Midnight

Even in this environmentally aware time so many people tend to bag dog poo then leave it hanging from a tree or fence. Plastic poo bags should be shunned in rural areas. Behind our house is a lane leading up to the moor. Every British animal known to man craps along there so it boils my blood when hikers bag their dog's poo and hang it on the willows or leave it on the stone gate posts. Unless you are one of those brain-dead morons who just leave in for someone to tread in, flick stick it into the bottom of the hedge where it can decompose naturally and swiftly.

Eleventh closure this year could be a record? With the long term closure at Figure of three and the Huddersfield not far behind the Rochdale it's not good ooop norf just now.

The residue sand was brushed off before coating. I didn't bother with that when I did Midnight just mixed it in and it's been okay. I've only seen the photos but asked the question and was told it's on the steel It's all over except for the base-plate and seems to be random

For clarity the silvery spots are all down the hull sides not just on the vicinity of the anodes. My initial thoughts were galvanic corrosion but as I said the boat has an isolation transformer fitted.

Apologies I misread your last sentence

Again this is a puzzle. Although about 30 years old and not in tip-top condition the hull and base-plate were sand-blasted prior to the two-pack coating being applied just one year ago. It's exactly the same system I've used on Midnight which despite being 16 years old now has no such issues. Although the base-plate was perhaps given an additional coat the hull sides had two coats applied. I think the Type 2 Microbial Corrosion mentioned by Alan de Enfield and Captain Pegg is the answer just very surprised it happened in such a short time span and now need to find out what the correct treatment is. In the past I remember someone washing the hull sides with Domestos.

No that's what's puzzling the base-plate is untouched

Here's a puzzle I helped a friend two-pack his hull sides and base-plate last year. Today he dry-docked to see how it was doing and was quite shocked to see the hull sides covered in silvery flecks but nothing at all on the base-plate. Both were painted just after the sand blasting and loose sand removed. He has an isolation transformer installed.

I use a big hairy one but if your hull is pitted you'll need a creosote brush as bizzard suggests

Slightly off topic This post has me thinking (nowt much else to do) about the devastated Figure of Three Locks on the Calder Navigation. There's an old lock above the damaged area that used to give access to the river. I'm wondering if it would be cheaper for CaRT to restore that lock instead of repairing the damage. The River would then need dredging at points down to Broadcut but that presumably would be the responsibility of the E.A. and if the original act of parliament was never rescinded wouldn't they be obliged to restore it for navigation?

Not as significant as quality of the steel. Midnight was moored at Ripon where the water is relatively clear for the first 7 years and that where the severe pitting happened. The hull sides were 2-packed from new and are still as good as ever. The baseplate was painted initially with Comastic then 2 years later sandblasted and 2-packed. I re-paint every 2 years and thankfully there's been zero deterioration. I was once told that paint on the baseplate would be scraped off in canals but I've seen very little evidence of that even though I've been grounded once and scraped along a few shallow canals. 'Blacking' in my experience usually means 'painting' with something er.... black

Definitely! When I bought Midnight as a shell the builder said no need to black the baseplate there's no oxygen down there to corode it (BTW tell that to the fish) . 8 years later after welding about 150 to 200 3mm & 4mm pits I had the baseplate sand-blasted and two-packed it - never had a problem since. Older boats with high quality steel seem to get by but with the crap foreign steel that's about now I wouldn't think twice about blacking the baseplate. Basically it'll cost about an extra £120. Over-plating costs a lot more than that! Edited to add - I use a 20 ton jack to move the stanchions so the whole plate gets done

Midnight's Mikuni MX60 is now 16 years old and whilst it continues to give excellent service it is rather noisey and inevitably will eventually need replacing. Just wondering if anyone has experience of the new breed of diesel heaters as I'm wondering which would be most suitable.

From my experience with forum applications a piece of code wouldn't need to be inserted as such. The settings probably have a filter for banned words in the message body which flag up some kind of action. Thunda-boat (sic) could simply be a banned word. Nothing too sinister there.

Sad news indeed a true gentleman and a great loss to the boating community

Oop norf where men are men the blokes do the locks the women steer. This is because men are better at fending off the wolves on Rochdale summit.

Serious question but why do you need ropes when descending a lock? I only use the centre line when single handed and then I'm stood on the lockside.

Bye! BTW My friend is a potato

Yes really and my friend agrees with you

But it does show plenty of room to pull over and wave the following boat past.

My friend said the point is if you pootle along and refuse to allow a following faster boater to overtake, you can expect to get a scrape as following now frustrated boater goes past anyway. Nick Norman is a jolly nice chap who offers the wealth of his experience to lesser mortals - or so my friend said.

Just asking for another friend, why haven't you answered the above?

Just asking for a friend, but where you going slow and minded not to let him past?

Well at least membership with voting rights would be available instead of this lame friends scheme

Yes it is! These kind of questionaires are used when you want to know the answer. 'On a scale of one to ten' questionaires are used when you want people to agree with the answer you already have.