senator

Hi Pete, the corgi inspection is not required for a boat that is not residential and will not be hired out, so a competent person becomes anyone able to test for leaks and check that the pipework has been supported within 6" of any joint, passages through bulkeads are sheethed with a suitable sleeve and so on, the BSS man is classed as competent to inspect. Wouild agree that having it checked by a gas man is very sensible though. Jim, the Propex heater is an easy piece of kit to install and although a bit Gas hungry does a good job of heating White Lady through 2 vents, one into the saloon and one into the cockpit, won't do much with the canopy off but keeps the cockpit warm on an Autum Evening with the canopy up. Would suggest you ring them directly rather than buying through Calor as they are very helpfull. We started with a Factory recon unit but after 2 failed we gave up and had a new one, customer service though was second to non with replacments and pick ups all paid for by Propex and next day service. Watch for the routing of your gas pipes through the engine compartment, you will not be allowed any joints within any area open to the engines, assuming that you have a petrol lump in yours. As Pete says a bubble tester within the gas locker is a very good idea, giving a permenant check for leaks. I used water pipe as a sheath for my gas lines an ran it the full length of the pipe, made installation easy, stops the pipe kinking and also by sealing the end away from the gas locker to the pipe, running the sheathing into the gas locker and not sealing it to the pipe there, if there ever was to be a leak it would be diverted back into the vented gas locker. Ian

Is your intention to buy a new boat every 4 years David or do you have another dastardley plan? Big things are made of the BSS but even the ventilation is only enforced if practicable, gettind more low level ventilation into a sports cruiser than that originally designed is virtually impossible so what did the BSS man do about it on White Lady? pass it with a little note that says that bit doesn't comply but doesn't have to. Even the Gas bits only need Corgi certification if the boat is residential, if not it asks for a competent person to install, as gas on boats is all compression fittings it isn't rocket science and once inspected by the BSS man, who won't be Corgi registered either then it is classed as inspected by a competent person. Worrying thing is the amount of people who have never seen a compresion fitting before that faced with a big bill for re routing the otherwise perfectly good gas pipes due to bss, will be tempted to have a go themselves.

Hi Perry, Have a look at this chap at his Ebay shope "Boatropes" name is Barry Edwards and he seems very helpfull and knowledgeable on the old string stuff, Prices are the best I found but remember to factor in the P&P http://stores.ebay.co.uk/Boatropes

Don't know why Simon but bought synthetic for the Mercruisers last year then read the manual. "DO NOT USE SYNTHETIC OR SEMI SYNTHETIC LUBRICANTS", Why I havn't got a clue but I did chicken out and by the quicksilver stuff. Ian

The waveny have one as well I think but it may just have been last year that they ran them. Thing is unless you are going to use the same examiner to do the BSS you could well still fail even if you have done the recomended work, It is better to get an examiner to test the boat in its current state, do the modifications he asks for and then get him to check the bits you have modified, will only charge you his traveling time and if he is local will probably not charge at all for the second look. Ian

Used seajet emperor 38 last year, supposed to be a 2 year antifoul for fresh and salt how good it is I won't know till next week when it is lifted after a year although from what can be seen it looks to be doing a good job, get a small amount of slime which comes off easily at river speeds. Next year will tell the real story as the new marina is in the mix of both, fresh water fish in the marina and when netted a load of salt stuff from the river. It wasn't cheap but what I liked was that you could paint the outdrives with it too and it did do very well in the Motor Boat Monthly tests. If you have drives don't get it mixed up with the 37, that can't go near Aluminium.

Jonny, Before spending a lot of time and money on work for your BSC it may be a good idea to get an examiner to look it over, they will usually not charge you any more for this, as long as they are local and will give you a list of items to be attended to, unfortunately with BSS it is the examiners interpretation of what is in the book that counts and that varies a lot from person to person. Ian

Not sure where to put this but I am thinking of servicing my alpha 1 gen 2 drives myself. Don't mind the engine servicing and general bits and pieces, generally you can always do it again if it is not quite right but am a bit worried about doing the bits that will need a lift out if they are not right, not to mention the possibility of sinking the boat or a very expensive repair bill if I get it wrong. That aside in order to do it apparently I will need a bellows expander a bearing puller for the Gimble bearing a hinge pin extractor and an engine alignment tool. Does anyone know where I could beg, borrow or hire these bits as by the time I have spent a couple of hundred quid on them it is seriously going to offset any savings made by doing it myself and I am not anticipating keeping the boat long enough to need them again. Ian

Maybe david but loose women always seem to end up costing far more than you anticipated so not much of a bargain. As to the discounts, out of season you will get 10% if you are brave enough to leave it late, always talk directly to the yards as although blakes and hoseasons have them stitched for the main season if they cant book it out then the yard is free to do as they wish with 10 days to go. Private yards will move a bit, Pacific at loddon is one that springs to mind but they will be older boats, we have hired from them with no complaints and it saved us about 20% on the equivelant 38' boat from Richardsons, the yards will also be more likely to do a deal if you have hired from them before, if you bought the boat back in 1 piece last time then it stands a good chance they won't have to spend money on putting it right this time either. Always worth playing one off against another and it is usually possible to get a fuel discount or free parking thrown in. Ian

Thanks for that Perry very interesting, what sort of distance do you actually cover up to wells, read that there were now all states floating pontoons in Anglia afloat and it instantly apealed as a possible destination but at £50-60 per hour carefull consideration has to be given to how long the journey is going to take. Ian

Was flying into London City so that probably explains it looking at the ais chart, thanks for that David now I will never get any work done Change of boat now looks off till at least the end of this year so little white lady looks like she will be taking on that nasty hilly stuff shortly, anyone know of a fast petrol tanker to accompany her?

Flew over from holland yesterday and the North see was looking seriously choppy down there with white water everywhere, the amount of traffic out there always amazes me though, at one point there were 14 ships in sight through the window Ian

Have always been a great follower of the discontiuned bargain, problem I find is that next year they bring out a gadget that will even Iron the dog for you and it plugs straight in to all the models after the one you Brought. Ian

Sounds about right, loads on the river, never noticed any of them, heard a few horns though. Ian

Maybe totaly barking up the wrong tree here but seem to remember reading something a year or so ago about maximum allowable width on our rivers, think the broads is 13', apparantly european waterways allow wider boats and it is for this reason that most manufacturers make for the continent instead of the UK, it is just not economical to put down development tooling for the comparativly small number of boats that the UK represents when it is then not possible to sell them abroad, because the hire companys want wider boats. Spotted the boat that Perry posted over the new year and it does look very nice indeed. Ian

Have'nt got a clue but it doesnt look like it will play any more, was it a CD in a past life? could it be either a bird scarer, purely on the basis that boaters will try anything, or by the angle of the cuts could it be a security locking tab. Ian :santawave:

Biggest advantage to firefox is that it is not Microsoft and most viruses are written to attack Microsoft. Ian

Where ever the meet is held shore power is going to be a bit hard to find unless you can find sufficient places in a marina, lets face it, public moorings, 2 plugs and 20 plus boats. North or south will be tainted by where everyone moors but central would seem fairest to all and offer the Breydon expierience which is what first fired the idea. As said all over this thread the Brightside is different so it is totally in keeping with this that the location gives the widest possible spectrum of boats and facilitys on the broads, where else can you run model boats and go for a 40 knot spin in a twin engined sports boat. maybe it should be left to others to do the 3mph for the next 30 mile locations, if this is to be the main meet then fill it with all things boat, I am sure there will be plenty of opertunities for a north and south meet through what is bound to be a balmy hot wind free summer. Ian

As far as I can tell, LPG conversions for boats and the BSS don't go together. sure others can let you know if I am wrong but while LPG is allowable as a fuel, dual fuel is not, as LPG conversions tend to use petrol as well due to the lack of LPG availability that puts most conversions out. Given that you can start the engine on LPG,(fork lifts do) then a corgi man with the relevent cetificate for engine conversions must verify the installation, these are apparently very few and far between. LPG is not available on tap on the broads and as the conversion would generally be to petrol engines, of which the majority are fairly high powered on sports boats useing a bit more juice, and LPG is at least 10% less efficient than petrol then you better have a very big gas storage locker which must also be fire rated and vented over board and not have any connections within the engine bay. Shame because as far as I can see it would be a fair bit cheaper and as most boats have LPG on board for cooking, what is the difference? Obiously if you want to go out into the deep stuff you can do what the hell you like but it still hasn't caught on, partly through lack of availability, partly through safety fears but mostly because red diesel was so cheap, will be a major effort now though to get calor to put all the tanks back in. Ian

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/CONNECT-AND-FORGE ... dZViewItem Cant work out how to put in a hyper link but if you paste this into the address bar it will get there. Don't know if they are any good, sure someone with more technical brains will be able to let you know but £50 seemed reasonable for a marine charger. Ian

Jonny, Am I right in assuming you have shore power at the marina but currently no mains charging system on the boat? If so how many banks of batterys are you looking to charge. Ian

May be worth while finding a good local fuel injection specialist to have a look. only reason I say this is I once had an Opal Manta GTE that developed a slight miss fire below 1500 rpm , was due a service so booked it in to the local main Vauxhall agent thinking that the service would clear it. When it returned the miss fire was worse and occuring upto 2500 rpm so I took it back. They denied it was anything to do with them but said they would have it in and check, when it returned this time it was miss firing upto 4000 rpm and was virtually undrivable. Their suggestion was to change the engine managment CPU at a cost of £450, a lot in those days and when questioned they admited that they didn't know if this would cure the problem. When I really pressed the service manager gave me the name of a local fuel injection man. It cost me £45 for him to put right everything Vauxhall had put wrong and the car ran like a dream. If they have altered any setting at all then it will send the wrong information back to the engine managment system, which will apply compensations that are not needed and could result in excess fuel being thrown in. Ian

Simon, You do prety well on fuel consumption mine is a 2 litre mondeo and has never seen better than 40 mpg, then again don't think it has seen 70mph either on the motorway. Secondly what Brian says about the sensors makes a lot of sense, these control the fuel flow via the CPU and can and do go down overnight so if it has decided to play up it could well be chucking in a load of extra fuel, would certainly think the air filter is worth a look but it seems a huge difference to be just that bearing in mind it is a new filter, unless the technician (young trainee mechanic) has left his sandwich's in there. Plug gaps would also have a detrimental effect but again they would have to be so far out to cause that much difference that I would think there would be other signs. Have found that ignoring service intervals and only fixing it if there is something broken is a good idea on modern cars. Had mine from new, it has 180,000 miles on the clock now and has only ever had 5 services, always insisted on fully synthetic oil and changed it every 30,000 miles. So far it has had a clutch, rear axel bushes, 4 sets of brakes 1 set of discs, not bad for 7 years. Previous Mondeo had regular services and loads go wrong with it to the point that I decided never to look at a ford again, was only because the new model seemed so much better than anything else in budget that I took the risk. Ian

I was always a big fan of the AF 32 and 37, can't be classed as perfect as they have an airdraft of 8'3" but they made good use of space and more importantly to me felt like a proper boat with a nice helm position, good handling, and plenty of space. First ever hire was captain Moonfleet an aquafibre 37 from cavalier cruisers, unfortunately both yard and boat no longer available. Most hated hire was Alfa Rapid a 42' droop snoot thing, had long been an admirer of the style so took the plunge to hire a 4 berth one. space was wasted everywhere and what space was used was very badly utalized. Think it was probably just the fitout on this one but it did enough to frighten me away from any further hires of this type of boat. Ian

I am only guessing but when White Lady was surveyed last year the surveyor was saying that one of the big problems with BSS was imported boats especially from the states.These tended to have higher quality fuel lines than british boats but because the numbers didn't match those of BSS they were having to be changed. Maybe the BSS has been upgraded to take account of this. Ian