Keeping Up

There is actually a lot of sense in having an isolator in the negative, from a safety aspect. Apart from the fact that just the one switch disconnects everything, it means that once it's been disconnected you can work on the batteries knowing that accidental shorting of either terminal to hull by a spanner will not cause a big bang. There are many spurious reasons for it being in the positive, many of them invented by Gibbo (once of this forum) because his Smartgauge didn't like it being in the negative; the only good reason I know of for using the positive is that an engineer now would expect it to be there.

I'd be willing to bet that a tinfoil wrap would work a lot better than the cheap jump-leads that I bought from Halfrauds a few years ago!

Quick way to do this- get some bare wire and wrap it round and round the 2 terminals. No need for any tools, just make sure you don't let the other end touch anything especially the hull. If you haven't any wire, as an emergency temporary measure use twisted kitchen foil.

From CRT's perspective it's getting better & better because (1) it improves their status of the ratio of unforeseeable issues to preventable faults - thus increasing the managers' annual bonuses - and (2) it would cause plenty of upsets and therefore help their pleas for crowd-funded repair contributions.

Exactly the same technique here!

I may be wrong, it's a few years ago now, but aren't there 2 separate sensors on the engine, a variable one to drive the dial and a switch to drive the alarm. If so, and transferring the wire from the sensor to ground operates the alarm, perhaps the two have merely been swapped over?

Yes me too. It went to first unread post until about an hour ago and then suddenly started going to the first post. Changing the account settings fixed it.

One problem with boats remaining unused for long periods, is that there are a lot of things which can seize up, stiffen, or otherwise fail when regular use would either prevent them from failing or else demonstrate symptoms at an early stage. In my case it was a diesel seal which failed during Lockdown 1, allowing a thankful of diesel to drip into the bilges. RCR agreed that a diesel leak constitutes a breakdown, and were excellent in arranging for a mechanic to visit us; not only did he fix the leak but also cleaned up the bilges and took away the contaminated diesel for disposal. I shall definitely be renewing my subscription to them.

One problem is the difficulty of finding a craftsman who also understands about boats. I once saw a new sailaway fitout from a retired carpenter which looked stunningly beautiful throughout; he hadn't understood the necessity of suitable battening to keep the woodwork away from the cabin sides, so in the 2 years that the work had taken him the wood was already rotting from behind. Luckily our surveyor spotted the problem and we walked away. Two years later I spotted the same boat in another boatyard being totally stripped out back to sailaway condition.

I was very glad when the float switch on ours failed last year. We had a diesel leak while I was away from the boat, and the combination of diesel plus stern-tube grease formed a sort of glue that kept the float stuck down - so we didn't pump 100 litres of diesel out into the marina.

The boy stood on the burning deck, whence all but he had fled .... TWIT! Courtesy of Spike Milligan

Indeed! The compass of a phone is often similarly affected so an app (or Google maps) doesn't always work unless you are standing a long way from the boat. That was why I invented the Satellite Sundial, which can even help you stop the boat at precisely the right place relative to a small gap in the trees; just print it out and hold the sheet of paper in front of you as you come to a stop. Of course it only works if the sun shines. Don't be tempted to use a larger dish in the expectation of getting a better signal. The larger the dish the more critical is the alignment, and the signal strength from a smaller dish is perfectly adequate.

Exactly where is that, relative to the lock?

Surely there are no "regulations" there are only "recommendations" and even they don't apply retrospectively to installations which pre-date them.

I don't know about the Beta 30 but we have a Beta 43 and when I spoke to Beta after conducting my own overheating tests they said that the maximum time it may be run at full power is only 40 minutes. It is fine to run at 90% power forever, and even at maximum revs if the prop size means that it is only actually at or below the 90% power level, but at full power you will start to have problems around that 40 minutes mark. It doesn't matter how good your water cooling system is (that is what I was testing on mine, after an engine swap) but you just might get another 5 or 10 minutes they said if you have additional engine oil cooling installed (not to be confused with the gearbox oil cooling and unlikely on a typical narrowboat system) but definitely for long term running you must run at slightly reduced power. On mine the main indication was that although the water temperature did not rise at all because my water cooling system is more than adequate, the oil pressure suddenly started to drop after 45 minutes.

My wife's phone is on a Tesco PAYG account at £4 per Mb of data - because it is not a smartphone and the cost of calls and texts is very low indeed. Thank goodness my own smartphone isn't on that tariff, when it crashed during the summer it would have cost me £62,000 to restore the data!

It may be a condition of your insurance to take a pilot but I don't think it's otherwise mandatory is it? Yes if you have to wait in Bristol you may incur massive mooring charges, which is indeed why most people start at Sharpness.