Leaderboard

Unless I have missed something, your batteries are always working, charging or running fridges etc. Therefore they will never be at 100% SOC. However, looking at those readings, there is nothing wrong with them either. Best reading was .... .gave up and went to pub.

It doesn't really matter what you can or cannot 'see', It is Cal and Paola's dream, if they want to overcome their own difficulties who are you to tell them not to try ?

LOL "Back to square one" take a deep breath and start all over again. You might as well start a new thread with all your questions on Narrowboats. So funny.

It makes an Ass out of u an me, and mtb with his two dodgy Smartgauges

There is a conflict of interest between people who want to cruise the canals, and people who want to live statically on them. Our trip on the KandA has really shone a spotlight on this, as for some reason the KandA seems to be a magnet for people who want to live on a boat but don't want to move it. The liveaboards blatently resent those who want to cruise (because they make their boats bob around a bit and means they need to tie them up properly if they don't want them to come adrift) and the people who want to use their boats for cruising resent the fact that they spend nearly an entire trip of several days at tickover due to the endless line of (often badly) moored boats. I don't see a way to resolve this conflict although of course I would say that the canals were put here, and in the case of the KandA restored, for the purposes of moving boats. Not for statically living on. We don't allow people to live in city parks or other leisure areas. Nor by the side of the road. I'm not quite sure why we allow the (a few) canals to become dysfunctional due to too many moored boats. I can sympathise with a view that the W&B would become clogged with moored boats, I think it is a certainty whilst the current regime persists.

So today day was supposed to be an early start from Gloucester and spend the day in Tewksbury....started off ok...pump out done...water topped up....then into Gloucester lock where a rather nice 1936 wooden motor boat joined us...we went out onto the partings..they said for me to go first...then going under the road bridges I heard some shouting...thought was kids on the bank so ignored it...then more shouting..looked back...motor boat at an amusing angle across the parting and lots of waving... As there's no chance of winding I stopped on the flow and the other boat limped closer. Turns out they had lost all steering due to pulley failure...so towed them to upper parting...spun both boats round then back into Gloucester Dock. I don't think the JP needs a decoke now! That isn't a light boat!! Was very glad of VHF so I could talk to the lockies to let them know what was happening as well as the large flybridge Sealine that was following us. Try doing all that on a mobile! Left them going over to Tommi Nielsen to see if they could help with a repair...we've now made Tewksbury and a beer may well be in order!! Beats sitting in an office any day of the week!! Let's hope the rest of the trip goes well for both of us!

Just another option to consider (add to the mix) It may get to the stage where Paola can no longer manage ANY boat, in which case you will need to 'get back into bricks & mortar' and may have difficulty selling a heavily adapted NB, unless you find someone with the same limitations as Paola. Why not : Look at a (up to)£40 narrowboat Have it adapted as necessary Rent out your house, as you have no mortgage it is all 'profit', and the income can be used to fund your boating life Your 'capital' (the house) should increase in value (or at worse stay the same) whilst your £140,000 NB would be worth (probably) less than £100,000 after a year or two.

Hi all In case this is useful to anyone else planning something similar, here's what we got up to on the HNC and Rochdale over 10 days last week -- starting and finishing at Shire Cruisers in Sowerby Bridge. Many thanks to everyone for their useful suggestions and advice beforehand about stopping places, pubs and places to eat, it all went very much to plan :-) Friday -- got away before 2pm, no problems (except for *very* leaky gate at Salterhebble top lock, water over my boots on the stern deck -- and handspike lock gear is *crap*), stopped at Cooper Bridge just above Lock 1 (nice mooring just round the bend) just after 6pm, much quicker than the 6h Canalplan suggested. Dinner on the boat then beer at the excellent White Cross, highly recommended for a drink and chat (no evening food). Saturday -- 9am start, easy run to Slaithwaite (moored below 22E) by 5:30 including about 40mins pause while the inverter batteries were replaced (ran out overnight, no further trouble), 2 1/2 hours quicker than Canalplan -- but with a crew of 6 with 4 doing locks. Very good curry at the Monsoon Tandoori, followed by excellent and cheap beer at the Commercial. Sunday -- Excellent breakfast (and loaves of bread) at the Handmade Bakery, then a slower run than expected up to Marsden due to low pounds, CART having to run water down and staggering boats between locks -- delayed by a couple of hours but no problem, still arrived before gin o'clock (6pm). Very good dinner (last orders 7pm on Sunday) and beer at the Riverhead Brewery Tap. Monday -- First boat through Standedge (whoopee!), then easy run down to Uppermill with plenty of water this side of the summit. Planned evening at the Waggon Inn scuppered by it being the one day per year they close for staff training, fortunately managed to get the last table at the Navigation in Dobcross -- excellent food (last order 8pm) and beer as expected. Tuesday -- Another easy day (6h?) down to Stalybridge, early arrival at visitor moorings outside Phoenix City above lock 5. Popped into Bridge Beers (micropub, closes 7pm) for some pre-prandial drinks (excellent, bought a boxful to take away!), dinner at Phoenix City (strange interior like a warehouse but food OK), then strolled up to the White House -- decent beers but nothing special. Wednesday -- Trouble free short day (6h?) into Manchester pausing to pump out at Portland Basin (tight access due to stupid moored boats), stopped in Thomas Telford basin -- very nice, got exit code from residents. Dinner on the boat then off to the Jolly Sailor in Ducie Street for beer and cards, "quiet" in the reviews is an understatement -- the six of us trebled the number of customers when we arrived, for the last couple of hours we were on our own with the (very friendly) landlord. Still, he was happy (we bought plenty of beers), we were happy (quiet pub to play crib and Wordthief in). Thursday -- Up the Rochdale to the Rose of Lancaster, no problems unless you don't like the dope smoke from the (friendly) bridge trolls -- still much more pleasant than the run in on the Ashton. Best mooring is just past the aqueduct where you can get right in, all the others are too shallow. Food and drink perfectly fine (Lees chain pub) as expected but nothing special. Friday -- Moved on up to Littleborough, later on paired up with a German family on another Shire boat who know what they were doing. Some very low pounds in spite of the rain. Water point not where we expected it, about 300m above lock 47 on the offside where you can't moor. Another very good curry at the Bay of Bengal, then lots of good and ridiculously cheap beers (£1.80!!!) in the splendid Red Lion -- we needed them to replace the lost sweat, it was roasting in there! Saturday -- over the summit and down to Todmorden VM in less than 6 hours, paired up again (breasted up on some stretches) and going like sh*t off a shovel (3h quicker than Canalplan!). A couple of teatime beers at the delightful Bare Arts brewery shop, liked them so much we bought a boxful. Delicious and cheap Thai food at the Golden Lion which then turned into a reggae venue, we stayed in the back room so as not to go deaf, left about midnight but couldn't hear a thing from the boat 50 yards away. Sunday -- another easy day, stopped for lunch at Stubbings Wharf (great sarnies and beer), moored in Sowerby Bridge at the bend before Tuel Lane (got there after it closed at 5pm). Excellent tapas and pizzas (and beer) at the Firehouse, then walked up to the Shepherd's Rest at the other end of town for a last evening in the pub -- fantastic place, probably my favourite pub (as opposed to gastropub) of the whole trip, dominoes, crib, music session, conversation. Monday -- down through Tuel Lane when it opened, then a couple of locks back to the boatyard and home after breakfast at Gabriels round the corner. Apart from food and beer in the evening, the sheer energy to get us through 197 locks came from massive bacon and egg sandwiches every morning (we had 15lb of Slack's best dry-cured smoked with us...) and a 10 gallon selection of beer in mini-barrels from Rebellion Brewery -- anything else was purely incidental in comparison. All the warnings about problems in rough areas came to nought, and we didn't even have to open the weed hatch once in the entire trip. Water shortages and low pounds held us up a bit but this was expected and we'd planned in enough slack time on the likely problem sections for these to be no big issue. Both canals are now two of my all-time favourites, lovely scenery and stopping places, super food and beer ( I estimate about 50 different ones on tap during the trip, maybe 40 of which I've never tried before) in the pubs, friendly locals everywhere. The only thing that would have made it better would have been a bit less rain, but then this was August in England... Of course having a large fit crew (with 4 windlasses) who love locks helps, but we never felt rushed -- we never stopped later than 6:15, usually well before this. All the pre-trip planning with Canalplan and the invaluable advice from the members of this forum (thanks again!) paid off, we never had any real concerns about getting stuck or missing a critical deadline (like Standedge). A terrific trip, highly recommended to people with similar tastes (locks, food, beer) to us. Don't let Standedge put you off, it was the biggest highlight of the trip for us -- but also don't forget you need to book it well in advance, unlike one of the boats we travelled up to Marsden with who were faced with a 2 week wait for a free slot...

Guys, I want to try and understand where I am with my batteries and SoC. Apologies for the long post but keen to understand the data I am looking at. There were 3 * 110 Ahrs bog standard cheap lead acids when we bought the boat (63ft 2002 NB). “Almost new” said the broker but no receipts. Guess they are probably less than a year old but seemed to be ok in the first few days (and certainly not poor). We then added 3 more 110Ahrs, that was a couple of months ago – so we now have 660Ahrs. Since then we have cruised most days between 4 to 8 hrs and also have 2*100W solar panels with an MPPT controller. We've done at most 7 days on shore power. The SoC has never dropped below 80% (??????) based on amps counted out on the battery monitor and the voltage 'at rest' which I am guessing (probably badly). I am interested to see if this 80% is just a figment of my imagination (given Tony and Wotever's comments to me in previous post)!!! So some real data. On Tuesday pm I assumed we were 100% SoC after 5 hrs engine running and then 3 hrs of strong sun. Tuesday night we used approx 50 Amp hrs according to the BMV battery monitor and the voltage in the morning was 12.50V (but taken with a small current draw alternating between 1.7A and 5.2 A depending on whether the fridge was running (240V via a Victon inverter). I have not tried a 'at rest' voltage as the inverter is always on so I am assuming the 12.5V is slightly higher and could be 12.6V at rest. This seems to suggest I was nearly at 100% SoC on the Tuesday afternoon. Wednesday we ran for 5 hrs but then it was cloudy but I assumed we were almost full and reset the amp counter to zero. Thursday morning (today) the Amps out were again 50Ahrs and the voltage with inverter and fridge was 12.48V. I turned everything off and after 10 mins the voltage was 12.55V. Ok, maybe 85% SOC?? but would the voltage have been higher if it was at rest for an hour? Thursday I did a bit of monitoring viz Time Voltage Amps Amp hrs 8.00am 12.50 -1.7 -50 (not quite at rest with inverter on but no fridge – but coffee machine had taken 80A for a few mins not long before) Engine on 8.15 8.35 13.58 30 -40 10.00 13.67 16.1 22.8 10.45 13.71 13.9 33.1 11.15 13.87 10.8 47.7 11.45 13.88 8.3 46.4 12.15 13.89 6.5 49.9 14.05 14.00 4.6 58.5 Engine off, but strong sun 14.10 14.15 4.7 58.9 gave up and went to the pub. All the above were measured with the inverter on powering the fridge and a variety of laptops, tablets and phones charging. I have a few questions on the above data: I was expecting to see the amps stabilise at 2% of battery bank (therefore nearly 14A) and hold steady for 45 mins once full. Problem is that the voltage never got to 14.4V (or 14.8V etc). Can the Amps be used at these lower voltages to determine SoC. The charge is coming from the engine alternator, I think a 90A one – Engine is a 2002 Beta 43. Should Voltage be higher in the float stage? Not a clue how to alter it. The Ahr counter is interesting. It starts at -50Ahrs (what I think I used last night) and then went positive by nearly 60Ahrs – which suggests 110Ahrs had gone into the battery. Even if you reduce this by 20% you still get 90Ahrs which is a bit above what I thought was in the batteries (from the voltage at rest – or not as it was). The solar continued to charge most of the afternoon at 9-10amps or so, with 5A being used by the inverter – voltage shown was 14.1V. On the MPPT controller it shows that the Adsorption voltage is set at 14.4V and the Float at 13.6V. I assume these settings were put in by the installer 2 years ago. Should I set the float higher? I assume the 14.1V measured is the 14.4V less the drain from the inverter. With a battery bank this size, what is the likely voltage at rest if the voltage with say a 2A drain is 12.50V. Any guesses? Did I ever get to 100% SoC? Tomorrow early I will look at the Amp hrs out overnight and the voltage at rest (with everything off for at least 30mins).

I have lived aboard narrowboats and one widebeam since 1989. I have lived aboard 56/57/65/70 and at present 68 foot narrowboat. In my not inconsiderable experience the bigger the better for living aboard BUT as others have said the bigger ones especialy single handing are heavy at times. They also preclude some waterways but there is a hell of a lot available to full length narrowbeam boats. Widebeams are so much more comfortable than narrow its quite nearly unbelievable but as a for instance try taking one for a beer and parking outside the mucky at Fradley junction or going to cropredy festival on one. If you ever get down this way pop into our place for a beer and You can pop on our boat for a few ideas and we can talk first hand knowledge with you of many differing boats but non plastic. We did have a fab teak one for a while though

I believe this is where the folk from Wigan were getting it wrong. They were finding the crust just too hard eating them whole.

If one had a plot of land abbutting a derelict canal, say the Wey Arun, walked down the Western K and A I could see why some landowners would refuse to cooperate with restoration progress. There is no avoiding the bald fact that the cmers are affecting it for the rest.

I agree with Nick, the BMV isn't seeing everything. My BMV goes negative overnight, then gradually goes positive as the battery charges, and usually only needs 10% more put in than taken out to getvback to 100% SoC. The voltages look fine. A 5.2 amp discharge on a 660ah battery will not affect the voltage significantly.

Your budget of £140k is enough for a new boat, and if you go for a basic spec in say a 50 foot boat would include a wheelchair lift. At Longport Wharf in Stoke on the Trent & Mersey Canal is Stoke on Trent Boat Building Co. They built the "Shropshire Lass 2" for the Lyneal TrusTrust, so have experience of boats for people with disabilities. Why not walk there and ask the some questions. It will give you an idea of what is possible. http://www.stokeboats.co.uk

Well you don't buy land and get much of a marina for £250,000 - but there are 15 moorings and one mile of bank side up for sale on the Rochdale canal for £250,000 - wouldn't be much use tho' to those K&A boaters who cannot move because "Cub needs to go to school, his mates are here, and of course his rope-swing is in that tree".

There is always the option of not reading the thread if you feel it is wasting your time. Not everyone feels that way, fortunately haggis

CPO's are very expensive, and can take years to action. What has "affordable housing" got to do with boating. If you own a "fat boat" then you have to pay for it; you chose it and could have bought something smaller if it was too expensive. I suggest you do some research on development in areas subject to flooding risks. They aren't cheap. They died, over a hundred years ago.

Nope... I can try, might get it right this time...

And I wish you would actually take the time to read the thread if you are going to comment, we have not said no to anything, we have just opened up further options, "added to the mix" I should not really have to explain what that actually means, feel free not to visit the thread as all you seem to bring is negativity and snide comments, We have just opened up our options even more which allows different people from different experiences NB, Cruisers to all give input, no where did I say we were not still looking into GRP, all I said was we are adding another option. Each type has positives and negatives, strengths and weakness and it is further complicated because each type has subsets like GRP which have a really nice boarding platform or NB with custom wide steps and access, we are still months away from buying, as most understand this is about opening up the floor to other ideas and possibilities from experienced people, which may lead us down another path, good thing is now we have at least a couple of people from this forum who have a lot of experience in different types of boats willing to come and look/check over any boat we decide on whether GRP Cruiser or NB which is a great positive.

I give in. Until the OP narrows down what they actually want there is no point offering any advice at all! As it stands now any boat under £40k is in the running.

Nice looking boat When you say "planks", does that mean wood construction? (If so, looks in REALLY good nick!)

Across & back on a jackstay, did that a few times, great fun unless they dunked your feet. Probably not allowed now, elfin safety. Steve

The towpath jabba is that it's a smackhead or two that are doing the boats to get enough dough for a fix. Last time I went through there I watched a zombie resembling bloke in a hoodie over his head (it was over 30c) doing what I took as scoping up and down the towpath. Probably be ok in a few years time when the ex smackheads are buried.

Yeah I must have been nuts Sea Kings were total luxury I went up in our flippin Wasp!! blimey!! We were at the time the only leander class ever to have a sea king land on the flight deck, it was an emergency to fly a criticaly injured trawlerman to hospital. The pilot managed to put the main wheels on the deck and the small rear wheel over the mortars to the tiny rear deck ad kept enough speed on the rotor so it swept over the top of the ships hanger whilst the casualty was loaded. The pilot later received some sort of gong for his unbelieveable skill. Any one who doesn't know what I am talking about consider landing a drum on a pea!!

But it is a two second job to get into a permanent berth.

As a regular on the K&A I find this an interesting and amusing thread. The waterway can indeed be hard work, especially the Kennet navigation but many of us love it inspite of all it's difficulties. It isn't a waterway for those in a hurry and many visitors turn back just before they get to the easier parts west of Newbury. Mark Evans, the waterway manager, at a meeting in April asked me why I thought people find the canal so hard, I told him of the things that occurred to me at the time. He'd welcome constructive comments on how to improve people's enjoyment of the waterway so please send him an email with your thoughts. Keith

I used the correct sound signals on the Trent on the Princess and one day some plonker rung our office to COMPLAIN that one of our boats had repeatedly blown our ( rather load ) horns at them. I had as always sounded before turning at the top of Holme lock and they were not near anyway as I wouldnt have turned in front of them, they had kindly left their tel number to be rung back on with the " Results " of what the company had done about it!! The Princess owners gave me the number and I very politely rang the " complainant " and after a couple of questions and answers they realised they new nowt about boating and thanked me for the advice I gave them.

Euwgh! Too sweet! The only legitimate purpose of sugar is to let little yeasties turn it into ethanol and CO2.

Its easy. Make sure your SF stove is out & completely cooled down and then place your ecofan on top of it. It will then run backwards and the reverse flow will cool down anything you place in front of it.

Sorry but once again way too much information, I just don't know what your after or trying to achieve?? I can't see you achieving a quality boating life and enjoying it to the full and achieving your expectations with all the medical issues.

Just by reading the above I can tell you a boat is not for you at this present time, but once all the medical issues and family issues are sorted and under control, then maybe you can enjoy the canals, this is not negativity just reality.

Below is an outline of CRT's new wheel clamping idea. http://www.watersidemooring.com/media/Enforcement/FAQs.pdf

This is 100% caused by CRT's social cleansing on the canals & the exclusion of canal boats form it's system. You may not like that fact but it is a fact. CRT could: A. fix the problem by investing in long term affordable moorings for boats. (It has our money & enough of it to do so) B. Take a big stick & try to beat the crap out of people that have little power to fight back. CRT is like most charities in the UK it's corrupt & takes in money only to fund the wages of it's over paid staff & doing as little as possible to run the very thing it has undertaken to help. How has this helped anyone with a boat? & if this has not effected you then you are lucky, but watch out it's going to catch up with you soon, as I hear more people talking about parts of the system that "You can be left along on" expect a mooring problem near you soon................. Boat sales are good in the UK & more people are coming into boating, lots of widebeam boats are being sold every year & people are looking for a simple way of life.... More people are paying on average £1200 a year to CRT & EA to use the waterways & the fact is more boats need more moorings. If not we all loose out & boating will be a pain.