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Bee

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Everything posted by Bee

  1. Gets under low bridges too, push back end down to get the wheelhouse under the bridge then cross your fingers that it doesn't all go horribly wrong......
  2. Bee is coming out of the water sometime this summer, time to grovel about under 12 tons of boat propped up on bricks and old gas bottles. I will probably be using Jotun 90 but before I fork out cash on the stuff has anybody got any comments - good or bad - on their experiences with Jotun. Thanks
  3. Depends on its original thickness but I reckon that if you examined it carefully you would find some deep pits. If you can lift floorboards it would be an idea to have a look, especially along the side to bottom joint - might be perfect but its best to know. Shotblasting would be great but failing that then hours with every tool in the box might be enough, Epoxy is the current best treatment and you might have caught it just in time - fingers crossed!
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  5. A lot to be said for Belgium, reasonable mooring costs and inexpensive licence but to get to the North of Holland its a bit of a slog and some travelling across or along serious commercial waterways. ≥ Ligplaatsen - Marktplaats is a place to start, Marktplaats is a sort of e bay but has a section on 'Water sports' and thence to 'Ligplaats' i.e. lying place or moorings, I'm not sure what the rules and regs are for boats in Holland - its been a while since Bee was there but we did spend a winter in Utrecht and it must have been reasonable pricewise. Sorry can't remember the name of the place, its small but can lift out boats up to approc 10 Tons. Google will help.
  6. I think I would start by looking for a collapsed or kinked hose.
  7. The points that have been raised on here quite rightly deal with the really important stuff, if you go ahead then you have to tackle the fit out. In most, but not all, peoples opinion the best form of insulation is spray foam, if this is an elderly boat there is a chance that it is fibreglass batts or even wool. That needs to come out and the boat sprayfoamed after any welding has been done. You have to budget for, and source, a lot of plumbing, a whole lot of wiring - for which you must follow boat safety rules - some gas- again, more rules, engine installation, this can be really quite expensive and then the heating, the water tanks, great big batteries, the list goes on and on. It is not impossible, of course not, but take time over this and go and see lots of boats, I reckon the best value is a second hand, middle aged slightly tired boat with a reasonable fit out. The big projects are for those whose creative drive makes them really want to do it.
  8. Its a big project. In your situation you need a lot of luck, the boat you are looking at might be a good quality boat that needs a refit that you would love or it might be a poorly designed thing that you would end up not liking, there is the same amount of work in both of these scenarios but no.2 would grind you down and you would lose money. Who built it?? And when?? Is the engine under the back deck, a so called 'cruiser stern' (which I dislike and would avoid) or has it got a short back deck with the engine inside the boat, so called 'Traditional' (which has advantages and some disadvantages) Then there is the hull, many boats of 30 years old or so have serious corrosion issues - many don't- but you can't tell just by looking and some (but not all) boats are built with little or no thought about corrosion from the inside as well as the outside. Travel around and look at boatyards - many are graveyards of peoples dreams and many of these dreams were 'projects'
  9. The most likely thing is the cable that operates the selector lever on the gearbox. check the oil in the box then move check the cable is actually attached to the box properly. if it is not or the Morse control is not moving the lever the lever backwards and forwards, then that is the problem. The chances are that if you move the lever by hand then it will engage properly.
  10. Hard to really tell without standing over the engine but if it was possible to fit a bigger pulley - the usual solution was a washing machine pulley- on spacers so that it cleared the water pump and oil cooler you might get a better speed at the alternator. No doubt this would then foul the engine bearers or some other bit of machinery and the alternator would need moving but it might just work (!) Good luck, Nice engine and engine room by the way.
  11. Run of the mill builders and repairers use blasted and primed steel in the Netherlands and everywhere I've seen in France, not sure if it makes that much difference - they tend to use thinner steel too and owners tend to spend more on maintainence. That is a lot of generalisations there and there are some old rustbuckets around too.
  12. My guess us some sort of lash up involving whizzing chains and belts and plummer blocks any one of which would take your leg off. Probably a couple of hefty sprockets on a short shaft from the Kelvin running chains to each prop shaft. Came across a clip on You Tube recently of a motor on the front deck of a Dutch sailing barge with a shaft running across the boat and a gearbox to turn it 90 degrees, that was coupled to a long shaft with a prop on the end and lowered over the side, it had a triangular frame to keep the prop away from the boats side, getting along at a good speed too. Not uncommon in the early years of motorising sailing barges but a bit scary to say the least.
  13. Thanks for posting these pics, really fascinating.
  14. Couple of observations. Bee has only ever had bitumen above the waterline and two pack below. The waterline is not an accurately measured and plotted thing, the present epoxy is bright red (it was a bit cheaper) and the waterline now looks awful as the bitumen has not stuck to the epoxy and come off in big pieces the epoxy though seems to have stuck to the bitumen, it is Jotun 90 and 'surface tolerant'. The first ever paint below the waterline was Sigma and it was a coal tar epoxy, this stuff is now banned everywhere that we float and when we changed to Jotun it bled through the Jotun, some solvent must have softened it but it still seems to have stuck. I wonder if newish and smoothish bitumen is overcoatable but years of thick layers of bitumen is not? Anyway, Bee is out of the water this June so we will see. Bee was in brackish water for a couple of years so now has a horrible layer of barnacles everywhere plus a ton of Zebra mussels so heaven only knows what is happening.
  15. for, John Deere 6100,6200 Engine Rear Bell Housing in Good Condition | eBay, This may be useful (?) there are others on E bay. Then maybe an adaptor plate to fit your potential gearbox , ASAP and no doubt others (Lancing marine in Shoreham do all sorts of stuff) Somewhere there will be a combination of parts that works but it might take a while to find them
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  18. Bee

    Licences

    I would also add a 5th point, that the whole structure is dependant on the political dogma of the government in power and a steadily reducing grant will cause a big and compounding increase in licence fees. It is not just economic theory that puts prices up.
  19. Bee

    Tidal Thames.

    Just a thought. don't know what hours Greenland wharf (dock??) operate but it might be possible to nip across the river in 'office hours' then leave from Greenland dock earlier ??? Probably not but you never know.
  20. I've always had more success using double sided closed cell foam for windows and suchlike as long as you can get decent fixings to pull the frame down nice and flat and reasonably tight. Any sort of goo will make a right old mess and you'll be using gallons of paraffin/white spirit/fairy liquid to clean everything afterwards.
  21. Batteries are horrible things. If only they had a lid so you could open the top and have a look to see if they were full or empty. What most of us don't realise is just how long it takes to charge a couple or three batteries. On Bee we have 2 x 110 AH batteries - or that is what they were 4 years ago, it takes 4 or 5 hours to charge them from the engine and no doubt you could squeeze a bit more in from a decent charger. We look after them and don't flatten them or they will play tricks like saying they are charged when in fact they are scrap. We now have a bit of solar (not much, just one panel of 30 watts????) and I think it is brilliant, it saves batteries from death and although it cannot power the boat it works all the daylight hours. This summer I will add another one.
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  24. 25kva! That's enough to have a nice little sideline selling electric to other boats that moor nearby!!!
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