MtB

Dunno, but it appears to have been half the power. 30hp engine on that feeble-looking 1" shaft strikes me as asking for trouble. I wonder what the surveyor thought about it.

That blade looks WAY too small for that engine!

Ok. You've basically asked "please tell us everything there is to know about living on a boat" and said hardly anything about yourselves or why you want to do it. We get this question once in a while and it just generates a trickle of random comments before petering out. You're far better off starting with one single subject to ask about and ask a carefully crafted question you've actually thought about in some depth. Then you'll get some constructive focussed response instead of a smattering of randomness. P.S. Before posting your question, paste it into the search engine here and see what has been already written about it. Otherwise you may get a lot of answers suggesting you 'use the search engine'!

Blimey, any one of those subjects is worth a thread all of its own. What you really need perhaps, is Tony Jones' book "Living on a Narrowboat". https://livingonanarrowboat.co.uk/a-review-of-the-liveaboard-guide-by-tony-jones/

You haven't explained anything with the above. We know that anyway. All you've stated is there are canal users who pay nothing. I imagine your solution is for towpath users to be charged? Somehow? Please expand on how, or explain your plan to save CRT from bankruptcy. Much obliged.

ALL of us would need to do that for it to have a significant impact.

This is pretty much what I did* when I lived aboard on an unserviced on-line home mooring. God turned my solar ON in late feb and turned it OFF again later October. It worked brilliantly supplied all my leccy all summer and I only had 600W of panels. The genny just gathered dust. Others here with a lot more solar than I had, say it keeps working all through winter too. * More accurately I used the Whispergen rather than the propulsion engine.

So you feel you should continue to be subsidised by CRT falling ever deeper into the red then? Quelle surprise, to quote Julian Clary.

I AM being 'careful what I wish for'. As a leisure boater I wish for a working system and I'm will to pay what is needed to get it. The trouble is, CRT don't have the balls to charge what is necessary so the system is sliding into dereliction.

Spend £25 on a hydraulic crimper from eBay, then make your own up exactly as you want them. You'll be delighted if you do, and I predict if you don't, you'll need more lots battery cables expensively made up for in the future as you learn more about boat wiring. DAMHIK.

Hopelessly economically illiterate. There is no hope....

Yep. As MM points out this *might* result in no boats, and no licence income. The 'laffer curve' principle at work again, but the problem is solved. But somewhere between 0% rise in licences and 400% rise in licences, there might be a sweet spot where a higher licence fee results in more income. Certainly it would result in few boats so less wear and tear on the system, so less maintenance would be needed. A Good Thing surely as it would be a step towards the canal system becoming sustainable.

Do you really still not see the connection between your licence being grossly under-priced, and all the stoppages you complain here about? (Your and everybody's licences, that is.)

It won't. But as others have explained, with this 12v 3-pin socket in the boat, there is almost certainly a 12v appliance around with a 13A plug on it. The fire risk is when someone plugs this 12v appliance with 240Vac three-pin plug on it into a 240Vac socket. Not an unreasonable thing to do.

A further point not made so far is that if CRT are sharp about it, they will keep a weather eye on the mooring income and general success of businesses occupying their properties on commercial leases, and take this into account when performing the 3 or 5 yearly rent reviews on the properties. In much the same way as the evil pub companies do.