Jess--

Certainly not the same people then, ones in my picture are Dave (aka Brum) and Marg, Dave ended up with the nickname Brum because he picked up a birmingham accent despite never going there.

Do we know the same people (or was it a lot more common than you might think)?

from memory only the flat part of the arm came off (single nut), behind that was the spring loaded ball bearing which will disappear into the oil in your bilge and take 30 mins to find (you will have oil there as if you're doing this job you have an oil leak from the gearbox). once the arm is off the seal comes out with no further disassembly needed, I used the sharp tip of a small screw to get it out but this does risk scratching where the seal sits (I was told the trick of running the engine afterwards and verified it when changing one with someone else) the new seal will be tight to slide in, once I had mine partially in I used the flat part of the arm to seat it fully. I used a small blob of grease to hold the ball bearing on the end of the spring to reassemble.

Not boat stove but recently found an issue with stove & flue in house we have just moved to, maybe relevant. the house we have just moved to has a tall external stainless 8" flue (20+ feet to clear the apex of the roof) in the cold weather we found we were getting a strong downdraft (presumably from cold air sinking down the long flue, any attempt at lighting the stove resulted in a smoke filled room and CO and smoke alarms going off. Our solution (knowing that the flue was clean & clear) was to hold a bit of newspaper up the flue and light it, after about 10 seconds the heat from the burning paper got the air flowing the right way in the flue and everything started drawing properly

Container lifting machine, saw them used a lot around DIRFT when I lived locally, they were being used to lift shipping containers off trains and onto lorries (or stack them), spreaders went from 20 to 40 feet and the head had adjustment to still clamp onto containers that were off level and a little bit of rotation for where the machine couldn't approach perfectly from the side.

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/151663574 between Canal and River Don at Stainforth Canalside (offside) but may not be to the waters edge, overhead pics show a boat moored there but that is possibly from thorne cruising club (next door)

But ONLY a phone No, no boat name etc All my various bunches of keys have a ring like this on them The only time it failed to get me keys back was when I lost a top box & disc lock key (being an idiot they were in the lock when I set off), knowing the roads I went along I suspect that they were run over many times so would have been useless.

Knowing a few people involved (not in a big scale), the biggest thing that caused an impact to them in recent years was the covid lockdowns. moving product became a lot more difficult, less cars on the road meant that it was harder to blend in and vehicles from outside the area were likely to be pulled (so a lot of supply lines scaled back), less people moving around in general made where the dealers were a lot more obvious and with supplies starting to get leaner a lot stopped dealing. The users now being (for the most part) stuck at home in lockdown and being faced with reduced supplies started to grow their own as the perceived risk was lower (since the police were too busy trying to enforce the lockdown). Once the lockdown started to ease a lot of suppliers found themselves with months worth of product as a backlog and much lower demand as a lot of their users own grows were now reaching the harvest stage leading to massive oversupply and dropping prices by a huge amount.

It's not a proper lock-in until you find yourself walking (sort of) back along the towpath in daylight after a night in the pub

I posted that as there was some discussion about whether a phone plugged into a power bank etc would still be covered by home licence, the bold red text was highlighted by me as I remembered that it had to be the devices own internal battery (external batteries / chargers etc took it out of the rules). The only reason I remembered the specifics were because many years ago an acquaintance rebuilt a 14" tv in a new case that also held a battery, home built inverter and a charger and used that to watch tv wherever he was regardless of whether the place had a licence, it was accepted because the power switch had On-Off-Charge so there was no way of running the tv with power from anywhere other than the battery

Can I watch TV on my mobile phone without a TV Licence? If you’re using a mobile device powered solely by its own internal batteries – like a smartphone, tablet or laptop – you will be covered by your home’s TV Licence, wherever you’re using it in the UK and Channel Islands.

Ours did the shutting off when up to temp trick, it ended up being a partially blocked pilot light jet. (although a failing thermocouple could give similar results) when cold with just the pilot light running enough of the flame hit the thermocouple to keep it lit with the main burner running it pulled the pilot light slightly away from the thermocouple but the extra heat from the main burner kept it running when the main burner shut off (up to temp) the pilot light didn't get the thermocouple back up to temp quick enough and the whole lot shut down with a clonk. One useful trick we did with our when cruising in cold weather was to run the pump without the boiler being lit, we found it pulled heat from the calorifier and heated the radiators (effectively heating the radiators from the engine), as long as we turned it off 20 mins before mooring we still had a full tank of hot water.

We used a 240w semi-flexible panel as pictured below which kept up with most of our usage (pic is after the panel had been in place for 5 years) Semi flexible panels will not last as long as solid ones, the plastic coating degrades over time (probably UV damage) Based on when a friends identical panel failed I would expect 6-7 years lifespan.