Keeping Up

Would that be Navvygator available here ?

Our previous boat had the chimney on the right. A few times we lost the hat under the trees, but twice when we met another boat in a tunnel the chimney got knocked off by the wall as we passed. Luckily it was on a chain so we didn't lose it, but the first hing we specified on our new boat was that the stove had to be on the left.

We've got one bottle each side at the stern. That leaves the bow locker competely free for coal and things.

It's good thing they weren't electrically powered, otherwise 'everyone' here would know exactly what they were and how they worked (there would still, of course, be at least as many differing opinions, but everyone would know that theirs was right)

Sometimes bad is good. A shorter pipe run without any bends, can be better than a longer run with 3 or 4 right-angle bends in it. I remember the samewhen I worked in radios. A spaghetti of wires often worked better than nice neat runs of parallel wires. That's why they invented covers and trim, isn't it?

There are plenty of discussions on the subject. Basically if it's over 60' you won't be able to go on the Leeds & Liverpool (except Wigan to Liverpool) or the North-Eastern waterways such as Calder and Hebble, Huddersfield Broad (the Huddersfield Narrow is OK), Sheffield etc. Otherwise you can go nearly everywhere with a boat up to 70'. A bigger boat measn ... you get a bigger boat, and usually more feet per £. Pro: it's bigger so more room inside. Cons, it costs more to licence or moor, and finding a big enough mooring can sometimes be difficult. Personally I'm glad we have a bigger boat - me and Pingu can spend the whole day more than 60 feet apart - and if I want to go on the L&L again I'll just hire a boat up there.

And to add, you can buy the licence at the first lock you come to.

I've often thought about using gas struts on my rear deck board. It's one piece 6' x 3' hinged along long edge, plus soundproofing. Could they take that much weight?

Yes but hasn't it always been that way?

It's been working OK for me today. Someone must have put another shilling in the meter (or cleaned out all the old Blackberries)

Do you have a thremostatic mixer valve, which combines the hot output from the calorifier with a cold feed to prevent scalding? I had similar symptoms and found that the mixer had a safety shut-off if the hot supply to it reached 80 degrees, so when the engine brought the water in the calorifier right up to max temperature, the mixer would shut down then let some through then shut down then let some more through, and so on. It could hav started to do this if your engine is for any reason running just a couple of degrees hotter than it was before. The clue was that the hot water supply worked fine if you let the water in the calorifier go cold (by not running the engine). The cure was to get a different (cheaper) model of mixer which didn't have the over-heat protection.

Still having a lot of problems here, in fact it seems to be getting worse. It's the same on two different computers (both running IE, but one is Vista and the other is XP), and both are fine on other sites so I think it must be the forum. Oh and it's BT broadband here.

We found it intriguing that the boat behaved differently on the Rochdale than on other boroad canals. Eventually worked out it's because the water from the ground paddles emerges very near the surface when the lock is empty, so it pushes the boat away, but as the lock fills up it reverts to the more conventional "pull" effect. I found I could balance it, at a certain point during the filling, according to how far forward I was in the lock (although at 67ft long there wasn't much room for movement) so I could carefully bring it across without using ropes. But it was quite difficult and ropes often would have been an easier option although it would usually mean having to climb up the ladder with it. I wonder if the C&H behaves in the same way? In broad locks where the gates open fully (not usually the case on the Rochdale but usually OK here on the Grand Union) then I certainly won't consider opening more than one gate to enter or leave a lock, getting past without rubbing the mitre is not a problem unless it is very windy.

Another thing about SR3's, the dipstick is only there so you can check for increasing oil level. You don't need it for checking if you've got enough oil: if it's got oil the exhaust will be smoking, if it stops smoking it has run out of oil.

That's a load of b*llocks