Meantime

Elecsol were two brothers Dennis and Stephen Gallimore. Dennis was an engineer and the brains behind the technology. He sadly died in 2005. A year or two after is when Stephen started to buy cheap standard batteries and rebadge them as Elecsol. The business then declined until about 2013 when it was dissolved. I'm never quite sure what happened to their patents because I've not seen batteries with carbon fibres in the plates since.

Elecsol were very good and used a new technology at the time, involving carbon fibre in the plates. The guy behind the technology passed away and I cannot remember if it was his business partner, or brother who carried on the business, but at that point he decided it was far cheaper to buy cheap batteries from the far East and trade off their previous good name until he run the business into the ground. When they were at their best, they were excellent and were universally praised by the caravan fraternity for their longevity. They were not cheap, but lasted well. Unfortunately when they moved to cheaper rebadged far East batteries the premium price tag remained. The remaining partner thought it would be viable to keep exchanging batteries under warranty, but destroyed the good name the batteries previously had, until trade dried up.

By Multicell, I mean the make Multicell, they have an office in Norwich and others around the country. I used to buy Bosch leisure batteries from CostCo. I've had one of those last 15 years, but the later ones don't seem to be as good. More recently I've bought HLB700s from Halfords, but they seem to have doubled in price in recent years. The last pair I bought were Hankook XV110 which seem to get good reviews. I paid £159.51 for a pair from Battery Megastore on eBay. That included free delivery. I decided against Bosch or the Halfords batteries this time around as I really wanted to go for Lithium Ion, but think that prices still have some way to come down on them before adopting them and changing chargers etc. eBay link

Griff, This has happened twice to me, both times with Multicell batteries, I won't buy them now. It is also relatively easy to find the faulty battery. When charging a good battery from 10.5V, lets say using a 20amp charger, it will draw the full 20 amps and the voltage will gradually rise over time as the battery accepts a charge. Once the voltage is somewhere above 12.6V the charge current will start to drop until the voltage reaches either 14.4V or 14.8V depending what you have your charger set for. At this point the charger switches from bulk charge to equilisation charge for a set number of hours and then eventually into float or power pack mode. Your good battery will take hours to complete the bulk phase of charging. The faulty battery will take the full 20 amps for about 5 or 10 mins and the voltage will rise a lot quicker until it gets above 12.6V and the current starts to back off. It will then enter the equilisation mode very quickly and at this point is not really accepting a charge. It is this behaviour that messes with the charging of the other batteries when connected in parallel to the faulty battery. The alternator which generally doesn't put out as high a charge as your advanced battery charger will very quickly reach its maximum charge voltage and effectively stop charging the batteries. Your shore based charger once it reaches the equilisation phase is at this point not charging the faulty battery, but is putting something back into your other good batteries, which is why once you have left shore power your batteries will generally last longer than once they have been depleted and recharged on an alternator. Once the bad battery has started to discharge a little it will at this point be constantly held up by the remaining good batteries, thus providing the drain you haven't been able to find. A good battery should never be discharged down to 10.5V, but the faulty battery will happily keep draining your good batteries until they all read 10.5V. So for faultfinding. When the batteries have just gone down to 10.5V, disconnect them all and leave them for 5 mins. The good ones will probably recover slightly to something around 11V. The faulty one won't. The one reading the lowest is more than likely your faulty battery. If the batteries have just been charged on shore power, disconnect them all and measure the voltage. The faulty one will probably have a higher float voltage and typically be something above 13V. The others will all be the same and normally lower than the faulty one. Finally from flat, charge them all individually. If they are still accepting a bulk charge after 15 mins they are probably good. The faulty one will be in equilisation charge within about 5 to 10 mins. I would start with the one identified as the likely faulty one from the above measurements. I had a real battle with Multicell in exchanging faulty batteries. I'd take it there fully charged, they would do a quick drop test and pronounce it ok. It was only when I persuaded them to do a longer capacity test that they agreed they were faulty. Each 12.6V battery is made up of 6 x 2.1V cells. It's as if the faulty battery has 5 cells working normally and one that can only hold 3 or 4 amps. Hence the battery works ok until that one cell is discharged and then the battery quickly drops to 10.5V. When charging the faulty cell quickly stops accepting a charge, the voltage rises and stops the rest of the cells from charging fully.

Hmm, I can feel a moan coming on here! More and more supermarkets are starting to remove sell by, display until, or best before dates from fruit and veg. I can see why, because a tomato doesn't suddenly become unsafe to sell or unsafe to eat a day past its advertised date. In my local shopping centre there is a Greengrocer's stall and none of the fruit and veg displayed there has a date on it. The guy that runs the stall is a Greengrocer. He knows his onions. It is his trade and he is proud of how fresh his produce is. He personally goes to the markets whilst we are still in bed and chooses fresh produce. He performs stock rotation on his stall and has a small section where he places older stock into bargain £1 bowls to shift stock that supermarket best before dates would have consigned to the bin. However, and its the big however, whilst my local supermarket, in this case Sainsburys, is removing sell by dates from fruit and veg, it also about 6 years ago got rid of the Butcher and fresh meat counter, the Fishmonger and fresh fish counter, the deli counter, the bakery and yes also the Greengrocer. The fruit and veg section is now stocked by regular shelf stackers with no idea of how to tell fresh from old fruit and veg. They simply open a new tray of onions and chuck them on top of the few that were left in the old tray. No idea of stock rotation etc. I no longer buy garlic from Sainsburys, having a 50 / 50 chance of it being old or mouldy. Similar with onions etc. Quite simply supermarkets need to bring back the trained Greengrocer (and ideally the butcher and baker) or bring back sell by dates to guide the untrained shelf stackers!

The property is still listed for sale on Rightmove, so I see no reason why they wouldn't continue to maintain the bank and collect mooring fees. Indeed until it is sold I would have thought it just as likely that the cafe and shop would open as usual for this year. Must be easier to sell an ongoing concern, than one that has closed.

Don't you mean free of charge at point of use until the 1st April. You've already paid for that mooring once through your toll.

I think you are conflating two issues here and I'm not sure that the protest in London, and BRAG's aims have any real overlap. The CRT are imposing an escalating surcharge on continuous cruisers without a home mooring, which on the face of it doesn't seem unfair. If you haven't got a home mooring, then your more likely to be making use of the facilities paid for by the toll more often and therefore an increased toll to reflect that extra usage seems fair. The protest in London was by continuous cruisers and aimed at that specific increase, rather than the overall increases for all. Edited to add: The CRT are not attempting to make a financial move against continuous cruisers, they already have. The surcharge starts on the 1st April and increases each year for the next 4 years. By which stage continuous cruisers, those without a home mooring will be paying 25% more for their toll than those with a home mooring.

I would imagine its the same person who has earnt millions being one of the stars of Towie. Imagine having an IQ low enough to earn all that money Just saying!

But if you read the article, "the relaunch will see it taking on more of a classic British pub feel during lunch service - serving classics such as fish and chips, pies and steaks." They are aiming to become more like a pub at the relaunch. Agreed, it wasn't in it's previous form.

The only problem with dogs in pubs or anywhere come to that, is not the dog, but the owner. I was on the bus the other day when some self entitled young person got on with her toy dog and proceeded to firstly sit down in the priority seats when clearly they didn't need it, followed by lifting her dog with wet muddy paws to sit on the other priority seat next to her. OK that dog maybe her world but really! Have some consideration for the next less able bodied person who actually needs to use that seat.

He said he was fishing on Monday, though I did wonder why he waited until today to post his observation. Perhaps the boredom of the closed season has kicked in already!

I also think that since the BA re-piled the end nearest the recycling, that end is slightly narrower than it was. The new piling went in front of the old I believe.

As long as beer comes out of it though, I don't really see an issue with that!

Probably just the BA coming out of Winter hibernation and suddenly realising that Easter is quite early this year. Not like the dates can be worked out well in advance So a rushed update to the website. Will be interesting to see how eager the troops are to collect the mooring fee though.

A PDF print out of the page has been created and saved should anyone have the need to use it as supporting evidence! It has the update at the top and the times of moorings fees being collected further down. Being staffed does not necessarily mean being chargeable. I note elsewhere on the page it states Ranworth is staffed from 9am to 6pm during the Summer months, which depending on your definition is the 1st June to the 1st September, or 21st June to 21st September. Yacht stations and staffed moorings.pdf

Yet on that link further down it clearly states the following Day mooring £5. Overnight mooring until 10.00am the next day £10. Powered boat use of dinghy dyke £3. All charges only apply in the main season from April to October.

I've enjoyed a tour of the brewery and also been to the bar a few times. If your in that part of the world there's a very good Nepalese restaurant called The Mountain View not too far away. I'm finding myself becoming increasingly annoyed at the actions of the big brewers. Generally small craft brewers tend to sell beers at a premium which reflects their smaller economies of scale, lower production volumes and higher overheads. All of which I can accept and don't mind paying a premium for a premium or craft, or small batch product. However increasingly the bigger boys are coming along, buying up the brewery and then suddenly production goes up tenfold, quality suffers and the price stays the same, generating huge profits for the brewery until people migrate away from the beer due to inferior quality. A classic example is Neck Oil from Beavertown brewery. It was started by Robert Plants son. Certainly was never sold at a cheap price and was only offered in a few places. Heineken came along and bought 49% of the brewery and production ramped up. Then Heineken bought the remaining 51% of the shares and expanded production again to the point where it is pretty much everywhere. The taste and quality has suffered, but the economies of scale and massive profits being made are not being reflected in a lower more mainstream price. Heineken have done the same 49% then 51% trick with the Brixton Brewery and again it is appearing everywhere at a premium price tag. Meantime, excuse the pun, Meantime beers are now past their prime and the star is fading as people realise the mass production has led to a drop in quality and are seeking other small craft beer producers.

Now look what you've started Gracie!

It is good, but in the meantime the damage and division is still being done elsewhere. At least the publicity seeking, self serving Youtuber, will get a few pennies out of it.

This forum is moderated, but if you take a look at other social media sites and comments sections, then the jar has been well and truly shaken sadly!

No Gracie no! I will not be changing my profile pic to a picture of a glass of Prosecco! I'll have you know I have plenty of joke books, only the Mods won't let me post the good ones There's at least 500 still awaiting authorisation. I still post them because at least the Mods get to see the good ones. I'm only joking by the way!

When I saw this thread, I thought I was going to be reading some bad news about my self then. I quite like the sound of Dark Star! They say a change is as good as a rest.

Let me make myself 100% clear. I am only talking about and discussing the incident shown in the video posted at the start of this thread, not any other boater / fishermen incident. I am talking about this specific incident.

I am not standing up for the actions of the anglers, or doubting the account of the people onboard Moonlight Shadow. At no point have I even mentioned them, I don't even know them. On the other hand as much as I wouldn't like to meet those two anglers, I'd like to meet that particular boater even less!