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Plastic boats


placoman

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We lived aboard a 40' x12' GRP forward drive cruiser for 10,years, Moored on the Broads . 

initially the boat was heated by a Mikuni blown hot air diesel heater, also had a Propex gas fired blown air heater as back up 

Finally fitted a Glembring drip feed diesel heater. I had friends who had GRP boats with solid fuel stoves 

Phil

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2 hours ago, placoman said:

Re Alan de Enfield, so Ive got to have my own boat then (bugger). Right, what size and make of boat did you have Dr Bob and how did you heat it?

Ours was a 40ft ocean going sailing yacht, big enough to live on as the beam was 13 ft or so. heated via webasto hot air system. Good but it didnt heat the water for showers etc - that was provided when running the engine.

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8 minutes ago, placoman said:

40ftx12/13ft not exactly canal boats then. There seem to be quite a lot of plastic boats on the canal system, just wondered if it was possible to live on one

....but you didnt ask that. You asked if anyone lived on a plastic boat .....hence my first response.

Plastic boats are great for rivers, estuaries and salty water (sailing and living). I would not park my plastic pride and joy on a canal with all these heavy steel boats around.

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11 hours ago, placoman said:

40ftx12/13ft not exactly canal boats then

I think you may be looking in the wrong places - there are an ever increasing number of (steel) widebeam CANAL boats 12 feet wide and up to 50 or 60 feet length.

I would even suggest that this sector of the market is growing faster than new Narrowboat sales.

Folks are even buying the Broads 'widebeam' (GRP) cruisers and bringing them onto the canals as Liveaboards as well as 'leisure boats.

NaghtyCal (of this forum) is one of them

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I have a 32 x 12 broads cruiser that I am doing a full gut out and refit on, they have no insulation at all!!! When mine is finished it will, however the large windows are a problem then for both heat loss and gain. I honestly think they are a better proposition than a steel boat, mine was built in 1982 and the hull is still in great condition with minimum care, steel boats if badly looked after like my broads cruiser would have sunk a long time ago.

Not all fibreglass boats are that well built poorly built ones suffer from osmosis so that is something you have to look for.

Heating wise I will fit a Rayburn on it as I like them, and they provide hot water and space heating along with being a very good cooker.

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OK Im looking in the wrong place, although I thought this forum, Canal World, was the right place. Can these 12ft wide vessels navigate the whole canal network, I would like to be based around the Midlands and travelling around there, are all the locks 12ft plus wide, could an ocean going yacht travel around this area

I will rephrase my question so that the replies I get will hopefully come from people who actually do what Im asking. Does anyone live in/on a plastic boat on the canal network? 

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8 minutes ago, placoman said:

Does anyone live in/on a plastic boat on the canal network? 

Yes, one of my neighbours does.   To wide for midlands tho at around 12ft.   Don’t think they would be many 7ft wide plastic boats that are designed for living on.  

Edited by Robbo
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36 minutes ago, placoman said:

OK Im looking in the wrong place, although I thought this forum, Canal World, was the right place. Can these 12ft wide vessels navigate the whole canal network, I would like to be based around the Midlands and travelling around there, are all the locks 12ft plus wide, could an ocean going yacht travel around this area

I will rephrase my question so that the replies I get will hopefully come from people who actually do what Im asking. Does anyone live in/on a plastic boat on the canal network? 

All was well - potentially - until you came to 'the Midlands'. Sadly all those canals are narrow which makes general cruising in anything broader than 7 feet somewhat of a challenge.

Perhaps more helpful is a map of the whole system -

http://www.jim-shead.com/waterways/mwp.php?wpage=Inland-Waterways-of-England.htm

Those coloured in purple are narrow.  

You are getting replies from other than your targeted boaters because generally living on a 'plastic' boat on the canal system is somewhat spartan and there aren't many of them anyway. Folks on here like to be helpful rather than ignore your question and so reply. I notice your frustration but to get any help at all it might be better to just ignore those which are irrelevant / unhelpful rather than complaining. That's the way forums work.....

Edited by OldGoat
Added link to a map of the inland waterway system
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46 minutes ago, placoman said:

OK Im looking in the wrong place, although I thought this forum, Canal World, was the right place. Can these 12ft wide vessels navigate the whole canal network

Basically a 12 foot wide boat can navigate all of the canals 'North' of a line (roughly) from Birmingham to Leicester, AND all of canals 'South' of a line (roughly) from Birmingham to Leicester, there is a 'bit in the middle which is 'narrow' only. The Shropshire & T&M are 'mostly' narrow even tho' they runs North West.

Map to show the wide / narrow sections of the canals.

There is more 'wide' than 'narrow', its just that the 'wide' (North / South) sections are not joined together

 

 

Widebeam Access Map.png

Edited by Alan de Enfield
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2 hours ago, peterboat said:

I have a 32 x 12 broads cruiser that I am doing a full gut out and refit on, they have no insulation at all!!! When mine is finished it will, however the large windows are a problem then for both heat loss and gain. I honestly think they are a better proposition than a steel boat, mine was built in 1982 and the hull is still in great condition with minimum care, steel boats if badly looked after like my broads cruiser would have sunk a long time ago.

Not all fibreglass boats are that well built poorly built ones suffer from osmosis so that is something you have to look for.

Heating wise I will fit a Rayburn on it as I like them, and they provide hot water and space heating along with being a very good cooker.

Osmosis has nothing to do with poor build quality. Most plastic boats in the water will eventually get osmosis to some degree.

Not all boats with high moisture contents display osmosis blisters. So unless you have a moisture meter and monitor the hull then you won't know if a boat has osmosis or not.

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I dont think any boat has sunk due to osmosis, although much is made of it by surveyors when buying and selling, (bit like damp proofing in houses - sometimes a big deal, but most often not). Strikes me that osmosis is mainly a cosmetic thing that a bit of grinding and filling will solve - a bit like rust on a steel boat.

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2 hours ago, Naughty Cal said:

Osmosis has nothing to do with poor build quality. Most plastic boats in the water will eventually get osmosis to some degree.

Not all boats with high moisture contents display osmosis blisters. So unless you have a moisture meter and monitor the hull then you won't know if a boat has osmosis or not.

Not quite right if a boat is poorly laid up osmosis will more than likely be present than a well laid up boat. Water has to get in to start the problem, so how does that water get through the waterproof gelcoat? Other than a crack or poor quality finish?

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Via the process of osmosis. Gel coat is semi porous. Water can and does move through it readily. 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osmosis

3 hours ago, Richard10002 said:

I dont think any boat has sunk due to osmosis, although much is made of it by surveyors when buying and selling, (bit like damp proofing in houses - sometimes a big deal, but most often not). Strikes me that osmosis is mainly a cosmetic thing that a bit of grinding and filling will solve - a bit like rust on a steel boat.

No boat has sunk from it but it can cause loss of strength in the lay up so not purely cosmetic although for most river boats it will never become a problem. For sea boats subjected to higher stresses it can be problematic. 

7 hours ago, Alan de Enfield said:

I think you may be looking in the wrong places - there are an ever increasing number of (steel) widebeam CANAL boats 12 feet wide and up to 50 or 60 feet length.

I would even suggest that this sector of the market is growing faster than new Narrowboat sales.

Folks are even buying the Broads 'widebeam' (GRP) cruisers and bringing them onto the canals as Liveaboards as well as 'leisure boats.

NaghtyCal (of this forum) is one of them

If the right boat ever comes for sale!

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1 hour ago, peterboat said:

Not quite right if a boat is poorly laid up osmosis will more than likely be present than a well laid up boat. Water has to get in to start the problem, so how does that water get through the waterproof gelcoat? Other than a crack or poor quality finish?

Still not quite right!

Osmosis occurs when there is a void in the laminate. This could be a microscopic air bubble or a big void caused by poor layup technique. The most common cause of big voids is where the glass mat (or glass rovings) were not rolled out well enough so the polyester did not wet the glass out completely thus leaving a dry area. Once the hull is in the water, the water then forces its way through the gel coat via osmotic pressure (which is very great) into that area of void and keeps coming swelling the void considerably. The gel coat will influence the speed of the flow of water but not that much. This may sound bad but it isnt really. In the days when people hand laid up using chopped strand mat (or woven roving), it was usually a very thick laminate that will last 50 years plus. In recent years where GRP boats are made with much thinner laminates, they tend to use resin injection or vacuum infusion or someother fancy technique which avoides the incidence of voids. Osmosis is not really a structural issue.

Structural problems tend to occur when the hull has has impact damage which cracks the gel coat and therefore opens a path for water to see the glass fibres, with water then 'wicking' along the fibres destroying the glass to resin interface and hence weakens the laminate. This is not osmosis. Poor workmanship when laying the gel coat can make this more likely to happen.

There was a 'rash' of high incidence of osmosis in the 70's which may have been partly due to some dubious gel coats on the market (despite my comment above that the gel coats influence is low) - but that is another story. I spent quite a few years in the late 70's developing gel coats for one of the 3 big UK manufactures.

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on the local canals plastic boats I have seen all seem to be under 32' or so - we are in the Midlands on the "narrow" section, so they are all under 6'10" beam around here too.   You could probably spend a night or two on one of them, most have 2,3 or 4 berths - but most do not have hot water either, and living on one fulltime would be a bit spartan, I would think.    There is a chap at Barton who is mostly liveaboard on his 23' cruiser, moored alongside our 23' cruiser - there was also a huge fire at Barton about a year ago, caused by a gas fridge on a GRP boat, apparently the owner was a liveaboard who had gone to the showers during which time his boat was well alight and killed the surrounding boats as well.  I think 4 boats sank in that fire. Luckily no-one was seriously injured. Our neighbour who is partly deaf, was alerted to the fire by his dog and they escaped without injury but he lost everything and is currently renovating and living on, another 23' cruiser. 

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I lived on a Dawncraft Dandy for near 6 months from Autum  time and used a Calor gas fire to heat the internally rain drenched freezing cold damp soden death trap. 

An experience...not to do again in a hurry, a tent would of been better. 

 

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7 hours ago, W+T said:

I lived on a Dawncraft Dandy for near 6 months from Autum  time and used a Calor gas fire to heat the internally rain drenched freezing cold damp soden death trap. 

An experience...not to do again in a hurry, a tent would of been better. 

 

People live on some unlikely vessels.  There are a couple of blokes living on tiny little yachts on the Fossditch at the moment. They seem happy enough. Wouldn't be my idea of fun though. They would probably think our current boat is a suitable liveaboard but we certainly want far more than it offers for a home anyway. 

 

ETA:

Your gas heater probably caused more condensation then it dried out :)

Edited by Naughty Cal
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