Longer Boats Up Norf

[ditchcrawler]

1 hour ago, The Happy Nomad said:

 

Good job it was free then, eh.

He was lucky, I paid

[peterboat]

Just now, ditchcrawler said:

He was lucky, I paid

I am hoping for a freebie as well, I just want to see somebody at the show, then go to the campervan show  at Stratford 

[MtB]

3 hours ago, noddyboater said:

I remember going to Crick show once for a day as I had free tickets. 

That was enough for a lifetime. 

 

 

I've been twice now. 

 

The first time I was staggered by how few stands had anything to do with boating. The second time was a few years later because I though my memory was failing the first time, but it wasn't.

 

Both times it was pishing with rain and my van got stuck in the field and had to be dragged out by the Land Rover. It was like Groundhog Day. 

 

 

 

 

[IanD]

11 hours ago, MtB said:

 

I've been twice now. 

 

The first time I was staggered by how few stands had anything to do with boating. The second time was a few years later because I though my memory was failing the first time, but it wasn't.

 

Both times it was pishing with rain and my van got stuck in the field and had to be dragged out by the Land Rover. It was like Groundhog Day.

 

 

I've never been and have no plans to, because -- like most boat reviews -- I expect the boat side of it is focused on fixtures and fittings and decor and looks and "ooh, look at that!" clever-but-maybe-impractical ideas, because that's what most boat buyers look at and make decisions on, just like they do for houses and cars. You can't blame the builders, they're giving the public what they want which is often the superficial gloss they can see not the engineering integrity they can't, which is what really costs the money, but they're in the business of selling boats and to be honest for most people the sizzle does that not the steak.

 

One reason for going with Finesse is all the in-depth discussions I've had with Ricky about what the underlying boat design decisions are -- hull shape, propulsion, electrics, heating and plumbing -- and why he does things that way without corner-cutting -- propulsion/batteries (including a customised motor design) and heating being just two examples. I came in with a lot of ideas, and after going into them in depth I often decided that his were better (or mine wouldn't work) so chose them -- but there are also some new ideas of mine that he thinks are good and worth trying out, especially on further reducing generator noise and vibration. But for everything we talked about he had solid engineering reasons about what the best option was and why, often based on things he'd tried in the past but since found a way to do better, and I respect that -- which must be one benefit of having built more than 50 boats, evolution works...

 

Apart from the boat planning -- how to fit everything in the limited space, and make it possible to build and maintain the boat -- I haven't actually had a single detailed discussion yet about interior/exterior design and decor, apart from the assumptions in the contract about materials, because that can wait until later. We did have a giggle about their electric dining table option in the dinette, which he said had got a "Wow!" from a lot of customers (and reviewers...) and maybe influenced them to buy a boat from Finesse (so job done, then...) but I saw as an expensive solution to a non-problem -- as usual, YMMV... 😉

Edited April 25, 2022 by IanD

[PD1964]

Is electric everything the way ahead to impress the customers? A while ago people could change an oil filter, sort minor engine problems out. So is this the future? everything electric, LCD displays instead of rev counters and gauges, electrical sensors/alarms on everything, GPS systems to tell you what lock your in, big generator’s and a roof full of solar panels? 
 Will boats become like cars where people just plug in a diagnostic device to find the fault and replace a circuit board to fix the problem?

  Maybe all this electric stuff is what’s making the boats in excess of £250K.

Edited April 25, 2022 by PD1964

[IanD]

16 minutes ago, PD1964 said:

Is electric everything the way ahead to impress the customers? A while ago people could change an oil filter, sort minor engine problems out. So is this the future? everything electric, LCD displays instead of rev counters and gauges, electrical sensors/alarms on everything, big generator’s and a roof full of solar panels? 
 Will boats become like cars where people just plug in a diagnostic device to find the fault and replace a circuit board to fix the problem?

  Maybe all this electric stuff is what’s making the boats in excess of £250K.

Some customers, obviously yes going by the electric table 😉

 

There's nothing stopping people going back to the "dead simple" days of almost no electrical equipment except lights and a mechanical-injection diesel with an alternator, if that's what they want to do.

 

If people want more "mod cons" on board then this isn't going to suit them, similarly if they don't want the noise and vibration of a diesel engine -- electric propulsion (series hybrid really) has some genuine advantages over diesel especially if you value silence, but it's not cheap.

 

And all that technology will cost more money. And the more stuff you have, the more there is to go wrong -- just like in a house. But then with remote monitoring/alarms you perhaps can spot a problem before it becomes critical even if you're not on the boat and maybe do something about it. Some modern equipment does give some genuine advantages, some looks more like technology for the sake of it -- like "smart" houses, all fine until the company providing the "smart" goes bust and everything stops working, like happened last week with Insteon 😞

 

You pays yer money and you takes yer choice -- a simple hair-shirt boat or a more complicated modern one, neither is wrong or right, it just depends on your priorities... 🙂

Edited April 25, 2022 by IanD

[ditchcrawler]

13 hours ago, MtB said:

 

 

I've been twice now. 

 

The first time I was staggered by how few stands had anything to do with boating. The second time was a few years later because I though my memory was failing the first time, but it wasn't.

 

Both times it was pishing with rain and my van got stuck in the field and had to be dragged out by the Land Rover. It was like Groundhog Day. 

 

 

 

 

That's what I thought very little boat stuff there. The only good bit, Eugene Baston bought me a beer, the only member of management with scruples so he left.

Edited April 25, 2022 by ditchcrawler

[PD1964]

2 hours ago, IanD said:

you pays yer money and you takes yer choice -- a simple hair-shirt boat or a more complicated modern one, neither is wrong or right, it just depends on your priorities... 🙂

And both do exactly the same thing and what they’re designed for, to travel down the canal from A-B. One costs £250k plus, the other 1/3 of the cost. What I’m seeing it’s more of a snobbery and self-ego/bragging thing, then being about practical boating. As you say you pays yer money and you takes yer choice. It just depends on your priorities.

Edited April 25, 2022 by PD1964

[IanD]

1 hour ago, PD1964 said:

And both do exactly the same thing and what they’re designed for, to travel down the canal from A-B. One costs £250k plus, the other 1/3 of the cost. What I’m seeing it’s more of a snobbery and self-ego/bragging thing, then being about practical boating. As you say you pays yer money and you takes yer choice. It just depends on your priorities.

And as usual, you're putting motives into peoples minds that they might not have. As far as I'm concerned if nobody passing ever comments on how fantastic/elite/expensive my boat is I'll be perfectly happy, so long as it suits me -- it's why my last two cars have been Skoda Superb estate "Q-cars", which I prefer to any of the BMW and Mercedes and Volvo and Audi I drove previously. And they get me from A to B just like a Dacia Duster costing 1/3 the price, but rather more enjoyably -- which to me is worth the extra cost 🙂

 

Snobbery is the self-admitted attitude of another poster on here -- "My boat (or at least, the bow...) is considerably better than yours". Mine is what suits me, it certainly won't be everyone's first choice, especially given the cost. It certainly doesn't make sense financially, but I'm lucky enough not to be bothered, I'd rather spend the money on this than (for example) a bigger house -- and it won't make me in any way superior to somebody in a different boat a fraction of the cost, or hire boaters, or scruffy boaters.

 

Unless they're a complete tosser, and in my experience this is nothing to do with money, there are rich and poor tossers around... 😉

 

I suggest you get that big chip off your shoulder and realise that money isn't the root of all evil, it depends what you do with it and whether you wave wodges of it at tramps before running away laughing -- but it certainly *is* the root of a lot of evil in our current government... 😞

Edited April 25, 2022 by IanD

[haggis]

1 hour ago, ditchcrawler said:

That's what I thought very little boat stuff there. The only good bit, Eugene Baston bought me a beer, the only member of management with scruples so he left.

Eugene was a great guy and as you say, he had scruples. He helped me a lot behind the scenes in my Ombudsman case for licences for shared boats, much to Sally Ash s annoyance I am sure. We met him several times in Scotland and on the day before the official opening of the Wheel he let Iain and I see inside the workings.

I was sorry when he left BW but I could in understand why. 

[PD1964]

 I have no chip on my shoulder. I’ve met many new boat owners over the years. Knowing roughly what their new boat cost, I get the ones who tell me who the builder is, what it has onboard and what they’ve spent, then I get the ones that just chat normal. I find it’s the ones that tell you the cost of everything that have the “heirs and graces” and the ones with the real money that you can engage with in a normal conversation. 
 I’m sure your boat will cost what you can afford and maybe even more then you think in a year or so, with the rising cost of materials and you’ll enjoy it. 👍

[noddyboater]

36 minutes ago, IanD said:

 

 

Snobbery is the self-admitted attitude of another poster on here -- "My boat (or at least, the bow...) is considerably better than yours".

 

 

Actually what I said was that as a measured,  planked bow it was considerably better than similar offerings built in the yard it was being compared with.

I am a boat snob, no argument there,  but probably not in the way most people on here would think.

I honestly would rather hang my windlass up than go boating on the latest narrow boats such as are displayed at Crick. Give me an old Les Allen though,  or a Barney boat and I'd be quite happy.  It's nothing to do with cost.

It was said earlier that it can take years to appreciate the lines of a decent boat, I'd agree with that but to a lot of people it's irrelevant. 

[IanD]

26 minutes ago, PD1964 said:

 I have no chip on my shoulder. I’ve met many new boat owners over the years. Knowing roughly what their new boat cost, I get the ones who tell me who the builder is, what it has onboard and what they’ve spent, then I get the ones that just chat normal. I find it’s the ones that tell you the cost of everything that have the “heirs and graces” and the ones with the real money that you can engage with in a normal conversation. 
 I’m sure your boat will cost what you can afford and maybe even more then you think in a year or so, with the rising cost of materials and you’ll enjoy it. 👍

 

If boaters want to discuss the technical ins and outs of my boat build and equipment and the tradeoffs involved I'll be happy to do that over a beer -- or online, while not giving away any secrets 😉

 

If they want to know how much it all costs (maybe because they're thinking of the same) I'd be happy to tell them that too -- just not in print here because of commercial sensitivity.

 

If they're not interested in either then I won't bore them or brag about it, instead we can talk about beer or food or music or canals or anything else of mutual interest 🙂

Edited April 25, 2022 by IanD

[IanD]

57 minutes ago, noddyboater said:

Actually what I said was that as a measured,  planked bow it was considerably better than similar offerings built in the yard it was being compared with.

I am a boat snob, no argument there,  but probably not in the way most people on here would think.

I honestly would rather hang my windlass up than go boating on the latest narrow boats such as are displayed at Crick. Give me an old Les Allen though,  or a Barney boat and I'd be quite happy.  It's nothing to do with cost.

It was said earlier that it can take years to appreciate the lines of a decent boat, I'd agree with that but to a lot of people it's irrelevant. 

 

Not irrelevant, it's all a question of priorities and opinions, and other people have different ones to you.

 

You like a "measured, planked bow" -- presumably a perfect copy of a "Josher" from some era or another? Are you willing to say exactly what it's a copy of, and who built it?

 

Personally I think incurved pointy bows like this look anachronistic -- especially when adorned with fake rivets -- but others (including you) may of course disagree, because this is just my opinion.

 

On the practical side, a bow like this makes the minimum bow length up to the cabin about a foot shorter, which is not what I want. The "Josher" also has a flat baseplate and a less steeply raked prow compared to the "non-Josher" bow, which is a negative point if you want to get a long boat (60') into a short lock (Salterhebble, or "the one with the railings" -- Elland?) -- the "non-Josher" will be able to slide forwards over the cill more easily to keep the boat closer to the top gates. Here are a couple of photos from Tyler Wilson to show what I mean.

 

In full-length boat this wouldn't matter, there's also more space to have a longer bow and have plenty of space inside. In my case it does matter, hence a Josher bow is the wrong choice for me.

 

Before you bring up anything about Joshers "swimming better", any book on hull design will tell you that for slow-speed boats like these the exact shape of the bow doesn't matter so much as how long it takes to reach the full hull profile. The Josher has a pointier recurved nose (which some think is elegant, like Cleopatra's...) but the non-Josher has a steeper stem and a lifted baseplate, so given the same overall bow length there's unlikely to be much difference in the hull area vs. length profile.

 

What is much more important is having a long swim at the stern because this contributes much more to drag than the bows (which is why container ships have blunt bows and long tapered sterns) -- and again it's not the exact shape (vertical sides or tapered) that matters, it's how long the tapered section is, and this is where a lot of modern hulls fall short -- literally 😉 IIRC this stretches about 13' from the stern on a 60' TW hull, which is about the most that can fit in without causing problems with the internal fitout -- again, in my case.

 

You might want something different and have different priorities to me, but this doesn't make either boat "better" -- horses for courses... 😉

 

Edited April 25, 2022 by IanD

[Mad Harold]

2 hours ago, PD1964 said:

And both do exactly the same thing and what they’re designed for, to travel down the canal from A-B. One costs £250k plus, the other 1/3 of the cost. What I’m seeing it’s more of a snobbery and self-ego/bragging thing, then being about practical boating. As you say you pays yer money and you takes yer choice. It just depends on your priorities.

Some years ago in a different incarnation, I was involved with flying. Mainly old and homebuilt aircraft. There was pretty much the same attitudes as now on the canals. 

I and my circle were wire, fabric, taildragging flies in the teeth type flyers.The simpler the aeroplane, the better we liked it. Cross country navigation by map,compass, watch and the one in sixty rule. 

Other wealthier flyers had three wheel landing gear, fuel injected engines, auto pilots ( God help us!) and enough avionic gear to navigate the world, even though they only flew to the nearest aero club to swap yarns of derring do! and have a cup of tea. 

The two types of flyer didn' t get on that well. 

It seems a similar thing on the canals now.

For me, I like simplicity, if an aeroplane, car , or boat doesn't have largely unecessary gizmos,these gizmos can't go wrong, can they?

There is quite enough stuff on a boat to break down without adding to it. 

 

[IanD]

14 minutes ago, Mad Harold said:

Some years ago in a different incarnation, I was involved with flying. Mainly old and homebuilt aircraft. There was pretty much the same attitudes as now on the canals. 

I and my circle were wire, fabric, taildragging flies in the teeth type flyers.The simpler the aeroplane, the better we liked it. Cross country navigation by map,compass, watch and the one in sixty rule. 

Other wealthier flyers had three wheel landing gear, fuel injected engines, auto pilots ( God help us!) and enough avionic gear to navigate the world, even though they only flew to the nearest aero club to swap yarns of derring do! and have a cup of tea. 

The two types of flyer didn' t get on that well. 

It seems a similar thing on the canals now.

For me, I like simplicity, if an aeroplane, car , or boat doesn't have largely unecessary gizmos,these gizmos can't go wrong, can they?

There is quite enough stuff on a boat to break down without adding to it. 

 

 

And if that's what you want, that's absolutely fine for you, and it's nobody else's business to tell you that you should add a lot of new-fangled stuff onto your boat that you don't want.

 

But that cuts both ways -- if people want more mod cons (or electric drive...) on their boat because they're happy with the complexity and cost, it's not your business to tell them that they're wrong either.

 

The key point is to recognise that people have different needs and make different choices, and nobody is wrong... 😉

[ditchcrawler]

1 hour ago, PD1964 said:

 I have no chip on my shoulder. I’ve met many new boat owners over the years. Knowing roughly what their new boat cost, I get the ones who tell me who the builder is, what it has onboard and what they’ve spent, then I get the ones that just chat normal. I find it’s the ones that tell you the cost of everything that have the “heirs and graces” and the ones with the real money that you can engage with in a normal conversation. 
 I’m sure your boat will cost what you can afford and maybe even more then you think in a year or so, with the rising cost of materials and you’ll enjoy it. 👍

I had a neighbour like that, he even appealed against his council tax saying he was in to lower band and not paying enough.

[noddyboater]

I'd agree that the washers do nothing for the shell in your photo. 

If you're going to the trouble of actually replicating a Josher bow though rather than a loose caricature you might as well add the fake rivets. 

[IanD]

7 minutes ago, noddyboater said:

I'd agree that the washers do nothing for the shell in your photo. 

If you're going to the trouble of actually replicating a Josher bow though rather than a loose caricature you might as well add the fake rivets. 

And you like that, and I don't on a modern replica boat. Do you simply not understand that not everybody shares your opinions?

 

Out of curiosity, for the benefit of people who actually have to fit stuff inside a boat, how far back from the bows is it before the floor becomes full-width?

 

I suspect you'll say that doesn't matter, elegance is everything -- which is your priority, but not everybody's...

Edited April 25, 2022 by IanD

[Mike Todd]

2 hours ago, PD1964 said:

 I have no chip on my shoulder. I’ve met many new boat owners over the years. Knowing roughly what their new boat cost, I get the ones who tell me who the builder is, what it has onboard and what they’ve spent, then I get the ones that just chat normal. I find it’s the ones that tell you the cost of everything that have the “heirs and graces” and the ones with the real money that you can engage with in a normal conversation. 
 I’m sure your boat will cost what you can afford and maybe even more then you think in a year or so, with the rising cost of materials and you’ll enjoy it. 👍

No doubt the ones you cite also do not know that it is 'airs and graces'?

[ditchcrawler]

39 minutes ago, IanD said:

 

 

I suspect you'll say that doesn't matter, elegance is everything -- which is your priority, but not everybody's...

It does matter, that is why it moves like a boat and not a skip

[Guest]

1 hour ago, IanD said:

 😉  

 

Aesthetically that bow is very pleasing on the eye. In fact the whole shell is.

[IanD]

9 minutes ago, ditchcrawler said:

It does matter, that is why it moves like a boat and not a skip

<sigh>...

 

So this is even more elegant, which obviously means that everyone cruising on the canals should have one of these since that's all that matters... 😉

Edited April 25, 2022 by IanD

[beerbeerbeerbeerbeer]

5 minutes ago, The Happy Nomad said:

 

Aesthetically that bow is very pleasing on the eye. In fact the whole shell is.

I like that bow too
But I don’t like how the rubbing strakes over lap on to the stem post. 

 

[IanD]

3 minutes ago, Goliath said:

I like that bow too
But I don’t like how the rubbing strakes over lap on to the stem post. 
 

 

And it would be more aesthetically pleasing without the fake rivets... 😉

 

And how about the horrible triangular fillets onto the panel in front of the crude bow locker hatch?

Edited April 25, 2022 by IanD