dom

Is that now joint all time winner for Chris Bunn?

I think most modern tanks are now MDPE, the average lifespan of which is around 50 years. Probably best to replace before that point, as a black tank explosion is not something I'd want to be dealing with!

Is the reporting in this case omitting info, or a bit misleading? You don't usually need planning permission for a yurt, as it's a temporary structure. You can't however site one on some classes of land. Is the application in this case a change of use on the land, from agricultural or forestry to residential or tourism? I can understand the BA's opposition if so.

Still an ongoing issue to this day.

Looks like it should be a CDA240U if it's type A. If it's an older RCD, there may be a possibility a new one might fit in the same footprint and they're not especially expensive. Looking at Brian Ward's current offerings, does the panel have a correct polarity indicator? The danger with reverse polarity is that with a single pole breaker or switch off, the neutral cable can still be live. It's especially dangerous if there's also an earth defect - a neutral short to case can electrify the whole device. It takes more than one factor for it to occur, but a UK distributor in the caravan market had an issue along these lines. Personally, with the cost of them now, I'd rather have RCBOs on everything, but understandable if you don't want to change the panel. The main advantage with RCBOs is things are more resilient and a fault only affects one circuit, but with a boat, you've obviously still got 12v lighting, etc throughout anyway.

BA used to provide a tax disc style proof of toll. I don't think it was actually required for it to visible externally - ours used to be on an internal bulkhead. They used to be quite useful as a means of identifying smaller craft which had come adrift when other marks were missing or not required. Generally, dinghies had a pressed acrylic holder on thwarts. Or when the inspector places an enforcement notice on a window directly above a clearly valid license, as has happened at least once this season!

Mains is a bit of a minefield, not least because in theory you ought to be working to 18th Edition and BSS standards, but the former will probably never get considered, except maybe in the case of an accident or insurance claim. I'd cable the domestic ring in 2.5mm, purely because if you switch to a 32A hookup, you can run a couple of 3Kw devices on a ring without having to upgrade cabling. It may not be something you plan on doing immediately, but if you start making a lot of use in winter, you can then run a heater and an electric cooker at the same time (a Ninja Foodie or similar is brilliant for use on a boat and avoids the moisture issues from gas cookers). The engine bay ring is probably fine in 16A, as long as you're only going to run lighting and tube heaters. I'd probably be inclined to run a dedicated radial/spur socket for a mains charger, so it keeps running (and supporting the bilge pump) uninterrupted if anything else develops a fault on the main ring. Be aware you MUST use dual pole RCBOs to be safe. It's not unheard of for hookup posts to be reverse polarity, which could render single pole breakers unsafe.

It staggers me the number of apparently untolled boats around the Broads these days. Whenever I watch a Youtube video, I tend to play "spot the toll dodger". 9 times out of 10, anything I look up shows as untolled on the BA website. There is however clearly an issue with the BA's toll database and access to consistent information. Seemingly, the web interface doesn't show when someone is paying by an agreed plan - something which I've said before I think could be construed legally as defamatory. It now appears that even rangers don't have access to reliable info which, again, leads to the type of situation described here. Again, not the first time I've said this, but I suspect the BA's chief executive probably doesn't have an especially great understanding of IT, so may well be oblivious to their need for a decent modern ERP.

I'd be inclined to agree with you, if it weren't for one thing - the fact he appears not to have recognised his own culpability in the situation. It may not be immediately obvious to people who've not spent time around locks, but the whole situation appears to have arisen in the first place from a locking technique which appears rushed to start with. The usual technique is that the helm passes out of the lock, pulls in bankside and holds the boat on a centre line, waiting patiently for their crew to set the lock and get back on board free from undue pressure. The technique in this case seems to have been to hover around the lock exit, whilst his wife takes a leap of faith onto an insecure boat keeping station by application of power. That's slightly elevating the risk to start with but, if you listen to the whole video, he kind of half admits (about 4:10) that he put undue pressure on his wife. She then rushed and fell, but he was focussed on the front end of the boat, rather than his crew member. The argument about risk of crushing seems a bit spurious to me. A trad-stern narrowboat reversing into a quay heading will have a fairly small contact point and it'd almost certainly be relatively easy to escape out either side. There was also another person on hand who was clearly in a position to intervene, and the "button" fender usually provides a degree of gap at the stern anyway (usually needed for the rudder). If the whole video was "I stupidly did the wrong thing doing X" and "I panicked and did Y, which was completely wrong" then he'd have my complete respect and support for taking it on the chin and admitting his own errors to benefit others. I'm not sure that's how I read the whole thing though. There's a lot of "Marianne did this" type comments, which I think is him (possibly sub-consciously) transferring some of the blame. He made at least 3 errors from the way I interpret things, and I'm not sure he accepted blame for any of them. Reading between the lines, it seems it was also a winter incident and crew were not wearing lifejackets. It's a difficult call with canals, as half the time they're very shallow, so debatable whether they're needed. I do however strongly believe that once winter comes around, it adds another element of danger which dictates that jackets ought to be worn, but especially when passing through locks where, as in this case, the water is often deeper (in reality, few people do). Obviously, no-one can really say, but it sounds like there's a possibility the outcome might have been less severe if she'd been held on the surface away from running gear by a jacket.

Personally, I'd probably go around the 20m mark for river use. I think most are 8mm, but even 6mm would generally be fine in non-tidal waters. Ultimately, anything's better than nothing, so opt for a 15m if cost's an issue - it could still save a life. My dad went overboard at Oulton Broad whilst we were racing. The problem we had on that occasion was a 30ft yacht isn't easy to manouver, even with the benefit of sails. We didn't have a line to use and it got very near the mark, as he was starting to tire in the cold water. Fortunately, there's always a safety boat on hand, who managed to effect a rescue, but if they'd not been there, the outcome could have been very different. Do also think about how to get people back on board. A member of my family went overboard recently from their relatively new to them boat and it didn't prove easy to get them back onboard. It's worth just taking a few minutes to consider what you'd do in an emergency. Ideally, you want a rescue or boarding ladder, but it's also possible to drop a U shaped loop of mooring line down and tie off to give the person in the water a step to lift against.

Seems well worth trying - having all your battery capacity available for the pump in the worst case scenario can only be a good thing. The only thing I'd probably do after connecting it all up is to pull each fuse in turn and bridge it with an ammeter, just to confirm there's no residual drain.

And another great Norfolk boatbuilder, who did his apprenticeship at Windboats I believe? Presumably his boat would either be stunnning and fabulously maintained, or, like plumbers with leaky taps, horribly neglected, because everyone else was always calling on his talents with their boats so he never got time to spend on his own!

It took me several minutes to work out why that sounded odd. I was sure one of Quo had died, but their Wikipedia entry hides Rick Parfitt's name away a bit. I can't say I'd rush out to see Quo, unless it was with a guest appearance from Maddy Prior. Her and Francis Rossi was one of those strange, random duos which added something special to the performances of both.

There was an issue in Northern Ireland along those lines, but I know rules were introduced in that case which allowed reduction whilst still retaining a single tank.

Video uses too much bandwidth to run over the NMEA and CAN-Bus protocols used for most connections. It's possible the unit may have dedicated camera input(s) but Furuno don't seem to make installation manuals available, so hard to tell. It might be worth looking at the back of the display, or on any hide-away boxes for an RCA socket (often yellow for video). If it hasn't got one, probably give up on the idea. If it has, it may be worth trying to track down an install guide.

...and a terribly inefficient charging system. Must take easily 40% of your fuel keeping the batteries topped up

I'm not sure if they even sell fuel these days but a while back, prices at Hermitage Marina in Earith used to be substantially cheaper than prices on the Broads. I can't imagine they would have been selling more fuel than the typical Broads yard either. What you've just said about Jones Boatyard goes some way towards confirming what I suspect, ie.that RGO yards are probably all routinely offering the reduced split. Obviously, there are 3 likely situations - the yard does it by default, they do it if you ask, or they say they don't want the admin. I was just curious to see what the current status is, as there's a link in the menu to a page (now extremely out of date, and prices that we probably all wish for!), which only shows a small number of places doing 60/40.

Scarily so. It's quite disconcerting when you're of similar age and remember them from their peak.

I may well be over-thinking the drop and in reality, it'd probably only lose you a short amount of running time. Just seems like such an elegant solution to me. Ordinarily, it'll draw from the higher voltage bank, or share the load across both. In a critical situation, it'll use all the capacity in both banks.

Excuse the hasty sketch, but can anyone with an electrical understanding see why this isn't feasible? You'd probably want to use germanium diodes or whatever the latest option is these days to minimise drop.

That tends to be the best option in many cases, and the batteries generally have better deep cycle resistance than the engine battery. The flip side is, left for longer periods, you're going to kill more batteries with most domestic banks if the pump runs the batteries too low. The "best" option is on any bank with support from a mains charger, or solar panel. With a 100w solar panel, simplistically speaking, you'll add roughly two hours pump running for an hour of sunlight.

It's far from a numpty question. It's a bit of a perpetual debate, with no definitive answer. Do you have a mooring wth shore power? And is there a float charger on either/both banks?

I think that's a universal statement with insurance these days, irrespective of market. It was meant more as "if you're not pleasantly surprised at the premium, try someone else"!

Posting here, in case it becomes another drawn out discussion, but I noticed a comment on another thread earlier about buying diesel and it costing within a few pence of garage prices. What's the availability of reduced duty diesel used for heating these days? I know there were some changes in 2022 but, as I understand it, it's still perfectly feasible to claim a 60/40 propulsion/heating split and to get lower duty on the 40% and many places on the canals support this principle. Are many suppliers on the Broads supporting this now? I think a while back, the number was fairly small, but that could have changed in either direction?

For insurance, try Haven Knox-Johnston or Craftinsure. Marine insurance is generally quite good value compared to cars. If in doubt, it's probably worth sharing your quote on here.