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Cal

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Posts posted by Cal

  1. 1 hour ago, Oddfellow said:

    Most? 

    The majority of hire boats do not have guages. New builds might but very unusual on an older vessel. 

     

    We have hired older and newer boats over the years and for the last 15 years or so have not had a boat that didn't have a fuel gauge.

    As I said before one boat we hired several times had a gauge retrofitted between times we hired it.

  2. Surely the addition of fuel gauges on most hire boats has negated the need for dip sticks?

    We hired the same boat from Barnes a few times. The first time it had a dip stick but for subsequent hires a fuel gauge had been fitted.

    A dip stick wouldn't have worked in our boat. The fuel filler was at the back of the boat and the tank buried midships in the engine bay. Access to the tank was tight to say the least.

  3. 10 hours ago, Davydine said:

    Mouldy, that is a very fair point, well made. I hadn't thought of it that way.

    I suppose the one exception would be at the ends of a run of moorings when people moor on the second or third mooring post, rather than going right up to the end.

    Edited to add that I should have read Vanessen's post who said more or less the same thing!

     

    We always used to sneak into those unused end moorings with our little Sealine. They were great moorings.

  4. 7 hours ago, Smoggy said:

    Nah, I phone the heating from the pub as I get the last* round in and it runs for an hour with extra ducts running under the duvet, when we get back the boat is toasty and the bed is roasted, get in a warm bed and you stay that way all night without heating on.

    As for the open fire/pub theory, we've been known to take a bag of logs along with us in winter.

    * last may not really mean last.

    We never had that on the boat but having got it on the motorhome now we wished we had fitted it. It is so useful.

  5. The 2kw Webasto air blown diesel heater we had on our boat used a maximum of 0.25 litres per hour. In practice it was less then this as the thermostat kicked in and out.

     

    A 4kw Webasto air blown diesel heater uses at most 0.5 litres per hour.

     

    We never bothered about how much it used. We preferred to be warm and dry.

  6. 22 minutes ago, Mouldy said:

    May just have been through the peak of the summer holidays. I think it’s fair to say that issues with foreign travel this year has caused an increase in folk holidaying in the Britain, which may have impacted the locals attitude towards increased volumes of tourists, especially during peak times (school holidays).

    I think it was one or two vocal locals kicking up a fuss about nothing really. Everyone we have spoken too has welcomed the extra tourism and money it has brought to them.

    The facilities provided up here for motorhomes are excellent and it would be great if more were provided in the rest of the UK but we won't hold our breath waiting for that to happen 🤣🤣🤣

    We are on night 14 and only one night has been on a campsite. 

  7. On 06/10/2021 at 09:01, Mouldy said:

    As much as I like Cornwall, finding that a week on the same site we went to earlier this year for the holiday we should have taken in 2020, has increased in price by about 50%, I think we will be making more use of Norfolk Lady.  That said, we still have a half share in Moonlight Shadow.  Our son and his family will be using the summer week in August, but we have friends who wish to join us for the spring week that starts on 30th April.

    I really wanted to do the North Coast 500 around the north of Scotland, however due to travel restrictions this year, it has proved too popular and some hostility towards holiday makers has been reported.  That may happen for us in 2023, as long as I’m still around, when levels of foreign travel have returned (hopefully) to normal, leaving the UK quieter for those of us who prefer to holiday here.

    We’ll have to wait and see.

    We have had two lovely weeks in Scotland in our motorhome. We are on our last night in Scotland before heading back across the border tomorrow. We have not seen any hostile behaviour towards tourists at all, in fact quite the opposite. Everyone has been very welcoming. It has been a brilliant holiday.

     

    We have a fair few trips booked in for 2022 already. Easter sees us at Burnham Deepdale, we are at Southwold for the Jubilee Bank Holiday weekend. We have a week booked in July for the Isle of Wight and our two week autumn trip next year takes in Devon and Cornwall. 

     

    The motorhome will be busy next year 😀

    • Like 1
  8. 3 hours ago, DAVIDH said:

    It's undeniable that a large proportion of the 100,000 shortage of lorry drivers, is down to those people who returned to their homes in Europe following Brexit, not returning. Transport companies are having to pay substantially more to attract drivers, and this will need to be passed on to the end user. Instore prices will rise to cover it. 

    And wages will have to rise to fill the job vacancies.

  9. It is all too easy to blame Brexit for things but the truth is that prices for pretty much everything are rapidly rising worldwide as economies reopen. This is nothing to do with Brexit it is global shortages caused by manufacturing closing down due to Covid. 

    • Like 1
  10. 16 hours ago, Mouldy said:

    Still a shortage of bottles, hence a shortage of bottled gas.  I spoke to one of the chandlers this afternoon and they are looking at selling bottles that can be refilled at the lpg pumps at the garage.  Trouble is, the refillable bottles will be about £200 each.

    We bought a couple of refillable bottles for our motorhome in April. It cost £500 for the 2x11kg bottles, automatic changeover, hoses and a new regulator.

    Sounds expensive but the motorhome runs mainly on gas with the heating, hot water, fridge and cooking all being gas powered so we use a fair bit of it. It also has the benefit of not having to change bottles or remove them from the van, we just take the van to the pump to refill the bottles and we can fill the bottles from part empty. 

    We have an LPG station a mile or so away from home which isn't the cheapest at 75ppl but even at that to refill one bottle is only £16.50. The cheapest we have paid was 47ppl at a Morrisons petrol station and at that one bottle is £10.34.

    It really won't take it long for us to repay the cost of the bottles.

    We are heading up to Scotland this coming weekend for a couple of weeks and we expect that we will use most of the 2x11kg bottles. Working on the most expensive LPG refill that will work out at about £33. Just one 11kg Flogas is £40 and a 13kg Calor works out at about £40 so about £80 for the equivalent amount.

     

    • Like 2
  11. The trouble with doing a few tweaks at once with the batteries/alternator/charging is that you never know which tweak has fixed the problem :default_laugh:

    I would put my money on the loose alternator belt being the problem. That said we always used to charge phones, laptops, cameras, etc when we were on the move with the boat. Made sense to do that while the engine was running and the alternator generating. 

    We try to do the same with the van and charge stuff up while we are driving.

    • Like 1
  12. 18 minutes ago, webntweb said:

    They are varying widths. A 12 ft beam would be limited to below St Ives lock to Denver Sluice - a distance of approx 38 miles plus the three tributaries: rivers Wissey, Lark and Little Ouse, a total of about 32 miles. Then there is the river Cam which is about 15 miles.

    So probably a total cruising range of 85 miles although the upper reaches of the three tributaries can be quite narrow - I can remember on one of them having not much room either side of the boat for a couple of miles with a 10ft 6ins beam.

    Our boat was only 8'2" wide and some of the lock approaches felt narrow :default_laugh:

    • Like 1
    • Haha 1
  13. 4 minutes ago, Smoggy said:

    Because easy,cheap,and boat are words that should never be used in the same sentence.

     

    How very true.

    We are finding it very refreshing with the van that parts cost £20 rather then £200 a time :default_laugh:

    • Like 1
  14. 7 hours ago, ranworthbreeze said:

    Sounds like a godsend, sadly with us it is a quick dash out of bed to turn on the heating, we do however leave an oil filled radiator on in those out of season weeks if required.

     

    We have an app for the heating and hot water on the van so that it can be controlled remotely. No need to get out of bed now to turn the heating on :default_biggrin:

    It is also gas heating which is so much quieter than the diesel heating on the boat was. No more noisy fuel pump ticking away.

  15. We loved winter boating on our own boat and would certainly consider hiring in November, December or January.

    Even on sub zero nights we never left the heating on overnight. It gets too hot if you do. We instead took an extra blanket.

    First person up in the morning stuck the heating on an hour or so before we wanted to get up and we got up to a toasty warm boat.

    Only thing to watch is just how low the temperature goes and if the water is likely to freeze. Probably not so much a problem on the Broads with it being tidal but we got caught out a few times on the still waters of the Fossdyke and had to ice break our way back to the marina!

  16. 38 minutes ago, 750XL said:

    Thanks for all the replies and information, they do seem to be good little boats.

     

     

    Airdraft is, I think, 6ft 5". Is this realistically ever going to get under Potter other than during long summer periods without rain, on a biggest of spring tides?

    We're there in October but I haven't even entertained the thought of getting under Potter?

    Sure it is possible. We have been through in larger boats in the past.

    What's the air draft on an Alpha 29/31? We have been through in a couple of those in the past. (Admittedly not in the last few years as we have either been on our own boat or hired larger dual steer or centre cockpit boats instead)

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