Advice needed for an important project

[calranthe]

Sale went through for Kathleen and apart from a bent fuel pipe she is an amazing boat, we paid £3,300 for her which even that some people will think is too much but this boat is solid and I mean in really good shape.
https://bwml.co.uk/brokerage/sm-9359-kathleen/

Engine, it had all new hoses fitted, cleaned, new oil, new filters, new glo plugs, sounds really good.
Batteries main and leisure both new
New electrical cables throughout
Gas bottle plus spare.
Enfield Z drive serviced.
Hull is in good condition from what we can tell.

It only has 2 issues, horn no longer works and RPM gauge does not work.

Insurance paid, canal and river license paid.
Canal and River Rescue gold plan paid.

We were going to get it moved up via road but that £400 could go on a lot of TLC for the boat so instead today (Friday) me and a great guy from another forum are taking it up to our home berth in Aston Marina (20 minutes from home) from Sawley via theTrent River and Trent/Mersey canal.

3 days on board the boat learning all I can, 26 locks 50+ miles, negative side is I will be away from wife but family is next door and I have planned/prepared 3 days worth of meals plus even though it will take 3 days (we could do it quicker) via canal and a tiny bid of the river Trent, I am actually less than 50 minutes away from home if she needs me.
Will be leaving home in 2 hours on my way to Marina.
I now own a Sea Magnet and a Piling hook.

 

[Murv]

Well done, enjoy the adventure

 

[Sticky Fingers]

Well good for you, I'm glad you've taken the plunge! Hopefully this will be successful and you can learn what works for you.

 

[calranthe]

Okay so things did not go according to plan, it was amazing fun and I had the best time of my life, learnt a lot about locks and boats, we set off as planned, but only made it 6 miles up the Trent and Mersey Canal at that point we had to call out Canal and River Rescue.

First issue was what we thought was an electrical short but turned out to be lack of knowledge about the boat, we started off along the Trent (from Sawley Marina) and none of the boat gauges were working, now we knew the RPM was not working but the others were working, we decide it is best to get on to the TMC and moor up, no idea if the boat would restart after turning off the engine and taking a look so preferred to be on the canal not a river.
Solution: erm well it seems you turn the ignition key one way to preheat and start the engine then you are supposed to turn it the other way and all the dials work.

At this point I should confess to a non disclosure of some thing quite important, I am deathly afraid of water, something to do with drowning when I was 12, even walking the canal with Paola is torture but I do it and deal with it because my love for Paola overrides any needs or fears I have, if Paola wants to do some thing then I will force myself to do it no matter what, this is a woman who has dealt with more pain and suffering than most people so my issues will not even come into it.

Well that is all great and fun in theory but the absolute terror that gripped me in that Marina stepping off the nice safe and friendly jetty on to a 20ft boat lets just say it was pure force of will, I honestly thought I would loose it completely, but I kept in my mind a focused thought on Paola and after some completely pathetic on the boat and off the boat issues (many splinters in my knees) imagine a 6ft2 20 stone guy literally crawling on and off a 20ft boat.

We set off, all was going well or as well as it can be with Peter Piloting the boat after making me take it out of the berth and on to the Trent, well erm going well that is what you can call it as I am standing there holding on a handle on the boat my hands going white I am gripping so hard as if my life depended on it.

Then we get to the first lock and he jumps of leaving me on the boat with this oh so tiny looking piece of rope loosely wrapped around a bollard, while he goes and does the lock, I was in full on panic mode, I had visions of the rope coming loose and me drifting down the Trent into a weir, lets just say I soon got use to double looping that rope and holding on real tight (except for the whole releasing slowly in a lock thing).

After the second lock I knew that I needed to get a handle on this or I would end up selling this boat and failing Paola so I volunteered to leave the boat and deal with the next lock, this took an almost inhuman level of bravery on my part after all I was just getting use to being on the boat, nice and safe holding on for deal life and I was going to step off onto an unknown quantity the uneven side of a canal.

Well now we get to the part in my story that I like to call "Fire Extinguisher ?? I don't give a flying $%^£ about that what about my life!"

So I took hold of the rope, we pulled into the side nice and slow and I planned to leap to my doom and it would have all gone very differently had not a loop of the rope slipped over the Fire Extinguisher as I stepped onto the bank taking the rope with me the Fire Extinguisher sailed quite majestically over my head and down the canal bank, at this point Peter shouted "don't let it go in the water save it" I am yanked on my ass as the throttle slips into forward and drags me along the bank, much scrapes and pain are to be had by the time Peter had the boat back under control....

Well I saved the Fire Extinguisher (no worse for wear) and could not stop laughing, it was a dangerous, stupid situation and I did many things wrong but all I could do is sit on the bank and laugh at Peter for being more interested in saving an Extinguisher than me (to be fair he was still getting use to the boat, his first GRP, a lot of experience on narrow boats).

I got back on the boat and realised I was not scared any more, cautious yes, focused and learning but no longer white knuckled and from that moment on every lock both 6 miles up and back I dealt with getting on and off the boat apart from the time spent piloting.

Well the engine started to make funny noises, lack of power and blue/white smoke coming out the back.
We checked all the normal things or thought we did, seems the oil had disappeared into a black hole (we thought the oil gauge was faulty but no we were at 0 oil pressure).
We limped to the side at Weston lock where CRR was waiting for us, 2.5L of oil and things sound much better, cooling system checked and it was running perfectly but what was not running perfectly was the fuel injection system.
Diesel was leaking from all over the place and the CRR people advised us strongly to get ourselves into a Marina and have it checked, we phoned around and no one had space, so we called Sawley and with quite heavy hearts limped back towards Sawley engine still lacking power, called the Engineer who worked on the fuel line and he said he could come out and take a look.

Long story short the fuel pump and injection system is shot, leaking so much that you could actually hear the drip drip drip of fuel into the bilge.

So a week of work on the boat, £480 for a reconditioned pump fitting/servicing and changing of any seals/gaskets that are needed (not a bad price I thought) hopefully finished today and if so the Journey up the TMC will start on Thursday and I am really looking forward to it.

Did I make a mistake not having a survey on a £3,300 boat ? I do not think so, damn thing is built like a tank, completely bone dry inside except for the oil/fuel stuff in the bilge, electrics are brand new as are the batteries love the boat, £500 we saved not having a survey just about covers the cost of repair/service.

The adventure continues, who would have thought being dragged along a canal bank holding on to a rope would be a therapeutic event

 

[Oscar24]

I got as far as the third paragraph.........
'Deathly afraid of the water'
Words fail me............

 

[calranthe]

I got as far as the third paragraph.........
'Deathly afraid of the water'
Words fail me............

We all have phobia's and fears, some people scream at the sight of spiders, me my phobia/fear of water comes from a very real even, I drowned, my heart stopped, it was a bath full of people some one just noticed a large shape on the bottom of the pool, took them 2 minutes to restart my body, on the plus side I got a pocket money raise due to all the work others had to do while I was recovering.

 

[henryf]

Wow!

I bought my first boat from Swaley marina. A fero-cement hull, wooden topsides 1960's tub with an old lister engine. I motored her up to Lincoln for a quick refit then down to Kings Langley in Hertfordshire were I lived on it for 3 years whilst at art college.

What life jacket do you have?

Henry

 

[calranthe]

Hello all,
Sorry to necro my own thread but it is sort of relevant.

I know its a long post but it has a very important and relevant point at the end.

Thank you to all those through this thread who tried to offer me advice, yes I was an idiot, yes I was crazy and approached it all wrong and yes I can see why people thought I was trying to con people out of money.

My apology for not listening and for jumping into the forum without thought to what this community was.

I was not driven by greed or deception but simply by an ill wife who was getting worse and I wanted to make a dream a reality, I went about it the wrong way and I was wrong.

Thank you to those that told me to try canals first, thank you to those that told me going coastal with little or no experience was stupid.

The experience I gained here and the other site I ended up on helped in ways I could not imagine back then almost a year ago.

We loved Kathleen the 23FT buckingham for the short time we owned her, I mean my wife who had never gotten to go anywhere, who got ill in college never saw anything really, when we left Sawley Marina, should have known something was wrong as we came to the small exit under the walk bridge the engine cut out, I almost needed a change of trousers right then but I remembered what I had read and been taught, restarted the engine and off we went.

The River Trent, just that short time between the Marina and the start of the Trent and Mersey Canal was amazing, we knew right away we wanted to be on the rivers, locks were a challenge but also a lot of fun, my stomach was just about in my mouth, once on the canal we had an amazing time for the first 6 miles, Paola was smiling and laughing taking pictures of everything, the community of canal people we met were wonderful.

My error, I didn't know the Enfield z Leg well enough it was my own fault really that Kathleen broke down noobie mistake of taking it straight from forward into reverse and back again not stopping in neutral position, a few of that kind of action and the leg got stuck in forward.

This is where the fun really started, we made it another 2 miles, I got really good at coasting to a stop without reverse and just hooking onto the bank (with that size boat its a lot of fun).

Decided not to try another lock incase of needing to reverse.

So we spent the night and went home, we sold her for a loss in money but a gain in experience (for the record the gofundme only raised 800 and that got spent on Paola's bucket list of days out to zoo's and air rifle shooting range at Dolphin discounts) the money for the boat came from us.

when we got home we realised even with the crazy leaking engine, the leg problems the cramped spaces and toilet I could not even stand up in. we absolutely loved it.

We almost instantly started looking into how we could get a better boat without selling our house, wanting to keep that stability, Narrow boats were an interest but we loved the idea of the rivers, once again after all the advice here and other places finally settled in.

We wanted to explore the canals but not be limited to them, so we settled on a Viking narrow beam 28ft, big enough to have customised and the stern was about the same as Kathleen (Paola actually had no problem getting in and out we got a turn table shower seat as silly as it sounds she sat on it and spun her legs over the side or back in and I helped her out/in), we even looked into going almost completely electric/solar and with a small gen or hybrid.

Things were looking up we were coming to the point when a few friends met on another forum were offering us mini holidays on boats they owned, we would get to test out a NB and a 32ft but sadly this is when things went wrong.

Paola got worse, within a month of Kathleen she could not even get out of the house in a wheelchair, lots of hospital appointments and tests, it is what we feared but while we hoped for 2-3 years befor major degredation it happened in 4 months.

Paola is now in ward 124 of the Stoke on Trent University hospital (Kidney ward) her kidneys have completely failed (renal failure) she can't have a transplant due to the medication keeping the cancer away was what killed her own kidneys so on monday she starts PD Peritoneal Dialysis for the rest of her life, its touch and go at the moment but we are fighters.

Now you may be wondering why is this relevant to boating and my experience here?
Firstly before she got ill Paola go to go on the river and canal, it does not matter that it was only for 24 hours or that it cost us money what matters is she did it, she got to experience something amazing and that 24 hours in our memory is priceless.

More importantly the experience is helping me look after Paola now, see our house is old it does not have a downstairs bathroom and both bedrooms are upstairs with a lounge and kitchen ground floor, social services, ocupational health and social care all advised us to move into an assisted living bungalow that even though we had a stair life Paola could get to the point of not being able to get upstairs.

That would mean selling our house and neither of us wanted that.

So I thought back to my time on the boat, on the modifications I was willing to do for that, looked at the downstairs of the house as if it was a boat because these days boats are amazing, every little bit of space accounted for and used, so using that kind of design philosophy, I turned the lounge into her bedroom, (yesterday I finished)

But what about a toilet and shower?

Once again thinking back to how well toilet/shower combo's work in a boat, I created a small cubicle in the kitchen a hybrid porta pottie with disabled rails and a very compact shower tray, it only takes up 1.2m * 1.2m.

Now if the PD works as well as it should and Paola gains back some of her energy and ability to walk and move around the dialysis machine is portable enough and the supplies also that in theory that 28ft Viking NB is still an option just would need to prepare a lot in advance.

Sorry for the long post but you people did make a difference I was just too pig headed bag then to listen.

I wish you all well on sea and land.

 

[calranthe]

One last update until Paola is well enough to be on a boat *crosses fingers*.
She was in the hospital for 3 weeks we are now back home and I am fully trained on the Peritoneal Dialysis, Home therapy team have been amazing, the boat inspired adaptations to the house are working well, our support team actually have experience with the idea of bringing a PD machine on to a boat, the machine itself only draws 60w max per hour and is active for 9 hours a night, so I would have to up the power budget, provide storage for the disposables and if week keep the team updated on our location they will give us a "live" list of local hospital services incase of issues.

The really amazing thing is a lot of the problems she had while originally caused by the medication for cancer were made a lot worse by the failing renal system, thus Paola is feeling better than she has for a long time already.

So the long term as in very long term plan is a Viking 28ft Narrowbeam, bought new and customised some time in the future, I may be wrong (it has been known) but I believe it will give us access to all primary canals in the UK, and once that is exausted rivers, good luck to you all.

 

[Murv]

Glad things are improving, hope it all comes together for you
Those power requirements aren't horrendous, a pair decent sized leisure batteries would provide that for a night with a fair bit of redundancy.
I think I'd be looking at a diesel generator to provide the power, and/or to guarantee recharging the batteries during the day, a large bank of new leisure batteries, and a suitcase generator to run outside the boat in case of emergencies.
But, I'd also get a professional in to ensure that the power supply was sufficient, with plenty of redundancy, given how important your power supply is.