The Dinorwic Centaur

DaveS said:
That's a slight exaggeration. It has a few inches of water, probably a rain leak, and a 40 year old Volvo claimed to be a good runner. :)
Click to expand...

hard to tell

amazing that they would take snaps with a wet floor

the presence of the battery charger suggests that there is life in the engine

but I have played the old volvo game

once bitten - twice shy

not that keen on round two

D
 
AngusMcDoon said:
It is, and it usually involves removing just about everything inside forward of the midpoint to get it in place, if you can at all, because the builder would have put it in before the deck went on. That's why I think for a tatty old wreck like that boat, rotten bulkhead = dead boat, however much free time you have and ability to be happy living in the cold wet windy bit of the country in damp squalor.
Click to expand...

Thanks. I had a smaller Laurent Giles Westerly of the Centaur vintage, and replacing the bulkhead would have been a nightmare. Not impossible, because nothing of that sort is, but a huge job to do even no very well. It's not just the deck mouldings: I think the bulkhead went in before the interior mouldings which in my boat completely obscured the lower aft half of it.

I contemplated these things when another boat broke one of my stanchion bases, leaving snapped off screws in it. The backing plate for the base had been glassed into the deck moulding and was immediately above the bulkhead. The amount of work required to get it out didn't bear contemplating ...
 
dylanwinter said:
I am assuming it will have a danforth and a gas cooker that will be a liability with rotten rubber pipes
Click to expand...

<fouryorkshiremen>
Pipes? You'll be lucky to get pipes. The original Centaur stove was a Camping Gaz one with a 904 cylinder mounted on the underside of the stove to provide a gimballing weight.
</fouryorkshiremen>
 
dylanwinter said:
had that on the slug - worked very well indeed
Click to expand...

I had it too. It's a neat system, and though it gives people the willies nowadays I thought the lack of joints, pipes and so on made it a pretty safe set-up. Also you could lift the entire system out in ten seconds, hide it in your car and then say "No gas, guv" when the British Waterways chap came round to check. Allegedly.
 
This whole 'Wellie Centaur' sideshow is taking the shine off an otherwise excellent KTL project.

I remember the first Principle of War: 'Selection and Maintenance of the Aim'.

Just my opinion.
 
Dylan, FYI the gas setup on my Centaur is mostly copper pipe with a bit of rubber pipe to connect to the stove. Don't know if they are all like that but if so it won't take much to check the system and replace the flexible pipes then you would have a working system.
 
dylanwinter said:
the only problem is that one of the keels has already fallen off!

D
Click to expand...

All the better for the deep water, non=drying harbours & smaller tides around Scotland. Tigers have a very good reputation for strength, accommodation & sailing ability (for a 50 year old boat that is). Twin keels will be essential for the Irish Sea & Bristol Channel legs of your trip, but a fin keeler is far better for the vast majority of E, N & W Scotland.
 
Tam Lin said:
Dylan, FYI the gas setup on my Centaur is mostly copper pipe with a bit of rubber pipe to connect to the stove. Don't know if they are all like that but if so it won't take much to check the system and replace the flexible pipes then you would have a working system.
Click to expand...

love my Origo

now I have two of them following the arrival of one of these through the post from a KTLer

3070052m.jpg


it can be used for cooking as well as heat so it will help to keep the inside of the boat warm

however, I confess that a grill would be a wonderful thing to widen the scope of the cuisine.

D
 
dylanwinter said:
love my Origo

now I have two of them following the arrival of one of these through the post from a KTLer

3070052m.jpg


it can be used for cooking as well as heat so it will help to keep the inside of the boat warm

however, I confess that a grill would be a wonderful thing to widen the scope of the cuisine.

D
Click to expand...

I've got one of those, probably the most sensible heater for a small boat.

Beware though Dylan, they're supposed to last 12 hours; do they **** !

More like 9-10 even if filled right up, I've had a few cold mornings, having started the thing going in the cold winter evening - which is another point, I've never felt like topping up the spirit once it's hot; one fill up is yer lot I reckon.
 
Seajet said:
I've got one of those, probably the most sensible heater for a small boat.

Beware though Dylan, they're supposed to last 12 hours; do they **** !

More like 9-10 even if filled right up, I've had a few cold mornings, having started the thing going in the cold winter evening - which is another point, I've never felt like topping up the spirit once it's hot; one fill up is yer lot I reckon.
Click to expand...

My plan is to have this and the origo cooker side by side where the gas rings are. if there are four aboard then two cooking devices will be useful and the Heat Pal can double as a cooker. I can buy meths from the web for £14 for 5 litres - it is cheaper, safer and more reliable than gas.
 
That's more expensive than quality paraffin then (£2.25 per litre from Caldo), plus Parasene's greenhouse heaters cost less than your heat pal thinghy. Ok I use paraffin for cooking and in my hurrican lamps so no need for meths apart from pre-heating. Wouldn't run an unvented heat source like that overnight though! I hope you plan fitting a CO warner in your Centaur.
 
overnight - never

2nd_apprentice said:
That's more expensive than quality paraffin then (£2.25 per litre from Caldo), plus Parasene's greenhouse heaters cost less than your heat pal thinghy. Ok I use paraffin for cooking and in my hurrican lamps so no need for meths apart from pre-heating. Wouldn't run an unvented heat source like that overnight though! I hope you plan fitting a CO warner in your Centaur.
Click to expand...

very careful with it

as for paraffin on a boat

I am with jerome K Jerome

Jerome knew where he stood on the issue

Paraffin tales from Three Men In A boat;

We join “J” (Jerome) and his friends Harris and George in Chapter Four during their planning of a two week rowing boat trip up the River Thames from London to Pangbourne at the end of the 19th century:

” ‘Begin with breakfast.’ (George is so practical). ‘Now for breakfast we shall want a frying pan’ – (Harris said it was indigestible; but we merely urged him not to be an ass, and George went on) – a teapot and a kettle, and a methylated spirit stove.’ ‘No oil,’ said George, with a significant look; and Harris and I agreed. We had taken up an oil stove once, but ‘never again’. It had been like living in an oil shop that week. It oozed. I nevel saw such a thing as paraffin oil is to ooze. We kept it in the nose of the boat, and, from there, it oozed down to the rudder, impregnating the whole boat and everything in it on its way, and it oozed over the river, and saturated the scenery and spoilt the atmosphere. Sometimes, a westerly oily wind blew, and at othertimes an easterly oily wind, and sometimes it blew a northerly oily wind, and maybe a southerly oily wind; but whether it came from the Arctic snows, or was raised in the waste of the desert sands, it came alike to us laden with the fragrance of paraffin oil. And that oil oozed up and ruined the sunset; and as for the moonbeams, they positively reeked of paraffin. We tried to get away from it at Marlow. We left the boat by the bridge, and took a walk through the town to escape it, but it followed us. The whloe town was full of oil. We passed throught the churchyard, and it seemed as if the people had been buried in oil. The High Street stank of oil; we wondered how people could live in it. And we walked miles upon miles out Birmingham way; but it was no use, the countryside was steeped in oil. By the end of that trip we met together at midnight in a lonely field, under a blasted oak, and took an awful oath (we had been swearing for a whole week about the thing in an ordinary, middle class way, but this was a swell affair) – an awful oath never to take paraffin oil in a boat again – except of course, in case of sickness. Therefore, in the present instance, we confined ourselves to methylated spirit. Even that is bad enough. You get methylated pie and methylated cake. But methylated spirit is more wholesome when taken into the system in large quantities than paraffin oil. ” We then rejoin the three men in Chapter Ten on the first night of their boating trip whist they prepare their camp for the night, when they reveal a novel way to compensate for their meths stove’s lack of power: “We put the kettle on to boil, up in the nose of the boat, and went down to the stern and pretended to take no notice of it, but set to work to get the other things out. That is the only way to get a kettle to boil up the river. If it sees that you are waiting for it and are anxious, it will never even sing. You have to go away and begin your meal, as if you were not going to have any tea at all. You must not even look round at it. Then, you will soon hear it spluttering away, mad to be made into tea. It is a good plan, too, if you are in a great hurry, to talk very loudly at each other about how you don’t need any tea, and are not going to have any. You get near the kettle, so that it can overhear you, and then shout out, ‘I don’t want any tea, do you, George?’ to which Geprge shouts back, ‘Oh, no, I don’t like tea; we’ll have lemonade instead – tea’s so indigestible.’ Upon which the kettle boils over and puts the stove out. We adopted this harmless bit of trickery, and the result was that, by the time everything else was ready, the tea was waiting. We then lit the lantern and squatted down to supper.”

With thanks to Strikealight
 
dylanwinter said:
“We put the kettle on to boil, up in the nose of the boat, and went down to the stern and pretended to take no notice of it, but set to work to get the other things out. That is the only way to get a kettle to boil up the river.
Click to expand...

Another common misconception

flies.png


As for the smell: it never bothered me in fact I hardly notice it. But then I took up snuff after quitting cigarettes so who knows?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Share this page

Top