system 4-50

If you knew nothing about cars, would you buy a Vintage car? Leave old heaps to enthusiasts - unless you have money you can afford to lose. Run a mile. Signed, miserable git.

Purely hypothetical. Is the steerer a single hander 1. at the other end of the tunnel, having let his boat get away from him? 2. in the tunnel, having fallen off the back? 3. in the bottom of the boat, having fallen down the steps and banged his head? Of which (2) is the most interesting. Having fallen off, what are your chances of being mown down by another boat before you are seen or heard?

They work reasonably well for transporting objects with a broad base, but the bottom folds up without warning and can damage the gear arrangement if you attempt to move stuff that is mostly edge such as a board. I have one and don't like them, but I don't know of anything better.

My ropes are terrible. I tie the boat tight and a couple of hours later there seems to be one foot of slack.

OK. You are at the head of the queue waiting for the 15 minutes left before your time slot to go into a timed one-way long tunnel. A boat comes out of the tunnel at a steady pace with nobody at the tiller. The boat continues steadily under power brushing the opposite bank as it comes past you. The boat appears conventional with no sign of remote steering gear. What do you do?

I am approaching the point where I need to connect my engine's cooling system to the horizontal calorifier in my cruiser stern. The calorifier is on the starboard side beside the side of my engine that has the injectors, filters, fuel pump, dipstick, oil pump out, etc. The engine is a Beta 43. Is there any likely benefit in keeping the hoses away from this side by routing them both round the port side and across the front of the engine? This would be a longer run. Do engine's have a busier side from the point of view of maintenance?

I suggest it is not good to post nasty ideas on an open forum....

I'm a single hander and I have a large square cruiser stern and I wouldn't change it for the other styles for anything. I just like the space. I can move around easily. It does indeed have all the drawbacks mentioned. I aim to install a car type fan heater running off the engine to help with the cold together with some matting stop the feet getting cold. The controls are exposed and not secure which is a nuisance. There is plenty of tiller room and I can swing it fully and still be comfortably behind it. I like having the engine quite removed from the cabin space and working access to everything is good. I have room for two gas 13Kg gas bottles leaving the bow locker free for solid fuel. Rain drainage sometimes but rarely defeats the three drainage channels and then only by a tiny amount, not enough to cover the floor of the bilge. At 60ft for one person I can afford a large stern and a large bow well deck and still feel only slightly short of space inside. I suspect I would still feel a little short even if it were 100ft long. I am going to be careful to never try steering a trad/semi just in case I might like it! Edit To date I have found that I have been able to get into the cabin and get anything I need without having to stop the boat. I have not yet tried tending the mid-boat stove yet, I suspect that might be going too far.

Rational Member of Parliament. A legendary species.

OK, I'm dim, but where exactly is this event going to be?

I still live in East London and the only thing wrong with it is the BBC local television which only reports bad stuff. Surely it can't be just your leaving???!

This happened in England. Time to leave the country. Or maybe Europe. Let me see, there have been no robberies on the canals on Mars.. London is a big place.

When a conscientious person like yourself starts worrying about such things at length then you must realise that you are currently in that rare state when nothing is broken, nothing needs to emptied, fixed, or transported, and therefore the world is perfect. Enjoy it to the full, it won't be long before normality returns!

<dream mode> I'd like to be able execute code. For example I'd like to create a process that members could input their electricity usage and their battery configuration and it would generate a charging scenario. And variations on that theme. And a cable sizing routine specifically geared to narrow boats. I'd like to create a NB configurator. And an interactive BSS quiz/checker. I'd like to create a tilt & tip predictor which takes simple weight data and tells you if an extra bag of solid fuel will make your boat roll over. I can write some of the code but I can't cope with setting up a web site as well. I don't see how that squares with this being a discussion forum but it might be useful. </dream mode> PS The existing setup is pretty damn good, given that its a discussion forum. But we need a reference database as well.

I'd rather be bumped once in a while than meet those people who need to hoot on every bend.

My funniest recent event was watching somebody trying to get their boat into an open (narrow) lock after getting the bow just into the mouth of the lock and the rest of the boat at a big angle to it. The only tool being used to achieve this was the bow thruster! After I had watched this for some time, I observed to the spouse watching on the bank that the bow thruster must have big batteries, and the reply came back, "Oh no, it's hydraulic". Edited to add "narrow" to be more precise.

I look down on everybody. Not enough ballast. Hope to fix it soon.

Where can I get one of those folding hedge trimmers that you see mounted on tractors in country lanes? I want to be able to pull a lever and have it fold down from the side of my boat, perhaps with two settings, "vegetation" and "anglers".

With lights? What a wimp. I assumed we were talking about record-breaking speed in the dark...

Canoes bother me when they overtake (no problem) and then cut in in front of my bow where I can't see them. If they have any sort of problem where they might slow down or stop I could run over them.

This can provide an hour or two of fun. Of an evening, when you can see a car coming by its lights, sound your boat horn a microsecond or two before the car does and watch the ensuring confusion...

Best wishes for the future.