Leaderboard

On a technical point of practicality, I have a proper printed license on display, who or how will anyone know it has been revoked. If it reaches court on the grounds your boat is not licensed. Seemingly a matter of fact according to CRT. But in defence you produce your valid license and argue it was revoked illegally. It seems the court ignores mitigating circumstances and decides simply that you are guilty because there was no licence. If it was me it would never get that far. There are so many options available to remedy the situation long beforehand. We have been talking of rights of both parties - but what of responsibility - good citizenship and a wish to confirm without hassle must figure somewhere.

If that half coupling on the reduction box is the standard Lister 6 bolt one which it looks like, and the one the propshaft ''which we can't see'' is the same then, I think I've mentioned it before, that the Ford Granada propshaft rubber doughnut couplings fit perfectly at a fraction of the cost of marine couplings. You couple them alternately 3 and 3, 3 bolts towards the gearbox and nutted and 3 bolts facing the other way nutted on the propshaft side. using appropriate spacer washers to give clearance for the bit of fore and aft thrust movement. You might need two of them bolted through together to get the the thickness of what you already have unless you are having a new shaft fitted which can be cut to length to fit just the one doughnut. You would need long shank high tensile bolts, nuts, plus a load of washers. I fitted one to my Lister ST2 in 2004 and its been excellent and absolutely trouble free. I fitted another to another old boat here with a Lister SR2, also a sound job. They were £12 odd each when I bought them, probably £15 or £20 each now. QH part No is QL9000. If your interested I can take a close up photo of the arrangement and stick it on here.

Perhaps Ex Brummie "continuously cruises"?

About 3 years back we went West to East via the L&L, followed by East to West via the C&C, C&H and Rochdale. We found the L&L spectacular, but were overawed by the Rochdale. As our son put it "on the L&L you see those massive hills to either side of you, but on the Rochdale you are actually climbing right over those hills. No significant problems for us on Rochdale with too little water, (although I do recall having to flush over one cill), but on a fair bit of it, too much water caused some difficulties. On the start of the ascent it often made getting exit gates open difficult. On the descent, we had to be very careful at some places not to completely engulf the tow-path ahead. Quite a lot of the locks had restrictors on their paddle gear to limit the amount it could be opened, but even with some of these it was possible to flood the towpath ahead, because water levels were overly high. Spectacular though, like no other canal we have yet done.

I really enjoyed my day coming out of Manchester on The Rochdale ... the locals were all friendly and there are some beautiful places elsewhere on the Canal. I think Rihdale is the most unpleasant part of the whole canal but it doesn't take long to get through.

I think Nick Norman is correct . Those windows look dreadful and you may well regret them later . I think there is more milage in considering how to create a view thru the front of the boat with large windows either side of the bow doors and arranging your seating so as to make the most of it . These might be those ghastly " captains " chairs ( i don t get them at all but others will disagree ) or a small sofa across width of the boat as opposed to under the gunwhales . Those windows are horrible , don t go there cheers