come this Sunday the boat goes on the market.
    They do still have 28 days under the contract to pay the existing debts and then pay in full and in advance the remaining contract value to prevent the sale which does seem fairly fair considering the situation, but they will still be incurring interest and storage charges up to that time or a new buyer is found if they decide to let the boat go.
     
    Now I know this sounds like we're being awful to the customer but considering the fact that they have failed to make two stage payments which we are now carrying and we have now being paying 3 wages for a month for staff to do practically nothing plus the boat is taking up the space that the next build should be starting in soon it is all a bit more costly and expensive than the customers seem to comprehend!
     

     
    So there you have a 57' x 12' 6" barge with rear wheelhouse, 65HP engine, 3.5KW Electrolux, Mastervolt electrical system, 9hp bow thruster and full double glazing if anyones interested! We stopped work on the interior at a point that will allow for a certain amount of redesign if it does end up with a new owner and is probably about 5-6 weeks away from completion.
     
    Now where did I put that big stick reserved for the beating of customers!
  5. Gary Peacock
    Well our non paying customer still didn't pay for their boat so in line with the contract we are now charging interest on the debt and storage fees amounting to nearly £2000.00 a week and it looks increasingly likely we will end up taking possession of the boat. I know that sounds a lot of money but with the loss of production this is causing that amount probably isn't even covering the costs. We still have to pay the wages of the people who should be working on it and we can't move it to start another until we can finish another two hulls that are in the way. So basically the money that the customers have spent already on the boat is now rapidly been eaten away by the debt and by the time we are likely to find a buyer there will be little left to return.
     
    On the positive side we haven't had a show boat for a long time so that is one possible option.
  6. Gary Peacock
    We might be building Jean-Luc Picard's next ship!
     
    We a bit of an exaggeration but we might be building a barge for the Safe Anchor Trust of which Patrick Stewart is the president.
     
    We built two of the their previous boats so if that isn't enough to convince them then to give us the order, I will have to get my dad to ring is old school mate Patrick Stewart.
  7. Gary Peacock
    We its been a busy week I have been sorting out new products forwww.canalboatbits.co.uk including something for dog lovers-
     

     
    Now I aren't a dog lover and after a rather unpleasant walk (Or should I say wade?) along the towpath I could devise my own version made up of a sack complete with bricks and a larger sack with more bricks for the owner!
     
    Anyway besides this saviour of the canine kind there are going to be some big changes, we now have access to a much larger range bits from another supplier (Actually we always have had but made a bad decision in the early days to go with another supplier.) the range of products they offer combined with our existing product range should mean we can just about provide anything available in the inland waterways market. One of the big pluses is going to be the spares we now have access to including the full range of spare for Stoves cookers and various other LPG appliances. We should also have a PDF catalogue soon that can be emailed or downloaded for customers.
     
    On the boat building side of things we still haven't seen any money from our customer who ran out of it so I might soon have a nice big 12'6" x 57' lined sail away barge for sale soon at a knock down price!
  8. Gary Peacock
    This is a early drawing of the boat we will be building in the Autumn for our customer from Australia being that he his a wheel chair user the boat is going to incorporate some special features to make the boat fully accessible to him.
     
    It's also looking very likely the boat will be fitted with air conditioning so I am doing a bit of research into some more marine designs than the systems used in the past.
  9. Gary Peacock
    Well it looks like the BMF contract is a good thing for builders too!
     
    In two weeks time we can start charging our customer that couldn't meet their payments interest and storage costs, now although this is not ideal for everyone at least it will start to offset what it is costing us.
     
    The ultimate possibility is that we will end up taking possession of the boat not a nice thing to have to do but considering the money involved probably the best result for us and the customer at least they will get some of their money returned eventually.
  10. Gary Peacock
    Building Maffi's boat while he was in Saudi Arabia was an interesting experience but we can now surpass that by quite a few miles! We got an order today for a 14' x 49' boat for a customer living in Sydney Australia he is a wheelchair user and the boat is going to be built to give full chair access throughout.
     
    The boat will eventually be going to France which now seems to be the favourite destination for larger boats. If you think the dimensions are strange this is due to the French not being terribly fond of new built noncommercial vessels over 15m so to keep our French friends sweet 49 and a bit foot it is!
     
    We had a bit off press interest today apparently Grand Designs Magazine want to do a 8 page feature on a broad beam residential boat, well it's one step away from the TV series!
  11. Gary Peacock

    Escaping the desk!

    By Gary Peacock,

    For the first time this year I am free!
     
    I have two boats to do the electrical 2nd fix on and I am really enjoying myself I had almost forgotten what it was like to do a proper job. Sitting behind a desk was beginning to finish me off!
     
    We have finally got a system that seems to work really well on fitting out. The joiners are now fitters and do their bit plus first fix electrics and plumbing working from good drawings done on Visio. (Great bit of software! Compared to the complexity of Autocad)
     
    This means they in effect get their own boats to work on individually from start to finish without tripping up over loads of other people getting in their way!
    We can then second fix around them without upsetting them too much, in the past we had loads of grief with the older generation of craftsmen who would do what they deemed to be their job but would have a major tantrum if asked to install a pipe or lay a cable.
    I know this doesn't sound rocket science but breaking the I am a joiner mentality as taken about two years and maybe now we have invented a new trade the boat fitter!
     
    So their happy and I'm happy, they have a nice plan and I have the same plan and touch wood everything as been nicely labelled and just where it should be which makes the job so much easier and efficient than some of the previous experiences I have had.
  12. Gary Peacock
    After resisting the urge to find go find a big stick and locate said customer mentioned yesterday to beat with it, I actually got a job done and it's the one I hate the most, price increases!
     
    It's not that I don't like putting up prices you have to do that or go bust, but it's the forecasting the future bit that I don't like. Most builders have around a years order book secured on sensible deposits and fixed price contracts (Those that claim to have years of business on the books based on £150.00 deposits should be looked at carefully!) the problem is that you are pricing for the future and that is into the unknown.
     
    Our new prices are for the only 2007 slots we have available and these will cross over into 2008 before completion. Now in theory the only known potential increases are going to be raw material (mainly steel) and inflation, but it's not that simple last year nearly all the equipment suppliers released two price increases during the year one at the start and one mid year this is not normal. You would have now expected them to have had a further increase at the beginning of 2007 but they haven't and are preaching the "we have held our prices" line but the chances of this holding true for a full year are slim so we have to price taking this into consideration plus the exspected 2008 increases during the tail end of theses boats build.
     
    At a verify rough figure about £30K of the boats value is dictated by these few companies engines, electrical, heating and fittings etc from that you can see that a small increase can put a large dent in the profits while a large increase in conjunction with an increase in raw materials can put you out of business overnight and is exactly what happened to a number of recently failed boat builders.
     
    Any way the end result was we increased the prices over the board by about £2k for the last slots this year and will have to look at it again for summer next year. If your interested in the prices for a boat costs today have a look HERE.
     
    Now if you look through the magazines you will see a number of companies are now into their third year without a price increase. Now from what I have told you in business terms that is simply not possible without massive increases in efficiency or reducing costs elsewhere. Then again maybe it's just the old favourite that Heron used to use that no one ever got a boat for the advertised price!
  13. Gary Peacock
    We have had a lot of problems along with all the other companies here with the TGB'S pinching everything that's not nailed down, so we had to put one of those buzzer lock things on the door with an intercom on the wall. We added a big notice to the door at eye level asking people to buzz the intercom so you can see who it is on the CCTV and buzz them in.
     
    Very simple in theory until you watch them on the CCTV trying to comprehend this. They try the door, they bang on it, they shout through it and go in search of another door! But read the notice that's just too simple for them all, very amusing really.
  14. Gary Peacock
    It must be my age but time seems to be speeding up these days!
     
    It's been one of those funny weeks I don't seem to have stopped but can't really say I have achieved anything either. Thinking about it I spend more and more time looking technical things up just to complete paperwork etc and I think this is where the time goes.
    I have some reading to do next week because we have just got our revised copy of the BMEA CoP for electrical installations which looks about as interesting as reading a telephone directory.
     
    The sales enquiry from Australia looks interesting it for a chap from Sydney and his wife, he is a wheelchair user and is looking at having a residential barge built for France around 50ft x 14ft the boat will have to incorporate some modifications for his needs making it a bit of a challenging project. I don't know if we will get the build but it would be nice to have a bit of a challenge on something a bit different if you know what I mean.
     
    Tomorrow is supposed to be quiet so I might get a day to do all the other things I have been going to do for weeks like fix the printer scanner, fit some more security cameras and fit some more outside lights.
    Thinking about it I think visitors are preferable so I will start with the printer and pray for visitors!
  15. Gary Peacock
    Well we are still searching for a welder. We aren't been greedy we only want one, but the last advert drew a blank with lots of no shows and the actually I can't weld but I can learn types.
     
    It seems to be a dying trade those that are good are very well paid and obviously choosy about where they work and little or no new blood is coming into the game.
     
    So with more adverts in the papers today we will have to see what we get this time!
     
    If you know anybody suitable let me know it's not a bad number you only have to work Monday to Thursday 8 till 6 and you get a 3 day weekend to go boating or whatever in!
     
    Now I wonder should I apply I'm sure it can't be that hard to learn? 4 days via 6/7 day week.
  16. Gary Peacock
    Got in this morning and had the first potential customers of the week arrive unannounced out of the blue at 8.30am nothing too unusual about that other than I prefer a slower start to the week.
     
    They left after an hour later the phone rings and I spend the next hour talking to a prospective customer sat in his apartment overlooking Sydney Harbour on the other side of the world again out of the blue!
     
    This is a very strange start to the week indeed! Next thing on the tick list is to make a household alarm system run on 12V, if it works I will tell you how it's done.
  17. Gary Peacock

    Fun with video

    By Gary Peacock,

    Well I have finally finished doing the now version of the DVD we post out and I don't want to see another boat picture again ever!
     
    I made the mistake of trying to be clever and use Windows Movie Maker to do this instead of using some of the old fashioned ways of doing it, this turned out to be a big mistake although Movie Maker is probably alright for doing your holiday video and snaps with it most certainly isn't the thing to be working on for a project with hundreds of pictures. The thing crashed screwed up the project files and was an absolute nightmare to work with and then to make matters worse the video generated is in Windows Media Video format that no other software will work with because of Microsoft's copyright issues! When I tried to upload the things to Google video it wouldn't recognise the format on files over a certain size, so I had to rip the file back off a DVD and trans-code these back to mpeg-4 a very long winded way of doing things indeed.
     
    Anyway you can take a look at the results HERE obviously these aren't DVD quality but they are watchable.
     
    You know I thought I was paid to sell boats!
  18. Gary Peacock
    You are all probably aware that a piece of European legislation called the Recreational Craft Directive exists. The purpose of this directive is to set a minimum legal standard for the manufacture of craft within the EU. (A lot of rubbish about safety and costrution standards in it.)
     
    Unfortunately this costs the boat builder quite a lot of money to comply with so wouldn't it be jolly for them if there was a way they could avoid spending their profits on something that is just a bit of official rubbish in their view anyway!
     
    Well the good news is there is such away and it's perfectly legal.
     
    If you sell a boat without conformity to the RCD you are committing a criminal offence but the chances of getting prosecuted are more or less non existent, what does cause you a problem is that BW will ask for the RCD certificate of conformity when an application is made to license the boat. So it's going to get messy when the customer finds out they have bought a boat that can't go on the water. Almost certainly Trading Standards will then get involved and this will not be at all good for your profits and maybe even result in a court appearance!
     
    So how do you avoid all this potential loss of profits and hassle? Well you engage the service of your local Boat Safety Examiner get him to come along and examine a brand new boat now is remit doesn't cover the RCD and he won't even consider asking you about that dubious Certificate Of Conformity to the RCD that you hand out with all your boats just in case of troublesome customers but he will hand you a nice new BSS Certificate. (Provided the boat can at least meet the BSS's required standards. These are far less exspensive than those required by the RCD anyway.)
     
    So you can now send your customer off to license his boat with BSS certificate in hand the nice man at BW takes one look at it takes their money and gives them a licence!
     
    Result happy customer, boat on the water, no Trading Standards officers poking their noses in to your business and a nice increase in profits from not having to mess about with all that silly EU rubbish!
     
    So there you go easy peasy lemon squeazy and I bet you thought it was going to be difficult.
     
     
    If things were to get messy for any reason the boat builders are well aware of another get out of jail free card that was very thoughtfully by the powers that be included in the directive this makes the chances of being prosecuted very remote indeed if you kow how to play your cards right!
  19. Gary Peacock
    Looks like all the main suppliers in the marine world decided to publish their 2007 price list this week.
     
    And it looks like it's going to be a strange year on the bad news side anything made out of nonferrous metals is going up with a bang thats brass ware, props, calorifiers and cable etc.
     
    But on the good side there have been lots of reductions on a lot of other items pumps, toilets, light fittings etc. So it looks like a few suppliers are going head to head to capture the market and probably admitting too that the mark up on these items was excessive.
     
    For those that didn't know the days of Flojet pumps are numbered they were recently bought out by ITT the owners of Jabsco and the brand is going to be phased out, but don't worry if you're a fan of Flojet because for a number of years the major components in Jabsco pumps have been near identical to Flojet (Jabsco supplied Flojet) so compatible models will be available along with Flojet spares.
     
    I will be adding the Jabsco range to www.canalboatbits.co.uk soon and it seems these pumps etc are going to be very competitively priced in comparison with other brands.
     
    Another bit of good news is that the Engine and Electrical system manufacturers are at the moment holding 2006 prices.
  20. Gary Peacock
    My office is closing in on me!
     
    Or at least it feels like it maybe if I wasn't sat on top of the fan heater it might feel better but it's freezing everywhere else because they have all the doors open while they ballast 4 broad beams and that is going to take all day.
     
    To make matters worse since I got a new lap top I am still having to bring the old one in everyday and inevitably end up using it for some seldom used thing that is always on the old one but not migrated on to the new one. (I can see this carrying on for a long time to come!)
     
    We are still getting loads of enquiry's still for this time of year but it is now getting to the point where the earliest start date will give a completion date of early next year. It always surprises me the number of customers who seem to think they can go put a deposit down and get a boat built just the way they want and have it in 2 months!
     
    Anyway if your feeling bored have a look at this little video HERE
     
    I will be doing a few more videos so keep an eye out for them.
  21. Gary Peacock
    Having gone completely numb looking at Sterling products and trying to resolve ways of avoiding anymore cases of fitters getting carbon monoxide poisoning from boat exhaust fumes, (Never a dull moment is there?) I decided to sort out the guest book on the Maffi's Boat Build Site because it was rapidly becoming the main on-line advert for Viagra and the importation of Russian wives by mail!
     
    I hadn't paid much attention to it lately but the site as had over 9,400 visitors in just under a year that's not bad going is it?
     
    If you're feeling board you can find out a lot about who looks at the site from the stats page HERE
  22. Gary Peacock
    Well one of our visitors from Saturday came back this morning with a deposit for a broad beam boat so that's a nice start to the week. They did offer to put it down on Saturday but I told them to take the weekend to think it over properly before paying it. I know that doesn't sound to be exactly the best sales policy but I would much rather take a deposit when a customer is 100% certain than take it one day and refund it the next.
     
    Project for to day (That probably means week!) is introducing Sterling Products on to www.canalboatbits.co.uk now I am only doing this based on feed back from this forum if the members are to believed these products are very reliable! (We will no doubt see, you probably know that I like Mastervolt and Victron and that I am very wary of gizmo's that promise magical results!)
     
    Anyway I have to admit the prices do seem very reasonable and if anyone wants one you know how to save some money on the R.R.P.
  23. Gary Peacock

    What a weekend!

    By Gary Peacock,

    I normally try and avoid the seven day weeks now but this weekend was a very strange one! We had one visitor booked in for Saturday and altogether we had five arrive!
     
    So I didn't even manage to get a cup of tea all day every time one lot left another lot arrived.
     
    They all seemed very interested too including a possible sale for another big broad beam. (Will know for certain if the deposit arrives on Monday!)
     
    This is all very strange for this time of year when tradition says it all stops between November and Easter, so maybe their is some kind of upturn going on in the new boat market.
     
    Anyway we even had another visitor today so while I was waiting I more or less finished off the "Green Power" products for www.canalboatbits.co.uk so if you're into wind gens and solar panels have a look HERE.
     
    I have tried to include links to lots of information on the technical side of things and without rubbing it in two much forum members get 10% off those prices if they register. (Details are on the right hand side of this page.)
     
    Still not totally convinced over this green energy thing but if you want it I have made a big effort to get all the products together that are available.
  24. Gary Peacock
    I am still wading through the suppliers of green energy products and I am rapidly reaching the conclusion that suppliers of the solar products especially really do see this as a license to print money! The vast variation in prices at the retail level gives me a good indication of the profits being made and they must be some of the highest I have seen in this game.
     
    So why not go green, save the planet and make someone very rich along the way!
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