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I'm a realist. Life is not about money. Anyway is it your money that he's spent on this boat? No. It's his, and he has a right to do what he wants with it - and what he does with it is absolutely none of your business.

It's run out of beer!

Thanks Heffalump I have after a week off it decided to sheath over the whole area, and maybe to the lower rubbing strake, which will be a good point to bled into, it is either that or just to the water line but that will mean grinding back a little all the way around the boat. So plan few pints then start by grinding away all the bad areas ready for filling with polyester filler and deeper areas laminating them back to thickness required thickness etc etc. To re`laminate i will be using polyester resin not epoxy, cant justify the cost and more work involved with the epoxy. It is either around £100 for poly resin or near £400 for epoxy. I will be using 350grm CSM and then on top a 280grm twill weave fabric to give a better smoother finish for the either epoxy or flocoat to go onto. Hey then lots and lots of sanding back......oh joys to look forward to lol. I need to look into the small areas of osmosis yet, may well grind back the whole area and wash it all down over a few weeks and leave it unitil next year to dry. I will be doing it bit a ta time as in between i will be getting on with the rest a sin making the canopy and finishing the interior. Need to motivate myself now after a time off fishing My best catch last week

Adjustable wench.

Probably the most sensible post you have made. Yes the OP may have bought a white elephant but he has learnt a LOT and decided to cut his losses. His money, his loss not yours so why keep on about it?

Now why is that? The level at which to fix a stop loss will be different for every person, varying with their attitude to risk, the degree to which they can afford a hit, what else they could be doing with the money, and a load of other factors. You I suggest, are trying to attribute your own personal attitude to risk etc to Mr Calranthe with this comment. His attitude to the risk/benefit equation is very different from yours but no less valid. He got a LOT of (negative) boat-owning experience in a very short space of time and has learned massively form it. Experience and lessons he would otherwise not have had. Edit to improve clarity.

Kindly avoid dragging your dirty northern bottoms on the bed of the lovely undespoiled Thames. Thanking you in advance for your co-operation. PS ................ the bottom is very close to the surface as you go under the road bridge at Sonning, just downstream of the lock. PPS .............. please bring billhooks and scythes to cut down your share of the Himalayan Balsam that lines the river for miles downstream of Lechlade. It has become quite tedious.

Right can`t wait (got to get on) so having a go myself.

Well if you do come to "an arrangement" don't come anywhere near my boat.

Copper washers, dowty washers, gasket sheet material. Ptfe tape. Tool thingmy for getting stones out of Hudson Butlers spats.

A dredger was stationed here for years to scoop the oil from the canal surface, latterly Alfred Matty had a spoon dredger there for said purpose, that went to the BCLM. the Bantock hull was dismantled and only the fore and aft ends remain.

You will of course check that the person hiring you their boat has the correct licence and insurance for hiring, and that the boat has a boat safety certificate confirming that it complies with the more onerous requirements for hire boats.

Actually I think perhaps people are being a bit tough on them. To me it looks that the fierce inrush of water from the bye wash is doing a lot to try pinning both motor and butty to the tow-path side. The strength of the flow can shift from "inconsequential" to "really quite bad" in minutes, and anyone not familiar with those locks can easily get caught out. We now know a more experienced steerer was present on the bank, but a less experienced one is actually at the tiller. Only by actually trying things out and making the occasional mistake will am inexperienced steerer learn to be a better one. I have seen one of the well respected crews of a privately owned pair cause modest mayhem at those locks - it is not something that is limited to "trust" boats where maybe the steerer has not yet gained a lot of experience.

Don't worry Rob, as discussed I will be filling in my application form shortly and I am well qualified to uphold the expert level of incompetence following my failure to master the finer points of working Atlas & Malus. It's staggering how after a career not involving boats spanning 25 years in order to attain a level of excellence I haven't been able to master a pair of boats over just a few weekends of volunteering and bugger all training. Although beware, I may have some burgeoning necessary skills; I did narrowly fail to buy a boat I liked the look of a couple of years ago. Jon

Please don't pity me, I should pity you and your efforts, I'm on the canals with a good boat living in the real world, So please pity yourself and not me, Thanks

Being in a similar situation to the OP, except my wife is a full time wheelchair user. We bought plastic 18.5 foot, but petrol engined. 3 year's in and not regretting it yet. I'm sure a lot of folk would have advised me how stupid we were

It's still none of your business. As far as Calranthe is concerned(and I agree with him), the money wasn't wasted. Your opinion might differ, but it's not your money.

Are you always this grumpy?

And what business is that of yours? Hopefully you'll find the right boat, at the right time for both you and Paola.

Because one of the jobs of being a moderator is to deal with offence. If the moderator hasn't really thought about it beforehand, problems could arise. So if offence cannot be given but only taken, a mod has to decide whether it is reasonable for offence to have been taken. I suggest that they have to refer to social norms, rather than their personal ideas or the ideas of the person professing to be offended. In other words, can of worms!

I do not in any way regret Kathleen (oh that is the post they were referring to Mike) I think Mike and others understand this was a positive experience for both myself and wife that we would not put a money figure on, it is still a GRP boat for us and yes a diesel (even though it is curious nearly all the GRP boats we saw going up the TMC were outboard petrol including a nice 27ft Norman.) Some understand some will not I have learnt that. Here is our shopping list for the next boat. A good solid table (that is not the main bed) A main bed in a cabin or at least setup at all times (not a corner bed you have to slide on/under) Diesel Engine preferably 2 but with good economy perkins or volvo with good service history. Preferable shaft driven Displacement hull Heating Shower A boat that can handle rivers and grow towards coastal. Either a way for Paola to get on and off the boat easy (side door or transom or low level back) or a superstructure that can be modified without too many issues. Solo mooring friendly as in easy access for pilot to the outside, hopefully Paola will be up to taking over but if not I need to be able to get out of the cabin easily to rope us up, Kathleen was great for this. Apart from a few brain burps where I didn't notice a boat was petrol when looking got a bit of tunnel vision the search is going well. This time we are focused on Paola's appointments gives us time to look into it all even if it means waiting till the tail end of the year and for use next spring.

isopon car body filler (2 pack)

not shore weather your been to fussy or theres a reel problem,

Probably caused by lack of maintence by CRT (Chinese River Trust)

Draper do a small cheap 1000watt wet n dry for those with a bigger genny/inverter. https://www.drapertools.com/product/06489/10L-1000W-230V-Wet-and-Dry-Vacuum-Cleaner edit; Actually, not as small as it looks looking at the other photo.

Well my advice to return the boat for a refund only turns out to have been good advice in retrospect and in the light of subsequent events. Had you done as I suggested you might still today have never had a boat, missed out on some valuable boating experience in your own boat, and still be wishing you hadn't returned Kathleen.

Although been a backpack design you could pretend to be a ghostbuster.

I guess anything taken out of context is funny to some people.

Yeah, stone them i say. And dock their wages. Oh hang on...

Soon the entire network will be plagued with no mooring, no fishing, no swimming etc warnings

I suppose the OP could stick with his current convention by changing his screen name to Solar Panel, but it could get tedious if he has a lot of questions.

Multimeter. 50% of boat breakdowns involve electricity*. * The other 50% don't

I prefer G and T A Double

I thought that there was a motorway bridge just outside Ellesmere port that prevents widebeams from getting as far as Ellesmere port and hence onto the MSC. Can't remember exactly how wide it is so maybe some narrower widebeams can still pass. ......Dave I read somewhere that quite a bit of this canal has fallen into disrepair and is unnavigable. Anyway I suspect the beer is not good and much of the food still alive when eaten. ...............Dave

Bilge paint might be ok up there but, it is normally used in the gloom of a sunless bilge, so may not have the additives in it to deal with sunlight. I wouldn't risk it. Interdeck would be ok, I should think.

Sorry if I touched a nerve, you assume a lot, you took my words out of context, I was saying if a £4000 loss or expense is too much then boating is not for you, where you see expensive I do not, let me put it into context, for the last 20 years I have watched both rich and poor people die in front of me cancer does not care how good a balance you have, who you know or where you live, doesn't matter your plans, I have seen so many amazing people, brave children and people who would have given up every penny they owned for one little piece of paper to say something different. Actually with all the Math it comes to more like £6000 including all the items but £2,000 worth of items will be reused, plus I took out the insurance monthly and CRT license 3 monthly. What did I get for my £4000 ? A confirmation that we love boating, seeing my wife get on a boat, going up the Trent and on to the canal, waking at 5am to see two hares playing on the footpath, met many amazing and interesting people, lost my fear of water, gained experience on what on that boat worked and what did not, experiences that will be put into practice, learnt that while we love the look of NB for us it will have to be a GRP cruiser, loving the size of the Trent and really looking forward to exploring rivers in the future. The instant my wife who doctors have told us time and time again has been on borrowed time for 18 years and the odds get worse every month got on that boat I could have happily burnt £4000 and not lost a wink of sleep. Now lets look at your other "fiasco" of an accusation "Mike the boilerman" here is what he said " Has your mechanic chap successfully tested the engine now then? If not I'd be wary of banking on your slow voyage starting on Wednesday. Just sayin', from personal experience of the way this sort of thing tends to pan out!" I let him know and others that yes our engineer had tested the engine, see the thing is the enfield outdrive was working fine in the marina and even fine a mile up the Trent, it even made it another two miles up the canal and then it failed, the engine was not the problem, the outdrive failed through use, how bad that fail is we do not know. Now one last thing, IF you had read the who thread you would know I even did the math of repairs vs just selling it off, but to be nice to you I will repeat it one more time. Current sale price of boat £2,500 - £650+vat brokers fee but lets round it to £750 that means "if" it sells at £2500 (unlikely) we get about £1750 (remember we have already wrote of the fulll 4,000) Now lets see how much we would get if the outdrive was fixed, well it was on the market for 3 months at £3600, reduced to £3,300 Now the cost of fixing the Enfield drive could be over £1000 depending on a lot of factors, time out of water, engineer call out, hiring a trailer, place to keep the boat, ordered parts needed, engineer call out to fit parts. At the end of that the maximum I can sell the boat for is £3,300 - £1000 costs of fixing it = £2300 - brokers fee £750 = total money I get back = £1,550 so ... ... ... i'll let that sink is but do not dare say I have not done the math, yes the boat will probably sell quicker but as I pointed out many posts ago which you supposedly read Time is also a factor and far more important to me and my family than a piddling little £4,000 I set aside three time slots of journey, three time lots of work on the boat, I did everything you can do as a new person, I checked oil, I did the filters, I got in an engineer, I took advice, some times it is just not meant to be. In no way does this stop our Boating adventure, if anything it has made us even more keen, you seem to focus the worst part as being money, ironically the worst and best part was being stranded at aston lock number 3 we met and saw some amazing people and spent 24 hours away from home on a BOAT!!! seeing 20-30 boats pass by with all the beauty and interesting things.

For me the report button appears as soon as the mouse touches the blue top or bottom bar, or if already inside the area when the page loads as soon as it moves.

I'll second this. I buy the button batteries in packs of ten now for all mine! And as already hinted at, they won't like being used underwater. Not one bit! Get a proper vernier for measuring this thread with the boat in the water. Or a better idea which should work ok is get a lump of plasticine or something similarly pudgy, and press it into the thread underwater to take an impression, then measure the pitch on the plasticine impression on the bench with the digital vernier. Much easier!

Your mother was a Hamster and your father smelt of elderberries!

Black berries are out early this year. Yesterday I made blackberry and banana crush for afters.

I've just read this thread from start to finish, all 44 pages! Cracking work, really amazing. Its a big job next but when it's done it will seem like it wasn't that bad keep it up, I can't wait to see the next step.