BroadAmbition

Bro was on Polaris then over onto Trident boats. He was on Subs from about 83 - 04. I was surface fleet, 76 - 2000

I would have normally been there but this Sunday, cruising from Brighton to Ramsgate Griff

Grendel - I love you to bits! Griff

There ain’t any imbalance with three full tanks as she sits now. There is the facility to drawi fuel from any of the three tanks simultaneously or separately (nearly said independently there!) with the balance pipe open or closed. It’s a proper versatile system Griff

Chuffin Eck, that Lady in the pink, that was some camera shot that was, I bet it was a wide angle lense eh? Griff

Well that was good update wasn't it? Re the fuel tanks, I really think some of us in here are in danger of 'Over thinking' the issue. I call it an issue coz that's the way I see it. It is NOT a problem, just an issue. Besides I don't 'Do' problems, I deal in solutions. Once we are back onboard this coming Thursday I will get in the engine room and have another look at it, I've a few things I want to look at more closely and discover, discover them I will only this time I will have a Nuclear watchkeeper on my shoulder that used to look after such systems onboard Polaris - Our Howard, two heads are much better than one. So I am confident we will get our heads round the system. That's all it is really - understanding the system, it's capabilities and it limitations. Once we have that knowledge, it will be of course passed and explained to Robin in good old fashioned 'Yorkshire Speak' and he is good to go forever. What Robin has achieved with engaging the services of professional yards has only made the issue much easier and removed many unknown scenarios form the equation Griff

Won't it weaken the hull and maybe give you an issue if you have to lift the boat out with a crane and webbing straps? Best talk to them that really knows, or maybe find out if anyone has done something similar in the past Not so much of an issue coming out on a slipway though Griff

I too was thinking that both tanks would have levelled pretty much instantly but they didn't. This could be due to a number of reasons. The vent pipes diameter could be reducing air flow, the tanks could be internally baffled to prevent surge / frothing at sea too. There is a fair distance between the two outer tanks and travelling through the balance pipe and centre lower tank, all these combined factors must be the reason why they are slow to equalise. Opening up the other deck filler would have surely helped - We didn't do this but will do so next time and see if that improves matters. When we had completed fuelling both tanks were brimmed, that is to say the diesel was up the filler pipe to the nozzle clicking off, which is higher than the site pipes of course. The nozzle is the same size as you find at roadside filling stations, and I'm assuming the delivery rate Litres to the minute would be about the same, so not ridiculously fast. I have as of yet not eyeballed the vent pipe on the three tanks, this is one of a few items that I want to attend to this coming Thursday afternoon. Tracking Indy during her travels - Robin is onto this one, he is hopeful it will happen and be fairly easy for all formites that want to follow her progress can do so, he'll be along soon to explain. Griff

Indy - Big Stuff continued:- On the Sunday we moved Indy over to another berth between finger pontoons so we could launch the Williams rib, test the crane etc. On completion we popped over to the fuelling berth to top up her diesel tanks. The fuelling berth being about 20ft long and us with 55ft of boat resulting the both the head and stern lines also acting as springs which was handy. Now on the gauges on the wheelhouse helm, both were stating the tanks were full, we knew otherwise looking at the sight tubes on the tanks within the engine room. So none of us knew how much diesel she would need, so I did a best guess and came to a figure of 400 x Ltrs, the rest of the crew offered their opinions based on mine, which was kinda imho, cheating, I should have wrote it down and kept my guess to mysen, their best guesses ranged from 360 up to 550. Anyroadup I opened the balance pipe valves, the diesel nozzle was ceremoniously stuffed into the deck fitting for the Stbd tank and fuel commenced to flow. I was in t engine room watching the site tubes, the Stbd was coming up nicely, the Port one however was much slower in keeping up. The Stdbd tank was soon full and I heard the nozzle click off. I shut the balance valves then went topsides. Robin was grinning like a Cheshire as Indy had taken 'Only' 220 x Ltrs. You should have seen his dish though when I gleefully announced instructions to transfer the fuel nozzle over to the port deck filling point So in it went and another 150 Ltrs was taken on board. A total of 370 Ltrs of diesel to 'Top her up' Topping up? Ye Gods 'B.A' takes 157 x Ltrs from dry for goodness sake. The price advertised was £1:20 per Ltr - Thankfully though that was the price for propulsion only. Robin paid just £1:00 per Ltr for the 60/40 heating split allowance. This is totally legit as to power the current heating system onboard one has to fire up the generator for the a/c to operate and/or the fan and tube heaters that Robin has dotted around the place, and of course next time onboard she will have diesel warm air system too. Btw - Robins diesel top up guess was closest, only 10Ltrs off the actual total, I bet he wished he was miles off though! Those berthing ropes in the blog, what Robin neglected to mention was that I hand scrubbed with a stiff brush the lot of them with a solution of algae remover, took me hours it did. Some of them were so green in places they were nearly black. After the machine wash I was astonished as to how clean and soft they were. They are however hugely too heavy for even Indy's weight / size. Yes they look pretty but also are pretty hard to work with, especially when wet. You would need to use a dedicated heaving line to get an Indy Line ashore of any distance over about 20ft Griff

Get it in asap, it will mix itsen quite nicely whether you are underway or not and start doing it's thing. Then run through the pipes and filters next time you start up. Yes straight into the filler tube, initial dose 'Shock Treatment' which is a stronger dilution, thereafter just the normal maintenance levels Griff

To put in perspective just how big things are with Indy - Everything seems to be big, I suppose it's coz we are so used to our normal Broads type river craft. Robin ordered some Biocide for her diesel tanks (Along with hundreds of other items that were taken down to Guz in the 'GriffTile' van) In this case the chosen product is 'Hydra Fuel Plus Biocide' a whole litre of it! (Now onboard 'B.A' we purchase Soltron in 500ml bottles, it lasts us an age as we are only using 1ml per 10 x Ltrs of diesel, we are currently on our second bottle) So there's me thinking a Litre for Indy will be fine - Wrong again Griffin. Indy's diesel tanks capacity is 2'400 Litres. So the initial shock dose treatment used up 720ml of biocide, leaving 280ml left. Indy's thirst on two 500hp diesels from Plymouth to Brundall will be far more than 280 Ltrs diesel so we will run out of the biocide. As a consequence another litre of the stuff has turned up at my gaff. (Only this coming Thursday we are going down to Guz on the train, no van. Still there will be four of us to spread items amongst ourselves) So Indy now has 1'280ml in stock which is enough to treat 12'800 Ltrs of diesel, that should do it, it had better do! Other notes with Indy - She has a tap / hose from the fresh water system in the engine room! - Showing off or what? But strangely no fresh water deck fitting around the anchor / chain on the foc'sle. On a craft of this size with a hugely impressive polished s/steel anchor and a large amount of chain (Don't know how much - another job to attend to) you would expect there to be a facility to wash off the chain and anchor as they are brought back inboard, swinging it about by hand in the oggin is not remotely feasible, not even for a Greek God. On mentioning this to Robin he smugly stated that in the cable locker up fwd there is indeed a plumbed in fresh water supply along with a 12v power supply already in place, just needs a deck fitting connecting up and the jobs a guddun. Smart boat builders those Traders have. Griff

"The rabbit comes out of the hole, runs round the tree, and goes back down the hole again". But can he do one behind his back? Probably, never tried to be honest as I have never really worked out why sailors should feel the need or have the capability to tie bends / hitches behind their back! Much easier to do it behind someone elses back imho. As for the securing the rope around the deck cleat as per the video clip - Hmmm, with practise maybe, but that too is pointless as my legs would never look that good in a million years! Griff

I think whichever product you buy, they all come with the built in measure / dispenser thing. I have just received another Litre of Biocide that Robin has ordered for Independence. The shock treatment dose on 2'400 litres has left him with 280ml from the first litre received, not enough left there to maintain normal dosage levels for the Plymouth to Brundall trip as we re-fuel Griff

you're slipping Pots Aren't I just! Neither was flag Bravo hoisted during refuelling, nor any broadcasts made either! However I will confess to stating to all the crew prior to slipping Indy's lines bound for the lock:- HTHS, SSDCU, ANBCDS3CY, CASDAH, HOOROTDCOTUD Took me a few mins to remember that lot! Griff

I think the 25g will do it nicely. Below the waterline - hopefully early next month I should be able to get delivered to your hovel some underwater primer, anti foul and the emperor blue boot topping - all the same gear we use on 'B.A' I have the sealed small tubs ready that will survive the postage system nicely. I've not been down to 'B.A' since early November hence not getting this gear to you before now. I hope to make a special road trip from Brundall on the 5th to wet shed to collect your gear before driving back home to Donny, once back up here I can then get it posted off to you. Griff

To anyone looking to volunteer some labour, I personally think that's a much more worthy cause than BA. And from what I've seen Lori and the NWDCT lot really crack on. Agreed. I'd really love to get involved with this organisation. Snag is I'm just too far away and when I do get time to pop down, 'B,A' takes priority with her upgrades and maintenance. What I really need to do is get retired and win the lottery. Then again if I did manage that then the NWDCT would be completed to full navigation within a year or so Griff

Some great advice in this thread. I particularly like this one from Ricardo:- Not a bad idea to get the BSS regs if your restoring a boat too as certain things need doing s certain way for BSS and could prove difficult to rectify when the boat is completed. We did exactly that during 'B.A's restoration. Some items within the BSS are listed as not compulsory but 'Best Practise' (or were). We endeavoured to incorporate all 'Best Practises' as the norm and did try to 'Future Proof' her along the way. We used the BSS manual as a sort of workshop manual, it worked for us. I also engaged the service of a local BSS inspector (To us up here in Donny) to visit us every couple of months to advise us as we progressed Griff

Soltron - Works for us. Back when we did the restoration thing to 'B.A' we installed a brand new s/steel diesel tank only we modified it to in-cooperate a sump with a drain valve facility. There followed new fuel lines, water separator and of course a brand new Beta Marine. All was to the good then. We made it a 'Rule' to always put 'B.A' away in the wet shed after use with topped up diesel tank to minimise the condensation thing. A few years on it dawned on me that no matter how good we were with keeping her diesel tank topped up, we could not control the cleanliness or quality of fuel we purchased at various boatyards. Time for a bit of a rethink. I did some research around the bazaars and online over on the t'other side in them days. I also read that a boater had a tired BMC that was not the easiest to start especially if the wx was proper cold and used to smoke a lot on initial start up and would take a fair while for the exhaust to become clear. He commenced with regular dosages of Soltron after months of running he reported back that starting became a breeze no matter how cold with a clear exhaust Basically there are two types of additive to keep the dreaded diesel bug at bay. One is the filter system similar to a product added to home brew that sits on top of the diesel in the tank then filters down taking all contaminations with it to sit at the bottom of the tank. I didn't like the idea of this method at all as all that would have done is built up a level of crud at the bottom of the tank, eventually to such a level that the pick up pipe would have been sucking it up and into the filters The other system is a product that breaks down any contaminations at a molecular level including the diesel itself which has an added side benefit which I will explain later. This method means that any diesel bug / water / crud then passes through the filters and is burnt off during normal combustion procedure and no crud sitting in the bottom of the diesel tank. Soltron is such a product (There are other makes of similar products available of course) Every two years during our bi-annual maintenance regime, we get under the tank to the drain, usually I cop for this task as it is somewhat awkward, open the drain valve and drain off any crud until it runs clear. The biggest volume of crud I have ever drained out is no more than half an egg cup full that from a 35 gallon tank or 157-ish litres The initial application is a 'Shock' treatment which is around 3ml per 10 x Ltrs thereafter everytime one tops up with diesel and I do mean everytime, one should add 1ml per 10 x Ltrs so, 100Ltrs = 10ml Soltron. Why Soltron? - No reason over other products other the result of my research really. That added benefit - Soltron also of course breaks down the diesel itself at a molecular level too. This has the added side benefit of making the diesel burn cleaner and more efficiently. If it was added to a road vehicle (And a lot of folk do) it increases mpg. In marine use it increases the efficiency giving more hours per Ltr, it also of course aids combustion with onboard warm air diesel fired system like our onboard Mikuni heater. Whichever product you decide on stick with it. If you are a 'Gung Ho' type and risk not adding any additive then my advice is to always top up your onboard diesel tank after use to keep down the risk of condensation thereby water contamination and remember today's diesel has less sulphur in it, the diesel bug hates sulphur so another reason to go with an additive The choice is yours, I have to say right now I am no expert and do not take my word as gospel but it does work for us. 'B.A's diesel system is sparkly clean and her diesel burn is very clean with no smoking from her exhaust Hope this helps, Griff P.S - Another product one should consider to use is 'ZX1' - Google it. I swear by the stuff but that is a topic for another thread

During the process of sterilizing the fresh water tanks, we spread the word not to use the water from the taps onboard but to use the water from the shore supply directly aft of Indy. Our Brian obviously forgot, later on he filled the kettle to make a brew for everyone, then remarked that his coffee smelled and tasted weird, well it would have done as he was slowly sterilizing his insides! Oh how we larrrrrrfed at that one too Griff

I wondered when somebody would spot that, Yes its my Birthday, Thank you Blimey - Nearly missed it, well, technically I have as it gone past the witching hour. Still better late than never, a day late and a dollar short as per the usual then Griff. Happy birthday for yesterday Pete, Griff

Isn't 'Broadsword' a bunch of volunteers that attempts to keep bank side growth cut back? If I lived nearer to the rivers I'd volunteer for that one Griff

Robin is it possible the crane is designed to lower the rib to the stern rather than the port side? Lowering over the Port side is fine as we discovered. Lowering it over the stern, well two things there, we didn't extend the jib out to it's max, until that trial has been done (With no load on it) Robin won't know if the rib will clear the swim platform. Also until Robin gets into the instruction manual of the crane, we don't know its max safe working load with the jib extended. Plus we had an obstacle at the stern of Indy when we did the trial, namely a floating pontoon! Griff

Me too. Robin will be producing an update on the four day Team Indy event to be published tomorrow Griff

Hi Sue - Sorted well done. I can confirm I will be attending the memorial for Pete. Early planning suggests I will arrive at the New Inn Saturday forenoon onboard 'B.A' and leave her there for the duration. Here's wishing you and Pete's family all the best for the Milton Keynes Service / Funeral I look forward to seeing you and Pete's family / friends on 10th March and thanks for the invitation. If you need me to help in any way, just ask. Griff xx

Yes, if I ever find time to get the Stbd side done, not to mention deck light pads and new cant rails Griff