Jess--

at least there is no pretense with that, it is built as a floating flat that happens to float

bear in mind that we may know of companies that could handle this with ease if your barge is a 20' long 7' wide tiddler but would find it impossible to shift a barge that is 100' long and 40' wide

You've jinxed it now, one of two things will happen... 1. We'll have a heatwave 2. Your skis will be delayed in the post (due to the snow) and will be delivered only after the last flake of snow has melted.

I use one of those for a 19v supply, and it is certainly some form of high frequency inverter based boost circuit in use, the inverter frequency is not fixed and seems to be free running and will give a distinct squawk if it's overloaded or the supply voltage drops too low, also when run near it's limits it will run fairly warm with this in mind I would put the somewhere around the 90% mark on efficiency

I used to carry my grandfathers pocket knife with a 4" locking blade (well into illegal territory now) I can honestly say I have never needed to sharpen it (and it is razor sharp) despite using it for everything. I stopped carrying it after seeing the looks I got when I pulled it out of my pocket at work and used it (simpler / quicker to use my own knife than find one from the other end of the workshop), it seemed to cause a bit of commotion amongst my co-workers that I was carrying a knife on me (and had been every single day for the previous 4 years that I had worked with them), in their eyes a knife was a dangerous weapon not a tool. after that the knife stayed at home.

listen for any change in engine behavior, we notice on our lister lpws4 (100 hours between oil changes) that as we get over about 85 hours the engine stops holding revs at certain speeds under 85 hours it will hold any speed selected over 85 hours it will surge slightly at 1400 rpm (up to 1425 down to 1375 continuously) engine oil level doesn't change at all over the time between changes as long as the oil filter is tight (yes we made this mistake)

Not quite... 10 watts from uk to australia was my best with voice, punching the power up to my 400w limit made almost no difference (apart from making my touch activated lights in the bedroom look like strobe lights)

UHF = line of sight (even more severely than VHF) on the ground transmitter range can vary from under a mile in cities to around 10 miles in open country however if you get a transmitter up very high you can cover huge ranges with very little power. A test transmitter of mine was sent up to 24,996 feet (annoyingly missing the 25,000 feet target by 4 feet), the transmitter power was 1mw (10 times less than a car alarm keyfob) yet the signal from it was received across most of europe

I think the difference is User (one person) vs Sons (multiple people) with 2 people + several servers & other systems we shift 500-600 Gb a month

you may also be able to transfer your landline number to someone like sipgate who offer VOIP phone (Voice Over IP) and keep your landline number usable anwhere that you can get internet access. in the process of testing this myself as a way of dropping 2 out of 3 landlines (need to keep the third for internet access as no mobile network is reliable here)

we used to have one seasonal (Mar - Nov) member of staff that used to want to take no wages at all during the season but take it all in one lump sum at the end (11-15k depending on the season), her reasoning was that if she had it every week she would spend it without noticing, but by taking it at the end of the year it paid for a month in australia visiting relatives / new kitchen / new bathroom etc etc

not done that well, (had to overcook it to bring the blues back out)

would it be overly cynical of me to point out that a lot of benefits are means tested and savings over a certain amount (I used to know the amount) incurs a drop in benefits or total removal of certain benefits. A friend got into a weird loop with council tax over this, his saving were just over the limit, this meant he became liable for full council tax, which was paid automatically from his account. paying the full council tax put his savings below the limit and triggered the benefit in relation to council tax, therefore he was now entitled to a refund of the now overpaid council tax. the refund put him back over the limit so the refunded amount was taken back via direct debit, putting him back under the limit again (loop repeats) He spent about 2 months with his account going up and down by £500 every week or so before giving up and buying a new freezer.

the best advice I have come across for new boaters (or experienced boaters with an unfamiliar boat) is to get the boat onto a quiet stretch and play with it. You'll learn a lot more about how the boat reacts from that than you'll learn from books or reading on here, you simply can't beat experience. That said... how well the boat handles drops dramatically with people watching.

Would a "really hot cup of tea" do the job? It did after all fuel the Inifinite Improbability Drive