TimD

I've also had this problem. I found that a sharp not heavy knock with a stick of firewood seemed to kick the accumulator pump into action. I presume it was due to a worn part sticking. I also found the problem annoying when showering, but the solution was to turn the shower tap on, knock the pump into action and then it would stay on for as long as a tap was open.

You do realise that if you have a widebeam with a mooring in Stratford/Worcester, if you want to go anywhere other than the Rivers Avon or Severn, you'll need to get a pilot to take you down the Severn Estuary into Bristol? And once in Bristol there's only one route along th K&A until you reach Reading.

no, unless it's a very wide canal you drive in the centre. You only pass on the right.

Erm, then how come this song Tom Beech's last trip was ever written if there was never a folk song tradition about canal boating.

Hindsight ;-)

The red-dye is so that the authorities can see if road vehicles have used it, and is OK to use in boats regardless of whether it's for heating or propulsion. The question about how much tax you can/should/ought/do pay on the fuel is another topic ..... I thik I'll quickly pop round the shop to buy some popcorn :-) Have fun on your new boat.

The Double locks has let its standards slip a bit in the last couple of years. It's in a great location but the beer and food has been on autopilot for a while as they know they'll always get the custom. If you have to make a choice of just one then Turf Lock is much the better bet. Oh and the towpath walk at tiverton's just become a hell of a lot more interesting BBC link

As you point out the EA data doesn't really match up to boat navigation. If you often travel on the same river sections it is worth keeping some notes so you can match the EA river height with the corresponding Red/Yellow/Green status at the river-lock/gate. The EA gauges don't correspond to the lock locations so you'll need to choose carefully, making sure you have the right river(not a tributary)! It's also worth keeping an eye on a couple of points up river as well to give you an idea of what's to come. On the point of insurance, I don't know for sure but I would imagine that providing you don't enter a river section when a river's in the red and you don't deliberately dawdle unless conditions are perfect then you should be insured. If mooring overnight then make sure you're on a good floating pontoon.

As long as you are careful with the stove, leaving the boat with the fire going also reduce the risk of another boater's nightmare - being burgled. If burglars are about, which boat are they going to break into, one that has smoke drifting out the chimney?

This depends on what you mean by "moor somewhere for a couple of months". If you are prepared to move your boat every couple of weeks albeit half a mile down the canal each time, then move to a completely new place every 6 to 8 weeks, you should be OK as a Continuous Cruiser (CCer). Over the Winter you'd be able to get a BW wiInter mooring if you wanted to stay put for 3 or 4 months don't know. If you really do want to stay put for 2 months at a time then you'll need to keep on finding marinas that can put you up for your stay.

Using the same logic you should advocate banning CCing because some CCers bridgehop/never move. Oh yes while you're about make sure that boaters in marinas don't stay aboard overnight unless they have a residential mooring and pay council tax for it. Don't you realise that by requiring bike licenses and insurance you'll put the good guys off taking up cycling in the first place but won't stop the "baddies" from cycling without insurance. Good luck predicting which newborns will be cyclists! Or do you mean "all anticyclists should be shot at birth"?

Agree with most of this but purely for the sake of balance. You are at the mercy of river levels there, there is no sanitary station on the cut so the you need to get to Leeds or Castleford which are quite often inaccessible. [there might be an Elsan at Lemonroyd marina but you'd need to pay to use it]. The pubs in town are a bit ropey especially if you're after real ale and one of the pubs featured in Nicholson's near the lock has disappeared. The other one "the two pointers" is your best bet. The only public loos in town are always locked, and there is no decent cafe around. I soon got fed up with having to go up the steep hill into town all the time The nearby station is a real plus and if the mooring is on the western bank then you'll be able to drive a car right up to the boat. A friendly Lockkeeper is often around and is a good source of info regarding river levels, and had no worries about leaving my boat unattended there for a few days.

Make a plan but keep it flexible. This time of year you often find you can't moor where you want to because there's no space at the visitor moorings. 6 hours a day is sensible plan if you're on your own, but if there's two of you then planning 10 hours a day is easy even if you do have to stop for a hour to do shopping and another for lunch. You'll still have a couple of hours daylight if you really need to push on to somewhere better. Oh and if you're going near Birmingham or Manchester don't forget to factor in the hourly stops to clear the propellor!

It's certainly easy to overplan because the details are never turn out as you actually envisage them. Flexibility in your planning is always a good idea. When planning an important be aware that stoppages/floods etc can happen at any time.

Whole heartedly agree but ... if BW want to stop boaters from opening floodgates themselves then they should send an employee round up-stream from Wakefield to open them as soon as the levels drop down into the amber again. Painful memories of backache in February are coming flooding back to me!

Just one quick piece of advice while on this subject. Not only can marina facilities vary widely so can the marina owners/operators. There are quite often threads on this forum covering sharp practices and one particularly distressing example was of a marina being built that took a load of money in advance but opened late with none of the facilities promised then fairly soon went bust. So if you find one you like the look of ask around. A good choice of marina will depend on how you plan to use your boat. If you plan to leave the boat for periods and return to terra Australis for 6 months a year you'd be looking for different things from the marina than if you want to take the boat out 3 nights a fortnight. Sorry that's two pieces of quick advice

If you venture on to thew River Thames, you pay for area, so a 50' WB is more expensive than a 65' NB. However, although the cost of the Thames seems expensive per day, it's not that much compared to the annual cost of a boat. It also rings a bell that BW on-line moorings cost more for a WB, and for sure a lot of moorings are for NBs only. I'd say the biggest problem with a WB is you are forced to choose either North or South

It was cleared on Friday, I went through there on Saturday.

On The A&C I had this and the lockie was able to override the pedestal. He told me to get on the boat and he finished the rest of the locking for me from the tower, and thankfully remembered to reclaim my key afterwards and hand it to me as I drove out. So it seems like some locks have an override and others don't. It makes sense to have an override otherwise if a NBoater breaks his key off in the pedestal then any commercial boats would have to wait until the pedestal was fixed.

This has really frustrated me. It's OK if you regularly do the same stretch but otherwise you're forced to store bottles and cans for weeks on end or just say sod it and put it all in the rubbish. I'm not going to pull in at every rubbish point en route just to check it this is one that does have recycling. And I've totally given up on trying to recycle plastic.

Before settling on a name imagine having to tell complete strangers your boat's name and spelling over and over again. You'll have to do that quite a bit and I'm sure that a lot of owners who chose puns as boat names must cringe every time they deal with BW or a marina

also if you spot a nice pub at 5pm and fancy a couple of hours there, you don't have the option to take advantage of it if you've already scheduled full days cruising

Even so 13 minutes is too much change for one day it's more like 2 or 3 mins change per day this time of year. I suspect the difference is due to two things, the 12 hours being when the centre of the sun is at the horizon if we were to view it with no atmosphere, but the sunrise and sunset times are for the top of the sun being visible standing on earth the lensing effect of the atmosphere.