sebrof

Blind as well? Poor chap.

You are referring to the heavy red vertical connectors at each side of the diagram, to which the cables attach? My battery set-up is a complete mess, so I am reading this with great interest. Presently I have a starter battery (originally for the genny), three 110Ah batteries in one location, two more in another, and two massive starter batteries for the bow thruster. All connected together!

Depends how fast you go. I generally trundle along at tick-over (if I go fast it takes too long to stop) and use well under a litre an hour. I hardly ever rev the engine, and generally stop by going into neutral two hundred yards before the place I want to be. Many boaters I see are forever revving their engines hard for manouevring, and I suspect in practice use much more than a litre an hour.

Well, he's not wrong, is he? When the police have reduced crime to zero, then let them worry about non-issues like this. Until then, there are much better things they could be doing with their time.

The bit I don't believe to be true is that the owner can do nothing about it. The theft of a boat is all too easy to believe.

The Red House at Marsh Benham considers itself to be is a very classy establishment. Personally, I don't go for pubs which serve massively over-priced cocktails listed on gushing, expensively-printed menus, but if you like that sort of thing, you'll like the Red House. The Dundas Arms at Kintbury is indeed good for food. I wouldn't say the bar itself is particularly special, but it's perfectly OK. The location is good. Kintbury has a good butcher, and, unmentioned by Nicholson, it has water and Elsan & rubbish disposal. Hungerford boats The Bear, a fine old coaching inn that some lunatic has gutted and made to look like any Conran restaurant - in other words, totally soulless. The food, however, is good. The younger generation will gravitate to The Railway at weekends, while their elders will insert earplugs. Perfectly pleasant at other times, if you like watching Sky Sport. The Harrow at Little Bedwyn is a place I would have eaten in, had I won the lottery. At Great Bedwyn the Three Tuns (further up the hill) serves the better food, but the Cross Keys is the better boater's pub. The bakery in the village is definitely worth a visit if you are there, but it's not worth a detour, as the Michelin Guides would say. It's a small unpretentious village bakery, nothing more, and if you're in Great Bedwyn it's a good resource. The Waterfront Inn at Pewsey Wharf is very much a boater's bar, with an extremely helpful landlord and good beers. The cafe downstairs does a superb all-day breakfast until tea-time on Fridays to Sundays. Opening times may be extended in the summer. The facilities usually do work, and you can get a car right alongside the boat, which can be useful. There is a good boating community at Pewsey. I haven't eaten at the French Horn (over the bridge from the Waterfront), but I believe it's OK. Horton Bridge is good, as stated, but a bit smarter than many canal-side establishments. Muddy wellies are frowned upon.

I don't believe this story to be true. What has occurred is theft, and the police are duty-bound to investigate and prosecute. There must be large numbers of people willing to testify that the real owner has been using the boat for years. But it does provide a reminder that it is sensible to keep copies of ownership documents and important receipts off the boat.

Useful information. Many thanks.

It is not inevitable that compulsion will come, but it will if people don't fight it. And suggesting new voluntary schemes is the thin end of the wedge. I think it is very patronising to suggest that the hire-boat industry don't know what they are doing when they hire a boat to an inexperienced person. They have a very powerful commercial incentive to ensure that their boats are returned in good condition, and they take whatever steps they deem necessary to minimise problems resulting from hirer inexperience. If they didn't, they'd soon be out of business. Obviously different businesses, and different hirers, will have different ideas about what constitutes adequate instruction, but that's life. People who compare motor-cycling with canal-boating are just playing into the hands of the H&S lobby. It's an absurd comparison, for reasons that Magpie Patrick has stated.

Very interesting. When I spoke to a Marina/workshop owner about installing a different system, he said that in his experience the biggest problem was lack of regular servicing, and he advised me to stick with the Eber, but to get it serviced annually by an approved dealer. Thereby doing himself out of a job.

It's interesting that most people here acknowledge that the canal is an extraordinarily safe place to be, but have still managed to get bogged down in a discussion of how best to introduce some new, and wholly unnecessary, form of regulation. With little or no instruction, people buy, rent, or borrow boats and happily set off down the cut with very little risk of injury to life or limb, and little prospect of doing serious damage to their boat or anybody else's. And yet, seven pages of discussion have ensued about passports, training, audited logs, and God knows what. For goodness sake, as one person has already said, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. And it ain't broke. The cost of any sort of formal training, and all the administrative nonsense that would inevitably follow, would be much greater than the money saved in having fewer accidents. And it's the thin end of the wedge. Voluntary now; compulsory in future. Somebody mentioned offshore sailing. Has there been any reduction in accidents at sea since it became almost impossible to charter a boat without a yachtmaster's certificate? I don't know, but I seriously doubt it. Man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains. Those who wish for yet more regulation in an already over-regulated world are just asking to be enslaved. Madness.

Cheers. Mine needs doing, hence the question..

Credit where it is due. Who is this dealer?

Actually, it isn't. Wise words. And by golly we needed some in this thread!

It's very generous of you to offer to share your alerts, Mailley. I feel both honoured and humbled by such a magnanimous gesture. IA

Not necessarily. It would anyway quickly correct itself in most cases, and if it didn't, no doubt the intrepid moorers would venture out and re-tie their knots. True Quite probably, but I have often had just one pin pulled out, and this is where the centre line saves the day. I'm sure you have had lots, and I think experience IS a good thing. Especially when it involves more than one kind of boating. Thank you! Apparently it's bad form to use a smiley, according to the local expert on everything, but no offence is intended!

Thanks, I didn't know that. Very useful. Here's the link: http://nicholsonsupdates.blogspot.com/

Well, with very little effort, I can rock a 20 ton boat around, just by walking from one side to the other. It doesn't mean I have done the equivalent of lifting 20 tons, and that I suspect is where people are going wrong.

Hello, Mr Mayall, and welcome to the thread. Now run along and look up "irony" in the dictionary. It's spelt like "iron" but with a "Y" added to the end. In future, and just for you, I'll add an "IA" to my posts to indicate "Irony Alert". Here's the first one: IA

Totally agree. I often look out to see what oaf has caused my boat to rock by charging past in a wide-beam, only to find that it's a canoe or two that has caused the problem. If you're on the K&A, canoes are a major hazard at this time of year.

When you use predictive text you soon get to learn which words are likely to give trouble, and you correct them as you go along. Home and good, and no and on, are samples of pairs that you get used to being wrong.

The maps in the Nicholson guides are quite good, and their coverage of pubs is more than adequate. By the way, the new guides, with maps in colour, are much better than the old. It's worth paying for a new one rather than making do with the old black and white ones. Their navigational advice is much less impressive. In particular, they are not nearly as good as they might be in giving specific advice for dealing with specific hazards. It's always worth seeking advice from other boaters in the bar, especially when there has been rain. The Pearson Guides are well-written, and nice to browse through, but again are short of navigational advice. Here's a sample of their prose: "Banbury sits like a bruise on the otherwise peaches and cream complexion of the Southern Oxford". If you know Banbury, you'll agree. I'm hoping that the Water Explorer maps will give useful information in time, as people add to them. http://www.waterexplorer.co.uk/gmaps/inter...vecanalmap.aspx

Dominic, I honestly don't see where you have "clearly explained" the reasons for doing things the "proper" way. Humour me, please, by pointing out where you did so. And as for starting arguments and being aggressive, your first post addressed to me ended with the gratuitously offensive "end of". Which I think is short for: "End of argument. I am right; you are wrong; push off". So it seems that you like to apply one rule to yourself and another to others. But perhaps I misunderstood, and you were simply being flippant and humorous. When your humour is as subtle as this, it's often a good idea to add a smiley so that the less intelligent don't get the wrong impression. But back to the point. My view is that people are being overly prescriptive about this, and this view is obviously shared by a number of professional boat people, or they would presumably not advise hirers to use the centre line. And let me re-iterate that I consider that the best way to moor is with a bow and stern line, and TWO springs, as long as the boat if possible. Given that some people can't be bothered to do that, or haven't got enough kit, or wouldn't understand why, the centre line provides some additional security. There's more than one way to skin a cat.

It may be necessary to avoid flat batteries.

I am always amazed by the number of people who don't use predictive text. I suspect that they started mobile life on phones without it, and have never caught up.