All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means, including scanning, photocopying, or otherwise without prior written permission of the copyright holder. Copyright © 2012 Living On A Narrowboat Table of Contents Introduction...... 7 Your Waterways Crystal Ball...... 10 Online Narrowboat Budget Calculator "Narrowbudget"...... 10 Narrowboat Electrics Part 2...... 10 New Case Studies...... 11 Your Homework For A Cold And Snowy Sunday Afternoon...... 12 Online Narrowboat Budget Calculator "Narrowbudget"...... 12 Narrowboat Heating Part 1: Stoves...... 13 The Real Cost Of Going Cheap...... 14 Liveaboard Case Study: NB Lucky Duck...... 20 Stove Fuel Test...... 21 Waterways World Stove Fuel Test...... 21 Essential stove maintenance...... 23 WiFi For Narrowboats...... 24 Fitting Solar Panels...... 25 Waterways World Stove Fuel Test...... 27 C & RT Tighten Up On Illegal Moorers...... 27 Getting Rid Of Unwelcome Visitors...... 28 Removing Problem Geese… The Easy Way...... 28 Know Your Narrowboat Costs...... 30 A Place To Search For Moorings...... 30 A New Service For Potential Narrowboat Owners...... 31 Your Own Narrowboat Blog On Livingonanarrowboat.co.uk...... 31 Essential Boating Equipment...... 33 Essential Boating Equipment...... 34 Stove Fuel Test Update...... 34 Your Own Narrowboat Blog...... 34 Whilton Marina Boat Sales...... 35 No More Excuses...... 36 A New Narrowboat Guide: Are you interested?...... 36 Case Study Of Widebeam Liveaboard Antioch...... 37 Essential Boating Equipment...... 37 No More Excuses!...... 37 Narrowboat Security...... 39 Narrowboat Security...... 40 Canalside Dining...... 41 NB Doublefracture Case Study...... 41 Mobile Broadband Allowance On Narrowboats...... 42 Narrowboat Security...... 42 Mobile Broadband...... 43 Online Moorings Available...... 45 The Trust Target Illegal Moorers...... 46 Identity Theft – The Gift That Keeps On Giving...... 46 A New Image For The Site – Tell Me What You Think...... 47 The Trust Target Illegal Moorers...... 47 RCR Engine Servicing...... 48 Narrowboat Blogs...... 50 A Day Trip To Braunston...... 51 New Forum Section...... 52 Your Own (Free) Narrowboat Blog...... 52 Narrowboat Fuel Tank Range And An Encounter With Snakes...... 53 A Picnic With Snakes...... 54 Out On The Cut Again...... 55 The UK’s Largest Inland Waterways Hotel Boat...... 56 An Interview With The Trust’s Head Of Boating...... 58 The Wessex Rose Hotel Boat Update...... 58 An Interview With The Trust’s Head Of Boating...... 59 Keeping Dry On The Cut...... 62 Waterproof Clothing For Boat Owners...... 62 Reducing Unnecessary Expenditure – Do You Really Need A Car?...... 64 From Nervous Anticipation To Confident Cruising...... 66 A Case Study – Our Nige Takes Forty Winks...... 69 Crick Show...... 69 Pre Cruise Checklist...... 70 Pre Cruise Planning...... 72 Cruising Notes For Narrowboat Owners...... 75 Happy Birthday Dear Forum...... 76 Considerate Boating On The Cut...... 77 Most Popular Narrowboat Names...... 77 Considerate Boating...... 77 The Cost Of A Two Week Cruise...... 78 Cruising In Your Own Boat – The Cheapest Holiday You Can Buy...... 79 New Liveaboard Case Study – Etive II...... 80 Life As A Continuous Cruiser...... 80 Smoke Detectors – Why You Should Have At Least One On Your Boat...... 80 Braunston Historic Boat Rally...... 81 Enjoy The Summer, Plan For The Winter...... 84 Anticipating Winter Weather...... 84 Fenland River Cruising...... 88 A Virgin Boat Owner Takes To The Waterways...... 89 Hire Boat Expectations...... 90 Hire Boat Expectations...... 91 The Dangers Of Boat Roof Storage...... 92 It’s Official; there’s No Need To Pay Mooring Fees...... 93 It’s Official; Living On A Narrowboat Costs Next To Nothing… And You Don’t Have To Pay Mooring Fees...... 94 The PERFECT Narrowboat Washing Machine?...... 97 Onboard Washing Machines...... 97 A Free Narrowboat Guide For You...... 101 Free Guide Living On A Narrowboat: 101 Essential Narrowboat Articles....101 Do You Know Anyone Else Interested In Narrowboats?...... 102 Helpful Hints...... 102 The Cost Of A Continuous Cruising Lifestyle...... 103 Narrowboat Insurance...... 104 Canal & River Trust Guide Approval...... 105 Narrowboat Insurance...... 106 New Liveaboard Case Study – NB Badger Sett...... 106 Free Guide Living On A Narrowboat: 101 Essential Narrowboat Articles....106 Downsizing From A House To A Narrowboat...... 107 How NOT To Kill Pests On Boats...... 108 The Downside Of Living On A Narrowboat...... 109 New Liveaboard Case Study...... 111 A Solution To A Leaky Engine Room...... 112 Swimming Lessons...... 114 New Liveaboard Case Studies...... 116 Managing Your Narrowboat’s Water Supply...... 117 On Board Water Consumption...... 118 A Tragedy At Calcutt...... 121 The Folly Of Using Unseasoned Logs For Your Stove...... 124 Seasoned V Unseasoned Wood As Fuel...... 125 Create Lasting Memories Of Your Travels...... 127 Our Nige And His Cruising Blog...... 130 Water, Water Everywhere… And Not A Drop To Drink...... 132 Liveaboard Case Study – Miss George...... 132 Managing Your Water Supply In The Winter...... 132 On Demand Water Heater Problems...... 137 Know Your Firewood...... 138 On Demand Water Heater Problems...... 139 More Tales From The American Among Us...... 141 Dealing With Condensation On Boats...... 142 Dealing With Condensation On Boats...... 142 A New Organisation For Liveaboard Boaters...... 145 New Google Search...... 146 Speeding On The (Virtual) Waterways...... 147 An Even More Comprehensive Source Of Information Than Livingonanarrowboat.co.uk...... 148 Feeling The Effects Of Excess Wind...... 149 Two Organisations For Liveaboard Boaters...... 153 Another Liveaboard Case Study...... 153 Know Your Narrowboat Terminology...... 154 Popular Narrowboat terminology...... 156 Narrowboat Running Costs...... 173 My Own Narrowboat Running Costs For October 2013...... 177 Narrowboat Central Heating...... 180 New Residents At Calcutt?...... 180 Choosing Narrowboat Central Heating...... 181 Diesel Narrowboat Central Heating...... 182 More Tales From The American Among Us...... 186 Winter Fuel Allowance...... 187 Winter Fuel Allowance...... 191 Case Study – NB Progress...... 192 ChoosingNarrowboat Secondary Double Glazing...... 193 A Condensation Solution – Secondary Double Glazing For Your Boat...... 193 Living On A Narrowboat Podcasts...... 196 Living on a narrowboat with a disability...... 197 Fitting Secondary Double Glazing...... 199 A Condensation Solution – Secondary Double Glazing For Your Boat...... 199 Living On A Narrowboat Podcasts...... 203 Living on a narrowboat with a disability – Update...... 204 Roses And Castles Canal Art...... 206 Roses And Castles...... 207 Secondary Double Glazing Update...... 210 Living On A Narrowboat Video Update...... 211 Narrowboat Storage Space...... 213 Living On A Narrowboat Video Update...... 214 Narrowboat Storage Space...... 214 Secondary Double Glazing Update...... 219 Managing Christmas Afloat...... 221 The Practicality (And Desirability) Of Hosting Christmas Afloat...... 222 Liveaboard Case Study – The Pearl...... 226 Linked ...... 227 Contents...... 227 Narrowboat Electrics Part 2: Generators and Inverters...... 228 Narrowboat Heating Part 1 – Stoves...... 233 Narrowboat Electrics Part 2: Generators and Inverters...... 239 Detailed narrowboat running costs for February 2013...... 244 A Case Study Of Liveaboard Narrowboat Xanadu...... 248 A Case Study Of Liveaboard Narrowboat Lucky Duck...... 254 A Case Study Of Liveaboard Narrowboat Doublefracture...... 257 A Day Trip To Braunston...... 261 A Case Study Of Liveaboard Narrowboat Miss George...... 265 Introduction I registered the domain livingonanarrowboat.co.uk in February 2010 in anticipation of moving out of my matrimonial home, away from a failed marriage brought about partly by a failed business, and onto a dilapidated thirty three year old narrowboat. I registered the domain on a whim without really knowing what I was going to do with it. I moved onto the boat because I needed somewhere to live but I couldn't afford even a modest flat. The boat, James, belonged to Roger Preen, owner of the marina where I had recently secured a part time position as groundsman. Roger had owned James since 1997 when he bought it from the original lady owner after the death of her husband. Roger spent ten hours a day, seven days a week, running the busy boatyard so he didn't really have any spare time on his new narrowboat so apart from the occasional day trip, James languished on a variety of moorings within the marina for over a decade. I persuaded them to rent the boat to me and I settled down to an easy, low cost life on the water. I was in for quite a shock. Now, three and a half years after moving myself and my single rucksack on board, I have a boat which I'm proud of. James is a warm and welcoming home, a home I hope to live in for many years to come. Over the last three and a half years I've learned a considerable amount about narrowboats, why they should work and why sometimes mine hasn't. It's been a steep learning curve. I had to resolve issues with water pouring through the roof, water cascading into the engine room and then under the back bedroom's flooring, water running in rivers under the floor from the front to the back of the boat, and water finding its way through poorly fitting window surrounds. I fitted a new steel cabin over the existing perished Masonite and then had the pleasure of painting the boat from top to bottom over a very intensive three weeks. I broke down on the cut on a bitter December day and had to be towed eight miles back to my mooring. I broke down again a few weeks later as a result of poor engine maintenance. I nearly broke down myself when I realised how much there was to narrowboat ownership and how little I knew. I replaced the threadbare carpets with durable wood effect laminate flooring and discovered that sections of the ply boards underneath also needed replacing. I had all of my seat covers replaced, had new curtains made and discovered and resolved issues with extreme damp. My on-board electrical systems were inadequate. I replaced and enhanced the battery bank, fitted a shore line, fitted a battery charger, an inverter and a solar panel system. I've identified and overcome internet and mobile phone connectivity issues to ensure that I always have virtual access to the outside world. When I say “I” have done all this, “I” have actually done very little of the physical work. I've only just learned which end of a screwdriver to hold so much of the refurbishment was beyond me. One of the many wonderful aspects of narrowboat life though is the friendly and ever helpful narrowboat community. I've gone from living in a bricks and mortar home where, even after ten years living in the same property, I knew very little about my next door neighbour, to joining an extended waterways community where everyone helps each other out. Much of the work done on James has been with help or advice from fellow boaters or from the enthusiastic and knowledgeable staff here at the marina. I can't thank them all enough. Because I like to keep records, because I like to write (and because I don't have many friends so don't get out much), I documented everything I spent on the boat and why I spent it. I started to add this information to my fledgling web site. As my boating knowledge grew, so did the site content. I started to realise that there were very few sites on the internet offering comprehensive information about the narrowboat lifestyle. I decided to add as much information as possible to mine and to share my new-found knowledge with as many potential narrowboat owners as possible. I sent out my first newsletter on 8th July 2010 to just eighty site subscribers. I have to admit, it wasn't very good and I wasn't really committed to sending out newsletters regularly. I sent a few out later that year and did slightly better in 2011. In 2012 with a couple of years of experience behind me I started sending out informative and well received newsletters every fortnight. My New Year's resolution for 2013, and one which I'm delighted to say I've stuck with, was to send out newsletters on Sunday every week. You'll see the occasional reference in the newsletters to one or more of the guides I sell through the site. I think, and plenty of site visitors who have purchased them agree, that they offer both very good value for money and what is probably the most comprehensive guide to living afloat you'll find anywhere. If you're interested in living a life afloat or just buying a narrowboat for recreational cruising, follow the links to find out more about them. If they don't interest you, just ignore any reference to them. There's plenty of free information in the guide to keep you busy. I try to ensure that each and every newsletter contains some of the practical information I've accumulated along the way. I think I've succeeded there but I'll let you be the judge. Here they are... Your Waterways Crystal Ball Published 8th January 2013 My last newsletter was sent out on Christmas Eve at a time when you should have had something better to do than read a newsletter about narrowboats. Many of you did though, so thank you. I nearly sent you another newsletter on New Year's eve. I thought better of it. I know you were all out partying. Personally, I don't like crowds so Sally and I stayed on the boat and had a special meal; Maine lobster, Alaskan wild salmon and a bottle of Wolf Blass. It was the perfect evening for us. The first week of the new year has flown by. It's been a very mild start to 2013. I've even considered letting the stove go out once or twice. There's some slightly cooler weather forecast for later on in the week but the winter so far has been a doddle. Long may it continue!

Online Narrowboat Budget Calculator "Narrowbudget" I've talked about it before. You may even be one of the beta testers of the original version, a very sophisticated Excel spreadsheet. It did just about everything you could ask a spreadsheet to do... apart from work for almost half of the people who tested it. The spreadsheet didn't work if the user had a version of Excel earlier than the 2007 release. It also didn't work for Mac users. It was virtually useless. The trial was a disaster but it was also a stepping stone to the current version. I decided to translate the spreadsheet into an application that would work directly from the site so that site visitors would be able to use it regardless of software or platform. Software architect and site subscriber Phil Copper has put the application together and, I have to say, he was a real pleasure to work with. The application works perfectly. It's fast and has far more bells and whistles than the original spreadsheet. It's a truly comprehensive solution to the problem that many potential narrowboat owners have trying to establish exactly how much boat ownership is going to cost them. I'll be releasing the application in four or five days. There are just a few cosmetic changes to make behind the scenes. I thought you might like to see some screen shots of it in the meantime and find out exactly what it does. You can read more about it here. I know you'll love it. Please note that I've intentionally removed the link to the application until it's ready later this week. (Note: At the time of writing this newsletter guide, the budget calculator has been live on the site for eight months. You can find out more about it here.

Narrowboat Electrics Part 2 Last week's newsletter included the first part of an excellent article about narrowboat electrics written by full time liveaboard and solar panel installer Tim Davis. I've now published the second and concluding part of his article. He talks about generators and inverters and what he considers the Holy Grail of on-board electrical systems. Tim is also thinking about writing further articles for the site. If you've enjoyed reading the two he's written so far there's an option for you to suggest which of several subjects he addresses next.

New Case Studies NB Xanadu - Mike is a kindred spirit. He moved onto his boat after his marriage failed although his first floating home was far more of a challenge than mine… a 27ft GRP cruiser. His current 50′ wide beam must feel SO spacious after that! Your Homework For A Cold And Snowy Sunday Afternoon Published 20th January 2013 Most of the time I really enjoy spending all of my working day outside. I haven't been quite so happy over the last few days. On Friday we had 2-3 inches of snow. It was fun to drive on for the first hour or two before it compacted into a thin layer of lethal ice. The cruel east wind didn't help either. I'm working on a project in our tip area at the moment. The tip was about of about an acre and was where we stored spare engines, engine parts, aggregate, timber and some old vehicles. We're disposing of quite a lot of the stuff down there so we can reduce the tip area by about 50% and use the additional space for container storage for our moorers. The work involves using the site digger and dumper to move heavy items around and level the ground ready for the containers. Sitting on a frozen digger seat while exposed to the easterly wind isn't very pleasant, but it's such a pleasure to get back to the boat after a day's work. The front of the boat including the saloon, dining and kitchen area is lovely and warm thanks to the coal fuelled stove. My "office", about twenty feet back from the stove, is a little chilly. I need a small mains powered Dimplex greenhouse heater to keep the chill off when I'm working. Further away from the stove, the bathroom and bedroom are quite cold. The wind direction makes a big difference to the temperature in different parts of the boat. The boat is moored facing west so the prevailing south westerly scours the port side of the boat, finding every gap in the windows and side hatches. When the wind blows from the east, it hits the back of the boat and finds the gap between the rear hatch and the back doors. Consequently the engine room is freezing when the east wind blows, as is the bedroom just behind it. I'm not bothered though. We're lovely and warm in bed with a four season duvet and additional blanket. The weather at the moment is unpleasant to be out in so it's great weather for staying in and doing a little narrowboat homework. It's the perfect time for working out how much your new boat is going to cost to buy and maintain. I've got the perfect tool to help you...

Online Narrowboat Budget Calculator "Narrowbudget" Great news! Narrowbudget is now live. I'm really pleased with it. Software architect Phil Copper has done a marvellous job. If you have a website and you need it enhancing by someone who is skilled, professional and a pleasure to work with, Phil's your man. You can contact him via a link on Narrowbudget's introduction page. In case you've just subscribed to the site, or you've not had time to read the newsletters recently, Narrowbudget is a bespoke narrowboat expenses calculator. If you're considering buying a narrowboat and aren't sure what costs you're likely to face, this application will really open your eyes. It's been developed as a result of my own three years on a narrowboat, extensive research into general narrowboat running costs and feedback from numerous other liveaboards. The image on the left is just one of the charts from the dashboard area where you can see at a glance what the lifestyle's going to cost you... and whether you can afford it. The application is available in two versions; the Standard version, which is free to you as a site subscriber, and Narrowbudget Gold. Narrowbudget Gold is a complete solution to the problem is pinning down narrowboat costs. It allows you to save your data, create unlimited workbooks so that you can explore different scenarios, comes with a completed workbook of my own liveaboard expenses for 2012, and both guides that I've published to date; Living on a Narrowboat: The REAL Cost of a Life Afloat and Living on a Narrowboat: 21 Liveaboard Case Studies. Narrowbudget Gold is priced at £19.95 but if you've already purchased one or both of the guides, you'll pay a reduced price. You can find out more about both versions here.

Narrowboat Heating Part 1: Stoves If you read and enjoyed Tim Davis's excellent articles on solar power and narrowboat electrics, you'll love his latest explanation of narrowboat heating systems. Narrowboat heating can be very confusing. Some boaters will tell you that all you need to keep you toasty in the depths of a harsh winter is a solid fuel stove. There's much more to it than that though. Tim has thoughfully and thoroughly explained all the options from multi fuel stoves to sophisticated central heating systems, and what you need to do to ensure that you have a constant stream of piping hot water for that all important shower after a cold day's cruising. Here's part one and all you need to know about narrowboat stoves. The Real Cost Of Going Cheap Published 24th February 2013 2013 is going to be an expensive year for Sally and I. I’ve lived on James now for just under three years and, although I’ve made essential improvements, the boat needs a great deal more doing to get it to the standard that we want. When I first moved on board at the beginning of April 2010, James was barely habitable. The rear cabin was virtually under water, the stove glass and flu was cracked which meant that the stove was unusable, and the original ply cabin top had perished to the point where rainwater would drip through the roof after anything more than a moderate shower.

In November 2011 I had James taken eight miles by road transport to a local boat builder – a journey that cost me £1,100 – where they over plated the original cabin with steel. When James was brought back to Calcutt, I blacked the hull while the boat was out of the water then, when James was launched again, I spent three weeks painting everything else. After the new cabin was added and I had finished painting, James was fully watertight. The exterior looks pretty good now even if, to me, the coach lines look like the profile for Blackpool’s Big Dipper. The interior, aesthetically, is in much better shape too. I had some paint mixed to match the cabin’s interior Parana pine cladding so that I could paint over a few areas too badly water stained to sand out, the curtains were dry cleaned, the carpet steam cleaned and everything else cleaned with a large dollop of elbow grease. We did as much as we could without spending a fortune but we’ve now decided to bite the bullet and upgrade James as much as possible. We started in January by buying new curtain material. Sally made the curtains, and a fantastic job she’s done too. Material cost £286.70 for ten pairs for the regular sized windows, plus a single for the one bathroom porthole.

In January we also bought a new mattress. I should have replaced it when I moved onto James. I don’t think the one that I inherited was terribly old but it had been in an uninhabited and therefore very damp boat for a number of years and had also been under one of the many spots where rainwater had leaked through the roof (resulting in some very suspicious looking stains on one side of the mattress). The original mattress was also quite soft. In fact so soft that it was causing Sally backache. We bought the new mattress from Argos. They delivered it almost to the boat. The roads were quite icy at the time so they would only come as far as the marina main car park. We had to transfer the mattress to one of the site vehicles the rest of the way. The mattress cost us £233.94 (reduced from £460) for a small double which is 6’3″ long by 4′ wide. Let me stray from the main subject for a minute and talk about beds and their sizes. I won’t take long and you may find the diversion very useful. Narrowboats by name, narrowboats by nature. With an exterior maximum width of just 6’10″ and in my case in the back cabin where we have our bed, an internal width of 6’4″ there isn’t much room for a fixed bed with mattress plus a passageway by its side. As our bed is four feet wide, we have a passageway 2’4″ wide through the bedroom. The passageway is wide enough, but with a standard double bed 4’6″ wide, it wouldn’t be. Both Sally and I are quite slim. Sally is a size 8, whatever that is, and I am 5’10″ tall and twelve and a half stone. Even so, a 4′ wide bed is quite a tight fit. If you are a little larger than us, and any taller than I am, you need to think carefully about the bed on your new boat. The width of the bed can be increased to include the passageway by fitting an infill section of mattress on a removable or folding base, but they you need to consider where you’re going to store the extra bits when they’re not in use. Back to the main topic: We wanted to make sure that the new mattress stayed in pristine condition. Our old mattress was often quite damp. It’s an often encountered problem on boats, especially where the mattress sits on the bed base. One solution is ensure that the bed base is ventilated. Ours was, but we still had a problem. We bought a Dry-Mat from Ship Shape Bedding. It works a treat. No more damp mattress, and no more £59 in my bank account. Our mattress wasn’t the only damp problem we had. The bedding in both dog baskets was constantly damp too. Warm dogs on bedding next to the cold boat floor = damp bedding. We had planned to fit some anti slip matting on the front deck so we put some under each dog basket to allow the air to circulate between boat and bed. It worked. We now have dry beds for both people and dogs. We’ve just ordered some more anti slip matting for the front deck to help protect the paintwork and manage the mess left by dogs with dirty paws. That’s another £87.60. Now that we’ve fully embraced spending money hand over fist, there’s no stopping us. I don’t know how long ago the current carpets were fitted in James, but their replacement is long overdue. Narrowboat flooring is subject to much abuse. In a house, the area of flooring that is used most is the hallway. A narrowboat is just one long hall. I’ve steam cleaned the carpets on James now three times, but you can’t make a silk purse out of a pig’s ear. The carpets have had it. A carpet isn’t the most practical flooring to have in a boat when you have dogs. Our dogs, Charlie and Daisy, are generally very good. They don’t make a mess. The vast majority of the time, they’re clean and can be left for quite long periods between toilet breaks. Unfortunately, they’re dogs. They’ll eat just about anything that’s vaguely edible; sometimes with disastrous consequences. You only need one or two bouts of doggy illness before steam cleaning is necessary and carpet cleaners aren’t the easiest of machines to manoeuvre around a narrowboat. We’ve decided to fit Colonia English oak effect vinyl flooring. The cabin floor area on James is 24 square metres. The cost of the flooring, including fitting is £640. We would have liked solid oak flooring but it just wasn’t either practical or cost effective to have it fitted around the built in furniture on James. I’m fed up paying for electricity when there’s sunshine that I can tap into. I’ve asked Tim Davis from Onboard Solar to fit a 300w system with an MTP controller. He’s coming to do that on 8th March. He’ll be leaving with £995 clutched in his hot, sweaty little hand. He claims that the system will pay for itself in about two years which sounds reasonable as I’ve paid over £500 for electricity for each of the last two years. And finally – for now – we’re going to fit an inverter. Today I was looking wistfully at the inverter on one of the shared ownership boats we look after. It’s a Vicktron 3kw pure sine wave charger inverter which can quite happily run power hungry appliances like vacuum cleaners, hair dryers and irons. Unfortunately at £2,300 it’s about £2,000 over my budget. We’ve decided to compromise. More about that later. Oh, I nearly forgot! Sally bought me a new chair for my office. The one I’ve been using for the last year was a bit of a liability. It was an old typists chair donated to me by the office at Calcutt. To put it mildly, it had seen better days. The base was five supports radiating from the centre column like spokes on a wheel. One of the spokes was broken so I had to carefully position the chair before I sat down to make sure that the missing “spoke” wasn’t behind me. Of course, I quite often forgot which resulted, much to Sally’s delight, in me being catapulted off the back of the chair onto whatever was behind me. The new chair cost £80. You may be wondering why I’m telling you about expenses I’ve incurred that may not be relevant to you and your boat. I’ll tell you why. James’ initial cost was quite low at just under £20,000 and with very good reason. When James was built in 1977, she was the bee’s knees and a beauty to behold. Sadly, the passage of time and the lack of some much needed TLC transformed her into an unattractive shadow of her former self. However, James was all that I could afford at the time – actually more than I could afford – but more than that, the boat just felt right. The ply cabin needed replacing, the rust on the gunnels crunched underfoot, the engine room was falling apart, there was no effective heating, the inside was extremely damp, the carpet was ruined and the electrics needed upgrading. You get what you pay for and James wasn’t worth much at the time. James was in a liveable condition when I first moved on board, but only just. I was using James as a static floating home so the engine and the ability to live “off grid” weren’t important to me at the time. I needed a roof over my head. James just about provided one. I moved on board in April 2010. The spring and summer were a pleasure as long as I anticipated the rainwater pouring through the roof during heavy showers and laid my collection of pots and pans in the right place. The winter was a different kettle of fish. Oh boy, was I cold! The winter of 2010/11 was severe. One night I recorded minus eighteen outside. The following morning I had a quarter of an inch of frost on the inside of the unheated engine room. My bedroom was next door. The morning temperature was just under freezing in the back cabin. When I leapt out of bed in the mornings it was to put on as many clothes as I could. I would often wear two fleeces, a fleece hat and gloves inside the boat. It wasn’t warm and it wasn’t pleasant. I spent much of my time sitting as close to the stove as possible trying to keep warm. The following two winters were much different after I had the original ply cabin over plated and more insulation sandwiched between the old and the new cabin. I don’t really notice the temperature outside these days. I’ve just checked the temperature outside. It’s minus four, but I’m as snug as a bug in a rug inside the boat. Adding the new steel cabin and the additional insulation has transformed my life on board from endurance to comfort, but the transformation wasn’t cheap. Insulating and waterproofing James was just the first stage of James’ necessary upgrade. I intend to use the boat this year for what it was built to do, cruising. But I can’t do that until I’m happy with the engine and I’ve added an inverter so that we can continue to use the more important of our 230v appliances while we travel. You can buy a narrowboat for relatively little money, but you need to make sure that it’s fit for purpose, especially if you’re going to live on board. You can survive on just about any condition boat. You won’t die, but you won’t have much quality of life either. You’ll see no end of decrepit barely afloat boats littering the canal side in many areas of the country. The boats, and the lifestyle of those on board, cost very little but, apart from the very few days in the UK when the days and nights are warm and calm, it’s not much fun. The first on your list of essential requirements is that your new boat is watertight and that it will be warm enough during the periods of the year that you will be using it. As far as I’m concerned a good solid fuel stove is essential but you have to consider whether it is enough. Painting your boat is hard work, requires a degree of skill to get a half decent finish or costs a fortune to have done professionally. As a very rough guide you can expect to pay £100 a foot, so for my 62′ boat professionally applied paintwork would have cost over £6,000. Painting the hull requires very little skill but is very hard work and very dirty work. All of your steelwork needs to be constantly protected from the elements, as I know to my great expense. In total, the cost over plating the original wooden cabin on James was just over £10,000. The steelwork cost £6,5oo plus VAT, the road transport £1,100 and the remedial work another £1,000. Then I had to take three weeks off work to paint the new cabin. The cost of the work was hard enough to bear, but the disruption was incredible. I had to find somewhere else to live while the work was done. Fortunately for me, the ever considerate marina owner Roger Preen let me use one of the out-of-season hire boats for three weeks, so I was OK for accommodation. But the mess that I had to clear up after the work was completed was incredible. All of the windows were removed from the original cabin prior to transportation then fitted into the new steel cabin after the boat was returned. All of the window openings were protected from the weather during transportation and while the work was done but in some areas the protection wasn't very effective. The boat was full of thick black dust produced as a result of grinding the sheet metal. In the dining area, red hot sparks had burned dozens of holes into an upholstered seat. The remedial work involved more grinding so that the windows, vents and chimney flue could be refitted, and the manufacture of hardwood inserts between the old and the new cabin sides around the windows. It all made quite a mess. If you’re considering having substantial remedial work done after you move on board, please bear this in mind. After all of this costly work, James still wasn’t ready for cruising. It’s not critical that I have 230v power when I’m off the mooring, but I want it. Maybe you feel the same way. I spend many hours each day editing this site, so I need my laptop. If I only had to think about my laptop, I would buy an adaptor that will run the laptop via the boat’s 12v supply, but we have other stuff too. We have a Kindle, and iPad, a mobile phone each, chargers for batteries, and a television. They’re the easy appliances to accommodate. They use very little power. However, there’s the heavy duty appliances to think about too; vacuum cleaner, iron and washing machine. I have a simple solution to deal with the iron… don’t use one. Sadly, Sally doesn’t agree. Before we met, I didn’t use an iron at all. I didn’t need to. I didn’t have many clothes but they were all chosen with care. Everything was very good quality but well suited to life on a boat. After washing and drying, I simply hung them up and watched the creases fall out of them. Sally had other ideas about my personal dress. It’s a woman thing. She wanted me in smarter, better coloured clothes. I have to agree that, when we go out these days, I’m far more presentable. The downside is that there are hours of ironing involved and I have to be careful getting on and off the boat so I don’t get my clothes dirty. After we’ve been out, I can’t wait to get back to the boat and into my good old crease free functional favourites. The vacuum cleaner is a problem. We have two dogs and a solid fuel stove. The combination means that there’s plenty of dust and dog hair to deal with. A dustpan and brush doesn’t do the same job. We need a vacuum cleaner if we intend to go on any cruises longer than a week. One option is a rechargeable vacuum cleaner that we can run through the inverter. Dyson make some good (expensive) ones. We’re looking into it. We also need a washing machine. At the moment we rely on the washing machines at the marina. They’re a bit hit and miss to be honest. Their cleaning capabilities are adequate but no more than that. There’s also the inconvenience of carrying loads of washing to the shower block, hoping that the machines are free, and making sure that we have enough machine tokens to run them for the required time. We would both rather have a washing machine on board. We’ve identified a space where the compact washing machine will fit. There’s a 230v power point already in place. We just need to run a cold water supply to it from the bathroom six feet away. The low power mains appliances are no problem. I’m going to have a fairly small pure sine inverter (1600w) fitted which will allow me to run them from the domestic battery bank, but I’ll have to think carefully about the larger items. Not only do I need a bigger inverter if I want to run these appliances from the leisure batteries, but I also need the inverter to be pure rather than modified sine to run the Zanussi washing machine that we want to use. As I pointed out earlier, at £2,300 a pop, I can either have a powerful pure sine inverter, or another car. We’ll decide how to deal with this issue when we’re able to spend more time cruising than we do now. James was a cheap boat to buy but it needed, and still needs, a great deal spending on it before it’s in the condition and has the level of equipment that suits us and the lifestyle that we hope to achieve in the near future. When you buy your boat, consider what you want out of it. Work out how close the boat that you’re looking at is in terms of condition and equipment and how much it’s going to cost you to get it to where you want. You may find that going cheap is the most expensive option.

Liveaboard Case Study: NB Lucky Duck Some people take to boating earlier than others. Amy and James have been living on their narrowboat since their early twenties. They love the lifestyle. In fact, they’re about to sell their current boat so that they can buy and restore their own historic narrowboat. If you’re interested in a ready made liveaboard narrowboat, you can find all the boat’s details at the end of their case study. You can read about their life afloat and their boat here. Stove Fuel Test Published 3rd March 2013 It may be the beginning of March and ever so close to the start of much needed warmer spring weather, but my stove is still in use twenty four hours a day. I use Pureheat, compressed coal briquettes. It burns well, produces plenty of heat and stays alight overnight, but it’s messy. Very messy. It drives Sally mad. No matter how often she races around the boat with a duster (and she races around the boat with a duster very often), there’s a new layer of dust, often within hours. It’s coal dust and the price we have to pay for using very convenient coal briquettes. Because of the constant dust, and because we often get bags of coal with holes in them which let the water in, soak the coal and form an oil coloured liquid in the bottom of the bag which inevitably end up on the carpet, I am always looking for a better alternative.

Waterways World Stove Fuel Test Waterways World have tested stove fuel this month. It’s fascinating reading if your boat’s main heat source is going to be a solid fuel stove. They tested coal briquettes, wood briquettes, wood, straw logs, newspaper logs and peat. The testers recorded stove heat, room heat and the volume of ash and unburned fuel for each of the products tested. Of all the fuel coal briquettes produced the most ash and unburned fuel. “No surprise there!”, said Sally waving her duster around for the umpteenth time that day. The four wood briquettes tested produced just 8% – 11% of the volume of ash – and possibly dust – produced by the coal. Of course, the heat produced by the fuel is the most important factor and the wood briquettes scored well there too. They actually produced slightly more room heat than coal. Many boaters burn wood in their stoves. The clinical tests proved what I have suspected for a long time. Even though wood can be sourced for free as you cruise the network, it’s just not practical to use it. Wood, with the exception of ash, can’t be used immediately. It needs to be stored under cover for at least six months so that it can dry out. If the wood you burn isn’t dry, much of the energy produced during burning is used to evaporate the water in the wood rather than producing heat. If you live on your boat you probably don’t have anywhere to store your wood to dry it out. You certainly don’t have the space inside your boat and, unless you have a permanent mooring with dry canal- side storage, you don’t have the space outside either. You’ll see many liveaboard narrowboats with logs stored on the boat’s roof. It’s not going to dry there, so it’s not going to burn very well. The Waterways World testers used wood that had been seasoned for over a year. Even then, the results weren’t very impressive. Seasoned wood only produced about 60% of the heat produced by either coal or wood briquettes. Peat and newspaper logs didn’t fare very well at all. Peat is difficult to light and doesn’t produce much heat. Newspaper logs may be free to produce yourself once you’ve bought an inexpensive log maker, but they are time consuming and messy to make, leave a lot of unburned ash/fuel and don’t produce much heat. The best fuel on test appeared to be wood briquettes. As the dust created by our coal use drives Sally mad, I thought I would run my own test to see how the briquettes fare in real life. I’ve ordered two 10kg sample bags from firewoodandlogs.co.uk; one bag of Ecofire high density heat logs and one of their Ecofire oak nuggets. Each 10kg sample bag costs £15 including delivery. There are a number of factors that will determine whether we switch to heat logs full time. One of them is the cost. The high density heat logs are available singly at £3.99 each, in packs of fifty for £183.75 (£3.68 each) and in packs of 100 for £364.09 ( £3.64 each). The fuel that I use at the moment, Pureheat in 25kg bags, costs me £10.78 a bag. The cost of the heat logs for the same weight fuel is £9.98, £9.10 and £8.27. The heat logs work of cheaper than my current Pureheat, but it’s not the only consideration. The option I would prefer is the 50 bags at £3.64 each. Where can I store them? I buy Pureheat ten at a time. I store them on the walkway next to the boat. Although the coal is stored in plastic bags to keep them dry, sometimes the bags have holes in them. Wet coal is messy to handle but the fuel still lights easily enough. Heat logs are an entirely different matter. I use softwood heat logs at the moment. I don’t use them often so a pack of ten kept in a cupboard is enough to provide a quick burst of heat if the boat is cold when I get up in the morning. They’re softwood so they’re not particularly good but they work very well if they’re kept dry. However if they come into contact with water they act like a sponge, expand to twice their size and prove very difficult to light. Heat logs need to be kept completely dry. Fortunately Sally and I have a storage unit, a twenty foot container, a couple of miles from the boat. We can keep it there and bring two or three bags back to the boat as and when we need it. Storing the bags next to the boat wouldn’t work. Any holes in the bags would render the logs unusable. I considered buying a sample bag of one of the other heat logs on test, Easy Logs. Unfortunately the supplier, The Briquette Company, doesn’t want to do business with southern softies, or for anyone else outside their immediate area. They’re based in Preston and will only deliver less than 25 bags to the nearby postcodes. They’re expensive too. The equivalent of 25kg of logs cost £13.10 compared with £9.10 for the Ecofire logs that I’ve already ordered. I’m now waiting for my two sample bags of logs to be delivered. I placed the order yesterday. They emailed me almost immediately to tell me that they were out of stock (because of the WW article?) but would deliver them week commencing 4th March. I’ll let you know how I get on with them. Update 2nd March 2013 My 10kg sample bag of Ecofire Oak Nuggets arrived yesterday. I’ve used them already. What a waste of money. Each oak nugget is slightly smaller than a tennis ball. The first time I used them, I made the mistake of filling the grate with about fifteen of them. The result was spectacular. I had a taste of what it must be like standing in the centre of the sun… on a particularly warm day. We had to throw the doors and windows wide open, remove the Ecofan off the stove top before it took off, and move to the other end of the boat until the heat died down… which took about half an hour. It was an intense, but short lived blast of heat and totally useless for providing a steady heat throughout the boat. On my next attempt I added just six nuggets to the stove. The heat was less intense, but still too much for comfort even with the fire damped down (by closing the vents). Half and hour later I had to add another half dozen, and so on throughout the day. Coal briquettes are so much easier and more practical to use. My stove is old and not particularly good. It’s certainly not a patch on the Morso Squirrel which, I’m told, will stay alight for more than 24 hours without any interference. Even so, my stove will stay alight without a problem overnight if I use coal. If I had to rely on the oak nuggets, the fire would last no more than a couple of hours unattended. The oak briquettes are absolutely useless for providing steady heat. They burn quickly and fiercely. In the Waterways World test there was very little ash or unburned fuel left in the stove at the end of the test. I agree. There was very little residue in my stove either, but what WW didn’t mention was the unburned fuel in the bag. I didn’t weigh it but I estimated that there was between 500g and 1kg of sawdust in the bottom of the bag which in addition to the ash in the stove was more waste than the coal briquettes produced in the test. I can’t think of any occasion when I would rather have a bag of Ecofire Oak Nuggets on the boat rather than my regular Pureheat. Coal might produce more dust, but it’s a far, far more reliable heat source.

Essential stove maintenance I’ve just been talking to a fellow liveaboard about the above fuel test. He told me a story demonstrating two very good points. I’ll share both with you. A few years ago, he had to go to Germany leaving his wife alone on the boat. While he was away, the carbon monoxide alarm went off and continued its shrieking all day. She put it under the mattress to deaden the sound and thought nothing more of it. Of course the alarm was making a racket because it had detected dangerously high levels of carbon monoxide inside the boat. Fortunately they weren’t high enough to incapacitate or kill his wife. When he returned to the boat, and recovered from shock at hearing what his wife had done to silence the carbon monoxide alarm, he used a torch to look down his chimney. Wood burning stove flues can suffer from a build up of tar. Coal burning stoves suffer from accumulated soot. He burns coal. A piece of biscuit hard soot had fallen from the flue wall across the flue which restricted the air flow. It hadn’t caused enough of an obstruction to prevent the coal from burning, but it was enough cause the carbon monoxide to build up to an unacceptable level. Learn from others’ mistakes before it’s too late; 1. Make sure you have a carbon monoxide alarm (and make sure that everyone on your boat knows what it’s for 2. Clean your flue regularly. You can by flue brushes at many chandlers, but you don’t need to. A slightly longer than flue length piece of chain will do the trick. Take your chimney off, drop one end of the chain down the flue, and give it a good rattle. Make sure the stove door is firmly closed before you do it though, or you’ll be cleaning your boat for a week!

WiFi For Narrowboats When I first moved onto James I couldn’t connect to the internet. I had bought a USB dongle to get me online. The instructions were simple. Plug the dongle into your laptop’s USB port, watch the dongle automatically install the required software, and click the Connect button that appears on the screen. In reality it wasn’t quite so easy. The dongle doesn’t work very well inside a steel box. I had to buy a USB extension lead so that I could hang the dongle out of the window before I could get a signal. I wrapped a plastic bag around it to protect the dongle from the rain. It looked very untidy. The set up is much neater now. I have run the extension cable through some nearby trunking and up through a vent where it is attached to the top of a four foot metal pole I have attached to the roof. Using the dongle alone, I could get a good internet connection for my laptop, but not for my Kindle, my Galaxy S2 (It’s now well and truly dead. I went for a swim with the phone. Neither the phone nor I enjoyed it. I recovered, the phone didn’t) or Sally’s iPhone or iPad. I bought an Edimax N150 wireless 3G compact router. It works perfectly. All of our devices are now fully connected. Fitting Solar Panels Published 1th March 2013 Nothing is ever as easy or straightforward as it should be. It’s so frustrating. I’ve just had a Sterling Pure Sine Wave 1600w inverter fitted. It’s more than enough to run the smaller electrical appliances I have on board. It will run my laptop, iPad, two mobile phones and the television. I could switch to a 12v television but as the one I have is perfectly serviceable and is fixed to the wall using a bracket designed for that particular television, I’m not going to change it. The inverter will also run a small vacuum cleaner if necessary. While the inverter is perfect for what I want, unfortunately the mains wiring I have in James is not. It needs replacing before the next BSS test if James is to pass. Added to the rewiring headache, I also need to get part of the original floor boards replaced. On Thursday we had a local flooring company arrive to remove the existing carpet and replace it with imitation light oak plastic planks. They don’t sound very attractive the way I’ve described them, but they look great and what’s more, they’re practical. They’re easy to clean and they’re waterproof. The proper name is Colonia English Oak. All of the original ply flooring appears to be in very good shape considering the age of the boat and considering that it spent over a decade neglected on a mooring. but a section of flooring has suffered from the neglect. In the centre of the boat, aft of the galley, there are side and roof hatches on both port and starboard. James originally had a wooden cabin with wooden hatches. The roof hatches perished during the decade of neglect and allowed water to drip onto the ply beneath. There’s a section about two feet square which needs replacing. Of course, the replacement isn’t straightforward. When James was built, as with all boats, the flooring was laid before the fitted furniture in the cabin. Full eight by four feet ply sheets were fitted in place over the boat’s bearers. The section that’s damaged is between two bearers so if the section is cut out, there’s nothing to support the new piece. The solution is to fit a new section of ply over the damaged part and secure it to the surrounding undamaged ply. This repair will of course raise the level of the flooring by the thickness of the new ply. It’s not going to be a quick job to ensure that the repair doesn’t stand out like a sore thumb. It’s a job for another day. In the meantime, Mark from Floors 4 Less has laid all the flooring apart from this one small area. He’ll come back to fit the small section once the remedial work has been done. He’s done a wonderful job and has justified his £250 fitting fee for a full day’s work. He was with us from 8.30am until 6.00pm and worked none stop throughout the day. We are very pleased with the work and at £640 including the fitting, it’s not a bad price. Just to make sure that we didn’t have any peace and quiet on Friday, we also arranged for Tim Davis from Onboard Solar to fit his ever so popular 300w solar panel system for us. Tim has been professionally fitting solar panels on narrowboats now for just over a year. He did a huge amount of research before deciding on the configuration he uses now. His services have proven very popular. He’s fitted 150 systems so far with more and more orders coming in every day, and for very good reason. They work extremely well. If you’re considering spending long periods away from a static mooring, solar panels offer you enormous benefits. We don’t live in the sunniest place in the world but, with recent technological advances, solar panels can provide you with free electricity even on dull winter days. Solar panels allow you to moor in a spot that takes your fancy for a few days without having to run your engine to top up your batteries. They should save me a fortune on marina electricity charges as I currently pay 20p a unit when I have my shoreline plugged in. I had high expectations of Tim, and I’m delighted to say that he was a real pleasure to work with. In an industry where shoddy workmanship and poor standards are all too common, Tim provided an excellent service. He phoned me on Thursday to tell me that he was coming and at what time. He arrived on time, was polite and ever so friendly, worked exceptionally hard and fitted three 100w solar panels and the associated electrics in about three hours. And that included getting the wiring from the roof, through two cabins and into the engine room. James’ original cabin has been over plated with steel, so Tim had to drill though the steel, through the two inch polystyrene filled gap, through the original wooden cabin and into the engine room. There was a little good humoured muttering as he threaded the wiring through the cabin tops, but it didn’t take him long. The solar panels are now installed and look quite attractive on the boat roof, but they’re not there to look pretty. They’re there to provide me with free power courtesy of the sun. How are they doing? It’s early days yet but the signs are very good. I haven’t seen any sunshine since Tim installed them. On Friday the weather was about as dull as it’s possible to get with thick cloud and fog. However, the panels still produced something. 1.6 amps is better than nothing. Today, there’s still no sun but the day is brighter than when Tim was here. I’ve just checked and I’m getting 3.2 amps. Actually, I’ve just been outside and tilted the panels into where the sun would be if it was out, and now I’m getting 4.7 amps. It’s enough to power my fridge. Yippee! While he was with me, Tim also reconnected the rev counter and the engine temperature gauges that are set into the pigeon box just in front of Tim in the photo. They were disconnected when the pigeon box was removed during the cabin over plating. Unfortunately the wiring wasn’t labelled when it was disconnected so Tim had to spend some time experimenting. He cracked it in the end though. I knew he would. I also took advantage of Tim’s mechanical knowledge while he was here. I have a problem with my engine or rather, with my gearbox. When the boat’s moving the propeller is turning intermittently. One possible cause is low oil in the gearbox. I know it’s not that though because I’ve recently had it topped up. Tim thinks that it is the gearbox clutch plate. He told me that if it’s the clutch plate that’s the problem, the symptoms will probably disappear when the engine warms up. I tried it. He’s right. All I need to do now is get a reconditioned gearbox fitted. Remember the B.O.A.T. acronym? Bet On Another Thousand. Don’t you just love boating?

Waterways World Stove Fuel Test Since last week’s newsletter and the article about stove fuel, a number of site users have emailed me with additional information. I’ve created a dedicated post for the stove fuel test and additional comments. You can read it here.

C & RT Tighten Up On Illegal Moorers Historically “bridge hopping” – the practice of constantly moving a liveaboard narrowboat backwards and forwards between two points in the same area – has been largely ignored by the authorities. It’s against the rules but British Waterways didn’t have the resources, or the inclination, to tackle the problem. Continuous cruisers don’t have to pay for a home mooring. As many moorings, even none residential moorings, cost in excess of £2,000p.a. it’s quite a saving but continuous cruisers have an obligation to cruise continually. They must move their boat, as part of a progressive journey, every fourteen days. Bogus continuous cruisers often over extend their stay on short term visitor moorings, on water points and on the bollards reserved for boaters entering and leaving locks. We had one very annoying example at Calcutt last week. A “continuous cruiser”, complete with a roof overflowing with coal, logs, planters full of weeds, bikes and a wheelbarrow, chained and padlocked his boat to one of the bollards at the entrance to Calcutt Bottom Lock. (He clearly wasn’t the brightest of buttons. The chain was secured by a heavy duty padlock to the bollard at one end, but simply tied on to the boat with a rope at the other end). His boat prevented easy access to the lock for five days. His attitude demonstrated a complete disregard for other boaters. The Trust recognises that it’s a nuisance caused by a minority group of boaters which causes problems for the majority of law abiding boat owners. They are taking steps to tackle the problem. Here’s some information from Damien Kemp in the Trust’s latest edition of the Boaters’ Update, and here’s the Trust’s interpretation of BW’s Continuous Cruising rules. Getting Rid Of Unwelcome Visitors Published 17th March 2013 Yippee! It’s grass cutting time again. On Wednesday last week I cut the site grass for the first time this year. It’s a sign that spring in on the way. The grass doesn’t start to grow in the new year until the weather warms up a bit. I know it’s been cold in the last week with a biting wind and the occasional snow flurry, but the bright sunshine with just a hint of heat has been enough to fool the grass. At this time of the year I have to be careful where I cut. Snowdrops and daffodils are everywhere. It’s the first wave of floral colour at the marina. The first of many. Calcutt is a beautiful place to moor in the spring and early summer. We have three of the richest wild flower meadows in Warwickshire. In fact, they’re so rich in flowers and grasses that they have been designated SSSI (Site of Special Scientific Interest). I have the pleasure of spending my days riding around on a mower through them all. In a month or so, I’ll be riding through carpets of cowslips and daisies in the beautiful spring sunshine waiting for our resident swans’ babies to arrive. The signets usually hatch in early May. At the moment Mr. & Mrs. Swan are busy romancing each other. It’s beautiful to watch. Unfortunately, there’s a part of their mating that drives me mad.

Removing Problem Geese… The Easy Way At this time of the year the cob (the male swan) is very territorial. He doesn’t want any competition on his turf which, as far as he’s concerned, is Calcutt’s Meadows marina. He tolerates the mallards, moorhens, coots and grebes, but he truly hates the Canada geese. So do I. There’s nothing pleasant about Canada geese. They’re noisy, far too numerous and very, very dirty. Each Canada goose eats about four pounds of grass every day. Three pounds of that comes out the other end to make walking along the towpath or riverbank where they congregate quite unpleasant. When I moved onto James, there were about a dozen resident geese. They were extremely noisy. Continuous honking during the day wasn’t a problem but they were exceptionally annoying at night. There were many nights when I lay awake for hours because of their incessant noise. A dozen geese were bad enough, but they enjoyed it so much they invited their friends. Two hundred of them. You can imagine the mess that two hundred Canada geese make with each of them dropping 3lb of waste every day. Each weeks they dropped two tons of faeces around the marina. I tried everything I could think of to get rid of them. I took our work boat, a 50′ narrowboat, for a spin around the marina to chase them off. They just swam out of the way and climbed onto the acre grass and tree covered island in the middle of the marina. I moored the boat on the island and ran like a lunatic through the trees to chase them off. They flew back onto the water. I surged around the marina again with the boat, so they climbed back onto the island. I climbed back onto the island, chased them off and then peppered them with windfall horse chestnuts. They didn’t mind. I walked around the marina at night, powerful torch in hand, trying to scare them off. I scared off the coots, mallards, moorhens and grebes, but not the geese. I investigated Canada geese scarers on the internet. I could buy imitation dead geese or a static flashing light that mimicked the eyes of their natural predator, the coyote. These bird scarers were horribly expensive though so I didn’t try them. What I did buy from the internet cost me just £20 and worked instantly every time I used it. It’s breeding season and our resident cob likes to chase Canada geese all day and all night. We have a breeding pair of swans. We also have a breeding pair of Canada geese. I don’t usually have a problem with geese these days, but during the breeding season the breeding pair of geese return to do battle with the cob and with me. Last night I head the geese’s none stop honking at 2am as the cob chased them. I dressed in warm clothes – it was minus four – grabbed my torch and my secret weapon, and took the dogs for an unexpected but very welcome night time walk. I used the torch to identify the geese and fired my weapon at them. My ever so effective geese scarer is a military grade green laser. I’m not sure why it works on the geese and not on the other water fowl, but it works incredibly well and what’s more, it doesn’t harm them. One quick flash, an instant collective panicky honking and they all take to the skies. The laser only works at night when the bright green beam is visible, but it’s at night when I want them off the marina. So last night the dogs enjoyed a walk in the dark and I restored calm to the usually tranquil marina. The mating pair will return tomorrow during the day so I’ll be out again tomorrow night, and the night after, and the one after that… Know Your Narrowboat Costs Let’s get this straight. Living on a narrowboat comfortably is not a low cost alternative to a bricks and mortar home. The cost is comparable to living in a three bed semi when you take all of the costs into consideration. If you’re thinking of moving onto a narrowboat just because you can’t afford to get onto the property ladder, don’t do it. Living on a narrowboat is a lifestyle choice, and a wonderful one at that, but it isn’t cheap. Not so long ago, we had a narrowboat for sale here at Caluctt which could have been turned into an acceptable home if a huge amount of time and money was spent on it. The boat was in a terrible state; the engine needed a major overhaul, the inside was damp and mouldy and the roof leaked. Surprisingly, it was sold within a month of coming to us. The three male purchasers had clubbed together to find the modest asking price. They were quite honest about their intentions. They were going to move on board immediately and use the boat as a floating home “somewhere in Birmingham”. They didn’t have any money for the license, for moorings or for repairs and maintenance. I’m fairly sure that this tired old boat will end up illegally moored, unlicensed and unloved along the towpath somewhere in England’s second city. The boat will undoubtedly cost them less to “maintain” than a home on dry land but their lifestyle won’t be legal, pleasant or comfortable. Maintaining a narrowboat properly isn’t cheap. A narrowboat’s steel exterior needs protecting from the elements. The hull needs painting every three years, the cabin every 7 – 10 years. Even if you’re not going to do much (or any) cruising, the engine needs maintaining so that you can run it daily to charge your batteries. Your batteries will need replacing every 3 – 5 years and your canopies on your front and/or rear decks will need renewing periodically. Keeping your boat warm is no cheaper than keeping your house warm. Most narrowboats have heating provided by solid fuel stoves, diesel or gas central heating systems, or a combination of both. Contrary to popular opinion, you can’t easily heat your boat for free using wood that you find on your travels. Unless logs are seasoned (left to dry) for a minimum of six months under cover, they use as much energy evaporating the moisture they still hold as they do producing heat. You simply don’t have the space inside your narrowboat to store enough wood. Before you spend any more time or energy on your narrowboat plans, you need to be absolutely certain that you fully understand the cost of maintaining your dream home. To give you a head start, I’ve written a post detailing the exact expenses I incurred on my own boat during February 2013.

A Place To Search For Moorings residential moorings are hard to find. You’ll probably spend as much time looking for a mooring, especially a residential mooring, as you will looking for a narrowboat. Very few marinas have official residential moorings but some unofficially allow liveaboards. I was told today that Mercia marina “has no problem with liveaboards” although their web site doesn’t give any indication that they offer official residential moorings. The majority of residential moorings on the canal network are linear moorings along the canal, usually on the “offside” on the opposite side from the towpath. You’ll have to do a bit of work to find available online moorings. You’ll see them sometimes advertised in the waterways magazines, and sometimes advertised here on Apolloduck. You need to sort the wheat from the chaff or, in this case, the coastal from the inland moorings, but there are some interesting ones there.

A New Service For Potential Narrowboat Owners Last week, I introduced an idea I had to help potential narrowboat owners decipher the terminology they’re faced with when they through a narrowboat’s advert. I though it was a good idea, but there aren’t many site visitors who agree. I asked readers of last week’s newsletter to let me know if they thought the idea would help them. Only 0.5% of newsletter recipients completed the two question survey so, at the moment, I’m not going to spend any more time creating the service. I’ve copied the introduction to the idea below as well as the link to the survey. If you are seriously thinking about buying a narrowboat, please just take a minute to cast your vote. I’m thinking about adding a new section to the forum. If you’re a potential narrowboat owner and you’ve reached the stage where you’re seriously looking at boats for sale, you can use this section to introduce yourself and let other site users know what you want to use your boat for. You can say whether you want to use your boat for limited recreational cruising or as a full time home on either a static mooring or for continually cruising the network. You can provide a link to the boat advert you’re interested in and ask current boat owners to offer the benefit of their experience. There are hundreds of boat owners are now registered on the site. Some of them are very active on the forum. I will add observations about the boat for sale based on the information provided in the advert. I will ask other boat owning forum members to do the same. By reading the response to both your own posts and posts by other soon-to-be boat owners, you’ll be able to build up a pretty good knowledge of the terminology and the specifications to look for in a narrowboat advert. What do you think? Is it a feature that you think you would use? I’m more than happy to set it up if there are enough people interested. It’s up to you to let me know one way or the other. I’ve created a very quick two question survey here. It will take you less than a minute to cast your vote.

Your Own Narrowboat Blog On Livingonanarrowboat.co.uk If you’re a regular visitor to this site, you’ve probably read about my transition from bricks and mortar to steel and water and the challenges I’ve faced since I moved on board. Although the story of my life afloat will have given you some idea of life in a floating home, I feel that this site could offer a far more comprehensive and rounded view of the liveaboard lifestyle. I moor in a marina. I’m very lucky. Everything I need is close at hand. I have an unlimited water supply (which is never frozen) and access to 230v electrickery on the pier. I can buy coal and gas at reception whenever I need it, and transport it easily to the boat. I have a choice of two Elsan points where I can empty my cassette, and a choice of two manned pump outs if I had a pump out toilet. I’m very lucky to be able to moor here because most marinas don’t allow liveaboards. They aren’t allowed here either. I’m only allowed to live on board because I work here. Your situation will almost certainly be different. You’ll either have to consider the life of a continuous cruiser, find a canal or riverside residential mooring or, heaven forbid, take your chances on the canal without an official mooring. I want this site to reflect all aspects of liveaboard life, so I’ve had an idea. If you are in the process of selling your worldly goods and investing the proceeds in a narrowboat, I would like to offer you your own blog on this site. You’ll have your blog address, something like http://livingonanarrowboat.co.uk/NBWillow and a ready made audience to read what you’ve written. This site is currently number five in the waterways site rankings and enjoys in excess of 7,000 weekly visits. Please let me know if you’re interested. All that I ask is that you can write reasonably well and that you’re committed to your dream of owning and maybe living on your narrowboat. I particularly want to hear from you if you’re going to be a continuous cruiser. I don’t get the chance to cruise very often because I still need to work. I want this site to include content from boat owners as they cruise the length and breadth of our wonderful canal network, complete with the adventures they’ve had along the way. Please email me if you’re interested. Essential Boating Equipment Published 24th March 2013 Why is the weather such a popular topic in the UK? Because you don’t know what’s going to happen from one day to the next! Easter is less than a week away and parts of Britain are without power, roads are impassable due to snow drifts and you can’t cruise down the Llangollen canal because of fallen trees. Providing your boat is up to scratch though, the weather doesn’t really matter. However, It’s very important that you spend time, energy and money to ensure that it’s fit for all seasons. James wasn’t an acceptable winter home when I moved on board. It is now. There’s a cruel east wind blowing snow horizontally across the marina as I write this, but I’m just wearing a polo shirt as I sit and type. I’ve taken the time to understand how everything on board works. If anything on the boat didn’t work effectively, I had it changed. I’m useless at the practicalities myself but one of the many wonderful virtues of the boating community is the willingness to help fellow boaters. I’m never stuck for a helping hand or two. The importance of understanding your boat, how it works, and why sometimes it doesn’t, was brought home to me by the email I received last week. This new liveaboard boater clearly hasn’t spent any time trying to resolve what are probably fairly simple issues. “My partner and I moved onto our narrowboat in November. All the possessions we knew we wouldn’t need or be able to squeeze onto the boat were sold. The moving day came and we were so excited. Its been a serious shock to the system I can tell you. Don’t get me wrong, I love the boat, the people in our marina and the peace. What I don’t like is the rain! We have residential moorings in [removed to protect privacy] and the river and surrounding areas rise rapidly. When will it end? My dreams are steadily being shattered. Heating is a multi fuel stove which is fine for heating the living room and galley but as the bedroom is 55ft away it’s absolutely freezing! We can only figure out how to use the radiators when the engine is running. I’m sure it can be done just on the gas but I haven’t been able to understand the huge manual that comes with the Alde yet. The pump out toilet blocked with terrible consequences so a porta loo has to suffice now. The chimney had to be swept etc etc. Please tell me that this will get better. We want to live the dream. Please tell me this isn’t what every winter is like onboard. Surely the summer will make up for it?”. I imagine that the Alde simply isn’t lit. The radiators are being heated by the engine when it’s running but nothing’s heating them when the engine is switched off. Aldes are quite common heating systems. I imagine there will be fellow boaters or marina staff who can offer a quick solution to the problem, or at least confirm whether the Alde is working or not. If it’s not working it needs fixing. There’s no excuse here for remaining cold and uncomfortable on the boat. The pump out loo blockage is something else which should be fairly easy to resolve, rather than abandoning the system completely and switching to a Porta Potti. As for the chimney, sweeping the flu is a basic part of narrowboat maintenance. Living on a narrowboat is a great lifestyle but you need to put a little more effort in than you do on dry land and understand what you’re doing. That’s why I created this site, to help you understand the ins and outs of living your floating dream.

Essential Boating Equipment There are some bits of kit that you should have on board at all times; a pole, plank and boat hook, two or three mooring pins or chains, a lump hammer (some boaters prefer a sledge hammer for hard ground in the summer) and, to get you through the locks, a windlass or two. Windlasses have a habit of ending up in the water. They are kicked in after being left on the lock side or fly in after being left on the paddle. It’s a careless and expensive mistake to make, but what can you do once it’s in the water? You can use one of the essential tools in your boat’s emergency kit… a powerful magnet. The 2013 Equipment and Chandlery Guide in Waterways World’s April magazine features a super powerful magnet available for £26. It’s under two inches tall but is capable of lifting 50lb. You can use it to retrieve your windlasses, mooring pins, keys (most boaters have dropped a key or two into the cut), your prized folding bike and, if you’re feeling particularly public spirited, a shopping trolley or two. It’s called the Maxigrab Magnet and is available here.

Stove Fuel Test Update Two weeks ago I mentioned that, after reading the Waterways World fuel test in the March edition of their magazine, I bought two sample bags of wood briquettes so that I could conduct my own tests on a real liveaboard narrowboat. One bag arrived within a few days but the second, the Ecofire Heat Logs only arrived this week after going missing in the post. Here’s what I thought of both fuels.

Your Own Narrowboat Blog Last week I offered site users some space on this site so that they could create a blog, a journal, of their own journey from narrowboat dream to actual ownership. Three narrowboat owners have taken me up on the offer so far. I’ve created a new section on the forum so that site visitors can read and comment on the blog posts. I’ve also included some information that may be of interest to you if you would like to start your own blog. Whilton Marina Boat Sales I received an email from a site subscriber yesterday. He was responding to one of the regular series of emails I send out with the intention of (hopefully) pointing potential narrowboat owners in the right direction. He suggested that I needed to know more about the way that Whilton Marina boat sales operate before I recommend them as a potential source for their new boat. I’m not saying that the information he provided is accurate but, coincidentally, I was given the same information by a respected boat builder this week. In the spirit of providing you with as much information as possible so that you can make up your own mind, I have copied the email I received on the Whilton Marina page of this site. I’m also more than happy to include a response from anyone at Whilton. No More Excuses Published 31st March 2013 It’s Easter at last. A time for sitting outside with your face turned towards the early spring sunshine, happy in the knowledge that the winter is behind you. Dream on! It’s minus five at the moment, there’s a layer of ice on the marina and a decidedly chilly forecast for the week to come. The cruising season has begun for our hire fleet. We had our first trickle of hardy holiday hirers last week. For the first time in the three and a half years I’ve worked here, we had to shovel the snow off the hire boats before we cleaned them. It wouldn’t be my first choice for cruising conditions but the groups hiring our boats don’t have the choice. They book their week or two week escape from “normal” life months in advance. While the liveaboard boaters steer clear of wet, windy or exceptionally cold cruising days, holiday hirers have to crack on regardless. We had one ambitious family complete the Warwick Ring, all 106 miles and 115 locks. They had a week to do it so had to cruise for eight hours every day. For those of you who don’t have boats yet, the four day Easter break is the perfect time to move forward with your plans to get one. As ever, Apolloduck is a great place to browse online for boats. This morning there were 415 cruiser stern, 307 trad sterns, 153 semi trads, 116 wide beams, 28 tugs and 13 butties; 1,032 canal craft for you to choose from. Maybe you don’t want a previously enjoyed boat though. Maybe your sights are set on having a brand new boat built to your own specification. Maybe the idea appeals to you but you don’t know where to start. Maybe I can help you.

A New Narrowboat Guide: Are you interested? For the last year I’ve been toying with the idea of writing a new narrowboat guide. It will document the construction of a liveaboard narrowboat from the initial concept and design, through the hull construction, ballasting, fitting out and painting. The pros and cons of different designs and levels of equipment will be discussed and commented upon. I’ll post updates on the forum as the build progresses and invite comments from current liveaboard boaters. I’ll also include advice on how to choose a narrowboat builder, how much you need to pay and when you need to pay it, how to spot an unscrupulous builder, and how to choose a good one, and input from the owner of the new boat throughout the build. As with the two previous guides I’ve published, there’s a huge amount of work involved in research and actually sitting down to write it. I want to make sure that there’s enough interest before I invest a considerable amount of time and energy. Do you think that you would find it useful? As usual there’s a very short survey for you to vote one way or the other. Here it is. Case Study Of Widebeam Liveaboard Antioch I am in awe of Sarah. She’s a lady who can do stuff with her hands (as opposed to me, a man, who struggles to change a plug.). She lives on board a wide beam with two of her three children on the Leeds/Liverpool canal. If you like the idea of living afloat, but not cruising very much, a wide beam may be a better option for you than a narrowboat. Here’s Sarah’s story.

Essential Boating Equipment I told you last week that I had ordered an essential bit of boating kit; a magnet for retrieving items that have been dropped into the water. It’s no ordinary magnet. It’s called the Maxigrab Magnet and is available here. The magnet arrived last week. It’s tiny, but it’s a beauty. Sally and I have had hours, well, minutes, of fun picking up increasingly heavy steel objects with it inside the boat.

No More Excuses! I know. You want to live on a narrowboat. You really do, but there are some important reasons why you can’t at the moment. You’re too young, too old, too inexperienced, nervous, poor, married, single, jobless, ill etc. The list of reasons is endless. The fact remains that if you really want to achieve your dream, you can. Here’s some inspiration from someone who’s taken the bull by the horns and realised her dream. Here's her post copied from the forum. “All of you who had dreams of living on a narrowboat may be interested in my saga. I had no idea that I would spend, hopefully, the rest of my life on a boat when my life turned upside down and I found myself looking for somewhere to live. I was then with my daughter on her catamaran one evening when several of her friends were there and chatting about my lack of home when I suddenly came out with "I'm going to buy a narrowboat!!" Silence filled the boat and then the advice started to be given. Despite being in and out of hospital for the next three weeks, we all studied the lists of boats for sale and decided to visit some. I left that bit to my daughter and friends and joined in when they got the list shortened. Now I had never been on a narrowboat so I was very open minded. This seems a fairytale now! The very first boat I went on said a warm welcome to me. After looking at others I knew that first one was going to be my home. My daughter and my new boating friends set to and checked the boat over. Its history and and servicing etc. and had the boat surveyed. Meanwhile I was working out things I thought could be done to make my life as easy as possible and we found a marina where I could stay for a period of time. I took the plunge and the boat was taken out of the water and the necessary work done. She went back into the water and I took possession on the 1st of November last year. Yes it has been a speedy change of life but it can be done with help from knowledgeable friends! I guess that getting it as I want it will never be finished but I am having so much fun and satisfaction in doing it and we have been out cruising this weekend. Dare I say it but I was at the helm for a lot of the time guided by one of my experienced boating friends. This may not sound very exciting to a reader, but I will now add a bit of info about me. I am writing this just after my 86th birthday and in the last six months I have gone through a divorce, a cancer operation and broken my jaw in a fall. So I'm saying to anyone dithering – take the plunge while you can! LIFE ON BOARD is great. New way of life, great new friends and so PEACEFUL.” Narrowboat Security Published 7th April 2013 I “celebrated” my 53rd birthday last Tuesday. How did I celebrate? A relaxing day on the boat? A fancy meal out? A fancy meal in? No. I worked during the day and then returned to the boat at the end of the day to discover that my online identity had been stolen. I still don’t know how it happened, other than my laptop was hacked into, keystrokes logged, passwords recorded, all of the important web sites I’m registered with accessed, and passwords changed so I couldn’t get into them. I had my main bank account contact details changed to an address and phone number in Bristol and an iPad ordered through my mobile phone account. My bank account has subsequently been frozen, soon to be shut down, so I now need to open a new account and go through the painful process of setting up a complete new list of payees. Because the new account won’t be live for another seven days, I am unable to pay bills, receive payments, or withdraw cash. The account I use to receive payments for sales from the site was suspended. They still allowed money into the account, but I’m still not allowed to take any out. The bank was particularly concerned when they discovered that the hacker had stolen a copy of my passport from my hard drive to upload to their site to prove that they were me. When I phoned, they were in the process of restoring the account to full functionality which would have allowed the hacker to transfer some or all of the money out of the account. I spent a fruitless hour reporting the crime to the police. They showed very little interest, even when I told them that I had the bogus address and mobile phone number that had been added to my bank account. They told me that they receive many hundreds of phone calls from people like me and that, unless they can spot a recurring trend in the reported hacking attempts, I’m unlikely to hear from them. The guy I spoke to even told me that assuming my identity isn’t actually a crime. They have to wait until the person assuming the identity attempts to defraud a company or individual before they can act. One or two techies I’ve spoken to have heard that devices are being interfered with prior to them being purchased which may explain why the laptop’s pre installed anti virus software, Norton, didn’t pick this up. I’ve now restored my new laptop to its factory settings to remove the offending code. All I need to do now is spend a couple of days reinstalling the software that took me a couple of days to install last week. And then I have to wait for the best part of a week before I have a bank account again, and then set up all standing orders and direct debits, change my bank details with everyone I deal with online. I used to be an angry young man. I’m much calmer these days, especially after moving onto James. However, I would love to spend just five minutes alone with the hacker so that I could explain, very clearly, just how displeased I am with him. Narrowboat Security On the subject of crime, my ex wife emailed me yesterday to let me know that her house, my old home, has been burgled for the second time in three months. The thieves escaped with the usual electronics; laptops, mobile phones, a X Box and a Play Station. They were in and out of the house in minutes and caused a considerable amount of physical and a huge amount of emotional damage. Boats can be burgled too. I’m delighted to say that James hasn’t been burgled. In fact, to my knowledge, none of the boats here at Calcutt have been burgled. The marinas here are too risky for thieves. The main entrance is via a half mile private drive with closed electric gates outside of trading hours. The marinas are difficult for thieves to access from the canal too. We’re on the canal “offside”, the opposite side from the towpath, so anyone wanting to come onto the site from the canal either needs to do so by boat, or by walking over the lock gates. If you’re going to take on a permanent mooring, from a security point of view, choose one which is on the canal offside. Thieves want easy access and exit. They tend to steer clear of moorings that they can’t sneak up on. There’s one marina in particular nearby where a quiet country lane runs close to the towpath. The thieves can park their vehicle next to towpath and quickly walk to the open gate to the marina next to the canal, completely bypassing the marina’s electric gates. I don’t know how many of their boats are broken into, but I know they are. Of course, the reason you’ve purchased a narrowboat is so that you can use it to cruise some or all of the network. You will be spending as much time as possible away from your home mooring so you need to be aware of security measures when you’re on the move. Apply the same common sense that you would to the security of either your home or your car. If you’re away from your boat, make sure it’s locked and that the locks on your doors and hatches are secure. Consider fitting a steel locking bar to the bulkhead either side of your front and rear doors and fit a decent security padlock. Consider storing items from your roof inside your boat including poles. planks and boat hooks. Always remove your tiller bar when you are away from your boat. Shiny brass is irresistible to towpath toerags. Consider carrying a spare tiller bar on the boat. If you don’t think the additional expense is worthwhile, try steering your boat for a while without one. Remember, your tiller bar can be dropped in the water as well as stolen. Keep your valuables out of site. Close your curtains and hide laptops, tablets and mobile phones. Consider fitting a timer to a LED lamp inside your boat to give the impression there’s someone on the boat. Here’s a thread from the forum with some very useful security information for you. Please read it. I know from bitter personal experience what it’s like to be burgled. Prevention is always better than cure. Make sure you take action before it’s too late.

Canalside Dining Sally and I enjoy the occasional meal out, but we’re often very disappointed. We leave the restaurant feeling that we could have prepared better food for a hell of a lot less if we stayed on the boat. Friday night was an exception. We took Charlie and Daisy for a walk along the Grand Union at Braunston on Friday afternoon. We stopped for a brief comfort break at the Admiral Nelson on the Braunston flight between locks three and four. We used the loo, bought drinks and crisps and browsed their menu as we sat on a bench outside with the dogs. We liked what we saw both on the menu and in the restaurant area of the bar so booked a table for the evening. It’s a good job we booked. We returned to the pub just after six wearing a little less mud to find it heaving with both diners and Braunston boatyard workers. One poor girl was running between bar and tables to keep everyone happy and we had to wait longer than we would have liked before we were served. We had to wait a while before our food order was taken and then served but, oh boy, was it worth the wait. The pub’s steak of choice is Scottish Black Gold 28 day matured and unbelievably tasty. The ribeye was served with balsamic roasted vine tomatoes, fondant shallots, Moreton Pinckney portabella mushroom, chunky chips served in an individual dinky deep fat fryer and balsamic dressed watercress. It was so good neither Sally nor I spoke throughout the meal. At £20 a steak it wasn’t cheap but we’ll definitely eat there again.

NB Doublefracture Case Study Mick and Marlene are committed to their life afloat. They burned their bridges and sold their house to fund the purchase of their liveaboard narrowboat Doublefracture. Weird name, lovely boat! Here's their story. I apologise for the shortage of new information this week. I don’t have a great deal of time to spare at the best of times but having to find an extra twenty hours to deal with my identity theft last week has left me just a little stressed. I’m going to relieve the stress in a minute by spending the day working on my lovely boat. It’s (finally) a beautiful spring day. I’m going to spend the next eight hours washing painting and polishing. I have two bottles of the best boat wax on the market. James if going to get a very serious buffing. Mobile Broadband Allowance On Narrowboats Published 14th April 2013 Last week I reported that my laptop was hacked into and my identity stolen. I think I’m back on track now, but there was one further quite scary additional development. I had an email from Google to let me know that my site was producing phishing URLs directing users to a bogus PayPal site. The company which hosts my site, Liquid Web, one of the largest hosting companies in the USA, has given my site a very thorough spring clean to ensure that any rogue code has been completely removed. Security to all areas of the site administration have now been changed and improved. The phishing URLs didn’t affect site users as the URLs were buried deep in the site. I understand that the hacker would have used them as part of a phishing mail campaign where spam emails would have referred recipients to the phishing pages. Talking of security…

Narrowboat Security I wrote about narrowboat security last week and referred to a thread on the forum. Forum user Cheeseybits asked about the reality of crime on the cut. He referred to The Water Road by Paul Gogarty. It’s an excellent book about Paul's four month figure of eight journey from London to the far north and back. He mentions carrying a baseball bat for security as he travels alone and of his unpleasant brush with stone throwing yobs in Wigan and then a little later, a charming tale about yobs rolling burning cars into the cut and shooting BW workers with air rifles! Cheeseybits, in the nicest possible way, accused me of looking at life on the cut through rose tinted glasses and wanted to know whether he’s going to be at risk on his watery wanderings. I’ve posted my experiences and those of our holiday hirers on the forum. I’ve been doing hire fleet instructions for Calcutt Boats for the last three years so I’ve debriefed hundreds of holidaymakers on their return. Did they experience any problems when they were out and about? You’ll have to read the thread to find out. If you are a boat owner, please add your comments to the thread. I want the anecdotes in context though. I want to know about the problems you’ve encountered, but I also want to know how often you’ve had unpleasant experiences in all the time that you’ve been out and about on the cut. Have you had issues every time you’ve ventured out, or has it been just once in a blue moon in a geographical area where you might have expected it? If you don’t want to post on the forum, please email me to let me know about your experiences. Mobile Broadband I use the internet every day. I spend three to four hours sending and answering emails and researching and writing content for the site. I used to use Three’s PAYG premium package which gave me 7GB of data for £25. My average monthly broadband spend was £40. It was expensive but, because of a poor credit rating brought about by the failure of my business and subsequent bankruptcy, I couldn’t get credit. My inability to obtain credit for absolutely anything meant that I couldn’t take out a monthly phone or broadband plan. My credit rating has been steadily, if slowly, climbing over the last three years. Eighteen months ago I was able to take out a 24 month contract on a mobile phone and then three months ago switch from Three’s PAYG broadband to a pay monthly tariff. The new tariff gave me 15GB of data each month which was more than enough… until last Friday. Three weeks ago I bought a new laptop to replace my old Lenovo which had developed a mind of its own and typed text anywhere on the screen it wanted. It was quite quickly driving me mad. The new Samsung laptop shipped with Windows 8 (Windows Hate would be a more appropriate name – what a terrible operating system!) but no other software. I needed to reinstall all of the applications I use on a daily basis, Microsoft office, Adobe Photoshop Elements, my accounting software, iTunes and half a dozen web site management and editing applications. Then I had to download my backed up data from Google Drive as well as my photo’s and music. Then two weeks ago my laptop was hacked into so I had to restore the laptop it its original factory settings and do everything again. Yesterday, for the first time, I exceeded my 15GB monthly allowance. It wasn’t a pleasant experience. If you run out of data with Three you can get onto the Three website to check your account but the rest of the internet is off limits. You can check your account to see how much data you’ve used but if you want to change any details, in my case payment details, you need to log into your account using a password. You don’t need a password at any stage when you first start to use your dongle. You just plug it in to your laptop, wait for the automatic driver installation, and away you go. Consequently, you aren’t aware of the need for a password at all. Of course I couldn’t log in to my account to pay for more data without the password. I didn’t know it so I went through the Forgot Password routine. With any other system that I’ve used, this involves answering some fairly straight forward security questions. Not with Three. I was asked for both the device and the SIM number. This information is on the SIM which is inside the dongle. My dongle is on the top of a pole on the roof. So on Friday night, in the dark and in lashing rain, I climbed onto the roof to fetch the dongle. Of course I had forgotten that last Sunday I spent seven hours lovingly polishing the boat roof with Carnauba wax. The combination of Carnauba wax on steel and heavy rain should be used on skating rinks. It’s almost impossible to stand on, as I discovered to both mine and Sally’s dismay when I fell over. I didn’t quite fall off the roof, but it was close. I managed to grab hold of the edge of the port side hatch before I joined the fish in the marina. After retrieving the dongle, I climbed back into the boat to let Sally know what had happened. She wasn’t interested. The shock of me crashing down on the roof caused her to drop what was in her hand – the pressure cooker containing our dinner. She was busy scraping it off the floor. I copied the details off the SIM but, before I could find out whether I could log in with them, I had to climb back onto the roof, more carefully this time, to replace the dongle. The device and SIM card number allowed me to log into my account, but I was still unable to top it up. There was a “helpline” number I could ring, but that involved finding a signal for my phone. I never have one on the boat. So, I went back out in the rain and into my car for a drive around the marina until I could find a signal. Of course there was the obligatory frustrating automated system to navigate but I was eventually able to make a payment using one of Sally’s debit cards (remember, I don’t currently have a bank account following my hacking attack). Back on the boat, I joyously connected to the internet… to discover that I still couldn’t get any further than the Three web site. I jumped back in my car, raced around to where I knew I could get a phone signal and went through the whole painful call centre process again. After ten frustrating minutes I was put through to a real person. He was on the other side of the world, but at least he was human. He very helpfully told me, from the safety of his call centre 5,000 miles away, that the payment I had just made had been credited to my monthly account but that I couldn’t buy any more data at the normal rate until the next billing cycle began in nine days time. Until then, he told me, I couldn’t use the internet at all unless I purchased data at the emergency rate of 10p per megabyte. £0.10/MB is a huge amount to pay. To put this rate into perspective, if Three used the same rate for my 15GB monthly allowance, they would charge me £1,500 instead of the £18 I currently pay. Their emergency rate is over eighty three times more expensive than their standard rate! Even if I wanted to carry on using the internet at that rate, they wouldn’t let me. They allow an emergency use of 200MB (at a cost of £20) before they cut off the account completely until the next billing date. I used the extortionately priced additional data by mid afternoon the following day – yesterday – so for the first time for as long as I can remember, I was completely cut off from the virtual world I’ve spent years creating. I didn’t fully understand quite how much I rely on the internet. I use the web for checking the weather, the news, what’s on television and to more or less instantly find out in depth information about any subject that interests me. I store my photo’s online, I constantly back up my laptop’s documents to my online storage, I use an online To Do list and calendar. I’ve moved much of my life online and, boy, do I miss it when I can’t get at it. Waiting over a week until my next data allowance cycle wasn’t an option so at 10am today I was in Leamington Spa waiting for the store to open. I purchased a PAYG SIM with 3GB data to get me through the next week until my monthly allowance resumes. 15GB is the biggest data package that Three offer, and Three is widely acknowledged as being the best provider for internet loving boat owners. 15GB is more than enough for a month’s general browsing but if you your laptop for watching TV or video or for regular large file uploads and downloads, you’ll soon use it up. I hope that the tale of my misfortune will encourage you to think carefully about your mobile broadband options if you plan to spend long periods on your boat and you value a constant internet connection as much as I do. I haven’t enjoyed the problems I’ve had recently, but I’ve learned from them. As far as my internet connection’s concerned, I now have a backup in case of emergencies. Maybe you should too. This story is really a long winded way of saying sorry for a content poor newsletter this week. I’ve spent so much time trying to sort out the problems I just haven’t had a spare moment to work on the site. I promise to try harder next week. Read this forum thread for plenty more information about mobile broadband on narrowboats.

Online Moorings Available I received an email ten days ago but forgot to mention it in last week’s newsletter. It’s from online mooring operator Peter Oakley… “I’m a linear moorings operator on the Middlewich branch of the Shroppy at bridge 25. With the pump out toilets, i encourage the (long term) moorers with a pump out, to buy a Patay pump (normally off e-bay) and lay flat pipe. If they are lucky they can get it all for £50. As we are farmers we have a septic tank for our house waste. Which is a 100mtr cruise into the next field along. I ask the moorers to pump their waste into there as it is approximately 30 metres in from the cut. 4 pump outs and they’re saving £££££££. I have checked with the Environment Agency . As long as the owner of the vessel does it themselves it’s acceptable. If i were to do it for the boater I would need to apply for the relevant waste carrying licenses. I hope this helps a few boaters in trying to save a few quid here and there.” Peter went on to say that he has two fully serviced long term moorings (metred water and electricity hook up) available from 2nd September this year. If you are interested in an online mooring in a beautiful part of the country, you need to contact him quickly. Long term online moorings are like hens’ teeth and Peter has just placed an advert in Towpath Talk. Please contact Peter directly. The Trust Target Illegal Moorers Published 21st April 2013 I’ve suffered quite badly with wind over the last week. Fortunately for Sally and the dogs not the type of wind that involves a furtive spray up and down the boat with an air freshener. Real wind, the sort of wind that encourages full time boater to stay on mooring rather than cruise. It’s been a very windy week. On Wednesday night we had gusts of 40mph. Both Sally and I had trouble sleeping. The starboard rear fender hangs close to our bed. In addition to the howling wind, we had the pleasure of the rhythmic squeak of rubber fender on wooden jetty as the boat bobbed on the marina waves. The following day I had to move several boats around the marina. Calcutt Boats’ Meadows marina is windy at the best of times, but boating on Thursday was a real challenge. Taking boats off their moorings and moving them to the relative calm behind the workshops wasn’t too much of a problem, but returning them to their berths was a real test of nerve. It’s essential when steering a narrowboat to use the wind rather than fight against it. Because of its flat bottom, a narrowboat doesn’t hold a line, it skates across the surface at the whim of anything more than a gentle breeze. To maintain any kind of control it’s necessary to steer into the wind to slow the boat down rather than with the wind and reduce your ability to stop effectively. Because the moorings that I needed to get on had the stiff breeze blowing from the port side, I had allow for the wind and steer the boat, with a considerable amount of throttle, towards the rear of the boat on the adjacent mooring and hope that the wind didn’t drop at the wrong moment. Fortunately the wind blew the bow around until, just at the right moment, it was pointing directly into the boat’s own berth. No bumps, no scrapes, and no need to change my underwear.

Identity Theft – The Gift That Keeps On Giving As you know, a couple of weeks ago I had my laptop hacked and, among many other problems, my bank account compromised. The account was closed immediately, funds transferred to a new account and a new debit card was sent to me in the post. Unfortunately for me, the bank doesn’t appear to have enough fields in whatever application they use to record addresses. When my new card hadn’t arrived after a week I phoned their call centre to discover that the bank had sent my card to an incomplete address. I corrected the address for them, or rather, told them which parts of the address they already had would need displaying on the envelope to stand a chance of reaching me. They promised to send me another card. The new card arrived yesterday. It didn’t work. I called the bank to ask why. They told me that the first card had been returned to them marked “Address Unknown”. Consequently, they blocked my account “in case the card was interfered with in the post”. They now have to issue a third card, hopefully to the right address, which won’t reach me before the end of next week. Oh the joys of modern banking!

A New Image For The Site – Tell Me What You Think

At enormous personal expense and after months of design, redesign and revisions, I have a new logo for the site. Actually, the whole process took less than a week and cost very little but I’m very pleased with the result. I gave the designer a blank canvas to work with. I told her that I wanted the logo to look professional but informal, both striking and relaxing and to reflect the rural aspect of narrowboat life. Do you think she’s cracked it? Do you like the logo? Please take under a minute to let me know. Before you go to the survey, please look at the logo at the top of the page. Is it too large, too small or just right?

The Trust Target Illegal Moorers I received an email from site subscriber Roland last week. Like many site visitors he’s considering buying and living on a narrowboat. He’s reached the stage where he’s actively looking for a boat to buy but there’s one thing holding him back; the availability of residential moorings. He sent me an update on the mooring situation in his part of the world. Here’s his email… “I cycled up the grand union today from the village I live in to Leighton Buzzard. On the way back I saw an old chap painting his boat and stopped to talk with him. What he said was very interesting. I can’t recall where you are based (Midlands ?), but the world of narrowboating in the south is changing and, it appears, becoming a bit of a nightmare unless you can find yourself a proper residential / long term mooring… and that is becoming a very expensive option. He said that the amount of people on narrowboats now mooring up on the towpath is causing problems. He knows of at least 3 people who work in the city and earn mega bucks but are living on a narrowboat as it’s cheaper than in the city, but whom have little real interest in canal way of life. He went on to say that, because of this growing influx of people mooring up on the towpaths, the people with money enough to have their boats in southern based marinas, costing them a pretty penny, have caused a stink with the CRT as they dislike the idea of them paying big fees when people are mooring up at random along the towpaths. To combat this the Trust now have inspectors on bikes. They no longer do the old two week check; they are out every 4 days in teams cycling the towpaths and keeping tabs on who’s where and moving people on. You then have to move several miles and you are not allowed back for a couple of months to that spot and you have to move every two weeks. If you don’t move, they will fine you £25 per day and then if you still fail to move they can seize your boat and auction it off.

All a tad scary and I guess the need to ensure you have proper residential moorings is now even more important than ever. The problem with that is that there just aren’t enough proper moorings and when they do become available, there is this auction system here (which I mentioned previously) where people bid for a place and the price gets silly. The last one I witnessed ended up more than my flat rental for the year! I’d love to live on a narrowboat, and to get involved in the way of life completely. I’m the kind of person who would get involved properly and help out with the canal and land etc., but I’d have to be barmy to pay more for a mooring alone, than my rent on quiet little two bed one up one down in a sleepy village.

He also mentioned that where people used to have ‘end of garden’ mooring rights, since the Trust took over, they are now making them pay 50% of the standard fees. In fact he works for a farmer who owns fields along the canal. The farmer offered him free mooring on his field side (even though there is no water, electricity or path) but the CRT said no and wanted to charge him £1000 for the right.

The old chap now plans to sell up, get a 55 ft steel boat to replace his current boat and move up north where he used to live. He said up there the authorities generally leave you alone and don’t bother as much as they do down here. I guess it’s because we are in the London commuter area in a way. prices go up and no doubt even though there are a lot of real people on the narrowboats down here there appear to be too many wealthy people “playing” at being boaters. What a shame!”

I speak to many boaters either through this site or when they pull into Calcutt for services. The Trust appear to be tightening up on their mooring policy throughout the network. I want the information I share with you to be 100% accurate though so next week I hope to speak to the Trust’s head of boating .

RCR Engine Servicing You’ve probably heard about River Canal Rescue or RCR as they’re more often known. They’re the inland waterways’ equivalent of the AA/RAC. With my limited practical skills and with a narrowboat engine which is far from standard, membership is essential. I asked them to carry out a service on my Mercedes OM 636. I don’t know when it was last serviced properly but it’s been many years. My boat, James, came to Calcutt Boats in 1997 after being lovingly maintained and used for twenty years by the London based Illiffe family. After reaching Calcutt, James was rarely used or serviced. I moved onto James in 2010 and treated the boat as a floating house. As finances allowed I slowly improved the boat . I want to do some proper cruising this year. I understand that my engine is a very good engine but it is thirty six years old and hasn’t been well looked after for the latter part of its long life. It needs some TLC. One of RCR’s longest serving engineers, Kerry, arrived last Wednesday at 10.30am to carry out the service. From the moment I met him I was confident that he knew his stuff. He couldn’t have been more helpful, even though there was a considerable amount of quiet swearing when he tried to remove the very badly positioned fuel filter. The expected hour long service actually took Kerry three and a half hours. He was very helpful throughout and explained some basic engine maintenance that I wasn’t even aware of. In addition to being a slightly unusual engine, my Mercedes is also raw water cooled. This means that the engine, rather than using its own water as a coolant, draws water from the canal or river. The water passes through a weed trap before continuing to the engine. I didn’t know the boat had a weed trap, let alone the need to clear it out on a daily basis when cruising! Kerry also identified several areas where I need to have remedial work carried out. I had been experiencing problems with the engine dropping in and out of drive. I knew that this is a symptom of having low or no oil in the gearbox. I’d had the gearbox oil topped up a few weeks previously but I still had the same problem afterwards. I thought I was going to have to get the PRM gearbox refurbished at great expense. Kerry identified that one of the two gearbox cooler pipes had perished and that the gearbox oil was bubbling out through it when the engine was on. I needed one or both of the cooler pipes changing, and not the gearbox. What a relief. He found an injector pipe with a minor leak and strongly suggested that the engine’s fuel lines were rerouted. They currently run under the engine and under the engine room ballast. It’s not a good place to route delicate copper fuel pipes. The rerouted fuel pipes would also allow a pre-filter to be fitted somewhere more accessible than the current position where it is almost impossible to change even for an experienced engineer. Kerry’s summary of my engine was very reassuring. With just over 4,000 hours on the clock – an average of just 111 hours a year over the last 36 years – my Mercedes is still a baby. It’s good for 20,000 hours so there’s a lot of life left in it yet. At £145 for the service, which included an additional £15 for genuine parts, I think I received real value for money. For many of you, the opportunity to spend hours tinkering with your engine will please you no end. For me, with very little aptitude in that direction, RCR’s assistance was invaluable. Narrowboat Blogs Published 28th April 2013 I’ve been reading Our Nige’s blog, Steppin’ Out, with great interest and a certain amount of nostalgia. He picked up his new floating home last Sunday and over the last week has been learning all about the boat as he cruised towards Mercia marina. He reminded me of my first cruise down the south Oxford and onto the Thames. I had only been working at Calcutt Boats for a few months, was still living on dry land, and didn’t know much about narrowboats at all. I was given the job of transporting one of our new clippers, a Calcutt Boats built 50′ cruiser stern narrowboat, to the IWA National Festival at Beale Park on the Thames. To say that I was under prepared for the cruise was an understatement. I took my then twelve year old son, Brook, with me to help with the locks, lift and swing bridges and coffee making duties. I loved every minute of the adventure, and what an adventure it was! We set off early in the morning on the first day, passed through Calcutt Top Lock from where the clipper had been moored on the wharf, stopped briefly to eject the stowaway site cat which had sneaked on board at some stage, and very nervously cruised along a tranquil waterway before coming to our first narrow lock on the south Oxford at Napton. This was the second time in my life that I had operated a lock (The first had been at Calcutt half an hour earlier). I enthusiastically raised the paddle to let the water out of the lock. Too enthusiastically as it happened as I hadn’t secured the clipper to the bollard correctly and, before I noticed anything wrong, the boat had drifted away from the bank and down the canal taking a very confused twelve year old with it. A couple on a boaters moored close to the lock brought both boat and son back to me with much smiling and collective head shaking. It was a very wet August. By mid morning I was so wet and cold that I could hardly think. Of course, I hadn’t brought any waterproofs with me. I had to stop the boat for two hours so that I could light the fire and warm up. As feeling returned to my extremities I looked out of the window as I dressed for the next leg of the journey… to find that one of the mooring stakes had pulled free from the soft earth and I was broadside across the canal. Another lesson learned. Over the next four days the adventure continued; we were pinned to the bank by the wind in Banbury, had to extract ourselves from a reed bed when I tried to get out of the path of a working boat and butty, had to stop for four hours while the police pulled a body out of the canal, and had the joy of trying to negotiate a lift bridge that was too heavy for Brook to raise on his own. We moored in some idyllic spots away from the noise and the stress of the “civilised” world. It was my first experience of the peace and quiet of rural canal moorings and I loved it. And then I joined the Thames. What a shock! After 49 miles of gently winding canal I nosed out onto the scary and oh-so-wide Thames at Isis lock junction. Although I had become reasonably proficient over the preceding three days on the canal, the river was a different kettle of fish. I immediately headed for the very large and very clear signs warning me to keep clear of the weir and was instantly pinned against the safety barrier put there to prevent idiots like me from being swept over it. I was pulled free, helped into a lock large enough to take a dozen boats and prevented from going any further down the Thames until my “trade plate” license was checked. Eventually I was allowed through the lock. The remaining 30 miles downstream to Beale Park was exhilarating. With the current helping me, I cruised at more than twice the speed I had on the canal and I had so much more space to play on than I had on the Oxford. We eventually found a bank side mooring on the Thames for our last night. We tried and failed four or five times because of the shallow water next to the bank. The cruise only lasted four days but we covered eighty miles, forty canal locks, ten river locks and eighteen swing or lift bridges. The first three days were ten or eleven hour cruises; the last day was a rather tiring thirteen hour stretch. The last hour and a half of the final full day was spent looking for a suitable mooring on the gently shelving Thames riverbank. It was a great adventure. I loved every minute of it. I can’t wait for regular cruises in the future.

A Day Trip To Braunston

After I wrote the above introduction I realised that, although I can’t afford the time off work to enjoy a multi day cruise at the moment, there’s nothing stopping us from going out for the day now and then. My home mooring on Calcutt Boat’s stunning Meadows marina is the perfect starting point for many different routes. If I turn left out of our marina, I’m on the Grand Union heading west to Leamington Spa and Warwick and then on to Birmingham. If I turn right, go through the Calcutt flight and cruise half a mile to Napton Junction, I can turn left to Braunston or right to head south on the Oxford canal towards Oxford and the Thames. I decided to take James out for a day and a night to see how the engine fared after its recent overhaul. Here’s my trip.

New Forum Section I’ve added the newsletter archive to the forum. You can find it here. Every week when I send out the newsletter, I’ll also post it on the forum. You’ll have all of the newsletters listed by date in one handy section, and you’ll be able to comment on the content in a place where others can respond. You can also use this section to ask for topics to be included in the newsletter. If there’s a subject you don’t think I’ve covered in enough detail, or at all, elsewhere on the site, please use this section to suggest its addition.

Your Own (Free) Narrowboat Blog Talking of new additions to the site, about a month ago I offered any site user their own blog section on the site so that they can create a lasting memory of their own boating experience. One or two have already taken me up on the offer. I would like to introduce you to one of them, Our Nige as he is on the forum. Nige’s dream was to own and live on a narrowboat. Even though he wasn’t sure he was doing the right thing, he bought his boat and he’s now on day seven or eight of his maiden voyage back to his home mooring at Mercia marina. If you’re thinking about buying a narrowboat, even if you’re only going to use it for recreational cruising, I’m sure you’ll enjoy the detail in his blog posts, and his determination to try every different drop of local beer at the end of a day’s cruise. Here’s the first of Nige’s blog posts. You can follow the blog’s progress through the forum here. If you’re in the process of seriously moving to a life afloat and you would like your own blog please read this post and then get in touch with me. I can have you up and running in about ten minutes. Narrowboat Fuel Tank Range And An Encounter With Snakes Published 5th May 2013 I took James out for another cruise last week. I was out for longer but didn’t travel as far, not did I have nearly as much fun. I took James along to our workshops to have some more work on the engine. River Canal Rescue serviced my engine a couple of weeks ago. It’s an old but ever so reliable Mercedes OM 636. It’s done just 4,000 hours. I understand that it’s considered young and that I can reasonably expect 20,000 hours from it. In fact, the engine should outlast me. However, it needs some TLC. I can’t ever see myself stripping it down to its component parts and putting it back together again, but I do need to be able to clean and change the fuel filter. I couldn’t get near the fuel filter up until now. It’s positioned at the front of the engine, low down, and very close to the bulkhead between the engine room and the bedroom. Both the RCR engineer and one of our own engineers have struggled to get it off to clean it. RCR recommended that I install a more conveniently placed pre-filter and that I have the fuel lines rerouted. At the moment they run underneath the engine which means that they too are inaccessible and are subject to damage from the ballast bars which lay on top of them. In order to change the fuel lines, engineer Jim had to drain the fuel tank. It was a slow process because there was a lot of diesel to drain. Before I went out on last week’s cruise to Braunston, I checked the fuel level. I didn’t know how much the tank held, noticed that there was a bit of a gap between the surface of the fuel and the top of the tank so I added another 25 litres. I needn’t have bothered. Jim removed about 320 litres from the tank. It’s a huge amount of fuel. I don’t yet know how much fuel my engine uses but I know that the consumption will be between 1.0 and 1.5 litres per hour when I’m cruising. Using the conservative figure of 1.5 litres per hour, the diesel will last me for 213 hours. At a speed of 3mph there’s enough in the tank to take me and my floating home 639 miles. I could cruise for seven hours a day for a full month up to Lancaster and back, travelling 446 miles, opening and closing 208 locks and passing through ten tunnels. I could do all of this without stopping for fuel. And then, if I still had any energy left, I could head south from Calcutt to Bristol. I would cruise for another fortnight at seven hours a day to travel the 184 miles and 162 locks before I had to look for diesel. My tank holds a lot of fuel. I can’t wait to use it all! Jim was called away on an emergency job so he couldn’t finish the work on Tuesday when I took James in so we had to stay overnight in one of our covered double docks. We didn’t have the views that we’re used to and enjoy so much. A polythene tunnel is a very poor alternative to grassy banks and an island covered by trees in their early spring splendour, but I still loved the few seconds of confusion when I woke up knowing that my house was somewhere different but not quite sure where.

A Picnic With Snakes I spent most of Friday working on James. Steven Cox, our buyer, is very good with electrics. He’s been promising to fit my inverter for a while now. He agreed to do the work on Friday. The engine room was a bit of a mess after the fuel lines were rerouted earlier in the week so I took James up from the marina through two locks to the wharf where we keep the Big Brute. It’s a wet vacuum cleaner the size of a small house which we use for vacuuming the hire fleet engine bays. A couple of hours with the Brute, a tin of degreaser and a stiff hand brush had the engine and its surroundings looking better than it has for years. Back on the mooring, Steve spent a couple of hours connecting the inverter and adding a changeover switch and a new shore line to comply with Boat Safety Scheme regulation. That’s nearly all of the electrical work done for now. I’m still running on just two 135amp domestic batteries plus a 110amp starter. I have two more 135amp batteries in the engine room. I’m waiting for the leads to be delivered before I can add them to the battery bank. It was mid afternoon before the various jobs were finished. I really don’t know where the time goes. I’m always up at 5am, but then the day flashes by. Maybe I should get up earlier. Friday was warm and sunny so Sally and I decided to have a picnic on the grass next to the woods. Last winter I removed a fence from the edge of the woods. The extensive grassed area adjacent to Meadows marina now merges with the mixed woodland and provides a beautiful and tranquil spot to spend a few hours relaxing. While we eat our picnic of chilli spiced sausages on buttered baps and fiery chicken wings with salad, Charlie and Daisy played along the tree line. Charlie is always finding creatures to annoy. One of his great pleasures last year was night-time hedgehog rolling. We often see them in the warmer months after dark on the marina embankment. As soon as they see Charlie, they roll into a ball. As soon as they roll into a ball, Charlie tips them down the marina bank. Charlie loves the game. I don’t think the hedgehogs are so keen. We’re used to Charlie discovering spiders, worms, crane flies, frogs and, of course, hedgehogs. We noticed that he’d found something but didn’t really pay him much attention. After five minutes of jumping up and down and pouncing on a pile of leaves though I went to see what the fuss was about. I couldn’t see anything so I left Charlie to his game. After a few more minutes of pouncing at leaves closer and closer to where we sat, I had another look. There was no mistaking what he had found this time though, a large and very unhappy looking grass snake. Charlie wanted to play. The grass snake didn’t and was quite vocal about it. I now had Charlie jumping up and down in excitement, Daisy running around in pointless circles and Sally looking for the nearest tree to climb. Sally doesn’t like snakes with very good reason. She was born in the Philippines where there are a considerable number of snakes far more unpleasant than our completely harmless grass snakes and barely venomous adders. They have 179 species of snake, fourteen of which are venomous. They have a Krait which can kill you in under two seconds and a very aggressive, highly venomous Philippine cobra which only needs to spit at you to kill you. Sally doesn’t like snakes. After the poor terrified grass snake escaped into the undergrowth, I calmed the dogs down, helped Sally down out of the tree and reassured her that our snakes, like just about everything else in the UK, are far less harmful than anywhere else in the world. I suggested a walk in the woods. The look she gave me was far more dangerous than any of the snakes in the Philippines. I’ll have to work on that one.

Out On The Cut Again There’s no holding us back now. Sally and I are out again today. I’m determined to do justice to the diesel tank’s hanger-like dimensions. Mind you, I’ve just worked out that if I only travel the five hours to Braunston and back once a week, and I make the trip every week until the tank runs dry, I won’t need to top up with diesel until 28th February 2014! It’s such a joy to be out at this time of the year. There are some beautiful places to moor just a stone’s throw away from Calcutt; just about anywhere on the six mile stretch between Calcutt and Braunston will do, above the Napton flight on the south Oxford or on the GU before the Stockton flight. We love the cruise to Braunston because, with limited time available, we can enjoy a couple of hours of lock free cruising after we’ve passed through the thee locks of the Calcutt flight. At the moment we’re moored near Napton Junction. It’s not as peaceful as it was last week. I should have expected far more boats about as it’s a bank holiday but there are a lot of people cruising this weekend. I still haven’t sorted out the problem I had last week with my dongle aerial. I’ve bought the fairleads which, when fitted, will keep the centre rope from snagging both the aerial and the vent over my water heater. Yesterday though I had to keep an eye on the rope to make sure that it didn’t sweep everything off the roof when we were tied up in the lock. As an added security measure I removed the dongle from its fitting and put it in my pocket. We moored up and, because I’m obsessed with keeping in touch with you, dear reader, my first job was to reconnect my broadband dongle. I couldn’t find it, but I did find a very large hole in the pocket I had carefully placed it. Sally and I ran the mile back to the Calcutt flight asking passing boats and walkers if they had seen a black dongle. The only response was confused and slightly hostile stares. Back at Calcutt Middle lock we found it laying on the grass by the upstream paddle. I was very lucky. I think I’ll keep the dongle inside the boat in the future. We ate well last night. Sally’s special spare ribs, beef noodles and sticky rice. All washed down with a couple of glasses of Wolf Blass and a pair of swans with their brand new signets to keep us company. After dinner I sat down to do a bit of work on the site, delighted that I didn’t need to worry about my laptop battery dying as, thanks to the new inverter, I had mains power… for about an hour. The inverter died. I scratched my head for a while before I realised that I had left a 500w heater plugged in when I switched over to the inverter. The heater didn’t take long to drain 2 x 135amp batteries. As it was about 8.30pm and as we had been joined on our tranquil mooring by two other boats, I couldn’t fire up the engine to charge the batteries again. I gave up for the evening, got up this morning at 5.00am as usual and took the dogs for a long walk along the canal until 7.00am when I could start charging the batteries. We set off for Braunston at 10.00am. It was an enjoyable but slow cruise. Every man and his dog were out on the cut. Every blind bend and bridge hole was a game of Russian roulette. We managed to get by with just one slight bump and no damage done. Braunston was very busy. Actually I should say, Braunston is very busy. I’m still there. We’ve done a bit of shopping at Midland Chandlers and had a coffee at the Boat House. Now we’re back at the boat. Sally and her friend, Sheila, are basking in the spring sunshine on the front deck while Sheila gives Sally a manicure. We’ll go for a walk later on before an early tea and a sedate cruise back to the marina. I can’t wait for the beginning of June and our two weeks away from the mooring.

The UK’s Largest Inland Waterways Hotel Boat We had a rather large visitor at Calcutt yesterday, the just launched hotel boat Wessex Rose. It’s a monster of a boat at 70′ long, 12′ wide weighing in at a rather hefty 50 tonnes. The Wessex Rose was launched yesterday at Stockton. They pulled in to fill up with diesel. They were with us for quite a while. The tank took 1,000 litres. It’s a monster of a boat which tends to get in the way of other boats. Sadly, they discovered the hard way just how difficult it is for other boats to pass around it. One boat caught their bow a glancing blow as the Wessex Rose manoeuvred onto the wharf. Only a couple of hours after launch, they had a foot long scrape through the sign writing on the bow. The boat is heading south where it will cruise with up to six paying passengers on the Kennett & Avon. I imagine that it’s a very comfortable boat to cruise on in luxury (each of the three passenger cabins has an en suite bathroom) but I wouldn’t like to try to pass it on some of the narrower stretches of the K & A). You can read about the Wessex Rose here. An Interview With The Trust’s Head Of Boating Published 12th May 2013 I’m always amazed how quickly you make new friends on the cut. After years of living and working in London where even my immediate neighbours were strangers, the easy going and approachable nature of most liveaboard narrowboat owners is truly refreshing. I spent a very pleasant couple of hours on Monday evening with new narrowboat owners Keith and Gui (pronounced Gee as in geese) on their new Calcutt built Clipper. I first met Keith and Gui last October when they hired one of our boats for a week’s cruise on the Ashby canal. Like many of our hirers, they enjoyed the trip so much that they told me they were going to look into buying a boat of their own and adopting the nomadic lifestyle of continuous cruisers. Unlike most, their suggestion was more than idle talk. Keith retired from his well paid but far too stressful job in anthropology three years ago. He’s been living with his partner Gui, an ex jet setting travel agent, at her home in Portugal after leaving his native New Zealand. He loved the relaxed lifestyle in the Portuguese village on the coast about half an hour’s drive from Lisbon. He loved the lifestyle, but not nearly as much as he loved the idea of cruising the canals and rivers of England and Wales. They’ve been on their new boat for less than a week and they’re enjoying every minute of it. They drove to Calcutt from Gui’s home so they were able to bring a few “essentials” with them. I love port so I was in heaven when I sampled the three different types they brought with them, along with a delicious cheese made from goat, sheep and cows’ milk. I don’t think there’s a better way of passing an hour or two than sitting on a boat’s deck on a warm spring evening, drinking fine wine, eating exquisite food and enjoying stimulating conversation. It’s what living on a narrowboat is all about.

The Wessex Rose Hotel Boat Update Last Sunday I wrote about the just launched Wessex Rose hotel boat. At 70′ long, 12′ wide and 50 tonnes it’s a rather cumbersome boat to move through the network. Even though the Grand Union is a “wide” canal – it has locks which can accommodate two narrowboats at a time, or one wide beam – there are very few wide beam boats using it. Although cruising on a wide beam boat is possible on the canal network, it isn’t always pleasant. The canals are usually very shallow away from the main channel which is kept silt free by the continual passage of narrowboats. A wide beam boat will often straddle the deeper channel, especially at bridge holes and narrow passing places, which necessitates ploughing through the muddy canal bottom. I met the hotel boat as I cruised back from Braunston at a narrow spot with boats moored against the towpath. The Wessex Rose is to narrowboat owners what a nervous caravan tower on a winding country roads is to car drivers. There was a queue of frustrated narrowboat owners moving at a snail’s pace behind the barely moving monstrosity. The hotel boat’s owners were highly stressed. Not only did they have to contend with dragging their new boat through the silty bottom, but they also had to absorb the tirade of comments from the boats behind them, the moored boats they passed and the narrowboats travelling in the opposite direction. I met them at Flecknoe where they only had to deal with boats moored against the towpath. I suspect they would have had far more problems with both navigation and criticism from nearby boaters when they reached Braunston. The approach to the junction from all three directions has boats moored on both canal banks. There’s just enough room for two narrowboats to pass each other. There isn’t enough room for a narrowboat and a broad beam boat to pass. They owners looked stressed when I passed them. They would be approaching a nervous breakdown by the time they had negotiated Braunston. The Wessex Rose is heading down to the K & A where they intend to take high paying passengers on relaxing short breaks along the rivers Kennet and Avon and the Kennet & Avon canal. There are some very narrow stretches on the K & A and plenty of moored boats. I hope that the passengers travelling on the hotel boat aren’t subject to the same stress as the owners.

An Interview With The Trust’s Head Of Boating. On Friday I spoke to Sally Ash, the Canal & River Trust’s Head of Boating. I regularly receive emails and respond to forum posts about residential moorings and how to find them. I think I know the answers to site visitors’ questions but I thought it was about time I asked for confirmation. Sally was the perfect person to talk to. When applying for a license for a narrowboat, owners are asked to either confirm that they have a home mooring or abide by the guidelines for continuous cruising (Full terms and conditions for licensing are here). A home mooring can cost in excess of £2,000 a year, rising to two or three times that figure in and around London. Many boaters are either unwilling or unable to pay for a home mooring, or simply can’t find one which will enable them to legally live on board full time. The license guidelines state that a boat owner cannot stay in one place for longer than 14 days, or less as indicated on some visitor moorings. Some boaters, in a mistaken attempt to comply with the mooring guidelines, move their boats backwards and forwards between two points in order to stay in the same geographical location so that they are close to work or to schools. Continuous cruisers are required to move every fourteen days as part of a linear progressive journey although, to date, the distance that a boat needs to move as part of the journey isn’t specified because of the difficulty the Trust has defining locations on the cut. The Trust are in the process are in the process of defining clear geographic areas on maps which will be made available to boaters and which will enable the authorities to qualify distance moved. Some continuous cruisers simply don’t move at all. They are referred to by the Trust as Non Compliant Continuous Cruisers or NCCC. They stay in one spot on the towpath, often as part of a community of other NCCC boaters. Out of the 35,000 narrowboats on the canal and river network, 13.4% or 4,700 are registered as not having a home mooring and are therefore obliged to cruise continuously. Sally believes that as many as 50% are NCCC boaters. Finding a suitable legal mooring for a liveaboard narrowboat is a considerable hurdle to overcome for many would be boat owners. There are relatively few residential moorings available either online (along the side of the canal) or offline (in a marina). Most of the Trust owned canal-side moorings are defined as leisure moorings and are not supposed to be used for residential use. However, the Trust are quite relaxed about boat owners living on leisure moorings full time. They are aware of the shortage of official residential moorings and also feel that the canal is a more attractive and more secure environment with moorings occupied by liveaboards than it is with lines of empty boats. While the Trust are happy to allow boaters to stay full time on their leisure moorings, they aren’t happy at all when boat owners over stay their welcome on visitor moorings. The Trust currently employs an enforcement team of 50 officers who patrol the towpath to monitor boat movement. The areas of greatest concern at the moment are the Grand Union south of Milton Keynes, the south Oxford canal and the western end of the K & A. The problem is so acute in these areas that navigation is difficult and vacant visitor moorings are few and far between. In order to deal with long term NCCCs, the Trust are about to launch a pilot scheme in the London area. The scheme will grant a license to existing none compliant cruisers which will allow them to legally “bridge hop” (move backwards and forwards between two or more points). This scheme will only apply to currently known long term NCCCs. Any new boat owners using the network who flout the rules will be identified and ultimately served with enforcement notices. So why is there such a shortage of residential moorings when there are so many vacant moorings, particularly in marinas? Sally says it’s all down to the local authorities. A leisure mooring doesn’t need planning consent. A residential mooring requires a change of land use. Many marinas are on green belt land so the local authorities are unwilling to give consent. Local authorities are becoming slightly more flexible with linear moorings, The Trust are currently working with them to identify suitable residential moorings along the canal, especially in congested areas such as the Grand Union south of Milton Keynes. The Trust acknowledge that they have a difficult task ahead of them. For many years NCCCs have been left to their own devices. There are many communities of static continuous cruisers. There are between 500 and 1,000 NCCC cases open at any one time. The Trust will, in extreme circumstances, remove these boats from the water. However, as the boat owners live on board full time, the courts are often reluctant to sanction boat removal and the boat owners subsequent loss of their homes. The message is clear, if you live on your boat but don’t cruise and don’t have a registered home mooring, you are breaking the rules as the Trust are concerned, but they are prepared to talk to you to discuss a solution. But if you’ve only recently declared on your license that you’re going to cruise continuously, you need to make sure that’s exactly what you do. Keeping Dry On The Cut Published 19th May 2013 I try not to upset people when I write these weekly newsletters. After all, living on a narrowboat is supposed to be a stress free alternative to living in a bricks and mortar home. I don’t always succeed though. I upset at least one couple with the account of my cruise back from Braunston to Calcutt two weeks ago. I met a brand new wide beam hotel boat heading towards Braunston last week. A meeting which required some interesting manoeuvring to pass it on a section of canal with boats moored along one side. As a result of my account, a post was made on the forum complaining about my attitude towards wide beam boat owners in general and the owners of the Wessex Rose in particular. I’ve responded to the post but, just for clarification, please let me say that I have nothing against wide beams or their owners. However, wide beams do cause the same kind of hold-ups on the narrow canals that caravans and RV’s do on narrow country roads. They need to cruise with care at narrow passing places, of which there are many, at bends and at bridge holes. Because of this, they tend to create a tailback of slightly frustrated narrowboat owners. So, if you are a wide beam owner and I’ve offended you, I apologise. I try to ensure that the site is as friendly as possible for all visitors, and not just for narrowboat owners and enthusiasts.

Waterproof Clothing For Boat Owners As you’ve probably guessed by now, I love my job. When I wake up in the morning, I don’t really know what I’m going to do. I can be working on the grounds trying to keep all 110 acres both tidy and attractive for our 250+ moorers, instructing holiday hirers on the correct operation of their temporary floating homes, delivering engines to or collecting engines from boatyards up and down the country, releasing sheep trapped in brambles or boggy ground, emptying bins and clearing blockages in our sewage system (I don’t enjoy that very much) and, one of my favourite jobs, moving boats around the marina. Our slipway is always very busy. Nearly every day we pull a boat out of the water for blacking or repairs. The boats need to be brought from their moorings before the work is done and returned once the work has been completed. Every year we black out own fleet of hire boats which involves taking them from the wharf, down through Calcutt Middle and Bottom locks and into Locks marina to the slipway and then back up the locks to the wharf once the work has been done. I’m actually paid for taking boats on short cruises and I love it. There are ten online moorings at Calcutt; five below the Calcutt flight and five above it. On Tuesday I had to take a boat from the wharf to one of the online moorings above the lock flight and next to the reservoir. It’s usually moored with the bow pointing down stream so it had to be returned to the mooring as it was found. In calm conditions it’s possible to come out of the top lock, use the winding hole to turn the boat 180 degrees and reverse it 100m to its mooring. Tuesday was quite windy so the alternative to reversing the narrowboat in a strong cross wind was to take it half a mile to Napton junction where I could turn around and then cruise back to the mooring pointing in the right direction. Not only was Tuesday windy, it was also very wet. By the time I reached Napton junction I was soaked and just a little bit fed up until I looked at my experience from a different angle. It’s spring and the canal was beautiful. There was new life everywhere. The hawthorn lining one side of the bank were in full and beautiful bloom, bowing over the few remaining daffodils. I passed a mallard with five chicks followed a little further on by a pair of swans with week old signets. The rain glistened on the vivid green foliage framing my view of acres of water and hundreds of birds on Napton reservoir. What’s more, I was cruising and I was being paid to do it. I really enjoyed the short cruise back to the mooring. The rain enhanced rather than spoiled my experience. If I had been wearing decent waterproofs I could have happily cruised all day. Not many boaters cruise in the rain. I think it’s usually because of the unpleasant sensation of standing immobile in wet and increasingly cold and uncomfortable clothing. I’ve spent many years as a keen hill walker and at a different stage of my life as a keen angler. I’ve had more than my fair share of uncomfortable days in wet clothing. I’ve tried a huge variety of waterproofs from low tech oilskins to the latest breathable fabrics. Oilskins are completely waterproof. You can stand all day in the heaviest rain without getting wet… until you generate some body heat. When I wore my oilskins as I remained stationary for hours at a time on board a boat when I was fishing offshore, the oilskins worked perfectly. However, if I was fishing from the shore constantly moving as I retreated before the incoming tide, the oilskins were very unpleasant to wear. I was frequently soaked by the sweat retained by the none breathable waterproofs. In later years I often loaded up a 75 litre rucksack and disappeared into the Scottish Highlands for a week at a time to enjoy some much needed solitude. I had a little more money to spend on waterproof clothing than I did in my youth so I invested in the best waterproof and breathable clothing that I could find. I was never completely happy with any of it. Scotland is often a very wet place to walk and even the best breathable waterproofs struggled to keep the rain out. Oilskins weren’t an option because walking all day long carrying a 40 – 50lb pack would have resulted in torrents of sweat running down the insides of waterproofs. Now my passion is boating and it’s the style of boating that involves standing very still on the back of a boat for hours on end. The situation is ideal for oilskins so I’ve just invested in the best oilskins I could find. I’ve bought heavy duty oilskins favoured by trawlermen. They are a Guy Cotten X Trapper jacket and a pair of heavy duty bib & brace trousers. I can now enjoy cruising the canals of rainy England in comfort. The downside is that they won’t be practical for lock work. Sally will have to do that. I haven’t told her yet.

Reducing Unnecessary Expenditure – Do You Really Need A Car? I gave my car away last week. It’s gone to my ex wife so that she can put the proceeds of the sale towards university fees for our children. I am now without a car of my own since I passed my driving test in 1977 which, incidentally, was when my boat was built. In the last 36 years on the road I’ve always had a car. In recent years I had a Toyota Previa for five years (for the children) followed by a Nissan Pathfinder for another five years (for showing off) before my last car a Seat Altea 2.0 TDI FR (for no particular reason). I loved the car. After a decade of big cars, the Seat was a pleasant and nippy change. It was comfortable to drive, was fast, good to look at... and totally unnecessary. In the last 12 months the car has cost me £1,900. I owned the car so the costs where for tax, insurance, repairs and maintenance and fuel. I suspect that if I had kept the car for another year, the annual cost would have been far higher. The brake pads needed replacing, all four tyres where on their way out and the car, only six years old, wasn’t keen on starting in the mornings. Before I decided to get rid of my car, I had to think seriously whether I needed one. Sally has a car. It’s a very reliable Honda Civic. Sally works shifts so our days off don’t always coincide. When we’re off together, we go out together so we can use her car. When she’s working and I’m off, like today, I won’t have access to a car but I don’t think it’s going to be a problem. I don’t particularly enjoy going to the shops. I love the feeling of peace and tranquillity that living on a narrowboat affords me. I’m now more used to the company of pigeons that people and I much prefer life this way. I don’t actually need to go to the shops very often. With the technology available to me, I can ask the shops to come to me. I do a great deal of shopping online. I’m a big fan of Amazon. I can buy just about anything I need from. Their system is excellent; products are easy to find, are accurately rated and have predictable or zero delivery fees. If I can’t find anything on Amazon, I can usually find it on eBay. My experience with eBay is almost as good as it is with Amazon. I actually enjoy food shopping, but I don’t really need to visit the stores. When I do physically walk down the isles, I’m a prolific impulse buyer. I fall for the supermarket’s product placement tricks all the time. It’s far safer for me to do my grocery shopping online. Whenever I make a decision about the boat or my lifestyle these days it’s always with my goal in mind. My goal is for Sally and I to cruise full time. I don’t think that we are many years away from achieving it. Will we want the hassle of dragging a car or two along with us on our travels when we go? I don’t think so. A car is convenient but it’s not a necessity. I don’t know how many of the 2,000 plus genuine continuous cruisers own vehicles but I know that there are hundreds who manage without. The genuine continuous cruisers are the few lucky narrowboat owners who don’t need to work or who are able to work from their boat wherever they are on the system. The genuine continuous cruisers enjoy a progressive and constant journey throughout the network. They have overcome the logistics of restocking on board food and medicinal supplies, laundry requirements and postal collections. If they need a car, which they don’t very often, they simply hire one. I intend to join the happy few. Getting rid of my car and reducing my outgoings is another step closer. From Nervous Anticipation To Confident Cruising Let me tell you a story. It’s a horror story. The main characters are my bank, my laptop, an unknown individual of debatable parentage and I. About a month ago I told you that I had my identity stolen. My new laptop was hacked, I was locked out of my email account, this site, the site that hosts this site, T Mobile, and my bank. The hacker changed the contact address and phone number on my bank account. As a result I had to close my bank account and open another. This process took three weeks due to one cock up or another by the bank. During this three week period my employer couldn’t pay me and I had no means of paying my regular monthly standing orders or direct debits. As part of the bank’s verification process, the hacker had to establish that he was me. He did this by uploading a copy of my own passport, which he found on my laptop, to the the bank. The laptop was brand new. By a process of elimination I guessed that the hack could have only come from within the new laptop. I did some research and discovered stories of laptops which had malicious code added to them before they reached the stores which sold them. The store which sold me mine was PC World. I took the laptop back to them. They assured me that their machine couldn’t have been infected but offered to do a factory reset for me if I would pay them £50. I didn’t feel as though I had the choice. I use a laptop for four or five hours every day, my old laptop has slowed down so much that I can almost make a cup of coffee between typing words and seeing them appear on the screen, and the inconvenience was driving me mad. Once I had the repaired laptop back on the boat, I started the laborious process of downloading all of the applications I use on a regular basis; Microsoft Office, Open Office (because Microsoft appear unable to develop a document editing application which can convert a document to a PDF with links which actually work), Adobe Photoshop, Picasa, and half a dozen other large downloads. Of course being on a boat and connecting to the web via a dongle, the downloads took an age, and they also resulted in me running out of data. Three offer the best roving internet connectivity in the UK, but they also offer the poorest and most frustrating experience when it comes to topping up. If you go over your monthly allowance and if you insist on carrying on using your dongle, they charge you 10p per megabyte. Adobe Photoshop at 600mb would have cost me £60 to download. I didn’t discover this until I had been able to log into my account which involved retrieving a password which they don’t tell you when you set the dongle up. In order to determine the password you need to tell them the SIM serial number. The SIM is in the dongle which, in my case, is on the boat roof. In the end, to keep myself online until my next month’s allowance kicked in, I had to buy a PAYG SIM and use that as an interim measure. Finally back online, and with a huge backlog of work on the site, my first job was to secure my identity and access to all of the sites I use. I upgraded my anti virus software and I also bought an application which generates complex passwords, encrypts them and password protects the passwords in a secure vault online. Finally my life was back to normal and I was safe… or so I thought. I checked my bank account on Sunday. I check it most days because I reconcile it with an accounts package, mainly so that I can record my boat expenses for Living on a Narrowboat: The Real Cost of a Life Afloat. I noticed that £500 had been withdrawn in Bristol. Sally and I live on the boat in Warwickshire, 100 miles from Bristol. Neither of us have been there for years. I called Mastercard’s lost or stolen credit card hotline immediately. I told them that neither of us had lost our cards but that there had been an unauthorised withdrawal from the account. Both Sally’s card and my card were stopped immediately. I told them that I wanted the account frozen as well as putting the block on the cards. The next day, Monday, I called Mastercard as soon as their phone lines opened at 9.00am. As part of the never ending automated service before I could talk to a living person, I was given the opportunity to hear my current account balance. The balance was now a further £500 lower than it should have been. When I was finally put through to him, the customer services guy told me that another £500 had been withdrawn from the same Bristol cash-point machine that morning, twelve hours after I had telephone their emergency hotline to put a block on the account. The operator told me that when I telephoned the day before I had asked for a block to be put on my card and Sally’s card, but not on the third card holder. He read me the name on the card. I was stunned. The identity of the third card holder was a mystery to me. I certainly hadn’t arranged for them to have a card. After a little digging Mr. Customer Services told me that they had received a telephone call the week before. The caller had correctly answered all of my security questions, including an eight digit security number only known to Sally and I. It isn’t written anywhere. The caller requested an additional card for the account to be sent to the account address – which the hacker had changed to an address in Bristol. One of Mastercard’s security measures is to send an email to the account holder (me) in the event of the contact details being changed. The hacker anticipated this, hacked my Gmail account and set up a filter to delete all emails from Mastercard before they arrived in my inbox. Consequently I wasn’t aware that a change had been made. Mr. Customer Services informed me that they would have to investigate the case before considering refunding the fraudulent withdrawals. In the meantime, yet again I have no bank account (and no money to put in one anyway), yet again I’m forced to use a laptop only slightly more advanced than the abacus and yet again I’ve had to send away my new laptop to try to get the malicious code removed. I haven’t taken the laptop to PC World this time. I have no faith in them. I’ve taken it to a computer expert who will be able to resolve the issue. However, I’m sure that he’s going to charge me about £1,000,000 an hour for his services so it’s questionable whether I would be better off having the laptop fixed or just throwing it off a very high building and buy another… not that I now have any spare cash to buy it with. I could take the laptop back to PC World and demand a new machine. However, I would have to prove that there was something wrong with it but I don’t know how to do that if the fault is a very well hidden key logger. Once upon a time I would have relished the opportunity to make a very big fuss inside the store. These days though I’m not so keen on going for a ride with the boys in blue. I want a quiet life. That’s why I live on a narrowboat. Update 22nd May 2013: Fantastic news! I received a letter from Mastercard today. They said “We have already refunded your account with the unauthorised transactions”. It’s wonderful news. The refund has allowed me to have some scheduled work done on James that needs to done before I go on holiday on 1st June. I can relax a little now. Update 23rd May 2013: When I spoke to Mastercard on Monday after they reassured me that the account was safe to use and that there was no way that anyone could access it to make changes including, frustratingly, myself, I agreed that they could reinstate both Sally’s card and my own. Reinstating the cards, I was assured, would be done at the click of a button. Imagine my surprise then when Sally called me from the checkout queue at Tesco in Southam where she was waiting with a full trolly’s worth of bagged food to tell me that the card had been declined. She was understandably very unhappy. I called Mastercard and as I waited in the automated queue checked my account balance. The second surprise of the day was that the £1,000 that Mastercard had promised to put into my account wasn’t there. When I queried this with the operator, I was told that they hadn’t put the money back in my account and simply sent me the wrong letter! They then admitted to a second mistake. They hadn’t reinstated Sally’s card after they promised they would. They corrected one of the errors by reinstating the card but told me that I would have to wait until they had concluded the investigation before there was any chance of getting my money back. Update 24th May 2013: Mastercard called this afternoon. They have listened to the recording of the phone call I made when I reported the first unauthorised transaction where I repeatedly asked the operator to ensure that the account was frozen. They agree that there was no doubt that the account suspension request had been made so they have transferred the second unauthorised withdrawal back into my account. Mastercard are going to investigate further before they decide whether to refund me for the first unauthorised withdrawal. Even though they sent me a letter advising me that the money was already back in the account, I think that I’ll be very lucky to get the money back. I’ve lost the money as a result of a sophisticated hack. I couldn’t have done any more to protect myself. As a result of the hack, I’ve lost £500 from my bank account, I’ve spent dozens of hours reinstalling software, setting up new passwords, securing this site and taking and collecting my hacked laptop to and from PC World. As a result of the second attack, I’ve taken the laptop to a private software expert who has taken the hard drive out, given it a very thorough going over and then reinstalled the operating system. I’m reasonably (but not totally) confident that he’s cured the problem. However, he’s charged me £200 for the pleasure. The work isn’t over yet. Sally will be picking up the laptop this evening when she finishes work. When I get my grubby little hands on it, I need to spend a further four our five hours installing my applications for a third time. I’m so pleased that I live in an age where we have so much technology to make our lives easier.

A Case Study – Our Nige Takes Forty Winks Nigel Buttery (Our Nige on the forum) is in his mid fifties, a registered care assistant and was, until very recently, an unhappy home owner. Like many visitors to this site, Nige wanted a boat of his own to live on. Unlike most, he’s seized the bull by the horns, sold his house, found a mooring where he can live on board and spent an exciting week taking his boat to its new home. Our Nige has also taken the opportunity available to all site visitors to blog about his narrowboat experience. He’s written some very entertaining posts. Here’s his case study. There’s a chronological list of his blog entries at the bottom of the post.

Crick Show It’s the end of May bank holiday and a long weekend when many narrowboat enthusiasts head for Crick and the biggest of the inland waterways boat shows. Crick is renowned for it’s poor weather so the continuous sunshine yesterday and today has been a very welcome bonus. I’ll be there tomorrow (Monday 27th May) to help bring the Calcutt Boats stand back to the marina and to do a little shopping. Sally and I have been compiling our boating shopping list for the last couple of months. We’ll be looking at truncheon fenders, front and rear button fenders, a BW style life jacket or two, some ceiling lights, a suitcase generator, rubber matting for the rear deck, and chrome mushroom vents and tiller. We can’t afford everything on the list but, with the discounts available on the last day of the show, we’ll be able to buy more than we could anywhere else. I’ll let you know how successful we were in next Sunday’s newsletter.

Next Sunday Sally and I are going on holiday. We’re taking James out for the first proper cruise since I moved on board three years ago. It’s taken me this long to be able to afford the repairs, additions and modifications to allow us to cruise confidently and comfortably. I’ll be updating the site each day as we cruise, very slowly, up to the end of the Ashby canal. We’re both very excited. Pre Cruise Checklist Published 2nd June 2013 I’m moving house today. I’m not moving out of my home, I’m taking it with me. The ability to undo a couple of ropes and move your home to another location with a better view is one of the many wonderful aspects of living on a narrowboat. We actually have very pleasant neighbours at Calcutt but, if we didn’t get on with them, we would be able to move our home to another location where the neighbours were better. We’re not moving permanently. We’re off on holiday for two weeks. A cruising holiday on James is something that I’ve been wanting to do for years. Unfortunately when I moved on board, James wasn’t in an acceptable condition to take anywhere. The wooden top was in a very poor state of repair, as were the front and rear doors. The hatches over the rear doors and the port and starboard side doors were in an awful state. At some stage the original hatches had been replace by deck board. The hatches had warped and the hatch runners had decayed to the point where I could poke my finger through them. The hatches offered no security at all. Anyone who wanted to gain entry to the boat could simply lift them off and climb in. The on-board electrics were extremely basic. I had a starter battery and just one 110amp leisure battery. The single battery wasn’t enough to run the 12v appliances on board and couldn’t be charged because the engine’s alternator was faulty. I couldn’t use 230v appliances at all because the boat didn’t have an inverter. The engine itself was in serious need of some TLC. The first time I took James out for on a day trip to Braunston I broke down with Sally and her two adult children on board. I walked back from Braunston to Calcutt with Sally’s daughter Maricar to fetch my car so that we could collect Sally, her son Michael and the dogs. I was very embarrassed. The cause of the breakdown was minor. The fuel filter was blocked. However, because the engine had been installed very close to the bulkhead between the bedroom and the engine room and the fuel filter was on the front of the engine, it was almost impossible to take off and clean. The next time I plucked up enough courage to take the boat out the engine kept dropping out of gear. I managed to limp back to the mooring where one of out engineers had a look at it for me. It appeared to be another minor problem. The PRM gearbox was very low on oil. A PRM gearbox isn’t damaged if there is little or no oil in it. The gearbox simply stops working so doesn’t engage the drive. With a fully topped up gearbox I took the boat out again. I had the same problem. This time I discovered that one of the gearbox hoses had perished so all of the oil recently added to the gearbox was in the bilge. All of these problems have been resolved now. RCR have given the engine a thorough service (and told me that the engine should outlive me), I’ve increased the leisure battery bank from 1 x 110amp to 4 x 135amp, I’ve added a 1.6KW pure sine inverter to allow the use of 230v appliances when I’m “off grid”, I’ve added 3 x 100w solar panels to keep the batteries topped up without running the engine even if I’m stationary for a few days. We’re now ready to thoroughly enjoy the two weeks ahead. We’ve spent time and energy making sure that we’re properly prepared… unlike two holiday hirers at the beginning of the week. John and Jan hadn’t been on a narrowboat before. They had booked a Tuesday – Saturday break to try it out. Unfortunately they picked the wrong Tuesday to experience narrowboating for the first time. The weather was awful. After a wonderful bank holiday weekend, the brilliant sunshine was masked by angry clouds. The rain was relentless. During the morning my “waterproof” Calcutt padded jacket had absorbed more water than a paddling pool so I had switched to my own Guy Cotten bombproof trawlerman’s oilskin smock top. There’s no chance of rain getting in. As it’s not breathable there’s also no chance of perspiration getting out, so it’s no good for wearing during strenuous physical activity but it’s marvellous for standing around talking. It’s perfect for instructing holiday hirers in the pouring rain. Jan and John didn’t have effective waterproof clothing. In fact, they didn’t have waterproof clothing at all. Jan stayed inside the boat while I showed John around the gas lockers, the wet locker and the engine bay and told him how to operate the boat. An instruction usually lasts about an hour. The first part details the safe operation of the hire boat and is followed by a hand’s on demonstration of how to steer the boat and how a lock works as we take the boat through one or more locks in the Calcutt flight. John steered and stayed with the boat while I showed Jan (“Oh dear. I didn’t expect the locks to be such hard work”) how to get the hire boat safely through the lock. By the time I was ready to hand the boat over to them, they were both shivering so violently that they could hardly speak. I suggested that they take the boat just past Napton Junction where there’s a lovely spot to moor. I advised both of them to have a hot shower and settle in for the evening. They told me that they couldn’t. They didn’t have any food with them apart from two packets of crisps. They needed to cruise to a pub where they could get something to eat. They planned to eat out every day so didn’t think they needed to bring any provisions. As they were heading towards the Ashby canal, the first pub en route was the Boat House at Braunston over two hours away. I’m writing this section of the newsletter early Saturday morning. Jan and John are due back later this morning. I hope they’ve had a good time, but somehow I doubt it. Out of their fours days on a narrowboat, they spent the first three trying to cruise in pouring rain while, chilled to the bone, they searched for somewhere selling hot food. A little forward planning would have made all the difference. A good set of waterproofs each and a stock of food would have allowed them to enjoy rather than endure a canal break. Relying on available pubs for food is a disaster waiting to happen. Boaters can’t guarantee that they can reach a pub during the hours that it serves food, or that it will actually be serving food when they get there. I suggested to Jan and John that they walked a mile from their mooring at Napton Junction to the King’s Head at Napton to get something to eat. They said that they would rather press on in the rain. I’m pleased that they didn’t take my advice because I found out later that the King’s head had been closed that night. I don’t know why. Remember the five P’s. Proper Planning Prevents P*** Poor Performance. Effective planning doesn’t just apply to holiday hirers. Boat owners need to plan their trips too. As I said earlier, I’m out for two weeks starting today. I’ve planned the trip for a while to ensure that everything goes as smoothly as possible

Pre Cruise Planning My planning has taken a long time for my first real cruise on James because of the condition of the boat when I moved on board. James was OK for a day trip – once the engine had been serviced, the fuel filter cleaned and the perished gearbox cables replaced – but the boat wasn’t suitable for even a short multi day cruise. The electricity generation and storage was very poor. There was a too small alternator to charge just one 110amp leisure battery. James had a 230v ring main but it could only be powered by plugging in the shore line. I’ve now upgraded the alternator, increased the size of the battery bank and added 3 x 100w solar panels complete with an MPPT controller. In order to use the electricity stored in the new larger battery bank for running my 230v appliances, I’ve fitted a 1.6KW Sterling pure sine inverter. And to minimise the amount of power I use, and to provide far more effective illumination, I’ve replaced all twenty of the boat’s standard light bulbs with LEDs. I’ve over plated the boat’s original wooden top with steel. Part of the work included adding a reinforced anchor point for the centre line, the most important rope on the boat and an essential aid to single handed navigation. I’ve also added a cover for the cratch to provide additional storage space. I honestly don’t know what we would do without it. All of the above has been preparation to bring the boat up to a standard where it can be used for comfortable cruising. After that I had to anticipate my needs for this particular trip. One of the many wonderful aspects of taking your liveaboard narrowboat on holiday with you is that you don’t need to do any packing. I’m not leaving my home to go on holiday for two weeks. I’m taking my home with me. All I need to do is turn the engine on, unplug the shore line, untie the bow and stern mooring lines, and we’re off! There’s no stress packing suitcases and wondering what clothes we need to take. I remember from previous holidays in UK that we used to take nearly every stitch we owned anyway. We had to take a range of clothing to allow for the English summer; cloud, sun, rain, hail and on one memorable break to north Devon at Easter, snow. So we don’t have to worry about what to wear. We don’t have to worry about negotiating busy airports, busy roads approaching the airports, tiny seats on claustrophobic planes, unpleasant neighbours overflowing their tiny seats, remembering to take passports (and remembering, months in advance, to ensure that those passports are up to date), organizing holiday spending money, furiously saving holiday spending money, organising hotels or apartments and planning and paying for airport car parking. And then, when finally arriving at the holiday destination, exhausted from planning a break to recover from the exhaustion of a “normal” stressful life, being too tired to enjoy the break for several days. This break is very different. There’s no stress involved at all. Providing I keep my “house” in good order, I don’t have to do much to prepare for a few weeks away. But I do have to consider the logistics of the trip. Unlike Jan and John, the under prepared holiday hirers, we won’t be relying on canal side pubs to provide us with hot food every day. We’ll be eating on board. Eating on board will be far cheaper (and the quality of food is likely to be higher) but we need to know where we can restock. Although we aren’t going to stick rigidly to a time table, we expect to take three days to get to the section of the Ashby canal we want to explore. The only decent supermarkets on the canal are at Market Bosworth. We could stop off in Rugby at some of the large supermarkets there but I want to spend as little time as possible in Rugby. I don’t like the town at all. We’ll pass through there as quickly as possible so that we can get back to the peace and quiet of the open countryside. We’ve bought enough fresh food to keep us going until about Wednesday, and some tinned and dried food in case we want to stay longer. I ran through my pre cruise check list on Sunday morning before we left. • 2 x windlesses • 2 x lump hammers • 3 x mooring stakes • 2 x mooring chains • British Waterways key (for the locking plates on the water points) • Anchor, chain and rope (I don’t need an anchor for this trip, but there’s one on board) • A sharp knife, bolt croppers and mole grips for removing obstacles from the propeller • Pole and plank on board and in good condition • Coal, kindling and firelighters in case the weather turns chilly. I don’t really want to have to light the fire in June but the early mornings can be a bit chilly and I don’t have a central heating system on James which can be used to provide a quick burst of heat as and when I need it. • A spare 13kg gas cylinder • Spare engine and gearbox oil • Spare grease for the greaser • Fuel topped up (so I can top it up again when we get back and work out how much fuel my engine user each hour) • Bow line, stern line and two centre ropes – all present and in good condition • Batteries topped up and holding a charge • A map of our cruising route. A good map (I favour Pearson’s) is essential for finding water points, winding holes – turning areas – estimated journey times and quiet mooring spots away from housing, roads and railways. • A good set of waterproofs, especially for the helmsman • A sense of adventure and anticipation I discovered that I didn’t have everything I needed, including a means of charging the starter battery. The thought of not being able to start the boat when moored in the middle of nowhere induced a certain amount of panic. I’ve run out of time to tell you about it now. We have a five hour cruise to where I want to moor tonight. We’re currently a mile outside of Braunston on the Rugby side. Once we moor up this evening I’m going to write a post about the first day of the cruise. I’ll explain all about my problem there. Until then, I’m going to enjoy the sunshine and the countryside drifts by at a leisurely 4mph. Cruising Notes For Narrowboat Owners Published 9th June 2013 What a wonderful week. I truly hope it’s been a glimpse into our future. Sally and I have been travelling, ever so slowly from our home mooring on the beautiful Calcutt Boats owned Meadows marina to the head of the Ashby canal at Snarestone in Leicestershire. It’s not a long or arduous journey and cruises go; just 52 miles and seven locks. But, even though I enjoy every day I work at Calcutt, it’s been far more pleasant exploring rural England at a very gentle pace. I know boaters who like to travel as far and wide as they can when they cruise. I know others who like to spend their retirement on a static mooring. Sally and I see ourselves somewhere in the middle. About a year ago I was introduced to the concept of snail’s pace continuous cruising. The idea is to stay as long as possible on a mooring but within the guidelines set by the Trust. The continuous cruising rules dictate that you should move to a new area as part of a progressive journey every fourteen days (which means that you can’t shuffle backwards and forwards between two points). I know of one couple who travel continously but only cruise for three hours (about ten miles) every week. They then have seven days to thoroughly explore their new “home” before moving on to the next spot. I can’t imagine a better retirement. Given that the average narrowboat engine uses less than 1.5 litres of diesel an hour, cruising at such a sedate pace would cost less than £5 a week for propulsion fuel. The canal and river network would take over four years to explore completely. I don’t know about you, but my memory isn’t what it used to be. Exploring the network every four years would be like exploring it every time for the first time. I think that Sally and I are a couple of years off being able to afford to support ourselves comfortably in retirement. This cruise has been a little bit of a test to make sure that Sally is completely comfortable with the limitations of living off grid. I don’t think she is yet. She’s been suffering from acute vacuum cleaner withdrawal symptoms for the last week. For the last hour she’s been on her hands and knees muttering about “bloody dog hairs” and the “dirty filthy stove”. If we’re to avoid her having a dirt induced nervous breakdown we’re either going to have to invest in a suitcase generator or a more substantial inverter. Either that or install a central heating system and shave both dogs. I’ve been on holiday for the last week so I haven’t had the time to write content for the newsletter as well sa writing the daily cruise updates. The seven blog entries are listed below in order. There’s some useful content in the posts about the ins and outs of managing a boat on the move so I hope you find the posts interesting reading. I also hope that my account of the cruise will stiffen your resolve to follow your dream and finally move into your own floating home. Day One: Calcutt To Braunston Day Two: Braunston To Brinklow Marina Day Three: Brinklow Marina To Burton Hastings Day Four: Burton Hastings To Stoke Golding Day Five: Stoke Golding To Sutton Cheyney Wharf Day Six: A Lazy Day At Sutton Cheyney Wharf Day Seven: Sutton Wharf To Congerstone

Happy Birthday Dear Forum The forum is now a year old. I set up the new section of the site on 3rd June 2012. Since then there have been 2,210 posts made on 388 different topics. I couldn’t be more pleased. I was in two minds whether to invest the time, money and energy into the installation and maintenance of the forum. I didn’t know whether any narrowboat enthusiasts would want to use yet another boating forum when there were one or two already in use. I needn’t have worried. With the very genourous contributions from a growing number of very knowledgable boaters the forum has become a very well used resource for both new and established boaters. We have also been joined by one or two escapees from the other forums who have come here because they consider the response they get here to be far friendlier than they get elsewhere. All I can say is that all constructive contributions to the forum are very welcome indeed. I’ve also received some very interesting emails from forum users. I received one from Roger Filler last week suggesting that a section where boat owners could add cruising notes would be a useful addition to the forum. Roger kicked it off by emailing me his cruising notes for the river Severn. I think his idea is excellent. There are more and more site users buying boats. The information they pick up as they cruise the network will be very useful to both new and existing boat owners if they add it to the new section. I’ll be setting up the new cruising notes section when I return from my two week break. In the meantime, if you’ve done any cruising and have recorded any notes, please let me know. I’ll let you know where and when you can add them to the site. There’s a list of the more popular forum topics below. If you can’t find the answer to anything you want to know about narrowboats in the existing topics, all you have to do is start your own topic. Remember, the only stupid question is the one you don’t ask. Considerate Boating On The Cut Published 16th June 2013 We’re back “home” after two weeks away. I’ve faithfully recorded our journey each day. Writing the daily updates has taken up much of my free time. I know I’ve been on holiday so it’s all been “free” time but there’s only so much time I can spend sitting hunched over my laptop and still maintain a relationship. Sally’s very good about the amount of time I spend working on the site, but I’m sure I’ve seen her recently looking at the power lead thoughtfully while she reaches into the cutlery drawer for a knife. Consequently there’s not much to this newsletter other than links to my daily blog posts. I hope you find them useful. If you’re new to boating they’ll give you an insight into cruising in a typical British summer, some sun, lots of cloud, light rain, heavy rain, threats of rain, a hailstone or two and plenty of wind. If you’re already a boat owner, maybe the blog posts will remind you of your own experiences and fill you with enthusiasm for your next trip. Day One: Calcutt To Braunston Day Two: Braunston To Brinklow Marina Day Three: Brinklow Marina To Burton Hastings Day Four: Burton Hastings To Stoke Golding Day Five: Stoke Golding To Sutton Cheyney Wharf Day Six: A Lazy Day At Sutton Cheyney Wharf Day Seven: Sutton Wharf To Congerstone Day Eight: Congerstone To Gopsall Woods Day Nine:Gopsall Woods To Sutton Wharf Day Ten: Sutton Wharf To Marston Jabbett Day Eleven: Coventry Basin Day Twelve: Ansty To Hillmorton Day Thirteen: Hillmorton To Willoughby Wharf

Most Popular Narrowboat Names Which are the most popular narrowboat names and how many boats are registered with these names. Here’s a current list of the top 200 names. There’s also a link to an A-Z listing of boat names. If you want a unique name for your boat, make sure you check here first.

Considerate Boating I encountered very little inconsiderate boating on my trip. Most of it was probably just down to lack of knowledge rather than pig ignorance. Here’s a very informative post by long term continuous cruiser Peter Early with some tips on how to maintain peaceful relations on the cut. The Cost Of A Two Week Cruise Published 23rd June 2013 I’ve been back in the real world for a week now. In my previous life as a stressed out business owner, going on holiday usually wasn’t worth the hassle. Even for a two week break I had to spend weeks preparing for my time away. As a small business owner I had to be all things to all men so preparing for a holiday was a nightmare. I had to make sure that staff wages were paid on time, ensure that all outstanding invoices were paid, organise and schedule work for my field based staff, make sure that the office staff knew what they were doing and deal with dozens of outstanding queries and problems. By the time I finally left for my holiday I was usually exhausted. And then when I returned from holiday there would be a new list of problems to deal with. These days I don’t earn very much but, oh boy, is my life easy. I have no staff to organise, nothing to plan for while I’m away, and absolutely no stress or heartache when I return. I lead a simple life and I love it.

So I’ve enjoyed my first week back after my holiday. Yesterday I spent a couple of hours mowing a footpath around the edge of two of our wild flower meadows. The grass and flowers were about three feet high so my mower was like a boat sailing on a sea of yellow and purple. And then after my “hard” day’s work I came back to a boat caressed by waving reeds and vivid yellow iris. What a way to earn a living! Cruising In Your Own Boat – The Cheapest Holiday You Can Buy I’ve been thinking about our two weeks away over the last few days as I’ve updated my accounts. One of the aspects of a holiday on your own boat is how little it costs you compared with, say, a traditional two week holiday abroad. A two week holiday in the sun costs you plenty. You need to pay for insurance, the cost of the accommodation, the cost of the flight, airport parking or travel to and from the airport, travel insurance, something nice to wear when you go out, when you go to the beach, when you travel too and from your destination and, of course, lots and lots of spending money while you’re away. In the carefree days before I had children, a two week holiday in Spain for the two of us cost at least £2,500. Compare that to the cost of two weeks away we’ve just enjoyed on our own boat. There’s no airport parking, fuel costs to and from the airport, travel insurance or cost of accommodation. And there’s very little need for spending money. For me it’s enough of a treat to be on a tranquil mooring in beautiful English countryside. I don’t feel the need to dress up and spend a fortune on a meal which, in most cases, I could have cooked better on the boat. I don’t feel the need to dress up and I don’t feel comfortable on the boat wearing “smart” clothes. I would much rather just stay on the James or on the canal or river bank beside the boat, enjoying home cooked food and beer and/or wine at supermarket prices. Our two weeks away cost us very little more than we would have spent during two weeks at any other time of the year. We used diesel for propulsion which we wouldn’t have used normally. We used a total of 67 litres over 42 hours cruising or 1.6 litres for each hour we travelled. The diesel cost £81.74. Added to that we spent £123.75 on eating out. We didn’t go to any fancy restaurants for dinner in the evening. We had a few fairly low cost pub lunches and a coffee at a waterside café every other day. They’re the only additional expenses for a wonderful two week holiday in beautiful rural England. Less than a tenth of the amount we used to spend on a pretty standard foreign holiday. It’s not just the cost that’s an issue. A holiday abroad, for me, was always stressful. Maybe you feel the same way. Your location is usually static for the duration of your holiday so you have to ensure that you choose the right accommodation for your stay. It’s always a bit hit and miss because you have to rely on other people’s subjective reviews to find out what it’s like. Finding the right accommodation is only half the battle. You’ve got to get there first. The journey usually involves a stressful drive to the airport worrying about whether you’ll get there in time, whether you’ve remembered your passports, flight tickets, insurance documents, foreign currency and travellers cheques and your airport parking booking form. Then you have to endure the tedious wait at the terminal, an even longer and more tedious period on the plane, yet another wait at your destination airport while you collect your baggage, find your transport to the resort and then sit in it for another hour or so. It’s exhausting. I know where I would rather be these days. The weather is often frustrating in England, but when it’s good, it’s just unbeatable. Our recent two weeks away was typical of a two week period in June. We had four or five days of very warm weather. The rest of the time we experienced some cloud – a lot of cloud – some heavy showers, a period of very blustery weather and some decidedly chilly days. The weather really didn’t matter. On the hot days we cruised for shorter periods and spent longer moored enjoying stunning views of rolling countryside as we relaxed on the towpath. If the weather was too cool to sit out, we cruised instead. We didn’t have to worry whether we had the right clothes with us because we had all of our clothes with us. We took our floating home on holiday. As you can probably tell, I love just about every aspect of narrowboat ownership. Super cheap holidays really is the icing on the cake.

New Liveaboard Case Study – Etive II Mary Anne, fed up paying rent to unappreciative landlords, took out a personal loan and bought herself a floating home. Now she runs her own business from the boat. Just look at the view from her new office!

Life As A Continuous Cruiser It’s the Holy Grail for many narrowboat owners; the ability to wander along the canals and rivers, without a care in the world, stopping as and when you choose enjoying a life filled with variety and adventure. It’s a goal achieved six years ago by retired narrowboat owner Peter Early. Just over a month ago he started writing weekly blog posts for the site. You can read them here. A word of warning though – if you are disenchanted with your current lifestyle, Peter’s posts are going to turn you green with envy!

Smoke Detectors – Why You Should Have At Least One On Your Boat In my humble opinion, every narrowboat should have a solid fuel stove as the backbone of their narrowboat heating system. Modern stoves are easy and safe to operate but, of course, there’s always a risk of fire. A smoke detector is essential. Here’s a short article on the subject of smoke detectors and links to a comprehensive online supply. Braunston Historic Boat Rally Published 30th June 2013 It’s been a difficult week for several reasons; I’ve made a bit of a boo boo at work, the site has been crashing on a regular basis and last but not least, I’ve been forced to light my fire a few times in the evening because of the chilly “summer” weather. Last week I told you that I spent half a day mowing a very tidy and aesthetically pleasing footpath around the edge of two of our wild flower meadows. The meadows are registered Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) and are two of the richest wild flower meadows in Warwickshire. The additional 1km footpath was very well received by the many dog owning moorers at the marina. The mown footpath replaced a difficult to find and barely used pathway through waist high wild flowers and grasses and complemented the existing 2km of maintained paths through woodland planted in 1994/5. The trees are now well established and provide a delightful walk under a canopy of ash, oak, field maple, wild cherry and alder. The woodland walk leads our happy walkers through a gate and out onto the new footpath through the stunning walk through the meadows. A footpath admire by all… apart from the people who employ me. The meadows are maintained with the assistance of a grant received from the guardians of the English landscape, Natural England. Under the terms of the agreement, Calcutt Boats aren’t allowed to touch the meadows until the grass has been cut. The cutting normally takes place in late July/early August. Sadly I’m going to have to allow the meadows to return to their natural wild state. There’s an official channel for requesting the addition of the footpath through the meadows but as Natural England have four month to respond to requests to carry out work on SSSI meadows, there will be no more easy walking for dog owning flower lovers this year. Instead of spending my time ambling through scented meadows when I finish work, I’ve spent much of the last week setting up a new section of the site. I created a new section of sub forums to allow site visiting boat owners to share their intimate knowledge of individual waterways. I created a section for rivers and another for canals. Each section listed all of the rivers and canals by name. I completed the listing then started to add the extensive cruising notes which I’ve been sent so far. It was a great start to the new cruising guide. I looked forward to sharing the news with you today. Unfortunately, I’ve had to undo everything I’ve added in the last week. The more sub forums I added, the more often the site crashed until, on Friday, the site crashed about a dozen times for up to half an hour at a time. The site technical support guys and the company which designed the forum both confirmed that the problem was caused by the site running out of memory because of the additional forums I had added. The solution was either to increase the memory (and increase the already high cost of maintaining the site) or remove the additional forums. I can’t afford to increase the site maintenance costs any more so I’ve had to remove the new cruising guide section of the forum. So, I’m sorry if you’ve had problems getting on the site in the latter part of last week, and I’m sorry you aren’t going to be able to refer to the cruising guide section when planning your own cruise. I haven’t given up yet. There’s more than one way to skin a cat. I just need to do a little more research into another idea I have before I do any more work on the new section. At least I’ve been pleasantly warm in the evenings and early mornings while I’ve been doing my research. Sadly the warmth hasn’t been provided by the sun. It’s been decidedly chilly on the boat in the evenings, especially in a strong breeze. James is moored in a beautiful but very exposed part of the marina. A stiff south westerly scours the port side of the boat and finds every gap in the windows and side hatches. Consequently, in late June and the beginning of summer, I’ve had to light the fire. I don’t mind though. I love the cosy feel of a live fire and I like it even more now that I can see it. I’ve tried all kinds of cleaning products on the stove glass. None of it has worked terribly well for me, but I think I’ve cracked it now. I read somewhere that Hob Brite ceramic hob cleaner works wonders on stove glass. In the interest of being able to see my fire burning I’m prepared to give anything a go. I tried it this week and it does a fantastic job. There’s a huge difference between being dimly aware that something is burning behind a sooty glass plate and having glass so clear that you have to check to make sure that the glass hasn’t actually fallen out. I now have an even better excuse for spending hours sitting in comfort mindlessly watching the flickering flames. I’m afraid that’s pretty much it for this week. I manage the site in addition to my full time hours at Calcutt Boats. Normally I work 45 hours a week. This week it’s 54 hours. I have to work today, Sunday. It’s usually one of my two days off and the day on which I spend four or five hours updating the site and writing the newsletter and its contents. Today I’ve worked on the wharf instead. We look after four hire boats for the Royal Navy in addition to our own fleet of twelve. They offer the boats at a subsidised rate to RN personnel. Three of the four returned this morning before being sent out with new crews this afternoon. It’s been a beautiful day for boating and a very busy day on the Grand Union. The 11th Historic Boat Rally was held at Braunston over the weekend with over 80 historic narrowboats on show. The two day event attracts hundreds of enthusiasts. Many of them travel to Braunston by boat for the weekend. Consequently mooring in or close to Braunston or cruising past Braunston marina is very difficult. I spoke to the owner of a wide beam yesterday afternoon who had cruised from a nearby marina to Braunston junction. There was barely enough room for him to turn around at the junction. Using the stretch of canal between the junction and the Braunston flight was impossible. As part of the handover with the hire crews, we take them up through Calcutt Top Lock and along the canal for a few hundred metres before jumping off the boat at a spot where the canal narrows and leaving the happy hirers in charge of their temporary floating home. Yesterday was a bit of a challenge for them. They had to contend with a strong breeze, heavy traffic on the canal and plenty of moored boats. The last crew I took out were complete novices. I had to introduce the concept of steering into the wind and moving along the canal at an angle of 45 degrees as the wind threatened to push them into the reeds or the traffic coming towards us. My usual step off point was hidden behind a moored boat so I had to cruise down to Napton Junction with them where they needed to turn right onto the south Oxford. Their newly acquired skills were tested even further when they had to negotiate the turn while fighting the wind and avoid a boat turning across our bow. After the baptism of fire I jumped off onto the tow path and enjoyed a leisurely half mile walk back to Calcutt Boats along a sun drenched canal bank. It’s a great time of the year to be messing about on boats but I’ll try to do less of that and more newsletter writing next week. Enjoy The Summer, Plan For The Winter Published 7th July 2013 It’s hard staying focussed enough to write the newsletter this time of the year. In the winter it’s easy. The early mornings and evenings are dark and cold so it’s a pleasure sitting in my cosy “office” listening to the wind howling and the rain beating against the window. The last week has been far, far different. Last night after I finished work I tried to write a little more for today’s newsletter but I just couldn’t do it. I looked at the thermometer. Twenty four degrees at 7.30pm. I looked out of my window at the sun kissed reed fringed peninsula next to James’ mooring, closed my laptop, grabbed a folding camp chair, my Kindle and a bottle of Theakston's Old Peculiar and spent the rest of the evening with an unread Kindle on my lap as I sipped my favourite beer and listened to the birds on a very tranquil marina. I love living on James all year round but lazy summer evenings are the icing on a very rich and fruity cake. The early mornings are hard to beat too. I’m trying to settle down to finish the newsletter off. It’s 7.30 on Sunday morning. We’ve just finished our Sunday treat, a full English breakfast. Sally’s just left for a twelve hour shift at the care home where she works in Daventry, I’ve made my second cup of coffee of the day and my laptop’s fired up and ready to go. I don’t think I’ll start just yet though. The sunshine’s calling me. It’s hard to resist, as are the imploring stares from the two eager spaniels at my feet. I think we’ll just have a quick walk through the meadows before I begin…

Anticipating Winter Weather The weather is beautiful at the moment and is set to continue for at least the next week. As the thermometer threatens to head north of thirty degrees, the shops are full of happy sun bronzed boaters buying cool beers and beef for barbecues. It’s the time of year for sitting in the shade doing nothing much at all and watching the world go by. It’s this kind of weather which confirms that you’ve made the right decision to abandon your bricks and mortar in favour of steel and water. It’s wonderful, and I love it. All too soon though we’ll be facing shorts days and long, dark and cold nights. Nights when sub zero temperatures cause the water to freeze and cause you, the happy summer boater, all kinds of problems you might not have anticipated. Forewarned is forearmed so as you sit in the shade sipping your Pimms, here’s some food for thought for the year ahead. Over the last three years I’ve been living on my own boat the winters have varied quite significantly. The first winter, the winter of 2010/11, was by far the worst. James was very poorly insulated at the time and the warped hatches, with gaps wide enough to insert a finger or two, allowed the icy winds to howl through the boat. There were several consecutive days with highs of minus six and a decidedly chilly minus eighteen overnight. The temperature in my bedroom at the far end of the boat from the stove was rarely above zero. In the engine room just a thin plywood bulkhead away from my bedroom I often discovered up to a quarter of an inch of frost on the pine cladding. For six weeks the marina and the adjacent canals were impassible due to a layer of ice five inches thick. One morning when I was feeling particularly adventurous I walked on the ice around James. My twelve and a half stone didn’t cause a crack or a creak. For the full month and a half we couldn’t offer a pump out service. Boats couldn’t reach the pump out station because of the ice, and the water tap and the rinse and sewage hoses were frozen solid. One moorer was desperate for a pump out. He lived on board, his sewage tank was full and he didn’t have a cassette toilet on board. We offered to help him smash his way through the ice from his mooring and across two marinas to the pump out station. Navigating through thick ice is a dangerous affair. Pushing through anything more than half an inch of ice will do a better job of removing the protective hull blacking than a shot blaster. But removing the protective paint is the least of your problems. It’s not uncommon for boat owners to punch holes through the steel when negotiating thick ice. We managed to get him to the far side of the marinas but the cost was high. The owner was fortunately moored stern in so he didn’t have to try to turn when he backed out of a mooring (something which is very difficult indeed in the ice). I helped him move the boat. It was an exhausting affair. Engine power alone wasn’t enough to break the ice so I had to stand in the well deck punching holes through the ice at the front of the boat with his pole. Before we had gone three feet I had snapped the pole in half. I swapped the wooden pole for a ten foot scaffold pole. For the next hour and a half I would smash a dozen holes in the ice around the bow before the owner would back up thirty of forty feet so he could ram the ice. The need to get his boat across the marinas quickly became an obsession. He gritted his teeth, his eyes glazed over, his knuckles turned white as he gripped the tiller and it was full speed ahead and damn the consequences. One of the consequences was that his long suffering wife poked her head through the hatch more and more often as his charges became wilder and less controlled. The resulting crashes into the unyielding ice caused anything inside the boat which wasn’t screwed down to leap off shelves and out of cupboards. Cups and glasses were smashed, his wife fell over twice and an insecure fire extinguisher flew off the wall. Each step closer to the pump out machine was a step closer to irreparable damage to their marriage. We reached the pump out machine after an hour and a half. Getting the equipment working and doing the pump out took another hour and a half. Ten minutes later he was back on the mooring. The following morning he was frozen in again and planning to have the boat blacked again the following spring. Most of the time boaters would agree that a pump out toilet is the best option on a boat. During the winter the need to move your boat in order to get rid of your waste can present a problem. You don’t have the same problem with a cassette toilet. You can leave your boat where it is and walk with your cassette to a nearly Elsan point. You’ll probably want to have a trolley available though. I use a Porta Potti. The waste tank holds 21 litres so the full tank weighs over 40lb. I don’t like carrying it very far. There isn’t a problem emptying a cassette in freezing weather but there is often a problem rinsing it out. Unless the rinse hose tap is protected you’ll just have to make do with emptying the cassette contents. Liquid waste management isn’t the only problem you’ll have in the winter. You need to be able to top up your boat’s water supply on a regular basis. I top up my tank roughly every three days, but topping up is easy for me with a tap just 20′ from the boat’s water tank. In the winter it’s not much more difficult. We turn off the above ground taps at the end of the piers and ask moorers to use better insulated below ground taps which don’t freeze even after the coldest nights. This facility is only available to moorers in the newer Meadows marina. The original Locks marina has taps which are above ground. They are insulated as much as possible but they usually freeze in the colder months. Ten minutes with a kettle full of boiling water normally thaws them out enough to use. Moorers at the marina are lucky because all of the boats have taps available just a hose length away from their boats. They don’t need to move their boats to top up the water supply. Boat owners on online moorings often aren’t quite so lucky. Some online are fully serviced with accessible water and electricity but many have neither. Electricity has to be generated on board and water has to obtained from the nearest water point. Liveaboard blogger Peggy Melmoth illustrates the problems she faces in the winter trying to fill up at a Trust water point in the winter in this charming video. Have a look at it and ask yourself whether you would be prepared to endure this painful water collection process every day when the canal is iced over. I know if would very quickly drive me mad. Maybe it’s one of the aspects of narrowboat life which has encouraged her to sell her boat (I’ll tell you more about her boat sale in a minute). Maybe you aren’t going to spend the winter on your boat but you still need to be aware of the problems cold weather can cause you. If you’re going to leave your boat for any length of time over the winter you need to make sure that you either “winterise” your boat or make sure that your boat is warm enough to prevent any water from freezing. Every year we are asked to repair substantial damage to at least one boat caused by freezing water. Winterising your boat involves turning the water off and draining the system down so that the expended frozen water can’t damage fittings. Winterising your boat is the route to go down if you’re going to be away from your boat for weeks or months at a time. If you are going to visit your boat quite regularly, you won’t want the hassle of winterising and de-winterising every time you visit so heating your boat is maybe the way to go. In order to heat your boat while you’re away for extended periods, you’ll need access to mains electricity. I use two Dimplex Coldwatcher 500 greenhouse heaters. They stop any water on the boat from freezing even in the coldest weather but I have to run them via my shore line. They would very quickly drain my batteries if I tried to run them via the inverter. Fenland River Cruising Published 14th July 2013 Hasn’t the weather been wonderful over the last week or so? With the daytime temperature hovering around the mid twenties, strenuous physical activity has been very demanding. Grass cutting has slowed down a little now that we’re enjoying drier days so there’s a little more time for other tasks around the marina. Each mooring bay around the larger Meadows marina is fringed by reeds. They grow at a tremendous rate, as much as six inches a week, so they have to be cut regularly to prevent them from obstructing the pontoons. Firstly they need to be cut with a circular saw blade attached to a trimmer and then some good old fashioned hard labour to collect the reeds with a rake and a couple of dozen builders rubble sacks. It’s hot and tiring work in the current balmy weather but so relaxing working next to the water. Monstrous carp cruise the shallows, black and white coots with their colourful chicks dash frantically two and fro as the bull rushes bob in the breeze. It's a wonderful way to earn a living. On Saturday I usually work on the wharf preparing hire boats in the morning and then instructing hirers on the correct use of their temporary homes when they arrive in the afternoon. Yesterday there were enough staff to deal with the boats in the morning so, after a few hours very enjoyable weeding, I was strolled up to the wharf at 2pm to meet the arriving hirers. One boat had been hired by a very vocal man and his long suffering wife. They had reversed their car on to the wharf and were loading their luggage onto the their boat (holiday hirers usually bring enough to keep them going for at least a month). Mr. Vocal came out of his boat and shouted across to fellow instructor Rob and I. “Oi! Have either of you taken my water out of the fridge?” “No” said Rob, “Neither of us has been on your boat” “Well, it’s not there now and I haven’t taken it out of the fridge” “Why don’t you look in the fridge on the boat next to you?” suggested Rob. “Maybe your water’s there” “Why would my water be in next door’s boat?” asked Mr. Vocal aggressively “Because the boat next door is your boat” smiled Rob “You’re standing on the wrong one!” Mr. Vocal was as quiet as a church mouse during his instruction. He was actually very pleasant. His long drive on a very hot day had caused a bit of an upset to his normally placid nature. I love working on the wharf. We have such fun! Yesterday, Saturday, was a beautiful hot and sunny day. The emphasis was on hot. The thermometer just touched thirty degrees. Sally and I decided that the weather was too good to spend on our mooring so we decided to go out for a cruise overnight last night and all day today. Before I finished work at 5.30 we had a surprise visit from Londoners Lucy Illiffe and her mother. They owned James from April 1977 when the boat was handed over to them by the builder until 1997 when Lucy’s father sadly passed away. Lucy was six when they took delivery of James so she had very fond memories of James spanning two decades. Her visit to the marina to see James was bitter-sweet. She was pleased to see that James had loving and caring new owners but the memories were too much for her. After a tearful farewell from Lucy we backed off our mooring and headed into the sunset. What a wonderful evening it was for a cruise. Many of the owners of locally moored narrowboats had clearly had the same idea as us. We had to cruise for an hour before finding a decent mooring. Every available spot was filled with happy boaters tending barbecues and sitting in camp chairs sipping wine in the sun. We found a quiet spot just after 8pm. Within ten minutes we were sitting on the towpath enjoying salmon fillets wrapped in bacon, a bottle of Old Peculiar for me and a bottle of Kopparberg mixed fruit cider for Sally. Sally was delighted that she’d found the Kopparberg on special offer at just £1 a bottle. She was delighted until she realised that the cider was alcohol free. You can’t win them all! We’re still there now. It’s 9am. We’ve had our normal full English Sunday treat, Sally’s clipping Daisy’s coat on the front deck and I’m writing the newsletter, glancing out of the window now and then to rest my eyes and enjoying the panoramic view of the rolling hills around Flecknoe. Life is good!

A Virgin Boat Owner Takes To The Waterways Could there be a better time of the year to start cruising in your new floating home? I don’t think so. Nor does John. He’s having the time of his life of the rivers of East Anglia. John has written about his experience on the forum from the logistics of organising his pre purchase survey to his current idyllic continuous cruising. You can read about his experience by following the links below The Logistics Of Buying A Boat The Adventure Begins Fenland River Boating Hire Boat Expectations Published 21st July 2013 Do you like cherries? I don’t. One of our woods is full of wild cherry and there are more of them growing every day. The canal-side wood was planted in 1994. It’s a beautiful shaded area of wild cherry, oak, ash, hemlock, Douglas fir, silver birch and holly. The wood has been allowed to do its own thing for nearly two decades and, beautiful as it is, it needed some TLC. The wild cherry growth is prolific. Every established tree was surrounded by a dozen or more saplings ranging in size shoelace thick twigs to fifteen feet high small trees with four inch trunks. They were choking the growth of the other trees around them so they had to go.

I’ve spent much of the last week hiding from the fierce sun cutting the saplings with a pruning saw. I have to use a hand saw as I haven’t been trained to use a chain saw yet. I think the company are a little nervous at the thought of letting me loose with one. I can see their point. I didn’t have a very good track record with machinery – or my own safety – in the first year I was here. I managed to reverse a truck into the canal trying to avoid a moorhen with her two chicks, I blew the engine up on the ride on mower (I still don’t know how that happened), I reversed the ex-army fork lift truck through the double doors of the wharf workshop and I managed to narrowly avoid serious and lasting injury when impaled my left eyeball on a two inch hawthorn. So in the last week I’ve cut down at least two hundred saplings with my little saw to clear the undergrowth and allow some much needed light into the woods. There’s something immensely satisfying in working on the grounds here over a number of years. As I ride around the site during my working day in my little Nissan Cabstar or as I walk Charlie and Daisy in the evening in can enjoy the fruits of my labour. The thirty two 18″ tall Leylandaii I planted in 2011 are now head height, the acre island behind my boat, once covered in head high thistle, is now covered by a healthy layer of short cut grass and studded with white poplar, alder, horse chestnut, willow and field maple and a solitary oak, once surrounded by waste high course grass now stands tall and proud on its own verdant corner of the marina. I love working on the ground but I also enjoy a change of scenery when I work on the wharf every Saturday.

Hire Boat Expectations Yesterday was Calcutt Boats’ hire fleet’s first busy day of the season. Schools have closed for the summer so the families are out in force. Eight boats went out so there were eight boats to prepare in the morning and eight groups of holiday hirers to instruct. I love doing the instructions. The hirers are often tired after their journey from home to the marina, but they’re usually delighted to be here in beautiful Warwickshire, on their boat and ready to enjoy a week or two relaxing on the waterways. Most of the hirers come back from their holiday with smiles on their faces after a restful, enjoyable and memorable break. There are always exceptions and I think the last couple I instructed yesterday were one of them. He was a happy-go-lucky guy in his forties, scruffy, laid back and ideally suited for boating. She was a very glamorous (and very attractive) lady of about the same age, dressed more for a cocktail party than a week on a narrowboat. After they loaded their luggage – an overnight bag for him and a never-ending collection of matching suitcases for her – they were ready for their instruction. I don’t know what Mr. Laid Back had told his newly acquired lady friend, but I don’t think he had been entirely truthful about the practicalities of boating. The first part of the instruction is carried out on the back deck where the hirers are given some general boating advice and then shown the daily checks they need to carry out. The demonstration involves lifting the deck board to show them the engine bay and the location of the greaser and dipstick. From the look on the lady’s face when she saw the engine bay, you’d think she’d just been shown a tank full of raw sewage (That was later on in the instruction). She pulled a face and then moved as far away from the engine bay as possible, which isn’t actually very far on a narrowboat. Once we’d finished on the back deck, we went inside the boat so that I could show them how the heating, shower, toilet, TV, cooker and electrics worked. She wasn’t exactly thrilled when I showed her the workings of the dump through toilet. She was even less pleased when I pointed out that they would need to consider having the sewage pumped out when the visible level rose close to the bottom of the toilet bowl. The final straw for her though were the on board electrics. She had brought a hair dryer with her which would have doubled as a wind machine on a film set, several sets of high power hair straighteners and a number of other unidentifiable but very suspicious looking electrical devices. I pointed out to her that the inverter on the boat was 1,000 watts which meant that none of her appliances would work. I had to explain the fact in a number of different ways before the full horror of the situation was clear to her. After a shocked silence she recovered briefly. “OK. It’s a huge inconvenience, but I’m sure there’s a way around it. I’m sure that there must be places along the way where I can plug them in.” I had to point out to her that although the Canal & River Trust are trying their hardest to improve facilities for boaters, they haven’t yet managed to upgrade the facilities to include fully serviced dressing rooms. Still reeling from the shock of having to spend a week without arrow straight hair, she didn’t seem to understand me when I asked her whether she was going to steer or work the locks. She said that she was going to do neither and that her man would do all the hard work. I told her that, as there were only two of them on the boat and as they weren’t experienced boaters one would have to steer the boat into the locks while the other worked the lock. She wasn’t happy but decided that steering the boat was the lesser of two evils… until she tried to take the boat into the lock. She told me that the engine was noisy and that the lock was too narrow, too damp and too wet. She also complained that the boat wasn’t working properly because it wouldn’t go where she wanted it to. After we had successfully negotiated the lock and a short stretch of canal I stepped off the boat onto the towpath and left them to their “fun” holiday on the south Oxford. As they zig-zagged their way up the Grand Union towards Napton Junction I heard her asking him to find them a hotel to stay in. I can’t wait to see how they got on with their planned 100 miles and 76 locks return journey to Oxford when they come back next Saturday!

The Dangers Of Boat Roof Storage You see plenty of boats with a roof filled with possessions which won’t fit inside the boat. It’s quite normal and doesn’t do the boat any harm, or does it? Regular forum contributer and ex submariner Martin Cowen explains the dangers of rooftop storage. It’s Official; there’s No Need To Pay Mooring Fees I heard many people complaining about the hot weather over the last week or two but I loved every minute of it. OK, I found sleeping a bit of a challenge on some nights when the temperature in our bedroom hovered at the twenty five degree mark even with all the doors and windows open, and maybe it was a little warm for work during the day, but the evenings were heaven. Take last Monday evening for example. As usual I finished work at 5.30pm. Five minutes later I was back at the boat or, more accurately, by the side of the boat. Sally had two camp chairs set up in the shade of the cockspur thorn tree on the peninsula next to James. We enjoyed a salmon salad overlooking the marina island then rested for half an hour while I enjoyed my evening bottle of Theakston’s Old Peculiar. Then we went to collect our desert. We have dozens of wild cherry on the site. Unfortunately their brightly coloured fruit are small and bitter so they don’t make good eating. However, there are two exceptions. There’s a 20 year old cherry tree – don’t ask me what type – bowed under the weight of ripe black cherries. There’s another six year old tree which, for the first time this year, has produced a wonderful crop of fat juicy and very sweet red cherries. Within half and hour we collected at least 2KG of mixed red and black cherries, washed them, put a couple of handfuls for each of us in bowl and added a scoop of Tesco Finest vanilla ice cream. We took our freshly picked desert out to the shade of the cockspur thorn where we sat until dusk. You can keep your big houses, fancy cars and exotic foreign holidays. Give me a bowl of freshly picked fruit enjoyed in a stunning rural setting any day! It’s Official; Living On A Narrowboat Costs Next To Nothing… And You Don’t Have To Pay Mooring Fees

Did you read this article in the Daily Mail last week? I don’t actually read the Daily Mail, or any other newspaper for that matter- they’re too depressing – but this particular article was brought to my attention because it paints a far too rosy and none too accurate picture of life on a narrowboat. Anyone currently living on board who reads this will notice the inaccuracies immediately. Probably the most glaring error is the claim that the owners don’t need to pay mooring fees or council tax because they are continuous cruisers. They aren’t. They’re moored in Stratford upon Avon where she works in a café and the kids go to school. They claim that they don’t need a mooring because they are continuous cruisers and move their boat every few days. A continuous cruiser has to be on a progressive journey. Clearly they aren’t if they have to be close to both work and to schools. They claim to have reduced their household expenses from £11,000 a year to £3,000. The waterways license and mooring fees, which so far they have avoided (but I suggest not for long once the Trust read this article) would total £3,000. Then there’s the cost of their heating. They claim that they spend just £60 each month on diesel for both their heating and propulsion. Given that they didn’t decide so sell up until February this year, they probably didn’t move onto their boat until April or May. They haven’t actually experienced any cold weather yet so probably haven’t needed the heating on very often. They’ll get a shock later on this year. There’s no mention of expenditure on gas so maybe they have an electric cooker which may well account for the high electricity cost and the need for a generator. They couldn’t run an electric cooker without one. There’s no mention of the cost of running the solid fuel stove (I spent nearly £900 last autumn, winter and spring) or repairs and maintenance. I don’t know how long they intend to stay on the boat or how often they are going to carry out essential maintenance such as blacking, painting and essential engine and equipment servicing but they need to budget for them. Another inaccuracy in the article about their life on a narrowboat is Mrs Lawrence’s claim that “It’s freezing in winter”. How does she know? The article states that the final straw for them was in February this year when they were faced with huge fuel bills following a “harsh” winter in their house. They probably didn’t move onto their boat until few months later so they haven’t experienced a winter on the boat. For starters, last winter wasn’t particularly cold. It dragged on a bit, but there weren’t that many really cold spells. Secondly, life on a narrowboat doesn’t have to be uncomfortable. Admittedly my first winter, the winter of 2010/11, was decidedly chilly. It was the coldest December since records began in 1908. The marina was covered by five or six inches of ice for six weeks. We had a few consecutive days with highs of minus six and one night when the thermometer dropped to minus eighteen. That night the temperature in my bedroom was minus two. I woke the following morning to fine a quarter of an inch of frost on the cladding inside the engine room. That winter I was cold. I hadn’t yet over plated the perished wooden top with steel – and sandwiched another layer of insulation between the two. I often needed to wear an additional fleece top and a hat when I was sitting at my laptop in my office area towards the rear of the boat. And I was still cold. I was cold on my boat, but then so where thousands of other people in their bricks and mortar homes. The weather was as unusual as it was extreme. The following two winters weren’t a problem. I haven’t been cold at all and James isn’t really what you could call a warm boat. I know many boaters, with better insulation and heating systems than I have, who leave their front doors open in the winter to let some of the heat out. Russ, our fitter, says that he can remember many a winter when he had his boat sitting sweating in his underpants (not a pleasant thought) with the front doors wide open and snow thick on the ground outside. There really isn’t any need for this family to be cold in the winter. Maybe they’ve only used their central heating so far and not fired up the solid fuel stove as well. Anyway, the heating is the least of their problems. Not many families live on narrowboats. There just isn’t the room. Most liveaboard narrowboaters are either singles, mainly men but quite a few women too, and older couples. The few liveaboard children are mainly pre school. Teenagers need space. This family have a son and a daughter with bunks in the same “bedroom”. There’s very little space for clothes, toys and possessions, and absolutely no privacy. Twelve year old Phoebe will go through puberty with seven year old Jake for company. In five year’s time, Phoebe’s raging hormones will have Jake’s to contend with when he goes through the same changes. At the moment, the family has all the space they need. The days are both warm and long. They can spend as much time as they like outside, returning to the boat just to eat or to sleep. All too soon the nights will draw in, the thermometer will drop and long evenings on the boat, enjoyed by adults who can appreciate the simple pleasure of reading a book sitting by a living coal fire, will have to be endured by energetic children. Children can immerse themselves for hours or days in the virtual worlds available to them through their gaming consoles. However, and increasing number of these games rely on fast internet connectivity. Fast and internet aren’t two words you can often use together when you live on a boat. Very rarely is the boat’s internet connection fast. Sometimes there’s no connection at all. An alternative to gaming is watching the infinite number of television channels available to couch potatoes everywhere. Everywhere that is apart from on boats some or all of the time. I hope that this family make a go of it. I really do. But I don’t think they have either understood or budgeted for all of the costs involved in running and maintaining a narrowboat long term. They certainly haven’t understood the continuous cruising rules and the need to pay £2,000 – £3,000 for a residential mooring (if they can find one) so that they can stay close to work and to schools in Stratford. I don’t think that they have considered the implications of housing two increasingly volatile youngsters in a very small space with little or no privacy, no room for their material possessions or access to their digital worlds. There are very few older children living with parents on narrowboats for some very good reasons. In years to come, I hope Phoebe and Jake can remember predominantly happy memories from the latter part of their childhood spent on a narrowboat. Somehow I doubt it. There’s a thread on the forum dedicated to this article if you would like to offer your point of view. The PERFECT Narrowboat Washing Machine? Published 4th August 2013 I love working at the marina. Every day is different. There I was on Thursday, minding my own business cutting the reeds around the moorings on Meadows marina, when I was called upon to do a bit of rescue work. Both marinas are generally quite windy. Meadows marina is always the windier of the two as the prevailing south westerly hits the newer marina first. Thursday was rather breezy and possibly not the best of days for a new moorer to attempt to get his shiny new boat onto his mooring for the first time. Tim and Alison on their rather fetching narrowboat Kalabash No 5 had done all of the right things. They’d approached the mooring steering into the wind and had steered close to the island to allow for the drift when they turned into their mooring. Unfortunately they didn’t know that the island shelves quite gently into the water. They grounded themselves very convincingly onto the mud. No amount of engine revving and pole thrusting would move them off during twenty minutes of trying so they were quite desperate by the time they managed to shout loud enough to get my attention. We didn’t have any of our own boats available down in the marina so I offered to pull them off with James. I enjoy any opportunity to take James off the mooring, although Sally wasn’t too impressed when I cast off as she was trying to do some washing at the time. She was even less impressed when, due to my haste to do my knight in shining armour impression, I kicked the steel shovel we use for scooping up the dog’s mess into the marina. A quick cruise around the marina to line up James’ stern to their bow, a quickly tied none slip clove hitch – keeping fingers out of the way when the boats moved apart and tightened under the pressure generated by two fifteen tonne plus loads – 2,500 revolutions from my Mercedes engine and both boats moved away from the island. I untied the rope quickly before the wind pushed me into a pontoon of moored boats, reversed away from Kalabash No 5 and headed back to my mooring…. to discover that they were stuck again. The second time they came off the mud and stayed off. Back on my mooring, Tim came to say thank you, and to give me a bottle of Chateau Mont Milan Corbieres. Not only did I have the pleasure of breaking my already enjoyable day with a little adventure, but I was rewarded for it too. What a life!

Onboard Washing Machines For the last three years I’ve managed without a washing machine on James. There are two washing machines and a dryer in the site’s shower block so I’ve used those. In the main, it’s been a satisfactory way of washing my clothes but there have been a few drawbacks. The machines are quite expensive to run. Tokens are available at reception costing £1 each. Each token runs the selected washing machine or the dryer for forty five minutes. A decent wash and dry cycle costs £5 most of the time. However, sometimes other boaters who aren’t used to the machines take their washing out and turn the power off before the cycle has finished. Consequently we sometimes find a machine half full of water so we have to use tokens to power the washing machine in order to finish the cycle. There aren’t many people on site using the machines regularly but there are enough to necessitate removing the washing as quickly as possible to prevent another boater doing it for us. Sally isn’t keen on other people sorting through her smalls. While I’m not concerned that another lady has had her hands on my underpants, I see her point. The washing machines aren’t always working either which means that we either have to wait until they are fixed, or take our washing to the nearest launderette ten miles away in Daventry. We’ve never been keen on washing our dirty linen in public so we’ve always waited a day or two for the repairs to be done. I’ve been reluctant to have a washing machine on James, mainly because of the cost, but also because of the work which needed to be done to plumb it in and because of the power it would need. The two most popular models with boaters, the Candy and Zanussi compacts, both use about 1600w. My inverter is 1600w so it would run the washing machine at a push with no other electrical appliances plugged in when the washing was being done. I didn’t want the hassle of making sure everything else was turned off and then possibly having to run the engine to back up the inverter every time we wanted to wash our clothes. The possible solution was a low cost, low power consumption twin tub washing machine. Midland Chandlers used to sell one but their supplier went out of business. I tried Amazon. I bought this one because of the positive reviews. Sally loves it. It’s cheap (£99), light (13kg) and fits beautifully in the alcove next to one of our two side hatches. It’s 58.5cm wide, 36cm deep and 67cm high. And it’s low power. The machine uses 180w on the wash cycle and 120w on the spin cycle. It’s important to point out that is isn’t an automatic washing machine. There’s no pressing a single button and leaving the machine for an hour or so while it does all the hard work. There are two tubs; one for 3kg of washing, and another for spinning the water out of a 2kg load. Setting the washing machine up is simple. Find somewhere out of the way to keep the machine (that’s the hard part on a narrowboat), plug it in to a 230v supply and you’re ready to go. The twin tub comes with a filler hose, although filler hose is a rather ambitious name for the tiny, weedy bit of plastic. I haven’t used it. I have no intention of using it. The hose is rubbish.

I could make up another more substantial filler hose for it, but there really isn’t any need. We’ve had no trouble at all filling the wash tub with a couple of bowls of hot water from the sink in the galley (You need to fill it with hot water as the twin tub won’t heat the water you add to it). To drain both the wash and the spin tubs, we just place the drain hose in the same washing up bowl then empty the water in the sink or, on a dry day, throw it out of the side hatch. There is a 15 minute timer which is used to start the washing machine. Fifteen minutes isn’t long enough so we do two or three fifteen minutes wash cycles. After the clothes are washed, we drain the wash tub and fill it with hot water again, but without detergent, to rinse the clothes. Then we drain the wash tub again, transfer half of the washing to the spin tub, set the five minute spin timer for two or three minutes – the spin cycle is amazingly quick and efficient – take the nearly dry clean washing out, spin the remaining wet washing, et voilá, you’re done! So it’s not an automatic washing machine. You need to be there to help it out. That aside, it’s a marvellous little machine. As I said, Sally loves it. She’s now washed everything on the boat – at least twice – including the sheets and duvet covers I thought it would struggle with. The twin tub has brought us yet another step closer to a sustainable off grid continuous cruising lifestyle. The twin tub runs of our 1600w pure sine Sterling inverter without a problem. All I need to do now is find an acceptable alternative to Sally’s other beloved appliances; the vacuum cleaner, iron, hair dryer and straighteners… A Free Narrowboat Guide For You Published 11th August 2013 Doesn’t time fly? It seems like only yesterday I was looking at the first spring flowers and anticipating the long hot summer ahead. Now here we are, approaching the middle of August, darker evenings and early morning grass wet with dew. I’ve just taken Charlie and Daisy out for a run. They run, not me. There’s a hundred metre long, forty metre wide patch of grass next to our car parking bay studded with horse chestnut, ash and field maple saplings. In twenty years’ time the ash will provide a roadside canopy forty feet high but, for now, it’s a marvellous place to exercise the dogs. Ten minutes with a ball thrower and three heavy duty unchewable rubber balls and the dogs had had enough and were very wet after sprinting and rolling in the wet grass. For the first time this summer I’ve had to towel them down before letting them into the boat. James is now dog friendly. We have durable plastic deck mats covering the front deck and a large door mat over the plastic mats in front of the front doors. The front deck is protected by a cratch cover so when the weather isn’t too pleasant, Sally and I can stand in the dry to towel down the dogs. We have oak effect laminate flooring inside the boat so even if the dogs’ paws are still wet or dirty it’s seconds work with a mop to clean up after them.

Free Guide Living On A Narrowboat: 101 Essential Narrowboat Articles Firstly, please let me apologise if you’ve subscribed to the newsletter list within the last week. You may have done so as a result of my offer of a free eBook, Living On A Narrowboat: 101 Essential Narrowboat Articles. If you did, you may be wondering where it is. I have a confession to make. Technology has beaten me again. You should have received an email containing the download link. It wasn’t working properly but I think I’ve beaten the gremlins now. This time you should be OK. If you’ve been visiting the site regularly, you will have read much of the information contained in this latest guide. It’s a distillation of the thousands of hours I’ve spent over the last three years researching content, writing content and developing the site. I’ve included all of the articles from the site, links to all of the popular forum posts and an index of all the regular newsletters since I began sending them out in January 2011. It’s a bit rough around the edges at the moment. I need to spend a few hours formatting the guide and generally tidying it up. Because the guide isn’t quite as polished as I would like it to be, it’s yours completely free of charge. There may be a cost in the future once I’ve spent some more time on it but, for now, it’s yours to download at the click of a button. Click here to download the guide. You’ll need to add your email address to the form in order to receive the download link. If you use the email address this newsletter is sent to, you will only receive an email from me telling you how to download the guide. If you use a different email address, you’ll also receive an email asking you to confirm your subscription. If you click on the link in the confirmation email, you’ll be added to the newsletter list again and you’ll receive two copies of the newsletter every Sunday. Much as I want you to receive my regular newsletters, I don’t think there’s any point in you getting it twice so, if you’re already a subscriber, please ignore the confirmation email.

Do You Know Anyone Else Interested In Narrowboats? There’s a huge amount of information in the guide. At over 53,000 words it’s as long as your average paperback but, not only is the guide packed with helpful articles, but it also links to hundreds of other site articles and forum posts. It’s a wonderful – and free – initiation into all things narrowboat. If you know anyone else who might find the guide and the information it contains of some use, please forward this email to them. They’ll thank you for it, and so will I.

Helpful Hints Mark Meopham emailed me with a suggestion. He asked whether I had ever considered a helpful hints section somewhere on the site. I think it’s a marvellous idea (even if I can’t think of a location for it at the moment. Mark has contributed a couple of hints to start us off. Here they are… “Great site, thanks for making the effort. Have you ever considered a helpfull hints topic for us, be good to share ideas, if so candle wax on the sliding hatch runners does wonders, and baby oil brings back bloomed paint work, even if only for a few weeks, but a lot less than a re paint.” I think we’re off to a great start but I know there are many boat owning site visitors who can help make this another really useful resource. Here are a few tips from me: Tip One Buy yourself a recovery magnet. It will pay for itself in no time at all. I have a pocket sized Maxigrab magnet which I attach to a very useful 100m reel of parachute cord I keep in the engine room. In the last six months I’ve used it to recover a padlock, two shackles, a mooring pin (pulled out by a fast passing boat) and the coal shovel (twice) we use as a poop scoop. The magnet is worth its weight in gold, and it’s fun to use too. Tip Two Getting rid of troublesome geese. Canada geese are a nuisance. They’re dirty, extremely noisy and there are millions of them in the UK. Their constant annoying honking can easily ruin a good night’s sleep. I’ve tried many different tactics to get rid of them both from the marina in general – we had two hundred land a couple of years ago – and from near my own mooring in particular. By far the most effective method is the none harmful use of a laser pen. Mine is a military grade green laser. It came with a rechargeable battery and charger. I haven’t had to use the charger yet. The battery has lasted eighteen months so far. It’s easy to use and is effective within seconds. Just shine it on the annoying geese at night, wait for the panicky mass honk, furious flapping and the delightful sound of them flying away to bother someone else. It’s magic. Tip Three Make sure your boat has a centre line. It’s arguably the most important rope on the boat but I constantly see boats cruising without them. A centre rope is essential if you’re going to cruise single handed, but it’s also a very important item of boating equipment if you have a full crew. I see no end of inexperienced crews trying to hold a boat to the bank with a bow or a stern line at locks, and then trying to retrieve the end of the boat which they aren’t holding when it drifts out into the canal. I’m going to have to stop there. I’ve run out of time but I can think of dozens of other useful tips. If you’re a boat owner I’m sure you can think of dozens more. Why don’t you share your knowledge with the site’s soon-to-be boat owners? You can either email me the tips so I can add them to the site for you or post them on the forum here.

The Cost Of A Continuous Cruising Lifestyle If you’ve browsed through the threads on the forum you will already know that it’s a great source of information on the liveaboard narrowboat lifestyle. One subject which is never far from people’s minds is what it’s going to cost them. Here’s a question posed on the forum a few days ago… “Hi this is a difficult one to get answers for I know but here goes. As a potential C/C next year I was wondering what other C/Cs budget for, either a month or the year. I know there will be unexpected costs ie mechanical faults ect but i wonder what costs are incurred in general day to day living, How far do you travel, how long for, how do you find Tesco’s, Sainsburys on the canal is there an app for phones you use? The reason I ask is we are intending to take a gap year or two ( bit late in life 52) for a gap year with the intention of after that time becoming proper live- aboarders with moorings. Any advice will be very much appreciated” I wrote about this forum thread last week but since then forum user and continuous cruiser Bikeshed has added some fascinating information. He explains how it’s possible to live a stress free life on his narrowboat on an income of £96 a week. His expenditure may not suit everyone but he demonstrates that a very low cost lifestyle is possible. Here’s the forum thread. I’m sorry it’s such a short newsletter this week. I’ve spent most of my time finishing off the new guide, uploading it to the server and creating the download section. There’s more than enough information in the guide to keep you going though. You can download it here. Narrowboat Insurance Published 18th August 2013 In the last week I’ve spent my time either tearing my hair out or considering putting the fire on. The thermometer hasn't dropped particularly low over the past week but it’s been cool enough to be not quite comfortable enough on the boat early mornings and in the evenings. The problem I have is that my main source of heating, indeed my only source, is my solid fuel stove. The stove takes an hour to heat the boat up, by which time I don’t need it for long if at all. I have two 500w greenhouse heaters which are great for taking the chill out of an autumnal evening but the inverter and my battery bank don’t like them at all. I’m trying very hard at the moment to live “off grid”( i.e. produce all my electrical power on board rather than plugging in the shore line). The only really effective solution is to have a central heating system fitted. I have a very ineffective system at the moment which is very expensive to run. I have a gas fire in the rear cabin and a gas fired space heater in the centre of the boat. When I first moved on to the boat I used the gas heating but the cost was prohibitive. I was using a 13kg propane cylinder about every four or five days at a cost of £27 each. That cost was in addition to the cost of the coal for the stove. In an ideal world I would have a diesel central heating system fitted in addition to the solid fuel stove, but the cost is a bridge too far at the moment. Calcutt’s own Hurricane heating system would cost about £3,500 fitted and maybe the cost of a full set of radiators and their fitting if my current radiators aren’t up to the job. I don’t think I’m going to have central heating fitted any time soon. When and if we’re ready to cruise the network full time and leave the convenience of the marina, we’ll have to think about the issue again. In the meantime my little greenhouse heaters plugged in to the shore supply – charged at the extortionate rate of 20p per unit – will have to do. I’ve also been tearing my hair out because of my ongoing battle with technology. This site uses the world’s most popular web site content management system, WordPress. In fact, as of March 2012, there were 72.4 million web sites using WordPress around the globe. In recent months WordPress sites have been subject to an increasing number of “brute force” attacks where a network of thousands of infected computers collectively try to guess access passwords for individual WordPress sites. Once access is achieved, the attackers create a “back door” to the site so that they can gain access regardless of passwords. The infected site is then added to the attacker’s network of computers. In order to prevent authorised access to the web sites they maintain, hosting companies have done all that they can to increase security. One such security measure is to initiate an IP address white list rule whereby access to a site is only allowed by computers which have had their IP address manually added to the safe list. My host initiated this rule for livingonanarrowboat.co.uk last week. They didn’t tell me. I couldn’t log in to the site. Nor could many site users. You may have been one of them. This white list rule is OK if the site owner is the the only person or one of very few people who log in to the site. However with this site, with users logging in on a daily basis to both the forum and the narrowboat budgeting software (there are currently over 7,000 registered users), adding each user’s IP address to the white list clearly won’t work. If you couldn’t log in to the site last week, please accept my apologies. My host has now removed the rule so we’re back to normal. I’m looking at a number of alternative methods of restricting unauthorised access, but they shouldn’t affect you. I’ve also been tearing out what little hair I have left because of my internet connection. I use Three to connect to the internet. I’ve used their service for the last three years here at the marina and when I’ve been out cruising. I’ve been very pleased with their service generally but recently they “improved” their service. They upgraded from 3G to 3.9G which meant that I should have enjoyed much faster download speeds. Unfortunately I’ve enjoyed quite the reverse. Over the last two weeks there have been days when for hours at a time I’ve had no internet connection at all and then, when I finally managed to get on line, there was virtually no signal worth talking about. It’s been very frustrating when I need to spend virtually all my free time on the internet working on the site. Fortunately I now have another string to my bow. Calcutt Boats have finally upgraded their WiFi access. For years it’s only been available fairly close to the office. I understand the problems they’ve had. The grounds here are more extensive than many inland marinas offering WiFi access to their moorers. My mooring is over a quarter of a mile as the crow flies from the office. The company has now overcome the problem by adding a repeater on a high mast on the peninsula next to James. If Three isn’t working I can now connect to Calcutt’s WiFi at a very acceptable 4.0 mb/s completely free of charge. I’m a very happy bunny.

Canal & River Trust Guide Approval I have another reason to be happy this week… apart from living with a loving and considerate partner in the boat of my dreams on a tranquil mooring in an idyllic setting The Canal & River Trust are now recommending this site, its guides and the budgeting software in the boating section of their own web site. I’ve been talking to them about a mutually beneficial relationship for the last six month and, oh boy, have there been a lot of hoops to jump through. They are very, very thorough. The end result is that they officially approve of my guides Living On A Narrowboat: The REAL Cost Of A Life Afloat and Living On A Narrowboat: 21 Liveaboard Case Studies and my package Narrowbudget Gold (Best value). I’ve also agreed to share the revenue with them from any sales made as a result of referrals from their site. So, if you want an excellent source of information about narrowboats and the cost of buying and maintaining them and you want to make a worthwhile contribution to the organisation which looks after our beautiful waterways, you know what to do!

Narrowboat Insurance Regular site visitor and forum poster Monzie has gone and done it. She’s bought herself a narrowboat to live on… and it’s a long way away from her home in South Africa. With a little help from her English friends, she’s found the perfect boat, secured a mooring here at Calcutt to use before she heads off on her travels and now she’s ploughing through all the other logistical issues of getting her boat ready to live on. One of her tasks is to find the right insurance cover for her boat. She’s researched the subject well and has asked for quotes from the major narrowboat insurers. She’s very kindly added the results of her enquiries to a post on the forum. There’s some very useful information here if you’re in the market for insurance for your boat.

New Liveaboard Case Study – NB Badger Sett Keith and Nicky downsized their property in Jersey, used the released capital to buy their 57' “go anywhere” narrowboat and now live on their boat full time while they continuously cruise the canal network. They’re ridiculously young to retire, and I’m very, very jealous. Here’s their case study.

Free Guide Living On A Narrowboat: 101 Essential Narrowboat Articles I introduced the new guide to you in last week’s newsletter. It’s a free download and it’s packed with useful articles. There’s an in depth look at both narrowboat electrical and heating systems, the best fuel to use in your solid fuel stove, solar power, what to look for if you’re considering buying a narrowboat to live on, what to look for if you’re considering a marina mooring, the ins and outs of narrowboat toilets, the pros and cons of living a life afloat, how to continuously cruise the canal network and much, much more, The guide also includes a full index of all the newsletters I’ve written over the last two years and another index of the most useful forum posts. Last week I told you that, because the I hadn’t found the time to properly format the guide and give it the polished look you would expect from an eBook with a price attached to it, the guide was available to download free of charge. Well, I finally managed to find the time to spruce it up. The guide is now looking pretty enough to offer it for sale, but I’m not going to just yet. For the next couple of days I’m going to leave it as a free download. This is the spruced up version and I’ve added more content to it. The guide now contains just over 65,000 words, or about the same as an average paperback, so there’s plenty of bed-time reading for you. The guide will only be available for the next 48 hours before I repackage it slightly and offer it for sale. If you want to take advantage of an opportunity to download a huge amount of narrowboat information completely free of charge, you need to click on the link below PDQ! Click here to download the guide. You’ll need to add your email address to the form in order to receive the download link. If you use the email address this newsletter is sent to, you will only receive an email from me telling you how to download the guide. If you use a different email address, you’ll also receive an email asking you to confirm your subscription. If you click on the link in the confirmation email, you’ll be added to the newsletter list again and you’ll receive two copies of the newsletter every Sunday. Much as I want you to receive my regular newsletters, I don’t think there’s any point in you getting it twice so, if you’re already a subscriber, please ignore the confirmation email.

Downsizing From A House To A Narrowboat Just over a year ago I wrote an article about the logistics of moving your life from a relatively spacious house to a floating cigar tube. No matter how tidy and organised you are you simply can’t fit a lifetime of accumulated household possessions on a boat. The temptation, rather than selling everything you’ve worked so hard for to buy, and selling it at a fraction of the purchase cost, is to put everything into storage. That’s exactly what Sally and I did when Sally moved her life on board narrowboat James just over thirteen months ago. Sally had been living pretty much full time on the boat for at least six months before that, but she hadn’t burned her bridges. She still had her house to go back to when she felt like a change or when she wanted a break from either me or my boat. After six months afloat she acknowledged that she loved the boat, as did her two spaniels Charlie and Daisy. She decided that she could tolerate me full time so she allowed tenants to move into her house, moved all of her possessions out of the property and moved in with me full time. Although James is, for a narrowboat, perfect for living aboard with more cupboards and drawers than you can shake a stick at, there’s no room for most of the contents of the smallest of houses. Sally didn’t want to sell or give away her household items. I can understand that. We hired a 20′ long x 10′ wide “half” container for £70PCM in the village of Napton two miles away from the marina. I wrote the following post before we’d made the decision to put everything into storage. I didn’t know whether it was a good idea at the time. I didn’t know whether we’d actually use the storage unit or whether the furniture, tools and equipment would just gather dust as we threw £840 a year down the drain. Last week I updated the post. If you’re considering downsizing and you have a removal van full of stuff you don’t know what to do with, you’ll find this post interesting reading. How NOT To Kill Pests On Boats Published 25th August 2013 I’ve been driven to distraction over the last two weeks. As I sit quietly in my office area minding my own business, typing and concentrating on what I’m writing, trying ever so hard to ignore the distractions around me, two new friends have been clamouring for my attention. They’re flies and they’re threatening my sanity. I’ve started to twitch and shake and shout and scream, anything to get rid of them. Nothing works. I’ve resorted to an extreme solution. I’ve spent some money. I bought the best rated fly killer I could find on Amazon… and I’ve completely wasted my hard earned cash. My super effective fly destroyer arrived a few days ago. The ExecutionerTM Fly Swat Wasp Bug Mosquito Swatter Zapper (they’ve certainly covered all the bases with that catchy little name), is like a badminton racket with electrified strings. Its operation is simple. You swat offending bugs with it and electrocute them. It’s child’s play. Nothing could be easier… unless you live on a narrowboat. I’ve written extensively about the lack of space on a narrowboat so why I didn’t consider the practicality of a device such as this is beyond me. I’ll put it down to advancing old age or the fact that I’ve been very tired recently. I’ve tried it out. Of course, the first thing I did, being male and not terribly bright, was to make sure that the centre of the fly swat really was electrified. I can now assure all and sundry that it is, and I can also assure anyone who is the slightest bit interested that the third degree burn on the end of my finger is getting better, that the damage done to the window frame when the shock hurled me against the side of the boat is repairable and that Sally didn’t actually die laughing despite indications to the contrary. Sadly, I am the fly swat’s only victim so far. There’s just no room to use it on the boat. I can’t swing my empty arms around let alone an arm with a three foot electrified bat clutched in my hand. Anyway, even if therewas room to use it, the flies have now mysteriously disappeared. Maybe they were watching when I tried it out on myself. Maybe just the sight of the OTT fly swatter has scared them off. I suspect that the zapper will eventually find its way into a drawer and never see the light of day again. Either that or Sally will include it in one of her regular giant parcels back to her not so well off relatives in the Philippines. I don’t think they’ll use it either but at least it will keep them entertained for hours talking about the stupid man their Aunty Sally is now living with in far away England.

The Downside Of Living On A Narrowboat This site is all about living on a narrowboat. I’ve written hundreds of thousands of words on the subject and, I’m frequently told, my unbridled enthusiasm for the lifestyle is evident in everything I write. It’s true. I love the lifestyle and genuinely can’t see myself moving back in to a bricks and mortar home. However life on the water, however enthusiastically I write about it, isn’t always a bed of roses and certainly isn’t for everyone. Last year, we had a liveaboard boat in for repair. It was in the spring when the nights were cold and the days were slow to warm up. It was a time of the year when effective heating on board was essential. The couple on the boat were freezing. Their Hurricane diesel central heating wasn’t working and it was the only source of heat they had on the boat (BIG mistake – If you don’t have a solid fuel stove on board in addition to a central heating system, you’re asking for trouble). The couple weren’t with us for very long. The solution to their problem was quick and simple. The boat had a cruiser stern. The Hurricane heater was under the deck boards in the engine bay. So were many other items the couple couldn’t find room for in the boat. A hose reel they had dropped in to the engine bay next to the Hurricane had caught a switch and turned the heater off. All the engineers had to do was turn it back on again. As they were about to leave I wished them a pleasant cruise now that their heating problem was cured. She said something like, “How can we have a pleasant trip? We live on a boat. There’s nothing pleasant about it!” She went on to tell me, all in one breath and at an ever increasing volume, just how unpleasant her life on board really was. She moaned about the lack of space, the cold, the heat, rain, muddy footpaths, inconsiderate boaters, dog poo on towpaths, bikes on towpaths, the problems she has getting to the shops, the bigger problem she has getting back from the shops with a full load of groceries, the disadvantages of having to use a launderette, the bad back her husband suffers after trying to carry coal and gas onto the boat, the frustration she feels when she (often) runs out of water in the middle of nowhere. Her list of complaints was endless. I tried to cheer her up by pointing out that the summer was almost upon us and that she could enjoy long lazy days on a tranquil canal-side mooring. “You must be joking” she exclaimed, “The boat gets too bloody hot and there’s no way to keep it cool. We have to sleep with the doors and windows open all night which is a real problem because of the thugs that hand around the towpath.” I tried to stop her from working herself into a frenzy. “Why don’t you moor in the shade of a tree? That will keep your boat cool”. She looked at me as if I had just grown a second head. “Moor under a tree? Are you MAD! It’s hard enough keeping the boat clean as it is without leaves and bird poo dropping all over it. And then there’s the sap from willows staining the paintwork. No, it’s not pleasant at all. I hate living on the boat in the summer, and I hate it even more in the cold, dark winter. I wish we hadn’t sold the house. I hate boats!” Here was a lady who had clearly made a mistake moving on to the water in the first place. The lifestyle didn’t appear to suit her at all. Maybe, as is sometimes the case, her husband was the narrowboat enthusiast and she had reluctantly agreed to his plans. I don’t know how much research either she or her husband did before the two of them decided to burn their bridges and sell their home. I suspect it was very little. It certainly wasn’t enough. Living on a narrowboat is very different from the convenience you enjoy living in a static home. You have to work quite hard for the pleasure of living close to nature. As far as I’m concerned the hard work is a small price to pay for the pleasure I get from my life on board. I’ve just given my eyes a break from staring at my laptop screen and glanced out of the window. The reeds are nodding in the early morning breeze. A pair of mallards have just drifted past the boat and now there’s a crested grebe with its spear shaped head searching for a fishy breakfast. One, two, three dives under the water without success and then the fourth time it appears with a small roach flapping frantically in its beak. It’s a wonderful sight and one which I never tire of. I’ve always loved the great outdoors so there was a pretty good chance that this lifestyle was going to suit me. It does, and I’m very happy here on James. In an ideal world Sally and I would cruise full time but, for at least the next couple of years, both of us need to work. A marina mooring doesn’t suit everyone but as far as marina moorings go, my mooring is pretty much unbeatable. The six and a half acre marina is spacious and beautifully landscaped. There are few marina moorings as pretty as this and very few indeed where you can live on your boat. Finding a boat to live on is the easy part. Finding somewhere suitable to live is far more difficult. The unhappy lady with the Hurricane heater had a residential mooring about ten miles from Calcutt. I think if I was forced to moor she was, I would have been unhappy with living on a boat too. Her boat was on a pier hemmed in by other boats. Her only view from inside was the sides of other narrowboats. They were packed into the marina like sardines. There was no feeling of space and no sense of privacy. Such a mooring would suit some people but it would be my idea of hell. There are three articles on the site which I think you’ll find very useful if you’re considering the lifestyle. The first is a post I wrote three years ago about the downside of living on a narrowboat. The next is a guest article from liveaboard narrowboat owner Pauline Roberts. Her post “It’s Not All Roses And Castles” was controversial to say the least. She finished off the article by saying that she enjoyed her life on board but, having just read her article again, I think she must have been talking about a masochistic kind of pleasure. She certainly doesn’t appear to love her life afloat. The third post is the result of a survey I asked boat owning site subscribers to complete. I created the survey to find out how many boaters felt the same about issues Pauline raised in her post. If you’ve read Pauline’s article and now think that life on a narrowboat is some kind of living hell, the survey will reassure you that all is not doom and gloom in narrowboat world. Here’s the survey. New Liveaboard Case Study Richard Varnes and wife Valerie have sold their home in Colarado to fund a very different floating home on the inland waterways of England and Wales. Professional photographer Valerie takes photo’s to add to Richard’s written account of their travels. Richard has kindly supplied a few of his articles for me to use on the site. You’ll find links to them at the bottom of his case study. There are just two there at the moment, but there are plenty more to come. A Solution To A Leaky Engine Room Published 1st September 2013 I think I have a problem. I’ve been burying my head in the sand but it’s not going to go away. I have a leak. I don’t know where the water’s coming from, but it ends up in the engine room and there’s plenty of it. When we took the boat out for two weeks at the beginning of July the leak appeared to be worse than it was when we were on the mooring full time. Because it was worse, I was sure that the water was coming either from the canal along the drive shaft, or from the raw water inlet. James is slightly unusual in that the boat has an engine which is cooled by water drawn in from the canal, pumped around the engine and expelled from the exhaust. I now don’t think the leak is in the engine room at all. Sally has been nagging me to get the leak sorted out for a while now. I’ve been resisting fixing it because (a) anything technical is usually beyond me and (b) I think we might actually have a serious, costly and very disruptive problem. Anyway, today I decided to take the bull by the horns and try to find out how big a problem we have. We took James from the marina to Calcutt wharf which involved going up through Calcutt Bottom and Middle locks. I wanted to use the wet vacuum cleaner we use for removing water and muck from the engine bayand scuppers when we prepare hire boats ready for new guests. The wet vac isn’t a normal vacuum cleaner. It’s called the Big Brute and has a holding tank the size of a wheelie bin. It’s fantastic for removing large volumes of oily water from engine bays. In addition to removing the excess water from the engine room, I also needed to remove some ballast. The bottom of the engine room is layered with different sized iron ballast bars, most the size of a gold ingot and weighing about ten pounds. There were probably about seventy of them, most of which I no longer need. When I had the cabin over plated I added about two tonnes to the weight of the boat. The additional weight pushed the hull about two inches deeper into the water and pushed the holes where the water drains from the bathroom sink and shower out into the canal down to the water line. I took about fifty bars out which took me just under three hours. The ballast bars were heavy, difficult to get at, and glued to the steel by an oily sludge. Once the bars were out I was able to vacuum the sludge and water until the floor was dry. Now all I have to do is keep checking to see where the water’s coming from. As I said earlier, I don’t think the leak is in the engine room at all. I think the water is coming from the front of the boat. There’s a hole about an inch off the floor in the engine room which allows water under the floor in the rest of the boat to drain into the engine room where it is accessible and can be removed. I suspect and Russ, one of our fitters, agrees that the water may be coming from a leak around the water tank under the front deck and flowing down the length of the boat into the engine room. If the leak is coming from around the tank, sealing it could be very expensive. James’ water storage is odd. There’s a galvanised tank linked to two plastic tanks under the front deck. In front of them preventing access to the tanks is a maze of copper pipes, the water pump and accumulator. All of these would need removing to allow access to the tanks in order to establish where the problem is. If the galvanised tank itself is leaking, or if the leak is at the back of the tank closest to the bow, it will have to be removed in order to carry out the repair. Removing a water tank is often very disruptive. It goes into the boat before the internal carpentry is done. A lot of internal carpentry has been done inside James next to the water tank. There are substantial and very useful book cases and cupboards either side of the front door. They would all need to come out if the tank had to be removed. Removing the woodwork wouldn’t be a problem, but removing it carefully so that it could be put back in the same condition afterwards would take time and, because Calcutt Boats would be doing the work, plenty of money. In order to establish whether the leak is coming from the front of the boat or from the engine room, I’ve temporarily sealed the hole between the engine room and the rest of the boat. If the engine room fills with water now I’ll know there’s a leak in there somewhere. If, when I remove the seal, I don’t get a rush of water through the hole, I’ll know that my bulkhead book cases and cupboards are safe. A couple of days should suffice. I’ll let you know the result. Update Two days ago I sealed the hole which allows water to flow under the floor of the main cabin into the engine room. Over the following forty eight hours I watched the water level rise in the engine room until it was about an inch deep proving that there is certainly a leak somewhere in the engine room. This didn’t mean that there wasn’t also a leak somewhere at the front of the boat. The only way to establish that the front of the boat was dry was to remove the seal between the main cabin and the engine room. My heart was in my mouth as I grabbed the plastic plug I had used to seal the hole. If I pulled it out and a torrent of water followed it, I would know that I was facing some very expensive repair/replacement work to the water tanks. I gave the plastic plug a yank and… Not a drop of water came out. Yippee! Over the last two days I’ve had visions of the beautiful book cases and cupboards inside the forward bulkheads having to be ripped out to get at the water tanks. Of course, in addition to the expense, I would have the knowledge that, not matter how good the carpenter, the shelves and cupboards wouldn’t look quite as good when they were refitted. Anyway, after pulling the plug I knew that the front of the boat was OK. All I needed to do was resolve the issues in the engine room or, to be entirely accurate, ask Russ my guardian boat-fitting angel to come up with a solution for me. But first I had to pinpoint the leak. I vacuumed the water out of the engine bay again and then, torch in hand, watched for any drips or puddles forming. The leak was a steady drip from the stern gland, a leak which was impossible to see when the ballast bars were packed around it. There are three possible causes for the leak; 1. The stern gland packing needs replacing. Mine was done not so long ago but there’s a suggestion that more packing should have been used. Here’s a great diagram and explanation. I’m going to have the packing replaced again. 2. The greaser hasn’t been turned down enough at the end of a cruise 3. The stern gland packing has solidified and abraded the drive shaft enough to allow water in. Russ’s solution, in retrospect, was simple. He’s fitted a catch tray underneath the leak. Inside the catch tray he’s fitted a bilge pump attached to a float switch. Bingo! No more water in the engine room. Any water finding its way along the drive shaft from the canal is now collected in the catch tray. The rising water level in the catch tray activates the float switch which turns the bilge pump on. In the fullness of time I’ll have the stern gland re-packed but there’s no rush. The floor in the engine room is now bone dry, and what a difference it’s made. When I moved onto James the rear cabin was very damp indeed. In fact, the cabin floor was covered by an inch of water. The water had come through a leak in the roof and had also overflowed from the engine room into the bedroom. I fixed the roof leak by having the whole cabin over plated then I pumped out the engine room. Until this week there has always been water in the bilge though. I’ve been used to seeing water in bilges on many of the boats in the marina so I accepted it as a normal part of boating. I also accepted the damp bedroom caused by the excess engine room water. Over the last week since the water ingress problem has been resolved, we’ve enjoyed significant decrease in dampness at the back end of the boat. It’s marvellous and I’m going to make sure that the boat stays dry. Bone dry is the new benchmark and nothing less is acceptable.

Swimming Lessons Talking of excess water, I’ve had more than my fair share of it in the last week. Before our holiday hirers are allowed out in one of our boats on their own, they are given an instruction lasting about an hour and a half. The instruction covers how everything works inside the boat, how and where to fill up with water, a lock instruction in one of the locks either side of the wharf, some basic engine maintenance and everything they need to know about the weed hatch. For the none boaters, let me tell you about the weed hatch. Our canals are often very shallow. A narrowboat’s draft, the depth of the section of the boat which sits under the water, is usually between 2’0″ and 2’6″. Even though there isn’t much of a narrowboat under the water, the canals are so shallow that the bottom of the boat is often in contact with the bottom of the canal. Consequently, the debris on the bottom of the canal, disturbed by the boat as it passes, often comes into contact with the rapidly spinning propeller. Because the propeller is spinning, the debris is wound around the propeller either causing the engine to overheat or the boat to lose power. If you’re lucky, you can put the boat into reverse while the engine is still in gear and throw the obstacle off. If you’re not quite so lucky you have to moor your boat, stop the engine and dive down the weed hatch. The weed hatch is usually either a square or rectangular plate in the engine bay secured tight against the steel on the bottom of the boat by a locking bar. Removing the locking bar and the weed hatch cover gives you access to the water directly above the propeller. By carefully reaching about a foot under the water you can feel, but not see, the propeller and anything that’s fouling it. If you’re lucky the propeller will only be fouled by plastic bags, bits of old rope or items of clothing which have found their way into the canal. If you aren’t so lucky, the obstruction can be lengths of barbed wire, mattresses, car tyres, bicycles, shopping trolleys and, on one particularly unpleasant fouling I heard about, a rotting fox carcass! We had a call last Monday from a party of three ladies who had hired one of the Royal Navy narrowboats we look after. They had committed the cardinal sin of leaving their stern mooring rope on the counter – the horizontal surface at the very back of the boat – as they travelled. As often happens when a rope is left there, the rope had vibrated off the counter and into the water as they cruised and fallen in to the propeller. The ladies did everything right. They tried to remove the rope by reversing the boat while it was in gear. When that didn’t work, they moored the boat, switched the engine off and opened the weed hatch. With the aid of a sharp knife and much unladylike language they managed to remove the section of rope from the propeller. But there was still a section held fast under the boat. They couldn’t get it off so they called us. I don’t normally go out on call outs to hire boats because I know very little about the normal engine problems which need resolving. As the solution to this particular problem just involved brute force and ignorance, I was allowed to go. The problem was obvious, so was the solution. The rope was twisted around the rudder’s bottom bracket which wasn’t accessible from the inside of the boat. No amount of tugging, twisting or pulling would release it. There were only two ways of getting it off. Either (A) take the boat out of the water so that the rope could be removed or (B) get into the water to remove the rope. Taking the boat out of the water wasn’t practical so the simplest solution was for someone to jump into the canal and cut the rope off. As the lady crew mysteriously disappeared shortly after I suggested the solution, a summer’s day paddle along the canal’s muddy bottom was down to me. I stripped down to my boxers and jumped in. At this stage the crew appeared out of thin air to offer encouragement. They were amazed to see that the water only came up to my chest. I pointed out to them that this was actually one of the deeper sections of the canal as there was at least two feet of clear water under the boat. Removing the rope took less than a minute. Showering on their boat to remove the muddy sludge from my legs and any germs I might have picked up from the dirty canal water took another quarter of an hour. Although I don’t particularly enjoy wading along the canal’s slippery bottom, I love the fact that I don’t ever know what the day holds in store for me when I start work at 8am. I really do enjoy my work!

New Liveaboard Case Studies Julie and Jim love life afloat so much they’ve brought a little person into the world to share the adventure with them. Although they both work, they constantly cruise the network, never staying longer than two weeks in the same spot. You can read about their life afloat here. Alan had a choice to make. He could either do nothing but feel sorry for himself when his wife sadly passed away, or he could seize life with both hands and move ahead with his plans to buy a liveaboard narrowboat. A year later he’s continuously cruising the inland waterways network with his rescue border collie. Alan has been a frequent forum poster since before he bought his boat. Click here to find out about the man behind the posts. Managing Your Narrowboat’s Water Supply Published 15th September 2013 Monday 9th September marked the passing of summer and the onset of autumn. Monday marked the onset of autumn as far as Sally and I were concerned anyway. We lit the stove for the first time since, I think, 8th June. Last winter and spring weren’t particularly cold compared with previous years but they were cold enough to warrant having the stove burning much of the time. The stove will be on now intermittently until the end of September when it will roar into life full time for six or seven months. The boat won’t be cold even in the depths of winter. At least it won’t be cold at the front of the boat. The stove has a back boiler which feeds three radiators down the starboard side. The radiators are gravity fed. There’s not much of a fall between the front of the boat where the stove is and the last radiator in the rear cabin so by the time the scalding hot water from the back boiler has reached the bedroom it’s lost most of its ability to heat the bedroom. We have an electric radiator in our bedroom but with the marina power charged at 20p a unit it prohibitively expensive to run. However, we need effective heating in the bedroom. There’s a ply bulkhead separating it from the poorly insulated engine room. Actually, that’s not quite correct, the engine room is insulated as well as the rest of the boat, but the insulation isn’t much good when there’s a howling wind blowing through the gaps in the poorly fitted rear doors. The steel doors were fitted when the cabin was over plated. Generally I was very pleased with the work done, but the door fitting, both front and rear, was very poor quality. Consequently there are gaps between the doors and the front and rear bulkhead I can almost fit my finger in. It’s not so bad at the front of the boat because the cratch cover protects the entrance from the elements. The back doors are open to the weather though so when an icy east wind is blowing it quickly chills the engine room and then the bedroom beyond. We often wake on a winter morning to a bedroom temperature of six or seven degrees (before I had the cabin over plated and an additional layer of insulation sandwiched between the old cabin and the new, the bedroom temperature was often just above freezing). Although we’re warm enough in bed with a winter duvet and blanket to protect us, it’s decidedly chilly getting in and out of bed. In the fullness of time, I’ll have to get the rear doors either refitted or replaced. In the meantime I’ll temporarily plug the gap with insulation to keep the worst of the winter wind out. I also need to try and improve the heating in the bedroom. I’ll be taking James in to the gloomy double dock at Calcutt shortly to have some work done on the heating. I don’t know when the system was last flushed, but it certainly hasn’t been done in the three and a half years I’ve been on board. I’ve been advised to have the system thoroughly flushed and, while it’s devoid of water, to have a 12v pump fitted to help the hot water reach the far and of the boat. James will go in to the dock in the next week or two so we’ll have the pleasure of spending a couple of days and nights looking out of the windows at a room full of dusty tools rather the nodding reeds and lapping water we enjoy at the moment. I also need to buy some coal for the winter. I’ve been offered 30 bags of Pureheat at last year’s price. Thirty bags will last me about three months so I’ll take all thirty bags. Paying for it is painful enough but carrying 750kg of coal 150 feet up to the top of a twenty feet high bank is very painful indeed. I’ll try to get Sally to help. Then she wouldn’t need to go to the gym.

On Board Water Consumption One of my favourite stories about those new to boating is one told to me by a boat owner when he stopped at Calcutt for diesel. He told me that he had been on a mooring at a marina. He had a had a hose attached to the pontoon tap and was just inserting it in his boat’s water tank when the lady owner from a brand new and recently arrived boat moored next to him wandered over to ask what he was doing. “I’m filling my water tank” he told her, “I have to fill it every five or six days”. She looked at him in horror, “I’m SO pleased I don’t have an old boat” she exclaimed, “I don’t have to do what you’re doing. I just turn the taps on inside and the water comes out!” There are very few new boaters as naive as this lady but there are many who don’t really think about their water supply and its management until they’ve run out a few times. The lesson is usually all the more memorable when the water runs out when they are in the shower and miles away from the nearest water point. You only need to experience standing in a rapidly cooling shower tray covered in soap suds once before the importance of monitoring your water supply sinks home. I’ve been on James now for three and a half years. I’ve not been able to find out what the water tank capacity is and there’s no easy way to do so. James has a very odd configuration. There’s a galvanised tank which feeds two smaller odd shaped plastic tanks. If there was just one regular shaped tank I could measure the dimensions and work out the capacity. I can’t so, in the interest of providing you with as much information as possible and to satisfy my own curiosity, I’m going to work out the capacity now… the hard way. I’m just filling the water tank to the brim. I have to be careful. Unlike most modern narrowboats, James’ water inlet isn’t sealed. If I overfill the tank it overflows into the bottom of the boat, runs the full length of the cabin under the floor, reappears in the engine room, fills the engine bay and then floods the cabin. The newsletter may be an hour or two late today. The tank is now full. I’m just about to empty it via the galley cold water tap and a litre jug. I’m back again after just over an hour of filling the tank to capacity and then emptying it out again. I measured the capacity of the washing up bowl and counted the bowls I emptied. There were thirty two of them at eleven litres a bowl or 352 litres in total which works out at just over 78 gallons. A 78 gallon water tank is quite small. If you look at any of the 1,000 plus narrowboats for sale on Apolloduck you will see water tank capacities, where listed, usually between one hundred and one hundred and fifty gallons. Although our tank is quite small, its capacity isn’t really an issue for us as we have a water supply close by. I don’t think the capacity would bother us if we were continuous cruisers either. The tank lasts us three or four days usually, less if Sally is using the washing machine. When we’re out cruising the longest we stop in any one spot is two days. As these are only holiday breaks though we want to cruise most days so we can see more of the system. If we were cruising full time with no agenda to adhere to, we would be tempted to stay longer on idyllic rural moorings but the cassette toilet capacity rather then the water tank capacity would dictate how often we moved. The only scenario when our current water tank capacity would be a real inconvenience would be if we had an online mooring without a water point. There are many liveaboards on moorings without water so they have to travel to the nearest BW water point to fill up. Replenishing the water supply on a boat with a normal 150 gallon tank would be an inconvenience but with James’ capacity so much smaller, trips to a water point to fill up after a hard day’s work would be a real pain. How do we use our 78 gallons? We aren’t as frugal as some, but we don’t consider we waste much water. For example, we don’t ever leave the tap running while we are brushing our teeth, just a quick tap open and close to wet the toothbrush beforehand, another quick burst to rinse afterwards and a final burst of water at the end to fill a cup to gargle with. Our water heater causes us to waste more than we would like though. The on demand water heater is in the bathroom which is about fifteen feet away from the galley. The hot water takes a couple of minutes to reach the galley after the tap is opened. That water is wasted. Some boaters collect this water to use later. I don’t know what they store it in our where they find the room to keep it but, quite frankly, we can’t be bothered with the hassle. Our shower is another source of waste. It’s a bit of a pig to get the temperature right. I understand it’s something to do with the water pressure and the flow of water around the heater but it’s beyond me. All I know is that I have to fiddle around for a minute or two before I think I have the temperature right. Sometimes I have the pleasure of showering under alternating jets of scalding and freezing water. Some boaters use the “submarine” method of showering to save water. They turn the water in briefly to wet themselves, turn it off while they give themselves a good soaping, then turn the water back on just as briefly to rinse the soap off. I’m afraid the submarine method isn’t for me. I’m not tough enough. Our bathroom is unheated so in all but the warmest of weather we would be standing in an icy shower tray in a freezing cold bathroom spraying ourselves with frigid water. Just the thought is enough to make me want to climb into a warm bed and pull a heavy quilt over my head. On a daily basis we each have a shower – less than five minutes – and fill and rinse out a washing up bowl morning and evening to wash the dishes. I also half fill the kettle six or seven times a day for a mug of coffee (I know I drink two much coffee. It’s my only vice, so please don’t lecture me!). A five minute shower uses about sixty litres according to the South Staffs Water web site. We probably shower for a little less than five minutes but two showers at forty litres each plus the washing up water would use 100 litres a day which is about right if we’re refilling our 352 litre tank every three to four days. Liveaboard narrowboat owner Julie reported in a recent case study that she only fills the tank of her narrowboat Lorien every six weeks. She’s explained how careful she is with water but I still don’t know how she does it. I don’t know how big her tank is but I think it must fill the front half of her boat and double as a swimming pool. Regardless of the size of the tank on your own boat, you’re still going to have to be far more careful than you are at the moment with the water in your bricks and mortar home so as you look out of your window today at the solid sheets of rain falling from leaden skies onto our green and pleasant land, please remember that there’s not a lot of this precious stuff about. A Tragedy At Calcutt Published 22nd September 2013 I moor my boat on Calcutt Boats’ Meadows marina. I also work full time for Calcutt Boats as a groundsman. When I first created this site I mistakenly assumed that most liveaboard narrowboat owners moored on marinas. I was wrong but by the time I realised that there was much more to living on a narrowboat than mooring full time in a basin surrounded by other boats, I had added nearly all of the inland waterways marinas to the site. In doing so I became familiar with their location on the canal and river network, their proximity to major roads and railways, the facilities they offered and the extent of their grounds. I thought then, and still think, that Calcutt Boats offered a location and facilities that were hard to beat. Where they really excelled though was the extent of their grounds. The two Calcutt Boats marinas are set in 110 acres of stunning Warwickshire countryside. Their are three S.S.S.I. (Site of Special Scientific Interest) meadows offering a stunning display of wild flowers in the spring and early summer and over 3km of footpaths through meadows and woodland. There were thousands of trees already growing on the site but between 1994 and 2001 two new woodland areas were created with the addition of 5,500 more trees and shrubs. There are now about forty species on the site including horse chestnut, beech, elm, alder, elder, poplar, hawthorn, blackthorn and cockspur thorn, a profusion of wild cherry including two bearing edible and absolutely delicious fruit every July, crack, white, goat and weeping willow and the most numerous of all, oak and ash. Three thousand five hundred oak and ash were planted. Many of those trees are now nearly twenty years old. The trunks of some are over twelve inches in diameter. They stand over thirty feet tall. They provide an unbroken canopy over acres of woodland with carefully cultivated footpaths and open open glades. Over the last four years I’ve spent more and more time caring for the woodland. I find working among the trees has a calming influence on me. I’ve spent much of my working life in conflict with people. I managed “strong control” pubs for the Bass Charrington brewery chain for over a decade. I faced violence and violent disagreement on a daily basis. I don’t suffer fools gladly. Sometimes I’m right, sometimes I’m wrong, but always I’m vocal. I feel more at peace in the presence of trees and the absence of people than I do anywhere else. I love woodland areas generally but, because of the work I’ve done in them, I love the woodland areas at Calcutt more than most. You can imagine how upset I am at the moment having to cut many of the trees down. Earlier this year we heard about a disease sweeping through one of England’s most numerous trees; ash dieback. With over 50,000,000 ash in the UK and with a projected mortality rate in excess of 70%, ash dieback was subject to much media coverage a few months ago. The advice to landowners was to identify any trees suspected of infection, report the trees to the authorities… and wait. Some of the infected trees may survive but no one is really sure so the advice was not to remove trees but to wait and see what happens to them. We identified half a dozen at the time which may be infected and reported them. Since then we haven’t seen any more. We thought we were out of the woods so to speak. Then, about a month ago, one of our long term residents, ex teacher and naturalist Blaine Harris identified half a dozen oak showing signs of acute distress. He was standing on the bridge between our two marinas looking at our largest woodland area when he noticed some trees with brown rather than green crowns. It was too early for the autumnal colour change. After examining the affected trees more closely he discovered that the bark about two thirds of the way up the trunk had fallen off. After extensive research he discovered that they were suffering from chronic oak dieback. It’s another disease sweeping through UK woodlands. The Midlands has been especially hard hit. The advice is clear. Once an oak is displaying the symptoms evident in our oak, the top third will die leaving exposed “stag horn” upper branches but living lower branches. The advice is to remove the affected trees if they are in close proximity to other oak. All of our oak are very close together and we have 2,500 of them. I’ve removed about thirty oak so far. It’s a slow and painful process. The woodland area desperately needs thinning out. Our oak and ash are planted 6- 8 feet apart which means that I can’t get a vehicle into the woods to carry the cut timber away so each branch and section of trunk has to be dragged or carried along the footpath to the nearest access point, loaded onto a truck, driven to our tip area where it’s unloaded and stacked ready for burning. The added insult to injury is that all of the felled oak have to be burned. I could keep my stove going for years with the timber but it can’t be stored and seasoned because of the risk of spreading the disease through wind blown spores. The silver lining to this dark and unpleasant cloud is that the trees needed thinning anyway. Oak can reach a staggering 130 feet tall with a spread of over 80 feet. Ash can grow nearly as tall. Given the eventual size of these two species and the fact that all of the rapidly growing trees are competing for sunlight and the same water supply, periodic thinning is necessary. If I work flat out I can remove ten in a day. There are another ninety oak marked for removal at the moment but I don’t know whether we’ve found them all yet, or how many more are going to be infected. And then there are the ash. If and when the advice changes from “wait and see” to “get rid of them as quickly as you can” I’ll have to thin the woods out even more. While all of this is going on, there are dozens of willows in the woods which need coppicing. The reeds are next to the reed beds which purify the water running off our waste tanks. The willow soak up any seepage from the tanks and help purify the water. Coppicing (cutting the trees down to about knee level) encourages each tree to send up dozens and dozens of new shoots and draw more water out of the boggy ground surrounding the reed beds. I’ve been looking for a project over the coming winter. The ash, oak and willow will keep me fully occupied over the coming months. The Folly Of Using Unseasoned Logs For Your Stove Published 29th September 2013 Have I ever mentioned that I love my job? Yesterday, Saturday, was – for me – a perfect day. I spent an hour in the morning cutting back the low hanging ash branches on the wharf lawn and the elder branches above the grassy bank where we park our recently acquired telehandler (fork lift truck), roped off a section of footpath between our online moorings and Napton reservoir where the footpath has been undermined by a leak from the canal into the reservoir, then spent the rest of the morning and early afternoon felling and removing infected oak. I don’t enjoy destroying twenty year old trees, but I love working in the peace and quiet of the woodland with the autumn sunshine filtering through the trees and the crackle of fallen leaves underfoot. I’ve now removed about sixty of the one hundred and twenty infected oak. I may only have 50% of the trees left to cut, but I have at least 75% of the work ahead of me. The wood isn’t very large as woods go but the remaining oak are at least 200m from the nearest point where I can park the truck. Every trunk, branch and leaf has to be dragged out of the woods and loaded onto the truck for transportation. The time of the year influences how much work I have to do too. The last few months have been pretty dry so the ground next to the woods is firm enough to drive the truck over without damaging the grass. All that is about to change though. October normally heralds the start of the autumn rains. We only need two or three days of rain to soften the ground enough to prevent vehicles from driving onto the grass without making a mess, which will mean that shortly I will have to carry or drag the cut timber even further. Yesterday was dry, sunny and a real pleasure to be alone in the woods talking to the trees. Alone that is until my radio interrupted my daydreaming with a request to go on a rescue mission. One of the narrowboats we look after for the Royal Navy had broken down at Braunston between the lock flight and the entrance to Braunston marina. One of our engineers had been out to it and determined that the boat couldn’t be repaired out on the canal. It would have to be brought back to Calcutt to be fixed. Bringing it back to Calcutt would necessitate taking one of our hire boats to Braunston to use to tow the navy boat back to Calcutt. I left Calcutt yesterday at 4.30pm for a quick cruise to Braunston. It would have been quicker if I hadn’t been stuck behind a boat intent on cruising at a maximum 2mph. I thought for the first couple of hundred metres that he was looking for somewhere to moor up because of his speed and the way he was zig-zagging from one side of the canal to the other. He wasn’t. He was just in his own little world, enjoying the scenery at his own very leisurely pace. I decided to do the same. Eventually he pulled over to let me pass, I increased speed, and so did he. He stayed on my tail all the way to Braunston. I couldn’t work it out but it didn’t matter. I was out on the cut enjoying a pleasant autumnal cruise… and being pad for it. I arrived at Braunston at 6pm, moored just before the junction then walked along the towpath towards the Braunston flight to locate the navy boat and to make sure that I could turn my rescue boat near where it was moored. I found the navy boat next to the entrance to Braunston marina. An entrance I can use to turn my hire boat when I go back there later today. I waited in the Boathouse in Braunston for Steve Cox from the office to pick me up and bring me back to the marina. Of course, we had to have a pint when he arrived. The purchase of two pints in a canal side pub reminds me why I don’t drink in pubs much any more. Seven pounds for two pints! I can buy one and a half bottles of very good Australian red for that much in a supermarket. At £3.50 a pint it’s fourteen times more expensive than the first pint I ever bought in a pub. Mind you, that first pint was thirty six years ago in a spit and sawdust pub in a particularly unpleasant part of Birkenhead. I was back at the boat by 8pm for a quick bite to eat, X Factor (I love it), bed and an early start to finish the newsletter before returning to Braunston at 11am. I’m just about to leave now. To be honest, I’m a little nervous. There’s a stiff easterly breeze blowing which isn’t going to make the journey back with a total boat length of 110′ any easier on a day when I can expect there to be plenty of traffic. Whatever happens, it will be an adventure. I’ll tell you how much of an adventure next week.

Seasoned V Unseasoned Wood As Fuel Earlier this week I was given a very clear demonstration of the difficulty in burning felled wood which hasn’t been seasoned. Last week I told you about the problem we have with our oak trees. There are about 120 diseased trees in total which need to be removed from the woodland and, because the timber is infected, burned immediately. So far I have removed forty twenty year old trees, cut them into manageable sections and moved them to our tip area where they are in an enormous 5th November sized pile waiting to be incinerated. I haven’t burned them before now because we have strict instructions on how and when to light fires. The tip area is to the west of the original Locks marina and to the south west of the newer Meadows marina. The prevailing wind is south westerly so most of the time, if a fire is lit, the smoke and ash blows across either one or the other marina and understandably upsets boaters, especially if they have just spent hours polishing a boat to find it covered in a fine layer of ash. We have to wait until there’s an east wind blowing. It doesn’t happen very often. Normally it’s not a problem as there isn’t much to burn. There has been recently with the continuous felling of infected oak. There was a light breeze from the east on Tuesday so oak burning was the order of the day. I don’t normally have a problem lighting a fire. After all, I did spend a year as a boy scout… before being asked to leave as I was considered a bad influence on other scouts. Normally I use a newspaper, sheets separated and screwed up, under a pile of cardboard boxes and then any cut timber – usually willow – over the top of the cardboard mixed with offcuts from our woodshed. Recently cut timber is usually a fairly small part of the overall mix. On Tuesday 95% of the bonfire was recently cut oak and it didn’t want to burn. I tried my usual method with no success at all. I threw a gallon of petrol onto the fire and lit that. The petrol burned wonderfully, but not the oak. I added twenty five litres of diesel to the already burning paper and cardboard. Again, the diesel burned wonderfully, but not the oak. I’ve now run out of options. I simply can’t light the oak. Most freshly cut timber is hard to light because of the high water content, water content which can be as high as 45%. The timber needs to be left, usually for a year or more to “season”, before it’s any use as a fuel. If logs are burned before they are properly seasoned, if you can get them lit at all, more energy is used evaporating the log’s liquid content than is used to produce heat. Unseasoned logs don’t burn very hot, are usually smoky, and cause thick and damaging layers of creosote I see, and hear of, no end of boaters who carry a chainsaw around with them so that they can cut up felled logs into manageable lumps for the fire. I suspect some, a very small minority, do the tree felling themselves. The cut timber is then piled onto the roof ready for burning later. But how much later do they burn it? Oak is one of the most common trees in the UK and can often be seen along the side of the canals and rivers as you travel. There are often windfall branches or felled branches or trees within sight of the waterways but, firstly, it isn’t there for every passer-by to help themselves to and, secondly, it’s no good as fuel until it’s seasoned. Oak takes up to two years to season properly. If done properly, it’s left outside during the warmer months where the wind and the sun can help dry it out and then taken under cover for the winter. Narrowboat owners simply don’t have the space to season enough timber to keep them going. I don’t use wood, but I know how much coal I get through. Between October 2012 and June 2013 I burned over 80 bags. That’s more than two tons of the stuff. If the wood produces the same amount of heat pound for pound – I don’t know if it does – a narrowboat owner would need to carry four tons at any one time (two tons to season and two tons for immediate use)… and, ideally, the seasoned two tons would need to be kept under cover. I often see liveaboard boats with piles of logs stored on the boat roof. Those boats often have very smoky fires. Smoky fires are an indication of unseasoned wood. Unseasoned wood burns poorly, produces little heat compared with seasoned wood or coal and causes an accumulation of flu creasote and the risk of chimney fire. The exceptions are the many boats you see on the offside on a mooring with either a garden or some space for storage next to the boat. You will often see a store of logs which have probably been well seasoned. I think that the rule of thumb should be to use coal unless you have a mooring with sufficient space to store two or three season’s worth of logs.

Create Lasting Memories Of Your Travels How good is your memory? Mine is awful. I can’t clearly remember what happened yesterday so I’ve no chance when it comes to remembering cruises months or years earlier. The good news for me is that I don’t need a fantastic memory to be able to relive every interesting or exciting moment of my travels. I take photographs. I take lots of photographs. My photographs are my memory and what wonderful memories they are. I’ve just had a quick browse through my online albums. Actually, the intention was to have a quick browse. I strolled down memory lane for over an hour. I have hundreds of albums with a total of just over 30,000 photo’s. I purchased my first digital camera in 2001. It had a massive 2.1 million pixels and cost £1,000. These days, the most basic mobile phones have higher resolution cameras. I bought that first camera when my three boys, Blake, Brad and Brook were 7, 5 & 3 respectively. It was at a time when I got on reasonably well with my then wife and at a time when the boys were growing rapidly and changing almost daily. I can’t remember much about events from that period, or any other significant period of my life… until I look at the photo’s. Then the memories come flooding back. My ex wife was immovable when choosing holidays. The holiday had to be two weeks and had to be somewhere where there was guaranteed sun where she could lay for fourteen hours a day in the sun. She wasn’t lazy. Far from it. She managed to combine looking after three very active boys with her job as a very busy property lawyer. Holidays allowed her to collapse, rest and recuperate. I understood the need for her to take these types of breaks but they weren’t always for me. I’ve always enjoyed the great outdoors and like to keep active. By 2007 we weren’t getting on very well at all and had been going to the same camp site on the Spanish coast about 100 miles north of Barcelona for five years in a row. I started to take breaks on my own and recharge my batteries in a way which suited me far more than a beach holiday. I went hill walking in Scotland. The photographs I took then now allow me to relive those adventures in detail. One of my favourite trips was to Ullapool on the north west coast of Scotland in August 2007. I drove there from my Warwickshire home. I stopped off in the Lake District on the way there for an exhilarating long day’s walk on High Street and an overnight stay before continuing north to Ullapool. I stayed the night in an Ullapool B & B before being taken by taxi to Oykel Bridge, 30 miles north east of the town. From there I walked back to Ullapool through the mountains. It’s a remote and stunning landscape completely devoid of human habitation. My first day’s walk was thirteen miles along a rough track in pouring rain wearing my new Paramo waterproofs. The rain didn’t get through but neither did the rivers of sweat I generated carrying a heavy pack while wearing thick waterproofs on a hot (for the Highlands) summer’s day. I couldn’t have remembered the details without referring to my photographs. The photo on the left shows my accommodation on that first night in the mountains. I had all my camping gear with me and enough food for a week away from civilization but I had read that there was a decent and free to use bothy (mountain hut) by the side of the loch at the base of 3,000 feet high Seana Braigh. With plentiful photo’s to jog my ailing memory, I can now recall the whole trip in vivid detail. I can remember how delighted I was when, wet and tired with aching and sore feet, I opened the door to the bothy to find that, not only was it in a very good state of repair, but it had also been stocked with luxuries by persons unknown who clearly had hearts of gold. The bothy had an open stone fireplace but a fireplace is no good without something to burn in it. There was a pile of seasoned logs next to the fireplace and kindling and matches to light it with. On the mantelpiece over the fire where half a dozen substantial candles for night-time lighting, a couple of packs of cards and, joy of joys, three different and completely full single malt whiskey miniatures. I lit the fire, changed into dry clothing, hung my sodden clothes on the drying rack over the now roaring fire. I heated a Wayfarer ready meal then relaxed in an old armchair next to the fire, reading my book with the aid of a head torch and slowly and reverently sipped one of the little bottles of single malt. There wasn’t a sound to be heard apart from the crackling fire. No road noise (the nearest road was thirteen miles away), no air traffic noise (this area of Scotland is a long way away from any commercial flight paths) and neither sight nor sound of another human being. I felt a profound sense of peace and, thanks to my digital memories, I can recapture that feeling whenever I browse through the album. The following day I left the bothy after a very late start, walked eight miles to another remote loch and camped almost within hearing of the waves lapping gently on the shore. I woke the following morning to the sound of grass being pulled from the ground very close to my tent. There were no sheep or cows anywhere near me so I didn’t have a clue what could be making the noise. The culprit was a magnificently antlered stag, peacefully grazing less than ten feet from my tent. I didn’t dare move to get my camera in case I disturbed it but I remember the encounter clearly thanks to the photo’s I took either side of the chance meeting. Why am I spending so much time telling you about one of my walking holidays when this blog is supposed to be about narrowboats, canals and rivers? Because cruising the network is an adventure, and adventure you’ll cherish when you’ve hung up your windlass for the last time. I haven’t started to cruise the network in earnest yet but the little cruising I have done has been recorded in detail. I’ve recorded my cruises by taking plenty of photo’s and by taking plenty of notes in the form of this written blog. I’ve been taking photographs ever since I’ve had children. The first eight years I used a film camera but I didn’t use it very much. I didn’t really know what to do with the camera so the results were poor and very expensive to have printed. My results weren’t much better when I switched to digital cameras, but at least there was no heavy printing costs to put me off taking the photo’s in the first place. Over the years I’ve bought dozens of books and enrolled on web based courses but the very best tuition I’ve ever received has been a fantastic downloadable package called 123DI (The 123 of Digital Imaging). It contains over 4,000 pages of step by step instructions and tutorials. Since I started using it, not only have I seen a huge improvement in the quality of the photo’s I’ve taken (and therefore the memories I’ve captured for the future), but I’ve also understood why the improvements have happened and what to do in most situations to ensure that I nearly all of my photo’s will stand the test of time. I love taking photo’s of my beloved springer spaniel Charlie. I’ve just taken one now and, using the the knowledge learned from 123DI, I’ve focused on his stunning eyes to make them stand out more. You can click on the image to see the full size photo. If you want to take high quality photo’s with just about any camera and regardless of whether you are at the beginner, intermediate or advanced level of digital photography, 123DI is an essential guide. You can download an evaluation version of 23DI here. There are some great tools available for managing and storing your digital images. I use Picasa from Google for organising my digital images and Google Drive for storing them. I used to have 30,000+ digital images stored on an external hard drive. After less than 12 months the hard drive failed. I had a quote of £400 to try to recover the lost images. I decided not let them try because (A) I couldn’t afford it and (B) all of my images are backed up to Google Drive the second they are added to my laptop’s hard drive. All of my photo’s were safely backed up, even if they weren’t backed up at quite as high a resolution as the originals. My 20GB of storage with Google costs me a ridiculously low $5 a year!. Finally, I use and recommend online publisher Blurb. You can publish your own books, complete with photo’s and text, at a very low cost. I’ve been using them for about five years now. I’ve created several photo journals documenting regular events as my boys developed. One of them, a 400 page coffee table sized book, cost just £50 to have printed and shipped from the USA (Blurb have since opened a branch in the UK). The books were loved and admired by all family and friends who browsed through them and are treasured by me.

Here’s a screen capture of one of the books. Just looking at the two photo’s here bring memories flooding back. I can tell from the caption on the photo that the event was a football match on Sunday 1st February 2009 in Balsall Common. Seeing the driving snow in the photo reminds me of how bitterly cold the day was and how cold my son Blake was (He's on the left in the red striped top). The photo on the right was taken just four days later on Wednesday 5th February. Heavy snow brought the country to a standstill. There must have been at least an inch on the road. The schools of course were closed so I had to stay off work to look after the boys. We went to a nearby nature reserve and built this snowman. The little fella sitting in front of the snowman is my youngest son Brook. I made him sit there because he had added a very impressive but totally unacceptable additional appendage to the snowman. These photographic memories are invaluable to me. If you don’t already have a camera, and you don’t have the gift of total recall, I urge you to go out and get one as soon as you can. I am in the process of adding my cruising photo’s and notes to another book. I know that this book and others like it will be among my most treasure possessions in the dim and distant future when I’ll be forced to sit with a rug on my knees next to a fire and remind myself what a wonderful life I’ve had.

Our Nige And His Cruising Blog Nige bought himself a narrowboat this year. He wrote some very entertaining blog entries about his journey back to his new mooring when he first purchased his boat. He’s been out and about again, this time he’s gone solo. Nige is very good at translating his experience into the written word. Grab yourself a coffee, settle down and read about his latest adventure. There are plenty of photo’s to keep you entertained too. There’s a full list of all of the posts he’s written below. The last eight are his latest solo trip. • Steppin’ Out. The first date • More info. Ideas on the ideal layout. • Steppin’Out; Second viewing, surveys, and questions. • Steppin’Out; Second opinion, does everything work, trial run. • Steppin’ Out; A day out and some locking experience. • Steppin’ out; a few plans and thoughts before the maiden voyage. • Steppin’ out; The maiden voyage approacheth, ooh mother what’ll I do now • Steppin’ Out; The maiden voyage, Lymm to Castlefield. • Steppin’ Out; Castlefield through the Rochdale 9 to the Velodrome. • Steppin’ Out; Day 3 from Velodrome to Marple bottom lock. • Steppin’ Out; Day 4 Marple bottom lock to Fourlane-ends • Steppin’ out; Day 5, Fourlane-ends to Congleton. • Steppin’ Out; Day 6 Congleton through the Harecastle to Stone. • Steppin’ Out; Day 7 Stone to Great Haywood • Steppin’ Out; Day 8 Great Haywood to Fradley Jct • Steppin’ Out; Fradley jct to Home, Willington • Our Nige; Joys of sunny days and The Dangers of The Dark Side. • Steppin’ Out; the epiblog part 1 • Our Nige; B****y Technology, steaming ears and high blood pressure. • Steppin’Out; Hell of a time. Any ideas on the heat? • Steppin’ Out; Settling in, Fishing and things. • Steppin’out: My first solo venture. • Steppin’out; Solo voyage day one. • Steppin’out; solo day two • Steppin’out; Solo Jolly day 3 • Steppin’out; Solo jolly day 4 • Steppin’out; Solo Jolly day 5, Great Haywood to Fradley. • Steppin’out; Solo Jolly Day 6 Fradley to Branston • Steppin’out; Solo Jolly day 7 Branston to Mercia marina. Water, Water Everywhere… And Not A Drop To Drink Published 6th October 2013 Last week I told you that I had taken one of our hire boats to Braunston and moored it there ready to tow a broken down boat back to Calcutt. I set off for Braunston on Sunday as soon as I finished the newsletter. It wasn’t the best of days for towing a flat bottomed boat six miles along a narrow, winding canal with plenty of traffic on it. There was a stiff easterly breeze blowing which made travelling slowly and keeping in a straight line quite a challenge. Going too slowly with a strong wind blowing was a recipe for disaster as we were blown towards the moored boats so, as usual when it’s a bit breezy, I cruised past moored craft slightly faster than I would have liked to. It’s always a fine balance on days like this between upsetting owners of moored boats by passing them too quickly, and upsetting them even more by passing them too slowly in the wind and being blown into them. I didn’t hit any moored boats but I did “jackknife” the two boats on two occasions. I’m sure to an experienced working boatman towing an unpowered butty, negotiating ninety degree bends without the butty pushing the boat in front in a direction it doesn’t want to go is no problem at all but, on two occasions it was beyond me. There was no harm done though. I managed to stop both boats before we hit anything and then just had to spend five minutes poling the lead boat until it was pointing in the right direction again. Apart from these two brief mishaps the journey was uneventful and very pleasant. We took about half an hour longer than the journey normally takes, including the time it took to untie the two boats, breast them up through Calcutt Top Lock, then reverse the harnessed pair onto our wharf. I was back on my boat by 3.30pm enjoying a cup of coffee and congratulating myself on a job almost well done.

Liveaboard Case Study – Miss George It takes all kinds of people to make the world go around and all kinds of people with their varying likes and dislikes to make the inland waterways such an interesting place. One person’s ideal mooring is another person’s idea of hell. After testing the lifestyle by taking a narrowboat holiday in the depths of winter, Jaks and Andy have now lived on their own narrowboat for four years on a rustic farm mooring on the cut with no facilities. Here’s their case study. Read on to find out why their perfect mooring would be my personal nightmare.

Managing Your Water Supply In The Winter The idea of a tranquil online mooring attached to a farm on the quiet and peaceful Ashby canal really appeals to me. However, what really doesn’t appeal to me is having to work but not having any facilities on the mooring. Jaks and Andy don’t have either water or electricity where they moor. The electricity isn’t so much of a problem. They just have to be very organised with their charging regime. Their water management is more difficult. There are two major hurdles to overcome if you need to work full time and have a mooring with no access to water. Firstly, you need to monitor your water usage and plan when to top it up. Topping up involves moving your boat from your mooring to the nearest water point, waiting for half an hour or more while the water tank fills, then returning to your mooring. Of course you will need to be able to turn your boat around both at or close to your mooring and at or close to the water point. Turning your boat will often involve cruising past both mooring and water point to the nearest winding hole (turning point). Jaks and Andy are on the Ashby canal so they don’t have any locks to contend with. Locks are another significant consumer of time if they are between your mooring and the nearest water supply. In total, topping up your water at a nearby water point could take you several hours of your very valuable free time at the end of a hard day’s work – a job which can be even more painful if the weather is less than perfect. Imagine coming home from work after a long and hard day at the office. It’s good to be back on your warm and cosy boat. You slip off your shoes, glance out of your window, watch the mallards fussing about in the shallows and the bull rushes dancing in the breeze, and you start to unwind. The first thing you reach for is the kettle to make your self a glad-to-be-back cup of coffee. Cough… splutter… spit…. You’ve run out of water. You can’t have a coffee, a shower to wash off the day’s dirt and you can’t wash your dishes. It’s a Monday. Both you and your other half have another four days to work before a well earned weekend break. You’ve no choice. You have to take your boat to the water point and your whole evening has been ruined. Your other half doesn’t get back from work for another hour so you call her to let her know that you’ve run out of water… again. She’s not going to be happy. She’s always a bit irritable when she’s tired, and she’s always tired when she gets back from an eight hour shift at the factory. And she always has a shower the minute she gets back. You pull out your mobile to tell her the bad news. More bad news. You don’t have a signal. You’re on a mooring in the middle of nowhere and you always struggle to get a signal for your phone. Today is no different. You have a difficult decision to make. It’s 6pm. Julie isn’t due back until 7pm. You can wait until she gets back to the boat before you set off, ensuring that she doesn’t arrive at where the boat should be moored but isn’t. You won’t incur her immediate wrath, but you will delay her much needed shower and your much needed coffee by an hour. The alternative is to leave a note on your car, hope she sees it and doesn’t mind sitting in her car until you return, and set off for the water point immediately. You decide on the latter. One hastily scribbled note later, two untied ropes, and you’re on your way… You would be on your way if you could get off your mooring. There hasn’t been much rain recently so the water level is about six inches lower than normal. There isn’t much water on your mooring at the best of times. Now your boat is resting on the mud. You jump off your boat onto the bank leaving the boat in gear and rock furiously from side to side to help unstick it. After fifteen minutes of frustrating and exhausting work, your boat reluctantly slides backwards into the deeper water in the middle of the canal. You’re off! But, of course, you’re off in the wrong direction. You have to cruise for a mile to the nearest winding hole before you can turn and head back up the canal to the water point. At the winding hole you try to turn your boat, but there’s a stiff breeze coming from behind you so the bow just won’t come round. A simple three point turn becomes an exercise in frustration as you slide the full length of the winding hole at an angle of forty five degrees. In the end, you force your bow into the bank to anchor the boat so you can swing it round. After half an hour’s cruising you arrive back at your mooring but thankfully now heading towards the water point. Another fifteen minutes and the water point’s in sight. Damn! There’s another boat on it. The owner has only just arrived and hasn’t even started to fill up yet. Your shoulders slump as you nose your boat into position behind him. Julie will be arriving back at the mooring any minute now. You still can’t get a signal on your phone so you have to hope that she will find your note. Even if she finds it, you know you’re not going to be back at your mooring for at least another hour. Julie will have to sit in her car and wait. The sky’s an ominous grey and fat drops of cold rain are splattering against your upturned and rather unhappy face. Tonight is not going to be a shining example of matrimonial bliss. Julie will be very unhappy. Twenty minutes later, the boat in front has moved off, you’ve moved forward and you can finally start to fill your water tank. After another twenty minutes your tank is full so you’re ready to head back to your mooring. Off you go, again in the wrong direction. You have to cruise another half mile to the next winding hole before you can turn your boat again. It’s now half past seven. Julie is very punctual. You know she will have been waiting for you now for thirty minutes. You also know that she’s not the most patient person in the world and you know she’s going to remind you, very vocally and at great length, just how often she’s told you how unhappy she is mooring so far away from a water point. Just to compound your misery, the rain is now bouncing off your roof and running in rivers down your neck. You arrive back at your mooring cold, wet and miserable but, by the look of Julie’s face, dimly seen through a misted up car windscreen where’s she’s now been parked and has been waiting for quite some time, you’re not as miserable as you will be in about ten minutes time… IF you can get your boat back on the mud flat which passes for a mooring. Of course, I’ve painted a particularly miserable picture, the worst case scenario and one which probably wouldn’t apply to you. But it might, and it might actually be more difficult than the picture I’ve painted. Peggy Melmouth, narrowboat blogger and ex liveaboard, wrote about the difficulty she faced trying to keep her water topped up during a particularly hard winter. Nearly every year the canals freeze solid at least for a day or two. During my first winter on board the canals were frozen under four or five inches of ice from the last week in November until the first week in January. Night time temperatures dropped to a decidedly chilly minus eighteen. On two consecutive days we had highs of minus six. Nothing moved on the canals for a month and a half. Peggy had an online mooring without any facilities. That winter she couldn’t move her boat to the water point for six weeks. It’s possible to plough your way through an inch or more of ice but you can do serious damage to your boat (one coal boat that year nearly sunk ploughing through ice to reach customers) and if you push your way through even a thin layer of ice you can kiss goodbye to the hull’s protective paint around the waterline. Peggy couldn’t take her boat to the water, so she had to bring water to the boat. She used an Aquaroll. An Aquaroll is a rolling water carrier designed for caravanners to easily transport a 40l drum of water from a water point on a caravan site back to the caravan. It’s a great idea. one litre of water weighs 1kg so a 40l drum, excluding the weigh of the drum, weighs 40kg or 88lb (just over six stone). Rolling is much, much easier than carrying. However, there’s a big difference between rolling the drum a hundred metres or so along the well kept ground of a camp site and taking the drum for a walk a mile or more along an overgrown and often muddy towpath. That’s what Peggy had to do. After walking over a mile to the water point with her Aquaroll in tow, Peggy had a rather unpleasant surprise. The tap at the water point was frozen solid. If your boat is near a frozen water point it’s an easy enough task to unfreeze it with a kettle full of boiling water. Peggy didn’t have her boat with her though. It was frozen into the ice. She had no way of thawing the tap so had to return to her boat with her empty Aquaroll. Not that forty litres of water would have lasted very long. I have a small water tank on James but my small water tank is still 350 litres – nearly nine times the size of Peggy’s rolling water supply. With normal use, our 350 litre tank lasts us four or five days at the most or between seventy and ninety litres a day. Forty litres doesn’t last long at all. An average five minute shower uses sixty litres. Our washing up bowl holds eleven litres. At a push we could make 40 litres last a day without resorting to ridiculous measures like going without showers for a couple of days at a time or compromising on the water we use to wash dishes or clothes. We could do it, but we wouldn’t want to. Where we moor we don’t have to but three years ago during my first winter on board I heard many tales of boats without water and the lengths the liveaboard owners had to go to just to survive. They didn’t (couldn’t) shower on their boat so they had to resort to using public facilities or relying on the hospitality of friends or relatives. They transported ridiculously heavy but completely inadequate supplies of water along the towpath. They used shop bought bottled water when they couldn’t get any from water points. That winter was exceptionally cold. The coldest on record in fact. Most winters aren’t nearly as cold. Most of the time the canals are free of ice. And even in the worse conditions there are many, many places you can moor where a constant supply of running water isn’t a problem. Most boaters didn’t have a problem that winter or any other winter. But they, more by design than by accident, where in the right place when the Arctic weather struck. As I said earlier a rural mooring without at least a water supply, no matter how tranquil and idyllic, just wouldn’t suit me at all. I know how much the regular ordeal of simply topping up my water tank would bother me. It would cause me far too much stress and inconvenience. Maybe you’re much more laid back than I am so the prospect of a twice weekly jaunt to the nearest water point in all weathers, and maybe even in the dark during the short winter days, would fill you with joy. I enjoy living on a narrowboat because it’s a more basic way of life living closer to nature. I don’t mind basic, but I don’t want it to be too painful. On Demand Water Heater Problems Published 13th October 2013 Over the last week I’ve been working hard on my latest obsession; building up a store of firewood to use in my stove to help me cut down on my astronomical heating bill. Between August 2012 and July 2013 I spent £889 on coal and on heat logs to get the fire started. By using logs I won’t be able to eliminate the cost of coal completely. I’ll still need to bank the fire with coal overnight and for extended periods away from the boat but I’ll use logs for all other occasions. I am very lucky. I have the job of thinning out our fledgeling woodland area as well as removing the diseased oak and ash, and of disposing of the cut timber. Much of it is going into marina owner Roger Preen’s own wood store at his home six miles away from the marina. Fair enough. It’s his land and his wood. However, he allows me to take enough for my own use. So taking enough wood for my own use is what I’ve been doing this week. In the last month I’ve felled about seventy diseased oak and coppiced about fifty willow. The goat, white and crack willow have been coppiced so that they’re (A) more aesthetically pleasing but mainly (B) so that they do a better job of soaking up the water around our reed bed filtration system. I have the usable wood from all one hundred and twenty trees piled next to our reed beds. Over the last week I’ve been processing the trunks and larger branches. I’ve cut a couple of tonnes into large logs for Roger’s wood burner and another couple of tonnes into smaller logs for my own stove. The wood in the photo above is a small part of the coppiced willow. The large wooden article in the foreground is me. Please excuse the shorts. It’s Sally’s idea of dressing me up ready to go out to a party. I’m weak willed so I always do as I’m told. Willow isn’t the best fuel in the world. It's softwood so it burns very quickly but it provides some heat and it’s free, there’s plenty of it and I’ll be able to use it much sooner than the oak. I now have about two tonnes of firewood stored on pallets. I’ll leave the oak alone now for the next two years to allow it to season. I should be able to use the willow next winter. Over the coming year I’ll add to my stock, mostly with oak from thinning out the trees in the woods but also with ash sometime next year after we’ve been able to assess which are afflicted with sudden ash die back. Seasoning wood is a science. If you’re going to use wood as a fuel on your boat you need to get to grips with it otherwise you may suffer unpleasant winters using poor fuel in an otherwise perfectly adequate stove. Here are a few pointers for you.

Know Your Firewood Correct seasoning is by far the most important factor when determining how efficient the wood be as a fuel. You’ll get nearly twice as much heat from dry (seasoned) logs as you will from freshly cut (unseasoned) wood. Correct seasoning is the most important factor but the type of wood you use is also important. Here’s a poem to help you choose the right logs for your stove. It was written during the coal strike of 1926 and first published in Punch magazine in that year. Logs to burn; logs to burn; Logs to save the coal a turn. Here’s a word to make you wise when you hear the woodman’s cries; Never heed his usual tale That he’s splendid logs for sale But read these lines & really learn The proper kind of logs to burn. Oak logs will warm you well, If they’re old and dry. Larch logs of pinewoods smell But the sparks will fly. Beech logs for Christmas time; Yew logs heat well; ‘Scotch‘ logs it is a crime For anyone to sell. Birch logs will burn too fast; Chestnut scarce at all; Hawthorn logs are good to last If cut in the fall. Holly logs will burn like wax, You should burn them green; Elm logs like smouldering flax, No flame to be seen. Pear logs and apple logs, They will scent your room; Cherry logs across the dogs Smell like flowers in bloom, But ash logs all smooth and grey Burn them green or old, Buy up all that come your way They’re worth their weight in gold. The poem suggests that ash can be used as firewood as soon as it’s been cut. I’ve heard that before but after a little more digging I’ve discovered that ash isn’t quite the stove’s quick fuel fix that everyone thinks (and hopes for). Although ash has a fairly low moisture content, it’s still usually about 35% water when it’s cut. A seasoned log needs to have a moisture content of 20% or less if it’s to perform well as a heating fuel. As an aside, you may be wondering how you can tell whether logs are seasoned or not. You can buy seasoned timber but I assume that, if you’re going to use logs in your stove, you’re more likely to try to find or cut your own. Even if you do buy “seasoned” logs from a supplier, there’s no guarantee that the logs have been seasoned well or even at all. There are some indicators that the logs have been seasoned; cracks in the ends of the logs, bark which comes off quite easily and a lighter than normal weight (something you wouldn’t know unless you were used to handling that type of wood when it was first cut). By far the easiest way though is to use a moisture meter. I’ve just ordered a Stihl Wood Moisture Meter from Amazon. It’s about the size of a box of matches and at £17 for something which can take the mystery out of selecting the right logs for the fire. For me it’s a must have gadget. The poem doesn’t mention willow, a common species in England and one which grows very quickly. We have hundreds of willow on site – goat, crack, white and weeping – which regularly have to be cut back from the roads, paths and car parks. I haven’t given much thought to them as a firewood before but now I’m obsessed with the subject, I’ve done a little research. Willow is being used increasingly as a firewood. Because it grows so quickly, it isn’t as dense as the far more popular oak or ash so burns more quickly and needs topping up far more often. It produces a reasonable heat though as long as it’s seasoned for at least a year so it’s worth adding to your firewood mix.

On Demand Water Heater Problems Sometimes I think Sally is very unreasonable. She makes a fuss for the silliest of reasons. Let me give you an example. On Wednesday evening she returned from work as usual at about 8.15pm. And as usual she jumped straight into the shower to wash the day’s work away. It was then that her routine differed from normal. She doesn’t usually emit a high pitched scream, leap through the shower curtain and accuse me of trying to kill her. Apparently Sally doesn’t enjoy showering in boiling water. We have an “on demand” gas fed water heater on James. It’s very old. In fact, it’s as old as the boat. The Vaillant water heater was installed when James was built in 1977. The heater has done very well to last this long although I don’t know how much use it’s seen and how often it’s been serviced. James was used up until 1997 for recreational cruising, mainly in the summer, before being moored at Calcutt marina until now. During the time the boat was at Calcutt it was pretty much unused until early 2010 when I moved on board. The heater has done well to last this long, but it now either needs a thorough servicing or replacing with something more modern. The cause of Sally’s anguish wasn’t the heater though. I hate to admit it, but it was all my fault. I have 3 x 100w solar panels which, for the last five months have provided us with nearly all the electricity we need. I’ve become used to leaving the shore line turned off and using just the solar panels to power the batteries. The few days prior to the shower incident where dreary and overcast. The solar panels weren’t providing enough power to keep the batteries topped up so by Wednesday evening when Sally jumped into the shower they were pretty flat. There was still enough charge in them to power the LED lights we have throughout the boat, and to power the water pump… after a fashion. The water pump was the cause of the problem. Although the pump was running, it wasn’t working in its normal efficient fashion. Because it wasn’t pumping water around the system as quickly as usual, the water was passing through the water heater’s burner far slower than it should so the heated water was far hotter than expected. The simple and immediate solution was to switch over to the land line to charge the batteries and get the water pump back up to speed. Too late for Sally and her reddened shoulders (and my reddened ears) but a valuable lesson learned all the same. Back to the heater itself. I have two issues with it. One might by a quick and inexpensive fix. The other definitely won’t be. The first problem is that it’s very difficult – impossible actually – to get the shower to run at a constant temperature. One minute it’s hot, the next freezing cold. I understand that the problem is probably that the diaphragm needs replacing. I understand that the diaphragm controls the gas flow and therefore the rate at which the water is heated. A perished diaphragm means inconsistent heating. I have a problem. Calcutt Boats think they have a diaphragm in stock which will fit my rather old Vaillant heater but the only way to check is to take the heater apart and remove the existing diaphragm. The problem lies in not knowing how perished my diaphragm is. That won’t be a problem if the one that Calcutt have in stock will fit my heater. I’ll have a major problem though if the heater is taken apart, the removed diaphragm falls to pieces, and the Calcutt stock diaphragm won’t fit. I’ll then be stuck without a water heater on the boat. The second problem is that my water heater, like most others on the market, needs to have a constantly lit pilot light. I understand that the pilot light, because it’s burning twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, uses a fair amount of gas. Many boaters simply turn their water heaters off and keep them turned off until they need them. They say – although I have no hard evidence to back it up – that their gas supply lasts twice as long this way. Adopting this policy isn’t something that will really suit Sally and I. Our Vaillant is in quite a tight space so the pilot light is difficult to reach and once the pilot light is lit we have to wait about five minutes before the burner will kick in. The alternative is to fit a new water heater and splash out on one which doesn’t require the pilot light to be on all of the time. The downside of a pilot light free heater, apart from the higher cost, is that the burner takes a little while to kick in so too much water is wasted. I suppose I’ll have to go down the diaphragm repair route and just hope that the one which is in stock at Calcutt actually fits my Valliant. I don’t really want to be days, or weeks, without hot water until I could get a new water heater fitted but at least I wouldn’t have the problem of a screaming and scalded Sally flapping about the boat.

More Tales From The American Among Us I’ve just added another article written by our roving American friend. Richard writes eloquently about his encounter with an Englishman in a lock whose command of the English language wasn’t quite so well developed. If you’ve ever taken your boat through a lock where a fellow boater was less than helpful, you’ll be able to relate to this story. Richard doesn’t just write about the canals he cruises on. He also writes about the people he meets on his travels. I think his articles are fascinating. I hope you do too. You’ll find links to his stories, including his latest episode “Me Missus”, at the bottom of his case study here. Dealing With Condensation On Boats Published 20th October 2013 I’m in Nottingham this morning. I have a hangover. I can’t understand why. I had two small cans of Foster’s last night. That’s all. I don’t ever enjoy a hangover but I can at least accept one when there’s good reason. I’m drinking less and less these days. I suppose my reluctance to swallow large quantities of mood altering liquid has something to do with the fact that, thanks to my lifestyle, I’m more than happy with my state of mind most of the time. Maybe it’s not a hangover. Maybe I’m just suffering because neither Sally nor I slept very well last night. There was no gentle quacking from nearby mallards or screeches from chaotic coots, no swish as the wind brushed the bowing bull rushes against the boat, no quiet squeak from the rubber fenders caught between the boat’s hull and the wooden jetty. And no soothing rocking enticing us closer to our dreams. Nothing. Just a regular sized bed – a very large bed by boating standards – in a room isolated from the much loved sounds of nature by very effective double glazing. Double glazing with windows we couldn’t open because they were locked and our hosts had gone to bed. The unpleasant heat didn’t help achieve a restful night either. Sally and I are used to sleeping in the coldest part of the boat. We’re quite happy, and very comfortable, with a temperature of twelve or thirteen degrees. The radiator in our room last night was on all night. We couldn’t turn it off. Much as I love the company of Sally’s daughter, Maricar, and her partner Ollie, I’ll be glad to get back to our beloved boat tonight. Occasionally, and very briefly, I think that this boating lark is too much like hard work. But on the rare nights when we are away from James I can’t wait to get back to the tranquillity we sometimes take for granted. My head’s clearing a bit now. I think it was just lack of much needed fresh air in the bedroom, so on with the important stuff. I’ve been receiving an increasing number of emails with suggestions for newsletter content. They’re all very welcome. I’ll gladly consider all the suggestions you want to throw at me so if there’s something about narrowboat life you want to know, and you think it worthy of a mention in the newsletter, please let me know. A rather appropriate suggestion for this time of the year was for some pointers on dealing with the problem faced by all boat owners, condensation. It was a great suggestion. Here you are…

Dealing With Condensation On Boats I had more than my share of condensation issues when I first moved on to James. The boat had been moored in the marina since 1997 when it was bought from the original owner by my boss, Roger Preen. He used it very little. In 2006 he moved James from Calcutt’s Locks marina to the boat’s new berth in the brand new Meadows marina. The new location offered a better view on a more spacious mooring. The mooring also offered full exposure to the prevailing south westerly and the rain it carried over the four years before I moved on board. The wind and the rain scoured the port side until the paint hung off the boat in ribbons revealing the Masonite cabin beneath. Maronite is a fibreboard and because it’s fibreboard it doesn’t react very well to exposure to the elements. The sheet joins had started to swell and curl allowing water through the joints in the roof and on the port side which bore the full brunt of the prevailing wind. In anything heavier than a light shower I had to empty the kitchen cupboards of pots and pans to place under the drips through the ceiling. There was water damage to the Parana pine cladding in both the dining and bedroom areas. The curtains were mouldy as were the bench seat covers and the mattress. Rain found other ways into the boat too. There’s a hinged steel hatch in my small trad stern deck to allow access to weed hatch. There’s a drain to catch any rain which finds its way through the hatch edges. The drain was blocked so years of rain falling onto the back deck had overflowed the drain channel into the engine bay. The water had then passed through a hole in the bulkhead between the engine room and bedroom soaking the underside of the wooden flooring in the bedroom. When I moved on board the boat was very damp indeed. I bought a dehumidifier to help reduce the humidity. For the first month on board I had it on every minute of every day. It soaked up gallons and gallons of water. Unfortunately I didn’t realise then that I was wasting my time. The dehumidifier was fighting a losing battle trying to deal with the constant inflow of water from the engine room. I also didn’t realise at the time how much the dehumidifier cost to run either. I’ve cured the leak in the engine room now so I’ll be very interested to see how much moisture the dehumidifier collects this winter. We haven’t used it yet, but we will before the month is out. We try to use it sparingly because it isn’t cheap to run. At 500w it’s too much of a drain on the batteries, so we power it via the shore line. Electricity at Calcutt is charged at £0.20 per kwh so the dehumidifier costs 10p per hour to run. The month I had it on full time in 2010 my electricity bill for the dehumidifier alone was £72. Now we plan to have it on for just a couple of hours a day in the winter. I was going to tell you that we haven’t started using it yet this year but while I was writing the newsletter Sally brought the dehumidifier back from our storage unit. I had it running for ten hours yesterday in our bedroom with all the doors and the windows closed so that only moisture from the room itself was removed. The dehumidifier removed a very impressive and slightly worrying 1.9 litres. The cost of extracting nearly half a gallon of unwanted water was £1.00 and was money very well spent. The duvet, mattress and pillow cases are now noticeably lighter and drier. The room feels warmer and more cosy. The damp has crept up on us over the summer months. I’ll need to run it regularly now until the spring. The dehumidifier didn’t totally cure the damp problems in the bedroom. We had an ongoing problem with our mattress (and no, it has nothing to do with the fact that I’ve reached a certain age). The underside was constantly damp. Actually it was more wet than damp. I had read that drilling holes in the bed base to allow air to circulate would cure the problem. Our bed base already had holes in it so we had to look for another solution. We found the cure in an online nautical mattress store. ShipShape Bedding sell a very effective and rather expensive anti condensation layer you cut to shape and lay between your mattress and the bed base. The company claim that the results are astonishing. They’re right. It works. Our mattress is far, far dryer now than it’s ever been. The first step in curing the damp of course had to be making sure that the boat was watertight. I did that by sending James away to have the Masonite cabin over plated with steel. When the boat returned two weeks later I had my first in-at-the-deep-end experience of narrowboat painting. The aesthetic result was passable but my main goal of ensuring that James was completely protected from the weather was achieved. Once we knew that no more rain was going to further damage the interior, we bought a new mattress, had all the seats recovered and Sally spent a week hunched over her sewing machine making eleven pairs of curtains. We now have a dry and mostly warm boat. I say mostly warm because the only heat source is the stove which is on the starboard side about three feet from the front of a forty seven feet long cabin with doors across the boat to section off the bathroom (and to also ensure that virtually no heat reaches the back end of the boat). There’s a radiator in the bedroom fed by the stove’s back boiler but as the radiator is gravity fed, and as the pipe that runs between the stove and the radiator forty feet away, the water is lukewarm at best. Consequently the bedroom is really the only part of the boat which now needs a blast with the dehumidifier every now and then. A final aid to minimise moisture build up is ensuring that we have roof and door vents open at all times, even in the depths of winter, and the windows open when and where practical. Just to finish off, here’s a comment on the subject by Waterway’s World technical editor Mark Langley I’ve copied from their web site. ”Good levels of ventilation is the key! If you are living aboard, then plenty of high and low level vents are very important. If the moisture has nowhere to go, it will condense out, causing mould, woodwork distortion, etc. Another important point is keeping the air warm, preferably with a source of dry heat (like solid fuel stoves, or radiators). Gas cookers produce large amounts of moisture, as does washing, showering, or even just breathing! You need to be achieving total air changes of greater than 4 times the internal volume, per hour. Solar vents can be useful, but better on unattended craft. Anhydrous calcium chloride crystals will only absorb around 1 litre of water per 500g crystals. Considering that the 230V mains dehumidifier (which consumes 200W from the land line) can easily, in winter, extract 5 litres of moisture per 24hours, the crystal ones are next to useless on boats! If you live aboard in winter, seriously consider a mains dehumidifier. If you don’t stay aboard, leave a couple of windows open and ensure that your ventilation is up to scratch! As for double glazing on boats, it works. The other alternative is to ensure good sealing (varnish, etc) of the wood, and regularly wash and dry your curtains! The latter is a good long-term solution!”

A New Organisation For Liveaboard Boaters This is another suggestion sent in to me. The Association of Continuous Cruisers is less than a month old but they already claim to have secured cheaper winter moorings for continuous cruisers. I emailed John Sloan asking for more information. He’s kindly sent me their press release. I also asked him how many members they currently have and how many they hope to attract in the fullness of time. I haven’t received an answer from him yer. At just £10 for a year’s membership it’s certainly worth looking into. I’ve reproduced the press release below along with John’s email address if you want more information. The Association of Continuous Cruisers is a newly-formed independent organisation, officially launching on the 27th September 2013. As well as providing support and advice to its members, the Association intends to advocate for the interests of all its members. Britain’s 5,000 continuous cruisers enjoy a lifestyle that is distinctive due to both the benefits and restrictions that accompany boating without a designated home mooring, which is protected and regulated by Section 17 of the British Waterways Act 1995. The Association of Continuous Cruisers feels that many of the issues that continuous cruisers face (such as access to medical treatment, and the provision of winter moorings) are unique to continuous cruisers, and the Association intends to provide advocacy and support to its members in tackling these and other day-to-day issues. One of the core tenets of the Association of Continuous Cruisers’ mission is to represent the interests of its members and ensure that the Canal & River Trust hear their voices, by building a positive working relationship with the Trust in perpetuity. A number of continuous cruisers successfully negotiated with the Canal & River Trust earlier in 2013 to change the allocation process and pricing structure for online winter moorings, resulting in lower-priced winter moorings being available to all continuous cruisers for the winter of 2013/2014. Lesley Jordan, founder member of the Association of Continuous Cruisers said: “Continuous cruisers make up a small but significant demographic of boaters. Up until now, there has been no formal organisation with the sole purpose of advocating for continuous cruisers, a situation that has weakened the voice and negotiating power of individual continuous cruisers when dealing with the Canal & River Trust and other organisations.” One of the main aims of the Association of Continuous Cruisers is to raise awareness of the positive role that continuous cruisers play within the wider waterways community, and challenge negative perceptions about the reality of the role of the continuous cruiser. Richard Parry, Chief Executive of the Canal & River Trust, said: “Continuous cruisers make an important contribution to the life and vibrancy of our waterways and so the creation of the Association of Continuous Cruisers is a positive step forward which we very much welcome. We hope the new Association will help improve communications and mutual understanding between continuous cruisers, the Trust and other boating groups. The more we all work together the more we can improve the waterways we all care for.” Regular meetings for Association of Continuous Cruisers members will be held across the waterways system, with members and potential members encouraged to keep in touch online, and by spreading the word to other boaters that they meet on their travels. Roving traders such as coal boats and other cruising businesses that cover large parts of the network will also be used to spread the word and keep the Association’s members up to date. The official launch of the newly-formed Association of Continuous Cruisers on the 27th September 2013 will coincide with the Birmingham Floating Market event on the same date, which is organised by continuous cruisers to highlight the contribution that roving traders make to the canal system. Anyone wishing further information should contact John Sloan on 07759207846 or send him an email

New Google Search I've created the site using the web’s most popular content management software, WordPress. It’s the web’s most popular management software because it’s not only very good at what it does but it’s also free to use. WordPress excels in many, many areas but it lets the side down a bit when it comes to its default site search facility. Quite frankly, it’s rubbish. I’ve always been frustrated with the very poor results it returns but I’ve been too busy to do anything about it… until last week. I’ve taken the bull by the horns and installed Google Custom Search Engine (CSE). Google CSE makes a huge difference to finding information on what is now quite a large site. With over 500 posts and pages on the main part of the site and 3,500 posts on the forum, you could spend hours trawling through the various categories and indexes and still struggle to find what you need to know. All that has changed now. The Google site search engine does its job very well indeed. I spent half an hour playing around with it yesterday and found stuff I had forgotten I’d written. The new search engine is in the same place as the old one at the top of the right hand column on the main part of the site. You can’t see it when you’re on the forum, But if you click on the “Home” link just below the forum search box you’ll be taken to the site’s home page where you’ll see the search box at the top on the right. Use the search facility on the home page from now on rather than the search box on the forum page. The forum search only searches though the forum posts but the Google search box searches the main part of the site and the forum. Enjoy your searching!

Speeding On The (Virtual) Waterways One of the many pleasures of travelling the UK’s canal and river network is the ability to take life as slowly as you like. Dawdling is encouraged rather than criticised. Taking it easy is the name of the game and it’s a game we all want to play. We all want to take it easy… until we switch to the virtual waterways network online. Then we want everything in front of us as quickly as possible. Browser dawdling is not tolerated. I launched this site on 19th February 2010. As I’ve mentioned, the site has been developed using the WordPress content management system. It’s a wonderful tool which allows users with no web design experience (me) to put together functional and aesthetically pleasing sites. And because WordPress is the most popular content management system in the world, thousands of skilled developers have written blocks of code which plug in to WordPress to enhance its functionality. These blocks of code (they’re called plugins) are free to download and install on a WordPress website and they can enhance a site in a bewildering number of ways. They can also cause a site considerable problems. Over the last three and a half years I’ve read about and installed many plugins which have taken my fancy. The forum itself is a very sophisticated plugin. The software which controls users access to paid products is another. The site has been enhanced in many different ways. Each plugin usually, but not always, works well in isolation, but sometimes conflicts with other plugins on the site. Even if there are no conflicts on the site, the more plugins you have, the more resources they use and the slower the site runs. I had far too many plugins and, as a direct result, the site was starting to run more and more slowly. I slow site is no good to you when you’re browsing, and it’s no good to me when I’m trying to click from page to page and post to post when I’m adding content. With that in mind, I’ve had an early and very thorough spring clean. I’ve deactivated 75% of the plugins on the site. The site is now loading three times faster than it was when you received the last newsletter so browsing for both you and I should be far easier from now on. To be honest, I don’t know what some of the plugins actually did. I’ve had a quick look around the site. Everything which should be working appears to be doing its job properly but I would appreciate a second opinion if you have the time. Please let me know if you notice anything either missing or not working. Just send me a quick email to let me know. Thank you. An Even More Comprehensive Source Of Information Than Livingonanarrowboat.co.uk I know it’s hard to believe. After all, this site now has over 4,000 posts and pages so I think it’s fair to say that it offers you a comprehensive resource when you want to find information about narrowboats and life afloat. But I have to say, there’s another larger and more detailed resource available to you. Waterway’s World is the UK’s most popular inland waterways magazine. You probably know that. But I bet you didn’t know that if you subscribe to the magazine you get unlimited and free access to articles from every issue over the last ten years? I think my subscription cost me £37 for 12 issues, plus a free Waterways World annual and the third edition of The Narrowboat Builder’s Book. Once subscribed you get unlimited access to every edition since 2004. It’s an incredible resource. For example, if I wanted to know more about rust on narrowboats (I did) I could do a quick search on the WW site and find a very detailed report written by Graham Booth in February 2005 (left). I would be able to discover everything I wanted to know about steel and how it corrodes and, more importantly, how to prevent it from doing so. I would also find an equally detailed five page article from 2010 about dealing with rust and painting your beloved boat. If you are already a Waterway’s World reader it’s an absolute no brainer to elect to take out an annual subscription, save money on each issue’s cover price, have each publication delivered to your door before it appears in the shops, get a couple of narrowboat books for free and get access to every article written in the magazine over the last decade. You’ll see offers for annual subscription in every edition of Waterway’s World. Make sure you take up their very generous offer next month. Feeling The Effects Of Excess Wind Published 27th October 2013 It’s half past two on a bright an breezy Sunday morning. I’ve just taken Charlie and Daisy out for a run (them, not me. I’m pleased to say that I gave up what I considered to be very tedious long distance running twenty five years ago. These days the only runs I experience are the frustrating kind when I’m painting James). I’m sitting in my office after just having completed an exercise in an Open University creative writing course module. “Close your eyes,” it asked “and think of the space around you. Open your eyes now and write your thoughts down without looking at the space you’ve just imagined.” It’s easy for them to ask me to do that from noise free room where the module was written. They don’t have the distractions I have around me. I closed my eyes and imagined… very little actually. My mind couldn’t get past the sound of a racing steam train that is Charlie after an over enthusiastic twenty minutes chasing a solid bright orange plastic ball over the recently cut grass. Or the sound of the gusting October wind as it rocks the boat under me. Or the incessant honking of an ever growing flock of Canada geese on the choppy marina water. And then when I opened my eyes to look at the room which I failed to imagine, all I could focus on was the “stuff” I’ve accumulated over the last three years since I moved on board. There isn’t much space on a narrowboat at the best of times so we really need to stop buying gadgets we don’t actually need. There’s a set of bunk beds behind me. In the top left hand corner of the upper bunk is a Magic Bullet blender which promises to “Make Life In The Kitchen… Easy!” No it doesn’t. I agree that it’s well made, does an incredible and almost instant job of liquidising and blending, and comes with more attachments than you can shake a stick at, but the speed with which it blends it counterbalanced by the time we have to spend washing the attachments afterwards. Especially if, as happened on one particularly memorable sunny summer’s eve, the fresh fruit blending is done next to a recently cleaned kitchen window with a poorly secured and very aerodynamic plastic lid. Oh, how Sally laughed when her nutritious smoothie liberally coated the walls! So the now unused Magic Bullet blender now sits next to the equally unused George Foreman grill. “We can use it to make healthy snacks,” Sally Suggested sincerely. No we didn’t. We used it to make endless calorie loaded cheese and onion toasties until we were both fed up with the sight of cheddar and neither of us could do up our jeans. We would have stopped using it for those reasons alone even if it hadn’t been responsible for the near demise of the inverter after the grill was plugged in at the same time as one of our 500w Dimplex greenhouse heaters. On the same bunk but at the opposite end sits another unused and unwanted gadget. This one was all my fault. It’s the tennis racket Executioner battery operated fly swat. I mentioned it a couple of months ago. The most damage it’s done so far is to a finger, foolishly poked into the electrified metal lattice to see if the device was working. It was, and boy did it hurt. I took one half hearted swing at a wasp shortly after nearly electrocuting myself. There was a very satisfying electrical CRACK! and a puff of smoke when I hit the wasp with it. The wasp fell to the floor but very quickly dusted itself off and launched itself into the air in my direction so I made a hasty strategic retreat outside the boat to take the dogs for a walk. There has been no sign of either the wasp or the Executioner since then. The gadgets aren’t just on the bunk. They’re on the desk I’m working on too. There’s a Photosmart 5524 all singing, all dancing printer/scanner/copier/tea maker (I lied about the tea maker). We chose this one in particular because it offered high quality photo printing in addition to the usual document printing we need now and then. We bought a pack of high quality and ridiculously expensive photo paper to go with it, and an additional set of print cartridges. After rushing back to the boat from PC World we quickly set the printer up and sent my favourite photo of Charlie to print. It was rubbish. After an hour’s investigation on the web I discovered that the printer needs a memory upgrade in order to print high quality images. I haven’t had the time or the energy to upgrade it so the printer sits next to my laptop gathering dust. The printer sits next to a Snowball iCE Microphone which produces studio quality sound. I bought it for creating voice overs for YouTube videos. It actually works very well. I spent hours creating the videos, writing a compelling script and uploading them to YouTube’s server. Then I spent more time researching ways to increase the ranking of my YouTube videos. I found a company with a good reputation who would “provide enough completely natural views, likes and comments to ensure first page ranking”. Ever gullible, I parted with my hard earned cash and left the company to do their stuff. Within a week one of my videos achieved first page ranking with the aid of 10,000 “natural” views. Two days later, YouTube deleted the video and closed my account for trying to increase the video’s ranking with “unnatural and manufactured views, likes and comments. I haven’t yet had the time or the energy to open another YouTube account and upload the video. So here I am, surrounded by expensive and unnecessary gadgets, offering you advice on how to shed your material possessions to live a simple uncluttered life on board a narrowboat. I must try harder to be less of a hypocrite. Anyway, back to the newsletter. It’s Sunday morning and, if the media is to be believed, much of England will be blown over to France tomorrow. The weather forecast is dire. Hurricane strength winds not seen since Michael Fish’s famous gaff in 1987 are set to devastate towns, villages and cities from the south coast as far north as the Midlands. Wind speeds of up to 80mph have been predicted as well as up to an inch and a half of rain over a twenty four hour period. That’s the national forecast. I always treat the televised forecasts with a pinch of salt. I always use the excellent service provided by Weatherspark. The weather is forecast for the following ten days for the local area. The ten day forecast is rarely accurate for the one and two day forecast is usually pretty good. You can see from the Weatherspark graph below that the wind will be at its strongest at 8am tomorrow but its strongest will be just 30mph. It’s still going to be very breezy though so I don’t expect to see any boats moving on the cut tomorrow (part from one or two desperate-to-carry-on-whatever- happens hirers).

In addition to the temperature, I find the rainfall/snowfall and the wind speed and direction very handy for planning trips out on the boat. I also find the wind direction very handy at work. We burn collected tree branches and offcuts of timber in our tip area. We have to make sure that the wind is blowing from the east so that smoke from the fire doesn’t blow across the site. As the prevailing wind is south westerly, we have to keep a close eye on the wind direction for a rare opportunity to light the fire. The wind direction and wind speed also dictates to a certain degree how warm or how cold the boat is. The wind’s influence was particularly evident last Sunday evening. We returned from Nottingham quite late. We don’t often spend time away from the boat so we’re used to coming back to a warm and cosy home with the stove still alight and producing waves of pleasant heat. That’s not what we returned to on Sunday. I’ve heard boaters talking about their fantastic stoves and how they can keep them alight for extended periods without having to add any fuel. After hearing them wax lyrical about their ability to keep their fire going you could be excused for thinking that using a stove to heat your boat was almost as easy as using central heating in a house. It isn’t. The longest we can manage to keep it alight without adding fuel is about ten hours and even then it’s sometimes a struggle to get it going again. Last Saturday when we left the boat the fire was on. We didn’t bank it (top it up with coal and minimize the ventilation to prolong burning time) because we knew it wouldn’t last until we returned. We were away for twenty eight hours but even after such a short period and on a warmer than usual autumn day and night, the cabin was cold and damp. I didn’t light the fire on Sunday night because it was already 11pm. In the time I would take to light the fire, make sure it was burning steadily, top the coal up and turn the ventilation down, I could have an extra hour’s sleep. Consequently the boat was decidedly chilly when I fell out of bed at 6am on Tuesday morning. The nighttime temperature had been a particularly mild twelve degrees but there had been quite a gusty wind blowing all night. The wind, as usual was south westlery. James is moored bow in facing west. The mooring is particularly exposed to the wind so the prevailing wind scours the boat’s port side. The effect the wind and the rain has on the outside of the boat was particularly noticeable when I first moved on board. Curling ribbons of paint hung from frequent bald patches on the port side, but not on the starboard side. The wind wouldn’t be a problem if the wind couldn’t find its way into James. Unfortunately it can. I was generally very pleased with the quality of workmanship when the new steel cabin was added to the boat in November 2011. I wasn’t at all happy with the way the front and back door and side hatches were fitted. There are gaps between the front and rear doors and their surrounding bulkheads that I can almost poke a finger through. The gaps between the side door and the hatches aren’t quite as bad but they’re still plenty big enough to allow the wind to whistle though and into the boat. The gaps around the front doors aren’t so much of a problem because the front of the boat is protected by the cratch cover. The rear gap at the top of the rear doors are only a problem when an east wind is blowing which hits the back of the boat, a wind which also drives waves against the boat stern. The waves hitting the stern often keep us awake on the rare occasions a strong east wind is blowing. The prevailing wind’s effect on the port side of the boat is our biggest problem. The wind chills the whole of the port side, testing the effectiveness of the polystyrene insulation. The wind also gusts through the gap between the port side doors and the hatch above. We’ve found that we can very effectively eliminate this draught by padding the door edges with foam offcuts. We’ll be doing that in the next week or two. We also have slight draughts coming through the top hopper windows. I don’t know whether the windows are original. I suspect they are so they’re thirty six years old and have been removed from the frames at least once to my knowledge. I don’t think there’s much we can do about the draught from them without replacing the windows but, at just over £1,000 for the windows without the cost of having them fitted, the draught isn’t bad enough to incur the expense. It’s the relatively mild south westerly which always causes us a problem. An east wind, laden with cold air from frigid Russian plains, is not so much a problem because it hits the back of the boat and although the engine room and the bedroom in front of it are noticeably more chilly in an east wind, the rest of the boat is unaffected. A north wind carrying icy Arctic air is also less of a problem for us. James is protected from a north wind by the boats moored on our starboard side. When a cold north wind blows we are completely unaffected. Tomorrow promises us a cheek-reddening breeze here in the Midlands rather than the destructive hurricane forecast for the south. The wind here is picking up already. The wind is moaning around my rooftop internet aerial and the coat hangers next to the port side hatch rattle together when the boat is hit by a powerful gust. Although there’s a bit of a breeze filtering through doors and windows, it’s not really cold. I’ll finish this newsletter shortly, make myself a cup of coffee and sit by the fire or two while I pretend to read. What I’ll really be doing is listening to the wind and the occasional patter of rain against the windows, watch the stove’s flickering flames and quite contentedly nod off for half an hour.

Two Organisations For Liveaboard Boaters Firstly let me apologise for the above title. I included it in last week’s newsletter above an article about the newly formed Association of Continuous Cruisers. I meant to add some information about the the Residential Boat Owner’s Association. The RBOA was established in 1963 to represent liveaboard boaters in the UK. I emailed chairman Allan Wildman two days before the newsletter went out asking for some information which I could pass on to you. He replied very quickly. He promised that “I will see this is dealt with as a matter of urgency.” Nine days later I still haven’t heard from either Allan or anyone else from the RBOA. If this is their idea of dealing with something as a matter of urgency, I’m not overwhelmed with confidence in their organisation. So I’m sorry I still don’t have any information about the organisation. Maybe if you are already a member you can give someone a gentle prod.

Another Liveaboard Case Study It’s always a pleasure to discover an Aussie or two who have found the UK more attractive than their Antipodean home – especially when both my parents and my brother were so keen to escape the UK to settle there. Retired Aussie couple Peter & Meagan O’Sullivan have spent the last two and a half years continuously cruising the canals and rivers of England and Wales in their Cat Stevens named narrowboat. Here’s their story. Know Your Narrowboat Terminology Published 3rd November 2013 Where you blown away by last weekend’s storm? We weren’t at Calcutt. The high winds and heavy rain which caused so many problems and four tragic deaths passed us by here in the Midlands. I received a couple of emails last Sunday wishing me well with the coming storms. I was asked what precautions I take when high winds are forecast. The simple answer is that I don’t need to take any precautions at all. One of the many wonderful aspects of living on the inland waterways is the fact that it’s generally a very safe and placid environment. It’s a different kettle of fish on the rivers where heavy rain can cause significant problems for boaters due to rising water levels but canal boaters don’t have to worry on that score. I suppose you could argue that I lead a sheltered existence moored on a marina. I agree, up to a point. The main danger for online moorers during periods of high winds is from falling trees. Many canal moorers are close to – or under – trees next to the water. The high winds we often experience in October and then again in March are just nature’s way of getting rid of weakened and dying trees and branches. A falling limb from a 150-200 year old beech, ash or oak can cause substantial damage to a boat moored under it. When we finally start cruising full time, I’ll make sure that I’m always moored a long way away from anything which can fall on the boat in high winds. I’ll also make sure that I can tie up to a strong anchor point. Mooring rings, bollards or Armco will be far more practical in windy and often wet weather than mooring pins, no matter how firmly they are hammered into an often soft and unsuitable canal or river bank. For the time being though, I’m moored in a marina secured fore and aft to mooring rings on a wooden jetty. Although there are over 8,000 trees on site, none of them are close enough to the boat to cause me any concern. In fact the closest tree to James, an eight year old cockspur thorn wouldn’t cause me too much damage if it was uprooted and used to beat me around the head. It could reach 20m tall when fully grown but I don’t expect to be on the same mooring in fifty year’s time. Although falling trees don’t present a problem at the marina, the wind makes things a little difficult. Although the moored boats are quite safe, those brave enough to try to cross the marina in high winds, or even turn off the Grand Union into the marina entrance, are asking for trouble. Although Sunday afternoon’s gale didn’t come anywhere close to the forecast 60mph, we had one or two 35mph gusts. Not many boaters were brave enough to venture out but two which returned to moor on Sunday struggled t0 get on their moorings. I mentioned the first of them in last week’s newsletter, Sue and Watson on their narrowboat Nell. Although they crossed the marina crab-like, they managed to race up to their mooring bow first at high speed. The second boat came in about an hour later. Anaconda is a heavy deep draughted seventy footer but she couldn’t cope with the ever strengthening wind. Some boat owners prefer to be reversed into their mooring for a variety of reasons, usually either for a better view or to enable the shore line to reach the pier socket. Anaconda’s owner tried to reverse his boat in. It was never going to work. Reversing of course involves stopping and then turning the boat, two things you don’t want to be doing in near gale force wind. The inevitable result was that Anaconda was blown at right angles against the moored boats. After much pushing and shoving by the owner’s two sons and a couple of willing fellow moorers the boat’s bow was pushed far enough away from the moored boats and towards the centre of the marina to allow the owner to unstick himself, do another quick circuit of the marina island and have another go at mooring, this time bow first into a nearby empty berth. Anaconda remained there until the wind died down enough a few days later for one of the marina staff to reverse the boat onto the correct berth. Yesterday the wind returned without fanfare and without any media attention. If anything, it was stronger than last Sunday. I had the pleasure of taking a family who were interested in one of our boats for sale from our wharf, up through Calcutt top lock, along the Grand Union as far as Napton Junction and back again. The family owned a GRP cruiser but with two fast growing children they wanted a boat with a bit more living space for their regular canal cruising holidays. They couldn’t have picked a better day to test the difference between the handling capabilities of a keeled cruiser and a flat bottomed narrowboat. Just after exiting the lock there’s an open 200m stretch overlooking the 30 acre wildlife haven of Napton reservoir. This section also passes half a dozen permanently moored boats, some of them liveaboards. It’s always interesting negotiating this section when you need to both slow down to appease the moored boat owners and travel fast enough to counteract the lateral drift caused by the cross wind. The boat and the helmsmen performed admirably, even at the forty five degree angle we were cruising at. Just before the junction we passed another dozen boats on residential moorings, again without incident, before executing a swift and none to subtle three point turn in the strengthening wind. At the wharf I left the family sitting around the boat’s dining table, marveling at the additional space the narrowboat would offer them after their claustrophobic cruiser accommodation, and calculating whether their finances would allow them to buy the boat. Test drives are wonderful tools for vehicle sellers. They increase the likelihood of the potential buyers responding to hearts rather than heads. From the dreamy expressions on the adults’ faces as I left them, I had a feeling that in their minds the boat was theirs already. The deal was done. All they needed to do was hand over the cash. Back on dry land, I spent an hour in the afternoon logging a mostly dead field maple I cut down last week. With my new moisture meter – I carry it with me everywhere on the site now – I knew that, with a moisture content of 20% in the dead limbs, most of it was ready for burning immediately. Last night as the wind howled and the rain rattled against the windows, Sally and I sat quietly in front of the stove, basking in the free heat courtesy of the field maple logs, quietly watching the flickering flames as we sipped our wine. It was a tranquil moment somewhat spoiled as both dogs started to growl and stared at the closed front doors. Not having any confidence in their ability to sense something out of the ordinary, we told them both to shut up so we could resume our fire watching. They wouldn’t and we couldn’t. A quiet scratching from the front deck sent Sally into a blind panic. She’s been pestering me for a year or more to fix internal locks to the front doors. The doors are open to anyone, welcome or otherwise, until I get around to it. Events like this just reinforce the need in Sally’s mind to beef up security. A little voice from somewhere far behind me ordered me to go and investigate. I confidently opened the doors expecting nothing more than the cratch cover flapping in the wind. The jack russell bitch sitting trembling on the front deck came as a bit of a shock. We don’t own a jack russell, nor do any of the boat owners moored anywhere near us. I carried the terrified dog into the boat. Our two placid spaniels Charlie and Daisy came to say hello. The not so placid jack russell told them with a curl of the lip and a low growl to stay away. We sat with a now happy and smiling little brown and white dog on our laps, Charile and Daisy still trying their hardest to get in on the action while we decided what to do with it. There wasn’t a name tag or an address on the dog’s collar so we couldn’t return it to the owner unless the owners was out searching for their missing mutt on a wild and stormy night. I left Sally in charge of the three dogs and did a quick circuit of a very windy Meadows marina looking for signs of life. Fortunately I spotted torch light in the distance after I had been out for ten minutes. The dog belonged to Dale, a long term online moorer who keeps his boat on the canal about half a mile from me just above the top lock. He had been taking his jack russell for a night time walk when it had been spooked by distant fireworks. Our boat’s font deck was the closest refuge it could find. With Dale reunited with his best friend Sally and I threw another couple of logs on the fire and settled down for another hour’s relaxing fire watching before bed.

Popular Narrowboat terminology I’m in the process of putting together another guide. It’s for anyone new to boating in general and narrowboats in particular who is considering buying a boat. There are in excess of 1,000 narrowboats for sale at any one time. You can find adverts for most of them online in one form or another but to the uninitiated the adverts are a mystery. The most popular place to start is Apolloduck. There are currently 1,113 cruiser, semi-trad and trad stern narrowboats for sale. That’s where the confusion starts for many. What’s the difference between these styles and which is best for the potential buyer’s intended purpose? Reading through the individual adverts leads to more confusion. What’s a tug style deck, what’s a hydraulic gearbox and why on Earth would you want a large pigeon box on the roof unless you were a flat cap wearing, roll-up smoking, bird racing enthusiast from up north? The range of narrowboat terms is mind boggling to those new to the game. There are steel specifications to consider, layout and equipment levels, toilet type, engine type and power, space considerations, heating and electrical requirements… It’s all too much. The first stage in my guide writing/compilation has been to put together a comprehensive glossary. Fortunately most of the hard work has been done for me. Enter Tony Ward. I found his web site when I was researching narrowboat terminology. On his web site he says; “I’ve been actively interested in the canals since the late 1950′s, for the last 12 years I have been a qualified Boatmaster steering passenger trip & hotel boats in London & the Midlands.

Years ago, I started collecting some of the idiosyncratic and colourful old boatmen’s terms and sayings. More recently I have added many more generally used canal boating expressions. Like Topsy it has grown to unexpected proportions so I thought I would make it available on the web so others can dip into it either just out of interest or perhaps to look up something they’ve heard but don’t understand!” I emailed Tony to ask permission to reproduce some or all of his glossary. He kindly agreed providing I gave him credit for the compilation and included a link back to his site. The abridged glossary is below. I’ve left out many of the old boatmen’s terms which you’re never likely to hear but if you want to see the glossary in all its glory, it’s here. I haven’t had time to trawl through many of the thousands of online narrowboat adverts, compare them with Tony’s glossary and determine which, if any, terms are missing. Can you help me with that? If you see any narrowboat terms which aren’t included in the glossary, in particular those related to narrowboat sales, can you please let me know? I’ll then add them to the glossary which will be included in the new guide and also pass them on to Tony to include in his master list. abreast Alongside; side by side (not to be confused with breasted-up). adrift Anything broken away from moorings or fastenings. aft (1) Behind (2) (on board): – towards or near the stern. air draught The overall height of a vessel measured from the water line to the highest fixed part of the superstructure. anchor Heavy iron or steel implement for chaining a boat to the sea or river bed, with barbs or partly swiveling flukes that bite into most types of bottom to give a firm purchase. Narrowboats are extremely weighty and need large heavy anchors when on river navigations. When dropped, the angle at which anchor presents itself to the bottom is critical for obtaining a swift hold and is governed by the way the cable (q.v.) is constructed. anchor-hold The hold of an anchor upon the ground. anchor-stock The cross-bar of an anchor which causes one or other of the flukes to turn to the bottom. anode (or sacrificial anode) In steel boat terms : - replaceable, large piece of metal e.g. magnesium, fitted to hull under the waterline, designed to corrode due to electrolysis instead of the hull. Annual inspection for wastage/possible replacement is usual at which time it is normal to clean the hull and apply blacking. anti-cavitation plate A plate, usually attached to the weed hatch cover, that is flush, or almost flush, to the uxter plate so that it closes off the underside of the weed-hatch aperture. antifouling Paint applied underwater to inhibit weed growth on the hull. Usually applied to river and canal cruisers rather than narrowboats (the steel hulls of which are invariably coated with bitumen paint, which has some antifouling characteristics). APCO The Association of Pleasure Craft Operators – an organization that represents the narrow boat hire industry. A subsidiary body of BMIF. aqueduct (Often pronounced “akkyduck” by old boatmen) A bridge which carries a waterway over a valley, road, river etc., constructed to avoid the expense of providing inconvenient locks. arm A ‘dead-end’ branch off a main canal, built to service a town, quarry, mine etc. astern (1) Area (or something) behind (or aft) of the vessel (2) Of boat:- going backwards; Of engine:- in reverse gear (note, boat may still be going forwards). AWCC Association of Waterways Cruising Clubs – organization for the numerous boat clubs of Britain’s inland waterways. balance beam Wooden or metal beam projecting from a lock gate (or lift bridge), to counterbalance the weight of the gate (or bridge) and thus allow leverage for opening and closing it. ballast Loose, heavy material (e.g. stone or iron) strategically placed within a hull to increase a boat’s displacement and thus its stability, and also to correct a natural list or poor trim. bank effect Tendency for stern to swing out from bank when in reverse due to some of the water thrust from propeller rising up between boat and bank and pushing boat away. barge Not an alternative word for a narrowboat! Barges are generally much wider commercial inland boats – or leisure boats based on the style of the commercial types. However, some barges (like some Dutch styles) have been copied in narrow-width versions for use on narrow canals basin A partly enclosed area of water at the terminus of, or at a point alongside, a canal or other navigation comprising wharves and moorings. BCN Initials by which the Birmingham Canal Navigations are often known, an extensive and intricate network in and around Birmingham, reduced from an original 160 miles to a little over a still impressive 100 miles. Still in substantial commercial use as late as the mid 1960′s. beam (1) The overall width of a boat. (2) A transverse support for the deck (see cross-beam). (3) ‘On the beam’: – same as abeam bilge The line along the hull sides where sides and bottom meet. Also, the lowest curved section of hull between side and bottom in a round-chined vessel. bilge pump A pump for removing water that has collected in the bilges. bilges Strictly, the ‘air space’ inside a boat’s hull lying beneath the level of the port and starboard bilge lines but usually applied to the whole region beneath the cabin floor or decking. blacking Term for protective coat of, often bitumen based, paint applied to steel hulls to discourage rusting Boater’s Code, The Free illustrated guide published jointly by British Waterways and Environment Agency containing a summary of regulations and good boating practice. boat-hook A light, multi-purpose, shaft normally about 8 feet long and usually made of wood with a metal (or, sometimes, plastic) point and hook at one end. Essential part of a boat’s deck equipment and a legal requirement for licensed passenger boats. Working boatmen would always carefully place it within arm’s reach on the cabin-top with the hook-end pointing to the stern in order not to damage the paintwork when taking it up. Useful for clearing fouled blades especially if there is no weed-hatch. boat lift A mechanical means of lifting a boat vertically from one level of waterway to another, usually with the boat floating in water retained in a chamber, or caisson, e.g. Anderton Boat Lift and Falkirk Wheel. (See also inclined plane). boatman’s cabin Originally the after-cabin (approx. 8′ long) of a working narrowboat, providing the crew’s living and sleeping accommodation. Often recreated in modem traditional-style narrow boats in addition to the main cabin accommodation. bow thruster Steering aid transversely mounted in bow section giving, from a small propeller, thrust on demand to either port or starboard. Powered electrically by battery or alternator, or by hydraulic motor. Useful on longer boats in close manoeuvres, adverse weather or water conditions or when going astern. Regarded by some traditionalists as cheating – but then they should go back to hauling open boats by horse! breach Burst or collapse of a canal bank or dyke, allowing water to escape, perhaps causing flooding etc. breasted-up Two boats, often a motor with a butty or mud hopper etc., tied up fore-and-aft alongside each other but being powered and steered from only one, allowing the steerer of the other vessel, which otherwise would have to be towed behind and steered, to attend to other duties. bridge hole (pronounced “bridge’ole”) The narrow water-channel beneath a canal bridge. broad The East Anglian term for a lake. Broads (The) The connecting system of navigable lakes and rivers in East Anglia. BSS (Boat Safety Scheme) The scheme by which British Waterways ensures boats meet minimum safety standards. A certificate of a boat’s compliance is renewable every 4 years. Mandatory for all private, hire and house boats. Boats built after 16 June 1998 are covered for the first four years under the RCD. Buckby/Buckby Can Common nickname nowadays for decorated water can (q.v.). The village of Buckby (on the ‘Junction’) was only one of a number of places where these were produced but name now seems to be all embracing. bulkhead Upright panels (or ‘walls’) separating a boat into compartments. bulls-eye Small round porthole set in the cabin-top fitted with convex glass, for lighting the cabin rather than for seeing through. butane gas Bottled gas, usually in blue containers, with a higher calorific value, and delivered to the appliance at a lesser pressure, than propane gas. Not liked by many boaters as it can ‘wax’ and not burn properly during freezing temperatures. button fender Cylindrically-shaped rope fender fixed by chains to stem or stern of narrowboat. The fender at stern should be long enough to protect the rudder when held amidships. butty or butty boat An unpowered narrowboat, similar to the ones originally towed by horse, now towed by a motor. For efficient steerage it requires a much larger rudder than a motor. Traditional butty characterized by large, curving, often highly decorated tiller arm, a larger cargo hold and slightly longer boatman’s cabin than a motor (due to absence of engine hole). BW (British Waterways) Prior to 2012 the navigation authority for most of Britain’s inland waterways and, particularly, the narrow canals. Succeeded in 2012 by the charitable status Canals & Rivers Trust. cabin-top The cabin roof of a narrowboat. CBA (Canal Boatbuilders’ Association) Organization representing the interests of narrowboat builders. A subsidiary organization of British Marine Industries Federation very helpful to builders on Recreational Craft Directive matters. Canals & Rivers Trust (CRT) The successors in 2012 to British Waterways, responsible for the canals system and many of the navigable rivers. cavitation Loss of thrust efficiency caused by air being drawn into the propeller. cavitation plate In a narrowboat, the underside of the stern counter forming a horizontal plane just under the waterline, that sits over the propeller helping to direct the propeller’s thrust aft, and reducing chances of cavitation. The bottom plate of a weed-hatch if fitted, forms part of, and aligns with, the larger plate. In other craft, or on outboard motor legs, any plate that performs a similar function. centre line Boat handling or temporary mooring line bent to stud or eye-bolt on cabin-top amidships, invaluable when working single-handedly. When under way it is usually laid out aft along the cabin-top so steerer can step off stern with line in hand. chimney (nearly always pronounced “chimley”) The removable metal flue on the left side at the rear end of cabin-top, venting the boat’s stove. Normally painted black and bound with one or more brass bands. Usually secured by plain or fancy safety chain to cabin-top to prevent loss overboard. Sometimes fitted with a Coolie or Chinaman’s Hat for rain protection. Chinaman’s hat A rain cover placed on top of a chimney that still allows flue to vent. chine Where hull bottom and hull sides are flat surfaces (rather than curving gradually from one to the other as in round bilge) the chine is the sharp edge where they meet. cill See sill. cockpit Open area, usually set lower than surrounding side-decks, used for sitting-out and for storage. companion Ladder or stairway. contour canal An artificial navigable channel that follows the same land contour throughout or for much of its course. Early canals were mainly contour ones to avoid the expense and construction difficulties of deep cuttings, high embankments, locks and tunnels (then in their infancy) and the exaggerated winding routes were expected to be more profitable by bringing extra business from the greater number of towns and villages that could be reached. Later, when competition from other canals, and then from the railways, made speed between the major towns and cities more critical, many contour canals underwent ‘straightening’ programmes (the Oxford canal is a famous example). coolie hat A metal cover fitting into top of chimney which gives protection from rain whilst at the same time permitting flue gases to vent. counter or counter swim The underwater stern section of a motor boat where the beam gradually tapers down to the stern post, allowing water to flow to the propeller. counter bottom plate Alternative name for uxter plate. counter deck The round or elliptical (looking from above) small stern of a motor forming a ledge projecting over the propeller and shaft. cratch Optional assembly over the forewell of a modern pleasure narrowboat. Based on a solid or glazed triangular deckboard (frequently but less properly called a cratch-board) which is supported from the cabin-top by a ‘top plank’. The assembly is completed by a fitted soft cover, usually of vinyl, sometimes of proofed canvas. The result greatly extends the usability of the forewell. Either side of the cover can be rolled up to allow access, and may be fitted with a zipped door/window panel. Early forms of cratches were covers over the fodder stores of horse-drawn narrowboats, the term thought to be derived from the French word ‘crèche’. cratchboard The forward ‘bulkhead’ of a cratch assembly. cross bed Narrow double bed across the full width of fore-end of boatman’s cabin, formed by opening the bed cupboard. Usually very attractively finished with curtains, lace, pictures etc and frequently left in place by working boatmen when it would be referred to as bed hole. cruiser stern/style A style of modern pleasure narrowboat roughly based on the lines of former working boats but adapted to provide a large exposed but more sociable aft deck, protected by taff rails, under which is the engine compartment. cut The name much preferred by the canal community for a canal navigation or any artificial channel. dinette A table with a bench seat either side, or on 3 sides, which in conjunction with the seats, can also be lowered to form a bed. displacement The water displaced by a boat, equal to the boat’s weight. dog box A roof skylight/vent on a narrowboat, larger than a pigeon box and with fixed or hinged glazed double pitches attached to an underframe. dolly An upright cylindrical metal deck fitting, with either concave sides or a button head, on a motor’s counter to which ropes may be secured for tying up or towing. See also T-Stud. draught The maximum underwater depth of a vessel’s hull, normally aft at the skeg. EA (Environment Agency) Government body responsible for monitoring condition of Britain’s natural waterways (in addition to some coastal areas), whether navigable or not.. Also the navigation authority for the river Thames (and some other south-eastern rivers), and for Anglian waterways (excluding The Broads). It acts jointly with BW in harmonizing boat safety standards and navigation byelaws. electrolysis Decomposition by electric current, frequently experienced in steel hulls, due to its activity in canal water caused by e.g. electric leakage from own or nearby boats, proximity to steel pilings etc. Effect reduced by use of sacrificial anodes. fairlead Deck fitting to guide ropes and reduce wear, frequently fitted amidships to upstands of cabin sides on modern narrowboats to protect paintwork from centre-line chafing. fend off To keep a boat clear of another boat or object, either by hand, or with boat-hook, portable fender etc. fender Traditionally, rope, but now often plastic or rubber object, to protect the sides, stem and stern of a boat, different styles depending on location (see pipe fender, button fender, tip-cat), fluke One of the barbs or pointed blades of an anchor. foul Not clear or free e.g. a fouled propeller has something wrapped around it or its shaft, gate The moveable wooden or steel door or shutter enabling a canal or river lock to operate. May contain paddles allowing passage of water when gate closed. gate paddle A sliding door over a sluice in a gate to allow water to pass through. When ascending in a lock, the ground paddle(s) should be opened first and the gate paddle not opened fully until the water has risen above it. gongoozler A term of unknown origin for someone who idly stands and stares, particularly at boats and especially at locks. grab rail A rail, usually fixed along edges of narrowboat’s cabin-top, to give a secure handhold when moving along the deck or gunwale. grounding Striking the bottom or running hard aground – arts well practiced on the canals. Common place for grounding of deeper-draughted boats in low water conditions can be in bridge holes, not only because of rubbish that tends to accumulate but also the brick invert can form a sill proud of the bottom under water. This may be overcome by using the old technique of accelerating up to the bridge strongly enough to make the water ‘wobble’, cutting the revs down to tick-over when the fore-end reaches the hole and by the time the stern reaches the channel the, by then, overtaking wake lifts the stern high enough to clear the obstacle. On the other hand this may dump you on top of the obstruction, leaving you high and dry! guillotine gate A lock gate raised and lowered vertically from overhead framework, common as a bottom gate on the Nene navigation. gunnel Alternative (phonetic) spelling of gunwale. gunwale The wale, or upper edge, of a boat’s hull sides next to the bulwarks, if any. (So called because in fighting ships the upper guns were pointed from it). Pronounced ‘gunnel’. handspike A wooden bar used as a lever. On some locks on the Calder & Hebble Navigation a handspike is still needed for working lock paddle gear instead of a windlass. Also used for operating capstans and some types of fire hose and bilge pumps. hatch (1) A horizontal opening with a moveable cover, that may slide or hinge open, in the deck or superstructure of a vessel. hopper window A form of rectangular window on modern pleasure narrowboats where the whole pane lets down slightly into the cabin for ventilation when required. See also top-hopper window. hung up A narrowboat caught on a gate projection within a lock, particularly the rudder or skeg on the sill inside the top gate, so as to stop it descending as the water empties. hydraulic drive Drive transmitted from motor to propeller through pressurized oil system, obviating need of conventional gearbox and allowing great flexibility in siting of motor. inboard motor An engine mounted within a vessel’s hull. inclined plane A wheeled system which lifts boats from one level to another without using locks, on a slope fitted with rails, the boats either afloat in a tank (or caisson) e.g. Foxton Inclined Plane, or in a dry cradle. inspection launch A short narrowboat with a long, covered but open-sided front forewell which contained the wheel steering position and loosely modelled on Victorian Thames launches. Used by canal companies to carry the Directors on their periodic inspections. inverter Device, common on modern narrowboats with no onboard AC generator, for taking power stored in the service battery bank and converting it from 12v DC to 240v AC for intermittent use of mains appliances e.g. TV’s, vacuum cleaners etc. Quality of supply is generally poor making it unsuitable for some sensitive electric motors and electronic equipment. IWA Inland Waterways Association – a voluntary body set up in 1946 to rescue Britain’s waterways from threatened dereliction. Represents the interests of all waterways users – not just boaters. Its fund campaigning includes several rallies, of which the best known is the National Waterways Festival, held every August, Josher Colloquial name for a working boat belonging to carrying company Fellows Morton & Clayton Limited – derived from Joshua Fellows keel (1) One or more parallel longitudinal fins on the underside of the hull, strong enough for a boat to sit on when not afloat. Main function is to improve directional stability through water. Not needed in conventional square- sectioned narrowboats because the flat hull sides grip water. (2) Square- rigged sailing barge. keel cooling Method whereby sealed water-coolant system is cooled before return to the engine block by passing in fine tubes through a radiator attached to the inside skin of the hull below the water line. Avoids the blockage problem inherent in raw water cooling system. lift bridge A movable bridge, the deck of which either swings up around its hinged end or moves vertically upwards. list When looking end-on, the angle at which a boat sits from vertical caused by e.g. imbalance of ballast or loading, or through shipping water. (see also heel and trim). lock The main means of raising or lowering a boat between changes in water levels, comprising a chamber with gate(s) at its lock key See windlass. moor To secure a boat against the bank with lines to strapping stumps, mooring pins etc. A canal boatman never ‘moored’ – he ‘tied up’. mooring hook A usually g-shaped metal mooring aid designed to fasten into the top of the metal piling sheets used to repair the towpath bank and then treated as if it were a mooring ring. Much favoured as, unlike stakes, they cannot be pulled out by the action of other boats passing by too quickly. mud box Filter chamber, just inside raw water cooling hull inlet and sea-cock, which traps mud, weed and other debris, stopping it from being drawn into and blocking the finer waterways of the engine. mushroom vent A usually brass ventilation fitting on cabin roof looking somewhat mushroom-shaped. Older versions could be hand-screwed down to shut off draughts but not now allowed under BSS regulations. narrowboat (Also known as a monkey boat or long boat). A commercial, cargo carrying canal boat measuring approximately 70ft to 72ft long by 6′ 10″ to 7′ beam. Used extensively throughout, but not confined to, the Midland narrow canals system. Design and dimensions thought to have evolved from those first used in C18th on the Bridgewater Canal taking coal to Manchester from the Worsley coal-mines. The original boats were of all wood construction, followed by ‘composites’ (wood bottoms but hull sides made of iron, later of steel), followed by all-steel hulls (iron and steel hulls were much lighter than wood) although some all-wood construction continued right up to mid C20th. There were many, relatively slight, design variations but the first major change came with increased long distance traffic requiring the provision of a boatman’s cabin for living and sleeping accommodation for the steerer and his family. The next significant change came with introduction of steam and then diesel engines, resulting in the motor with its stern counter and capable of towing what previously had been a horse boat but which became known as a butty. Notwithstanding, some hauling by horse continued commercially right up to the 1960′s in some places, particularly with day boats. Modern and usually much shorter narrowboats built for leisure purposes roughly retain the ‘motor’ design, but with full-length cabin accommodation, and have either traditional, semi-traditional or cruiser style sterns. narrow canals Canals, generally those in the English Midlands area, whose locks were built to take narrowboats with a beam of no more than 7 feet. Why this became the standard is not known but it is thought probable it was to keep down canal construction costs. Without their introduction from the mid C18th onwards, bringing a lightning fast (for the period), reliable, year-round way of carrying raw materials and finished goods throughout inland England, the Industrial Revolution would not have got going until very much later. The early canals were highly profitable, leading to a canal mania but many of the later ones were doomed to poor returns and even early abandonment through lack of sufficient commercial demand or inadequate water supply. Canals ruled supreme for some 70 years but the establishment of the railways from mid C 19th onwards and improved road transport in C 20th dealt them blows from which they could not recover. In the 1930′s, the Grand Union Canal Company, in a valiant effort to make the canal system viable for the modern age, tried to encourage all the other canal companies to broaden the locks to 14 feet and, with government aid, famously led the way by widening their canal almost to the centre of Birmingham (they ran out of money). Unfortunately no one else followed suit. The Second World War temporarily postponed the death sentence, after which the system quickly fell into terminal decline and by the mid 1970′s commercial carrying had finally expired. Thanks mainly to the efforts of various canal societies and recovery groups, there has been a long term restoration programme bringing derelict canals back into use and there is now a very decent navigable network being enjoyed by leisure boaters. National Rivers Authority (NRA), now incorporated with Environment Agency (EA). navigation A navigable river or canal. navigation lights Lights required under IRPCS and by various navigation authorities to be shown at night or when visibility is poor. White light forward required to be visible through 180º but very few canal boats comply in practice, often relying on their tunnel light (usually a car spot or fog light). Port (red), starboard (green) and stern (white) lights not yet required on canals but are on most rivers. off-line mooring Berthing space away from main line of canal e.g. in marina, side channel or private cut. on-line mooring Permitted berthing space alongside towpath or outside bank of main line of canal. overflow A weir set in the bank of a canal to take away excess water and prevent flooding. Also called storm weir. packing In a greased-type stern gland assembly, the thick tape-like material that circles the prop-shaft and is forced up into the void between the prop- shaft and the stern tube by the follower. When supplemented by water resistant grease from the remote greaser (which also acts as a lubricant for the bearings) the packing forms a water tight seal and stops water from dripping into the bilges. paddle gear A blanket expression for the mechanism that opens and closes a paddle such as a windlass-operated rack and cogwheel device. paddle The sliding door of a lock gate or other sluice, the drawing of which permits water through. piling concrete, timber or metal posts or sheets going through water, or non- load bearing or otherwise unstable ground, to a considerable depth to support a structure (e.g. a pier) or to act as a protective or retaining wall (e.g. canal bank). piling hook Same as mooring hook. pitch (of a propeller) – the distance a propeller would travel during one complete revolution, theoretically calculated from the dimensions and geometry of its blades. port Left-hand side of boat when looking forward. Most narrowboaters prefer to use the much simpler ‘left’. port to port The usual manner in which oncoming boats pass each other when in close proximity i.e. each boat moves over to its right (starboard) and passes the other on its port side, unless the steerers agree otherwise through hand or sound signals. (Custom believed derived from ancient times, before the rudder was developed for sailing ships, when many boats had their steering mechanism – the ‘steer board’ – on the starboard side making steering to port very difficult and slow, and where passing starboard to starboard would also have exposed the steering gear to possible collision damage. They would also tie up to quay on the side opposite the steering gear hence ‘port-side’). porthole Circular window in cabin, or hull, side. pound The stretch of water on a canal between two locks – no matter how far apart. pram canopy Cloth canopy fitted on folding framework allowing it to be easily raised and lowered, fitted to cockpit of cruiser and, infrequently, over a narrowboat’s counter to protect steerer from bad weather. propane gas Bottled gas, usually in red or orange containers, with a lower calorific value and delivered at a higher pressure to the appliances than butane gas. Generally preferred by most narrowboaters as, unlike butane, its performance is relatively unaffected by freezing temperatures. propeller (or blades). Radially assembled, spiral shaped blades which by reason of rotation in water and blade angle of attack, convert the rotary force provided by engine and gearbox into thrust. A ‘right-handed’ propeller is designed to rotate clockwise (when viewed from astern) – vice versa for ‘left- handed’ prop. Larger diameter propellers with greater pitch and producing more thrust are usually needed by narrowboats powered by slow-revving traditional engines but at the cost of greater transverse thrust. Correct choice of propeller, gearbox and engine combination is crucial for optimum performance. ram’s head Name given to the large wooden headstock of a butty’s rudder (frequently decorated with fancy ropework or a dead horse’s tail) into which the large wooden tiller was slotted, and also applied on motors to the Z-shaped piece made from steel which is attached to the upper end of the rudder stock and to which the tiller is fitted. raw water cooling System of engine cooling constantly taking cold water from canal or river through hull via sea cock and mud box, passing it through either a heat exchanger in a sealed water system or through the engine’s actual waterways – and expelling it warmed via a hull fitting above the waterline. Beloved by many traditionalists but has disadvantage on inland waters of becoming blocked by mud, weed and rubbish. (As opposed to keel cooling). RBOA Residential Boat Owners Association – represents the interests of live- aboard boaters. remote greaser A metal cylinder fitted close to the stern tube, acting as a reservoir for the frequent supply of grease required for stern gland (or stuffing box). Grease is forced from cylinder by hand-operated piston, through intermediate tubing into gland. roses and castles Traditional and highly stylized manner, along with simple geometric shapes and playing card suit symbols, of decorating a narrowboat’s cabin exterior and interior, doors, deck equipment etc. Close up the roses seem almost diagrammatic and each should comprise of no more than four? colours. The castle is the main element of what is called the ‘landscape’. rubbing strake A longitudinal steel reinforcing strip welded to the hull of a narrowboat to lessen damage to the sides. rudder An underwater vertical metal blade at the stern which when angled by the tiller arm against the water thrust by the propeller turns the fore-end of the boat in the same direction. RYA Royal Yachting Association, mainly concerned with coastal cruising, but offers much advice on inland boating abroad and manages Helmsman Certificate courses. scumble Painted graining on cabin wood work or onto steel to make it look like wood – interior or exterior. scuppers Holes through bulwarks for draining decks or venting gas from gas locker. sea cock Valve to shut off a water inlet passing through the hull under waterline for e.g. raw water cooling. Often combined with a mud box shackle Metal link with removable bolt, in various shapes such as ‘D’, ‘U’, bow or twisted. shell The empty structure of a glass-fibre or steel boat. sill (of a lock) The bar of masonry often faced with a timber sealing piece below water level, against which the bottom of the lock gates rest when closed. When descending, care must be taken to avoid the stern gear becoming hung up on the head-gate sill. skeg A short piece of metal running fore-and-aft from the bottom plate, beneath the propeller (for which it provides some protection) to the underside of the rudder stock where, in a cup-shaped bearing, it houses the rudder pintle. skin tank A steel tank fitted to the internal face of the hull below the waterline, the tank contents being cooled by the canal water via the hull plating, usually used for cooling the engine’s sealed coolant water system (similar to a car’s radiator). speed wheel Small metal wheel in the steerer’s hatches that opens or reduces the throttle via a system of rod connections to engine. The gearbox can, rarely, be speed wheel controlled but usually this is by a pull/push handle. spike same as mooring pin. Springer Type of pleasure narrowboat, usually of short length, formerly constructed by Springer Engineering of Market Harborough. The first company to build narrowboats along ‘production lines’. staircase locks A series of two or more lock chambers each of which leads directly into the next without a pound in between. The bottom gates of one lock thus form the top gates of the one below. Sometimes called a ‘riser’. starboard When looking forward, the right-hand side of the boat or the area away from the boat on that side. (Derived from steerboard, being that side of ancient ships on which the steering paddle was situated). “Right” has always been preferred on the canals. stern gland An arrangement – usually by means of greased packing in a stuffing box or stern tube – whereby water is prevented from entering a vessel at the point where the propeller shaft passes through the hull. Also usually contains the prop-shaft’s aftermost bearing. Some modern pleasure narrowboats have stern-glands that are lubricated by water drawn by the propeller’s action through the gland by pipe from the weed hatch. stern line Rope used for securing boat by stern dolly or T-stud to other things e.g. mooring pin. Considered unprofessional when seen hanging coiled from tiller pin from where it could slip and foul the propeller when under way or get under the steerer’s feet. Preference is to remove it from dolly and coil it neatly within reach on the cabin-top ready for possible emergency use – perhaps with a bowline formed at the end. stern post Vertical edge of hull or fin, through which prop shaft emerges. stern rail An enclosed safety rail around the stern of a vessel. stern tube Casing which contains the prop shaft’s aft bearing (where it emerges through stern post). Also contains a waterproof seal at forward end of bearing. See also stern gland. stop lock A lock sited at the junction of two canals, originally constructed to prevent loss of water from one company’s canal to another, sometimes with only a small rise in level of an inch or two. As boats had to stop, it also provided a convenient place for the canal company to gauge boats for tolls. stop planks Wooden boards slotted into stop grooves to seal off section of canal. stoppage A temporary closure of a waterway necessitated by required repairs or due to water shortage. stud The T-headed pin fitted on bow and sometimes stern of a narrowboat to which mooring or handling lines are attached. stuffing box Traditional type of seal at forward end of the aft prop-shaft bearing (see stern tube). Uses combination of special rope packing and grease to lubricate bearing and prevent water entering the hull. Swan’s neck Name for the curved steel bar that connects the top of the rudder to the tiller. swim (1) The tapers at forward and aft end of a narrowboat’s hull sides – from full hull width to stem post or to stern post. (2) A boat is said to swim well or to be a good swimmer if it answers quickly and positively to the tiller and makes way without causing too much turbulence. swing bridge A movable bridge which pivots horizontally on some form of turntable. Can be manually pushed, cranked by handle or electrically operated. table cupboard Distinctive and often highly decorated cupboard in boatman’s cabin fitted on port side between range and bed cupboard. Has tall door hinged along bottom edge that lets down to become a table top. Sometimes featured in main cabins of modern narrowboats due to its space saving properties. taff rail Rail wholly or partly around aft cockpit or counter, usually high enough and wide enough to sit on. tiller Lever against which the steerer pushes to direct the rudder to steer the boat. The bar is often removable in which case it is a courtesy to remove it immediately boat is tied up and not to put it place until immediately before letting go. tow (or towing) path The path by the side of the canal used by horses or men hauling boats. traditional-style/trad stern A style of pleasure craft based on the lines of former working narrowboats in which the stern counter, only up to 3ft – 4ft astern of the accommodation, extends over the propeller, and the tiller is arranged so that the steerer stands in the hatches within the aft doors of the cabin. trim Angle at which a boat sits in the water, looking from the side. Level trim, with gunwale line parallel to the waterline, is said to be ideal for narrowboats, although invariably gunwale line rises gradually towards the bow, particularly when boat is under way. T-stud A metal T-shaped deck fitting to which ropes may be secured. tug A generally shorter length boat with no cargo space but with an often powerful engine for towing other boats, hoppers etc. Modern pleasure boat versions have a long open foredeck with the deck level with the gunwale. tumble home Angle at which the cabin side of a narrowboat leans in, when seen end-on. Most narrowboat hull sides also tumble home – with slight lean-in from top rubbing strake to the side deck; and from the top rubbing strake down to the chine. Turk’s Head Highly decorative knot work frequently seen on ram’s heads, tiller arms, traditional rope fenders etc. uxter plate The steel bottom plate of a narrowboat’s stern counter deck where it projects over the propeller. Also known as the counter bottom plate. wake The disturbed water astern of a moving boat, caused by propeller action and the fast moving counter current meeting the stationary or slower moving water immediately aft of the hull. wash Waves along the bank created by the wake from a boat. On canals, to avoid damage to the banks, boats should keep wash to a minimum at all times but especially if the waves have breaking crests. weather side Side from which wind is blowing. weed-hatch A watertight compartment with a removable lid (and to which an anti-cavitation plate is usually fitted), in the stern of the boat, which provides access from deck level for clearing a fouled propeller. Boatmen of old did not have this luxury, if they could not clear the fouling by using the boat hook from the towpath then they had to get into the water and duck down underneath the counter deck! weir An overspill dam placed across a river or alongside a canal or by the sides of locks (in which case they discharge back into the waterway below the locks) for regulating the depth of water. well deck The floor of a well or cockpit. wharf Structure built of brick, concrete, masonry or timber, for cargo loading or discharge. In some places also known as a staith. wind To turn a boat around. (Rhymes with tinned). winding hole (pronounced win-ding) A triangular bay cut into the outside bank of the canal to provide sufficient room for craft longer than the canal’s width to turn around. windlass (1). L-shaped handle for operating lock paddles. Has a square socket at one end to fit on the spindle operating the paddle gear. Also known as a ‘crank’ in some districts. Sometimes called a ‘lock key’ (2). Drum winch with cranked handles or removable hand spikes used for raising an anchor. There you are then at the end of a full year's newsletters. I hope you've found them useful and I hope that I've managed to convey just how much I enjoy life on board narrowboat James. I'm still not what many boaters would call a “proper” liveaboard boater. I haven't had to make any sacrifices to live the life I do. I don't have to scratch around in unfamiliar woodlands foraging for food and for fuel to burn. I don't have to endure the dubious pleasure of negotiating a muddy, slippery towpath every time there's rain, and I don't have to dread the coming of winter and the difficulty of replenishing my water supply when both taps and canals are frozen. I live a cosseted lifestyle moored on a beautiful and spacious marina with easy access to an always available water supply, electricity on tap and nearby sanitary facilities. I am one of the fortunate few. The relatively few marinas offering berths for liveaboards are very rarely as spacious and aesthetically pleasing as the marinas at Calcutt. There are literally miles of wonderful walks available through SSSI wild flower meadows and woodlands stocked with close to forty different species of tree and shrub. I live a cosseted lifestyle here at the marina and I consider myself very lucky indeed. However, my goal is to move from here within the next two years and continuously cruise the inland waterways of England and Wales. That's when my real adventure will begin. There are about 5,000 narrowboats registered as continuous cruisers. Less than half that number are estimated to be genuine continuous cruisers making a progressive linear journey around the system. I want to join those happy few. One of the couples I surveyed for a liveaboard case study are doing what I hope to do one day. They cruise very little, but their journey is certainly progressive. They cruise for just three hours, about ten miles, every week. They stop at the next village, town, city or idyllic canal-side mooring then spend the next seven days in leisurely exploration before moving on again. That really is the way to live life in the slow lane. I can't wait to do as they do. Maybe I'll see you there. Narrowboat Running Costs Published 10th November 2013 I’m going to discuss narrowboat running costs this week. There’s a huge amount of free information on this site but there are also one or two products which I offer for sale. One of them is a package which goes into great detail about the cost of buying and maintaining a boat on the inland waterways network. Income from the sale of these products helps me to maintain and further develop the site so I spend some time each week promoting the products. About a year ago I uploaded a five minute video to YouTube to help generate more visitors to the section of the site where I sell my guides. YouTube allows unmoderated comments. Many comments have been posted on my video. Sadly, quite a few were racist (Sally is from the Philippines) and many were just plain unpleasant but there were some which offered constructive criticism. One comment suggested that, because my video was a blatant advert and offered very little helpful information, I should watch some of the videos made by twenty five year old Daniel Brown on the subject of living on a narrowboat. I was told that he has a particularly good video detailing narrowboat running costs. Since then I’ve watched that particular video plus a few more in his narrowboat series and I’ve read his Kindle book, The Narrowboat Lad. I thoroughly enjoyed his book. It covers the purchase of his 30′ narrowboat Tilly and his adventure as he takes it to his home base near Oswestry. It’s an honest and very enthusiastic account and only costs £1.50. His videos are also unquestionably well meaning and entirely positive about living a life afloat. I think they are a little misleading though. Take his ten minute video on narrowboat running costs for example… Dan lives on a 30′ narrowboat with a cruiser stern. His internal living space is tiny. His cabin is just 15′ long (compared to the 47′ cabin on my own boat). Dan, as far as I know, is a young single bloke who’s happy living a very simple life with virtually no material possessions. I take my hat off to him. I like a few creature comforts and although there isn’t much space on my own boat there’s nearly three times as much as Dan has on his boat. I think that very few people would be happy living such a spartan existence in such a confined space. Dan details a few costs in his video. He says that the two major costs are the boat’s annual license and the cost of insurance. I agree with him about the license cost being one of the two major ongoing expenses, but not the insurance. By far the largest ongoing cost for most boaters is their mooring fee. Dan says in his video that moorings are based on the length of the boat and the fee for his boat is just £64 per month and that he pays for moorings for just two or three months of the year over the winter. Some marinas offer moorings on the boat length but many mooring fees are determined by the pier length. At Calcutt we have two marinas; twenty five year old Locks marina and seven year old Meadows marina. Locks marina is charged at 67p per foot per week so Dan would pay £87 per month for his 30′ boat. Moorings on Meadows marina are charged by pier length rather than by boat length. A 60′ pier costs £2,300pa or £191.67 per month. There are also 70′ piers available for £2,683pa or £224 per month. These moorings are rarely available to rent by the month though and they are not available for anyone living on their boat. Dan only quotes figures for winter moorings. In his book and in many of his other videos on YouTube he talks about the joy of being able to move his floating home wherever he likes and of the logistics involved in commuting to work from his varying locations. Unfortunately by cruising backwards and forwards along the canal to stay close to work Dan isn’t complying with CRT’s rules for cruising. He is either supposed to register a home mooring with them or comply with their continuous cruising guidelines by continuing on a progressive journey. CRT is clamping down on boat owners who aren’t following the rules so unless Dan complies he’s likely to receive some unwanted calls from them. In reality, rather than under £200 he currently pays for winter moorings, if he needs to stay in one spot so that he can commute to work, he needs to find a permanent residential mooring and pay four times his current total for mooring for a full year. If you are going to be living on your boat, and if you need to stay close to work, in reality you are going to be living on a boat closer to sixty than thirty feet. In reality your mooring fees are going to be closer to £2,000 than £200. Dan then talks about his diesel costs. He says that he pays about £1 a litre so the cost to fill his 150 litre tank is £150. His diesel is much cheaper than it is here. A litre of diesel at Calcutt on a 60/40 split (60% propulsion/40% heating) is £1.25 per litre. Dan points out that his costs are low because he doesn’t travel much and because he doesn’t often have to run his engine to charge his batteries. Dan’s circumstances are unusual and probably won’t apply to you. His boat has a tiny cabin and very few electrical requirements. He doesn’t have any power hungry electrical devices on board. I don’t think he even has an inverter so he can’t run any mains appliances. At one stage he didn’t even have a fridge. He kept perishables cool be putting them in his water tank. The only electrical power he needs is for charging his phone and iPad and for running the lights and water pump(s). His power consumption from lighting is very low because of the exceptionally small cabin and because he sometimes uses candles for lighting. I’m not saying that I’m right and Dan is wrong but I couldn’t live like that. Dan doesn’t have a television. I didn’t for the first year and a half I lived on board. I resisted getting one. I told myself that I much preferred sitting quietly either reading a book or listening to the radio. Sally changed my mind for me. After a couple of months of visiting me on the boat she summed up her feelings in her normal forthright manner. “Much as I like listening to music, it’s REALLY boring having to do it all the time. Don’t you fancy just sitting down occasionally to watch a bit of mindless telly?” She’s quite right. On a long and dreary winter’s evening, much as I like sitting in front of the stove hypnotized by the flickering flames thinking deep and meaningful thoughts, sometimes I’m equally happy to watch an episode of Q.I. and let Stephen Fry clearly demonstrate just how stupid I am. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t spend that much time in front of the goggle box. But I do spend a fair amount of my spare time connected to t’internet researching and writing. My laptop is always on, day and night. I need constant power for it and for a selection of chargers too. I also need power, and plenty of it, for Sally’s two favourite appliances; the vacuum cleaner and the iron. Because Sally likes to/needs to use the vacuum cleaner regularly throughout the day we tend to have the shore line plugged in much of the time so we end up buying far more electricity from the marina than I really want to at the delightful rate of 20p per unit. Most liveaboard boaters have to run their engines for two to three hours each day to recharge their batteries. Dan covers his utility expenditure in a sentence or two. He explains that a 13kg propane gas cylinder lasts him for months and months without needing to be changed. He qualifies that by saying that during the colder winter months he does most of his cooking and water heating for both drinks and dish- washing on his multi fuel stove. Dan’s stove is an unusual design. The flue joins the stove at the top of the left hand side rather than the usual position on top of the stove so Dan has far more space than most to do his cooking and water heating. My own stove has very little space on top. I can only just manage to sit my Ecofan on top without it toppling over. I certainly couldn’t put any pans on it. The very popular Morso Squirrel stove has a bit more space but you would be hard pressed to cook a meal on it.

Dan also mentions in his book, but not in the video, that much of his “cooking” is heating soup. He gives the impression that many of his meals are takeaways. I’m not knocking his food choice. Each to their own, but I just want to give you an accurate picture of the costs involved. I use propane gas for both cooking and for heating water on the boat via and on demand heater. We need hot water for two showers a day, five or six kettle boils a day for coffee for me, and toast in the morning for breakfast and a cooked meal for the two of us every evening. This year so far I’ve changed my gas fifteen times so, on average, I change my gas every twenty one days. He mentions that water is available free of charge. It is. It’s either available on the canal at water points maintained by CRT – the charge for its use is included in your waterways license fee – or on your mooring as part of your mooring fee. The one utility cost not mentioned by Dan is fuel for heating. Heating fuel is a significant expense for most boaters whether they use diesel, gas or solid fuel for heating. I burned two tonnes of coal last year which cost me nearly £900. Your heating cost will be determined by the size of the area to be heated, the type of fuel you use and the effectiveness of your insulation. Dan talks often about the pleasure of collecting and using windfall firewood for his stove. I’ve talked recently about the logistics of using wood to heat your boat. I doubt that the wood he collects is seasoned so it won’t produce much heat. He doesn’t need to produce much heat because he has a very small cabin space to keep warm. If the wood he uses is unseasoned, there’s a good chance that the inside of his flue is becoming clogged up with creosote. Your liveaboard boat is likely to be much bigger than Dan’s so you will need an effective heating system and plenty of fuel. If you are unfortunate enough to be totally reliant on gas central heating, you’re going to pay a fortune to keep your boat warm. Two years ago I spent ten days living one of the smaller boats in our hire fleet. I used 38kg propane while I was on board or 3.8kg per day which works out at just under £8 a day to heat the cabin on a 45′ narrowboat. To put that in perspective James, with a much larger 48′ cabin costs me £4.40 a day to heat with coal. During the colder months I have to supplement the stove’s heating with two electric radiators for the back of the boat. These two heaters are too power hungry to run off the inverter so I’m about to have a central heating system installed. I don’t know which one yet. Another cost mentioned by Dan is blacking. A narrowboat needs to have the hull painted (blacked) to prevent rust. This work needs to be done every two to three years. The figure Dan gives for blacking his 30′ boat is £550. This seems very high for such a small boat. At Calcutt we charge £6 per foot plus £195 for removing the boat from the water and then returning it once the work is done. If Dan had the work done here he would pay £375. My own 62′ boat would cost £567 if I asked Calcutt to do the work. James is due to be blacked again in April next year. I’ll do the work myself though. Calcutt will just remove James from the water for me. It’s very hard physical work but I can do it in a day and save a fortune. The final figure quoted is £200 for general maintenance. That’s probably not a bad guide if you know your way around a tool box. I’m afraid I don’t. The simplest tasks seem to be beyond me. I have to rely on the professionals. RCR gave my engine a major service in April this year. The service plus a new impeller cost me £187. This was just a small part of my repairs and maintenance expenditure though. I’ve also had to buy a new starter battery, two additional leisure batteries, battery leads, an inverter plus fixings (and the labour to install them), rubber mats for the front and rear decks, draught excluder, polish for the cabin sides and roof, traffic film remover for removing the muck left on the side of the boat by the chimney, a coolie hat, an Ecofan to help distribute heat from the stove, replacement LED lights, a torch for nocturnal dog walks, Hozelock connectors, bolt cutters for the weed hatch, a recovery magnet, a carbon monoxide monitor, three new fire extinguishers and a fire blanket, a new shore line, two mooring chains, I had the engine fuel lines rerouted and a pre filter fitted, a frame welded around the engine so the engine room can be properly boarded, a new bilge pump and float switch fitted, a new front and rear fender, spring clips for hanging up mooring gear in the engine room and a padlock for the rear doors to replace the one I threw in the cut. In addition to the maintenance expenditure, we’ve also forked out nearly £1,700 for a 300w solar power system and new laminate flooring. Most of these expenses weren’t absolutely necessary but they’ve allowed us an easier, more convenient and safer life on board. It’s horses for courses. Dan appears to be very happy indeed living in a very small space with virtually no material possessions. He doesn’t doesn’t have a boat full of thirsty appliances so doesn’t have to buy large quantities of diesel so that he can run the engine to charge his batteries and power his devices. He makes do with simple meals which he can heat on the stove which also heats his boat and some or all of his water. The larger and more complex the boat, the greater the cost to maintain it. James is a fairly typical length for a liveaboard narrowboat. It’s large enough to allow two people to live in comfort and not too large to manage on the waterways and some of the smaller locks. I think I would feel claustrophobic on anything we smaller than we have now, especially with two dogs under our feet all of the time. Maybe you would be as happy as Dan obviously is living in a pocket size narrowboat. Statistically, you’ll go for something much closer in size to James. Your boating cots will probably be similar to my own, so you’ll probably be interested in the next section.

My Own Narrowboat Running Costs For October 2013 Here are my bang up to date expenses for my own liveaboard narrowboat James. Not all narrowboat owners will incur the costs that I do. Many of the costs below will apply though so if you’re considering buying your own narrowboat, you need to be aware of the costs. You may wonder why I have included costs for items and services that aren’t directly related to running a narrowboat. They’re included because they are typical lifestyle costs that you may well incur. You can discount them if you want, but just bear them in mind. Electricity: Each mooring has a 230v electrical supply which is charged at 20p per unit and topped up cards available from our reception. I’m currently looking into fitting a central heating system to supplement my solid fuel stove which fails to heat the back of the boat. In the meantime I rely on two Dimplex 500w greenhouse heaters to provide a little extra heat. I’ve only just started to use them so the running cost hasn’t really affected my electrical costs yet. – £20.00 Gas: I’m averaging one 13kg propane cylinder every three weeks at the moment. I replaced two this month.– £45.90 Coal: I get a better deal if I buy ten bags at a time. Ten 25kg bags of Pureheat last me about a month when the stove is on all of the time. It’s been on constantly now for the last week and will be for the next five months, apart from the period we will be away in February visiting Sally’s family in the Philippines. I expect coal briquettes to be my main stove fuel again this year. Next year I should have a plentiful supply of seasoned wood available from the willow and ash I’ve felled this year. I’m looking forward to using fee fuel but I don’t get anywhere near as much heat from wood as I do from coal. Waterways World published the results of their own stove fuel test in the March 2013 edition of the magazine. Here’s what I thought of their figures. I bought ten bags of Pureheat this month– £109.40 Mooring: Mooring costs £2,300 a year – £191.66 Maintenance & Repairs: There were no repairs as such this month but I record sundry boat expenses here. This month resisted the urge to spend on anything but the essentials. We’re saving hard for our winter break so we need to watch the pennies. We had to buy a replacement companion set for the stove. Our old brush had about three bristles on it and the coal shovel’s handle had snapped off. Our new shovel is pretty sturdy so it should see us through this winter – £16.80 Total boat expenses for October – £383.76 Other expenses for October… Of course, the boat expenditure is only a part of the cost of life on the boat. Here’s what we spent on our day to day expenses in February. Internet: I’m still using the excellent 15GB per month mobile broadband service from Three – £17.02 Telephone (Mobile): Sally and I both have mobiles on contract and Sally has an iPad, also on contract. I’ve also included the cost of our Skype to landline/mobile calls – £79.78 Laundery: Calcutt Boats as two washing machines and a dryer for moorers’ use. We only use the washing machines. Sally hangs the damp washing inside the boat. It’s dry within 24 hours. The washing machines take tokens which we buy at reception. Each token costs £1 and keeps the washing machines going for 45 minutes BUT WE NO LONGER HAVE TO USE THEM!! We have a low power twin tub on board which saves us about £20 each month -£0.00 Groceries: We eat well but not extravagantly. The total includes £23.95 for wine £193.86 Entertainment: I love to read. I love my Kindle. It’s so easy to finish a book, use my laptop to browse through the Kindle books on Amazon, click a button and open my new book within a minute or two. I don’t read as much as I would like because of the time I spend adding content to this site. However, I still get through three or four books a month. Four books in October, plus a subscription for Lovefilm.com for unlimited DVDs each month – £27.79 Car: I’ve been without my own car since May so now we only have one car to worry about. Forty pounds for fuel. The balance is for two new tyres – £168.90 Tools: I’m not a great one for buying tools but I needed to equip myself properly for managing my growing wood supply. In October I bought a moisture meter, a chainsaw chain sharpener and a log splitting maul – £122.87 My total none-boat-related living costs for October were £610.22 bringing my overall total to £993.98. It’s been quite a low cost month but with our holiday looming and the prospect of fitting a central heating system, we need a few more months just like this one. This is an example of the monthly expenses detailed in my guide Living on a Narrowboat: The REAL Cost of a Life Afloat. If you’re seriously considering buying a narrowboat to live on it’s an essential read. Some of the costs listed in this article are optional. You may be able to live on less than we do, but many of the costs that apply to us will also apply to you too. Many potential boat owners mistakenly think that a narrowboat floating home is a low cost alternative to bricks and mortar. Nothing could be further from the truth. Please read the guide before you make a very expensive mistake. The costs guide is now packaged with Living On A Narrowboat: 21 Liveaboard Case Studies and the Gold version of the site’s bespoke narrowboat budget calculator. I’ve also just added a free bonus to the package. It’s a compilation of all the articles from the newsletters this year so far. The guide has over two hundred pages of indexed information about buying and maintaining a narrowboat to live on. I’ve added it to the package for today only. It’s a bit of a test. I’ll be removing it from the package later today and offering it for sale both on Amazon and elsewhere on the site. If you want a free copy you’ll have to get it today from this page. Narrowboat Central Heating Published 17th November 2013 Before I talk about this week’s subject narrowboat central heating, let me just say a huge “thank you” for the many, many emails I’ve received offering Sally and her family moral support. I’m delighted to be able to report that Sally’s family are OK. We tried and failed to contact Sally’s sister, Corazon, for four long and very worrying days. None of the houses have land lines a stone’s throw from La Carlota City on the island of Negros where Corazon lives. The island was completely without power for four days after the typhoon battered the island on Friday 8th November. No power meant no way to charge mobiles so no contact with the outside world. Tacloban City was completely destroyed. An estimated 10,000 people have died in the city and on neighbouring Samar. The island’s population is still without food or water. The relief effort is being co-ordinated from Cebu City airport 112 miles to the south west of Tacloban. La Carlota City is just sixty five miles to the west of Cebu City. Given that the storm front was an estimated three hundred and fifty miles wide, Corazon and her home were extremely lucky to have escaped the storm. Sally and I are both very relieved. We both naturally feared the worst when we couldn’t make contact after four days of waiting and countless frantic phone calls. Not only are Sally’s family OK, but the house has escaped without any damage at all. The family are all well, the house is in one piece, but they have potentially lost their meager income for the year. The family, like many of the less affluent residents in the area, rely on the small income they can generate from the sugar cane they grow and sell. The wind and the rain have destroyed much of the crop. We don’t know how much. Life in the Philippines is a struggle for many. The islanders have to cope with constant severe storms while they try and scrape a living from the soil. We are thankful that Sally’s family and their friends have escaped harm on this occasion but saddened by the news of the loss of their crops. We’ll see what we can do to help them when we stay with Corazon in February.

New Residents At Calcutt? We have a new visitor at the marina. We may have two. Over the last couple of weeks I’ve had the pleasure of getting up close and personal with a grey heron. It’s very shy, unlike the mallards, moorhens, coots, and swans which are often almost within touch as I work close to the water on Meadows marina. The heron is quite spooky. The other water birds are quite vocal as they conduct their daily affairs; the mallards quack, the swans hiss if I get too close to them, the moorhen croak, the coots beep but the heron just doesn’t say a thing. Not only is it very quiet, it’s also very still. It’s like one of those street performers, made up to look like a lifeless statue, completely immobile until you get too close and then startling when it launches into flight. Actually, the heron doesn’t so much launch into flight as float away. All the other birds on the water, especially the geese and the swans, make quite a fuss as they struggle into the air. The swans, which are shorter than the heron but much heavier, need quite a long runway as they thrash at the water before eventually hauling themselves off the water. The heron simply opens its wings and floats silently in the air like a released helium filled party balloon. It’s a marvelous sight. I’ve seen a single heron every day for the last two weeks. Last Saturday I saw two. They were flapping around each other like a pair of ethereal crane flies. I’ve only seen two together once. The rest of the time there’s just one. A solitary predator intent on its daily meal of small fish, frogs and voles. I see it in the morning as I walk along the grass embankment on the west side of Meadows marina. The huge bird stands in the shallow water on the edge of the reed beds waiting for breakfast. I see it again standing in the shallow stream which runs from the reservoir through one of our paint tents. Sometimes it stands next to the marina access road looking for something to eat in the long grass. The grey heron is a welcome addition to the already rich wildlife here at Calcutt.

Choosing Narrowboat Central Heating I’ve spent much of the last week trying to decide which central heating system to install on James. James, as you know, is quite an old narrowboat. When the boat was built in 1977 it was a wonder to behold and was at the cutting edge of modern technology. The Torgem stove fitted in James was a popular boat stove at the time but they’re no longer made and aren’t as good as the most popular narrowboat stove these days, the Squirrel from Morso. My Torgem has a back boiler attached which feeds three radiators along the port side; one half way down the boat in my office area, a tiny radiator in the bathroom and a slightly larger one in the rear cabin where we sleep. The radiators don’t heat the boat very well. I feel little benefit from the radiator in the office so, to keep warm in the winter when I’m sitting immobile for hours on end working, I supplement the heat drifting back from the front of the boat with a Dimplex 500w greenhouse heater. The Dimplex doesn’t produce a huge amount of heat but on all but the coldest days it’s just enough to supplement the heat generated by the stove. By the time the gravity propelled hot water has trickled forty feet from the stove to our bedroom it has lost the ability to provide effective heating. The radiator, at best, is tepid. The fact that the bedroom is cold isn’t really a problem. It’s a little uncomfortable climbing under the duvet’s icy cover when we go to bed, but it soon warms up. The real problem is the damp. We have a dehumidifier in the bedroom to deal with the damp. It does a very effective job of removing the moisture from the room but it’s quite expensive to run the 600w appliance when we’re attached to the land line and unpractical to run it via the inverter and the battery bank. We need central heating on the boat to supplement the stove over the winter. Central heating will also make life much easier during the warm day/cold night period of the spring and autumn when we need a quick burst of heat at either end of the day. The stove is very frustrating to use at these times of the year. In the morning when we light the stove we don’t really feel much benefit from it before we leave the boat to go to work and then the stove continues to heat a boat which is already being heated by the rising sun. Central heating would allow us to quickly heat the boat for the short period we need it and then just as quickly turn the heat off when we leave the boat. I’ve considered all the options open to me. The first to be very quickly dismissed was gas. Gas central heating is very expensive to run. Many ex hire boats are bought by liveaboards. Most hire boats have gas central heating systems. I’ve spoken to a few of the new owners who are appalled at the cost of keeping their boats warm. Buying two 13kg propane bottles every week isn’t unusual and at a cost of £27 each from Calcutt, heating James with gas would cost me as much as £250 every month. When James was taken away to have the new steel cabin fitted, I stayed on one of our 45 cruiser stern boats fitted with an Alde gas heating system. I used 38kg of gas in ten days or 3.8kg per day. The cabin on that boat is just under 30′ compared with a 48′ cabin on James. I stayed on the boat in November when the weather wasn’t particularly cold. The boat was warm enough but certainly not too warm. Clearly heating the much larger cabin space on James over the much colder months of January, February and March would be much more expensive.

Diesel Narrowboat Central Heating With gas discounted I then focused on diesel central heating. Calcutt Boats are the UK agent for the very popular Canadian Hurricane diesel heater. It is widely acknowledged as the best diesel heating system on the market for narrowboats. It is reliable, relatively easy and cost effective to service and can accommodate the central heating and hot water needs of the most demanding user. It’s a wonderful heater but there are three things I don’t like about it. The first reason and probably the one which has put me off most is the cost. It is currently (November 2013) £2,640 for the 7.3kw heater and a further £600 for the narrowboat fitting kit. £3,240 is way over my budget at the moment. The official Hurricane blurb claims that it is quiet in operation. In reality it is anything but quiet. Steven Cox, our buyer, has a Hurricane fitted to his own boat, Whistling Kettle, which is moored three boats away from me. I can clearly hear the roar of his Hurricane exhaust when I’m inside James. The Hurricane isn’t the only noisy diesel heater on the market. NB Nell moored next to me has a Mikuni on board. Unfortunately the exhaust is adjacent to our bedroom. Watson and Sue on Nell are out cruising at the moment but they’ll return from their last trip of the year any day now. Nell will be left on the mooring with the Mikuni turned on to provide frost protection over the winter. There’s a cold snap forecast from mid next week with temperatures as low as minus seven. I’m not looking forward to being woken up in the middle of the night by the sound of a jet engine taking off six feet away from my right ear. The third thing putting me off the Hurricane is its size. It’s a big unit at 9″ high, 13″ wide and 19″ deep. It’s the size that it is so that the internal components are accessible for servicing which means that servicing can be achieved more cost effectively than some smaller, more compact diesel heaters. There’s not a huge amount of free space in my engine room though so I would struggle to fit it in. With the Hurricane discounted I then considered the Webasto Thermotop C. The Thermotop C is much, much smaller than the Hurricane at 6.5″ high x 9.5″ wide x 4″ deep. It will easily fit into the available space in the engine room. It’s much cheaper too. About £2,000 cheaper to be precise. The price difference is the difference between me having a central heating system fitted this winter or waiting another year. Unfortunately one of the problems with the Hurricane is also a problem with the Webasto. It’s noisy. However, I don’t think it’s anywhere near as noisy as the Hurricane. I don’t think I can get over the noise problem unless I have a gas system installed. I won’t use gas because of the high running costs. Anyway I think I’m probably making too much fuss about the noise. The water heater itself will be in the engine room. The Webasto, like the Hurricane and the Mikuni, is noisier outside the boat than it is inside and it’s only noisy when the heater is on. The only time I would be close enough to the heater and its noise would be at night when we are in bed. When we are in bed we don’t want any heating on so the noise won’t be a problem. I’ve been told that the compact size of the Webasto means that servicing is more expensive. Rather than replace smaller parts when necessary as you can with the much larger and more accessible Hurricane, you have to replace much larger assemblies with the Webasto. I’ll have to replace a huge number of parts though before the Webasto costs me anywhere near as much as the Hurricane. I’m very interested in the Webasto Thermotop but I wanted to hear from someone who had been using the heater for a while. I spoke to two owners. The first was the owner of a boat moored about 50m from me. I stood chatting to the guy on his cruiser stern deck while the heater ran in the engine bay beneath us. He was very happy with the heater’s performance. I was happy that we could easily hold a conversation over the noise from the exhaust. The second more clinical report was from Peter and Margaret Berry on board NB Kelly Louise. I contacted them after reading one of their blog posts about the Webasto heater. I emailed Peter. Here’s his very comprehensive reply. “Kelly Louise was first used in September 2004, and was fitted from new with an Alde gas central heating system, (the tall thin one). We found this to be expensive to use, ( 1 X 13kg bottle could be used over a weekend), and it was also inefficient, suitable only as background heat to the solid fuel stove. Eventually it failed prematurely due to a leak in the water jacket, which I now believe was due to a copper calorifier being used in the system, (Alde warn against this as they use aluminium in the boiler construction, and galvanic currents set up as a result of the mismatch caused the corrosion), so I believe the problem was due to an error by the boat fitters, not the fault of the boiler. I researched what to do for the best, repair or replace, and then what to replace with. The quote for repair was £850, which included removal and stripping the unit completely. I chose to replace. The Webasto was my second choice – I would have preferred a Hurricane, but the cost put me off. The Webasto is about half the price of that I believe, but also less sophisticated. However, the Webasto has proved very reliable in use, and can be used for lengthy periods, (the 1 hour timer of the standard unit has been disabled in the marine version). It has quite a hefty current consumption, around 3.5 amps if I remember rightly, but I do know that I have to limit its use due to this when we are not running on shore power and charger. K-L only has a small battery bank, (2 X 110ah lead acid deep cycle), and using the heater has flattened it on a couple of occasions before I realized what was going on. The Webasto shuts itself off when the battery level reaches a certain point to prevent damage to the batteries. Using it on shore power with a charger connected is no problem though, (the heater is 12V only in operation). I will get around to upgrading the battery bank next time I have to replace them. My heater is a Thermo Top C, and it has 2 automatic operating cycles, full, and half output. I use it connected to 1 x large radiator and 2 x smaller ones through the boat, plus the calorifier. You must calculate the correct heater to obtain and use for your own requirements, as if it is mismatched to your system, the heater might cycle too often, and damage it. A Webasto dealer will assist in this. Webasto quote fuel consumption at approximately 0.6ltr/hr on full heat, dropping to 0.2ltr/hr on the cooler cycle. The heater swaps between the two automatically depending on the heat of the radiator fluid that is returned and measured back at the boiler. Also, when the unit is turned off, a cleaning cycle is performed automatically to help prevent a build up of carbon around the burner. In practice, we get a weekend’s use for around 5 litres of diesel. For example, last weekend, Friday and Saturday evening, I used the heater consistently from around 5pm through ’til 10pm on both nights, approximately. I guess a total not exceeding 12 hours use. I started with a full tank of diesel, and I put in 5 litres on Sunday morning to fill it to the brim again. I get this regularly, so it appears to match Webasto’s claim. In use, the heater is also much more efficient than the Alde, and can be run as stand alone heating. Since we have had the Webasto, we rarely light the Squirrel stove, unless it gets very cold, and we require heat overnight. We have the standard timer unit that is supplied in the kit, which offers 3 individual start times, programmed as you wish. A more complicated timer/programmer is available as an extra, as is a remote control that can be activated away from the boat via your mobile ‘phone. Kings Lock demonstrated this to me, and I was impressed, but not at the additional £250 it would have cost me to include it at the time. Overall we are very happy with our Webasto. It is a huge improvement over the Alde, and from what I can gather, if serviced annually, should provide years of reliable use.” I emailed Peter again asking for more information about the running costs. He said… ”In your circumstances I believe including the mobile phone remote could be your best option, as it not only reports by text the inside temperature of your boat, when requested, again by mobile ‘phone, but allows you to turn the heating on just before you want to return to the boat, thus saving fuel by not using the heater unnecessarily. I have included the original brokers information for my boat as a pdf file, which includes sizes and layout diagrams for you to digest, rather than explaining it. We bought it off the first owners in Feb 2009. My radiators are normal domestic types with a 5 foot in the saloon, a 2 foot in the bathroom and a 2 foot double in the bedroom. Not sure on the size of calorifier, but I get piping hot water within about 20 minutes of using the Webasto. The rads also get too hot to touch, where the Alde only ever provided lukewarm to the touch. After 2 season’s use, heading into the 3rd I am fairly confident in reporting around 0.5ltr/hr fuel consumption on average with a good reliability. We still turn the diesel heating off overnight though, leaving the Squirrel to tick over if very cold, protected by the CO monitor.” I’m happy that this heater will work for me. The running costs are acceptable but I will have to increase my maintenance budget by the cost of an annual service. One or two helpful individuals who obviously don’t know me very well have suggested that I do the servicing myself. I know my limitations though and accept that my maintenance skills only extend to running a vacuum cleaner over it once a week.

The next step is to organise the installation. At least three days will be needed. There’s a fair amount of work to be done. The original radiators need to be disconnected from the stove’s back boiler and removed, the back boiler needs to be made safe, new larger radiators and pipes need fitting, the current gas water heater will have to be removed and then the heater will have to be fitted and connected to the radiators and to the calorifier under our bed. The work is going to be quite disruptive and unpleasant if we are on board. I’ll schedule it for when we are away in February. Hopefully we’ll come back to a warm and cosy boat. More Tales From The American Among Us I’ve just added another article written by our roving American friend. Richard doesn’t just write about the canals he cruises on. In fact, he rarely writes about his actual cruises. He writes about the people he meets on his travels. In this post he writes about the dying art of butchery. I think his articles are fascinating. I hope you do too. You’ll find links to his stories, including his latest episode “Chilling With Rich”, at the bottom of his case study here. Winter Fuel Allowance Published 24th November 2013 It’s official. I’m now fully trained to cut down the same size trees I was cutting down quite happily before the four day training course I endured last weekend. Don’t get me wrong, I think that comprehensive training is necessary when working with dangerous tools and chainsaws are very dangerous. There are far more serious accidents in forestry than there are in the building industry. Comprehensive training is important but the thirty six hours of instruction on safely felling and logging predominantly oak, ash and willow saplings nearly finished me off. We didn’t actually start a chainsaw until day two. On day one we learned how to carry out a risk assessment of the areas where we work, assemble an effective first aid kit and put together a tool kit for every eventuality. We learned about chainsaw development from the first chainsaw manufactured by Andreas Stihl in 1926 (electric powered and weighing in at 140lbs) up to today’s relatively lightweight, more powerful and much safer saws. Our instructor Tim Rose, former poacher, gamekeeper, prison officer and now tree surgeon for eighteen years, really knew his stuff. He demonstrated all of the saw’s safety features, why we need to use them and what to do if they go wrong. He lectured us on fueling, safe practices, legislation, manual handling, the Health & Safety at Work Act 1974, Personal Protective Equipment at Work Regulations 1992, Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999, the Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1998, The Control of Noise at Work Regulations 2005, The Control of Vibration at Work Regulations 2005, the Approved Code of Practice (ACoP), the Control of Substances Hazardous to Health (COSHH) and the Sustaining Trees & Understanding Particularly Infectious Diseases (STUPID) act 2013 (I made the last one up). After the theory we were actually allowed to hold a real live chainsaw, but not to start it. Tim had brought a couple of his working saws with him, and both had particularly blunt and battered chains. Tim then explained, in mind numbing detail, the anatomy of the chain. He told us about the witness mark, top plate, side plate, working corner, gullet, depth gauge, toe and heel. He waxed lyrical about the difference between and full and a semi chisel cutting heads, cutters, drive links, guard links tie straps and rivets. With the finer points of chain composition finally exhausted he very kindly allowed Pat and I to spend an hour sharpening his blunt chains. Oh, what fun we had! Finally, after twelve hours tuition, we were allowed to take our chainsaws into the woods. We spent the rest of the day working next to our reed bed filtration plant cross cutting half a dozen oak which I had felled earlier in the week. We learned about tension and compression, the correct sequence of cuts, the dangers of kickback, correct posture and grip, pulling and pushing chains and when to use them and, most importantly, how to pay attention and look interested so we didn’t hurt Tim’s feelings. On day three we spent the morning practicing our felling techniques… but not on living trees. Tim strapped two 2m oak logs vertically to two nearby willows so Pat and I could spend a couple of hours practicing cutting “sinks”, the wedge shaped pieces which are cut out of the tree to determine the direction of fall. In the afternoon we ventured further into the woods to fell our first trees. We spent a couple of hours discussing what we needed to do before felling the 10m high oaks. The reason we are removing so many oak, apart from the damage done by the squirrels which has resulted in the crowns dying, is because our 1,500 oak are far too close together. Most of them are no more than 2m apart which means that they don’t have room to grow and that they are all competing for a limited amount of water. The fact that they are so close together means that the one which need to be removed are quite difficult to fell without getting “hung up”. A hung up tree is one which falls against an adjacent tree and stays there. I felled an oak surrounded by other oak and ash which immediately hung up. Tim then spent the best part of an hour describing the methods which could be used to safely put the tree on the ground. He finally came to the conclusion that the best remedy for the problem would be to attach a robust strap to the half-fallen trunk, run the strap through a pulley strapped to a nearby ash and use a ratchet to ease the tree into the horizontal position. Given that I didn’t have any of the necessary equipment and, to be honest, didn’t understand at all what Tim was suggesting, I waited until he left for the day, picked up the troublesome oak and carried it out of the woods. On the last day we concentrated on felling oaks although, with frequent breaks for review and correction, we didn’t fell very many. We finished the course at about 3pm on Sunday after cutting down a total of eight oak and two willow out of the twenty five trees I had reserved for the course. So now the course has been completed. Both Pat and I have passed and are now certified in chainsaw maintenance and crosscutting and basic felling techniques on trees up to 200mm in diameter. Do I think the course has been worthwhile? Yes I do. Every minute of it. I was pretty confident felling trees before the course, but possibly for the wrong reasons. Since last Sunday I’ve spent a couple of days on my own in the woods both felling and crosscutting. The techniques which were repeatedly drilled into us have stuck with me. As a result I’m now less of a danger to both myself and those around me and, because of the techniques I learned, I can use a chainsaw for longer with far less fatigue. I’m grateful to Tim for sharing his extensive tree surgery knowledge with us, but I’m even more grateful for the encyclopedic knowledge he shared about woodland management. Tim’s first experience with woodlands began over three decades ago as a teenage poacher. He then legitimised his woodland exploits by becoming a gamekeeper and then a tree surgeon. He knows a huge amount about the balance which needs to be achieved if the woodland is to develop into something which is both aesthetically pleasing and a haven for a rich variety of birds, insects, reptiles and mammals. Tim told me that, although there are plentiful signs of both flora and fauna in our larger six acre wood, it is what is described as a “cold” wood. A cold wood is one which has a top layer, a canopy, but no mid or bottom layer. Our wood is predominantly oak and ash with a few conifers and other marginal species thrown in for good measure. There is no understorey (mid layer) or ground cover. The animals which venture into the wood don’t stay for very long because they feel exposed. There are plenty of signs that animals have passed through the wood; there is, of course, the extensive damage done by grey squirrels to the oak canopy, then there are marks left low down on tree trunks by rabbits, hares and muncjack deer and, slightly higher up, by roe deer. Tim told me – and he kept a very straight face – that the muncjack marks are made by sexually frustrated bucks who are prevented from getting anywhere near the does by the dominant buck. There are signs that they have passed through but passed through too briefly. The easiest way to provide quick and effective ground cover is to use the brash, the twigs and smaller branches, from the felled oak. It’s a win/win situation for me and for the wildlife. They get plenty of ground cover and, rather than having to drag the brash a couple of hundred metres to the truck, load it up, drive to the tip and unload it again, I can leave it close to the felled trees in tidy piles.

The remaining stumps or stools from the felled oaks will also help to provide ground cover. Early next year the stools will produce new shoots which will initially give cover close to the ground and then, over the coming years, grow into an understorey layer. With some ground cover in place, I just needed to find a solution for the missing understorey. Next week I’ll be planting some. On Wednesday I hope to take delivery of 270 mixed holly, wayfaring tree, spindle, hazel, field maple and crab apple. It’s not enough to cover all of the woods, but it’s a good start. I’ve only just stated to use the brash from the felled oaks as ground cover. Most of it had already been removed from the woods before Tim visited us last weekend. Some of it had been burned. I didn’t like burning the oak branches. I thought it was a shame to see it go up in flames. We use a fair amount of bark chippings around the site on paths and to suppress weeds around shrubs. A rubble sack full of chippings costs about £60. I knew we could save this cost if we chipped the large amount of brash we generate in general from site maintenance and in particular from the oak felling project. I persuaded the powers that be to hire a professional chipper for the day. Early on Tuesday morning I drove twenty miles to West Haddon in Northamptonshire to pick up a professional Timberwolf chipper. It was a beast of a machine.

W e fed the brash from about forty oak and half a dozen willow through the machine – plus a couple of arm-fulls of very painful to handle blackthorn – over six very intensive hours. The end result was four truck loads of chippings, or about ten rubble sacks, numerous cuts and scratches and absolute exhaustion. Patrick and I don’t work together very often. I think we’re both a little antisocial. But on the days we are together we tend to be quite competitive. Feeding the chipper was quite demanding physically, as was wrestling the branches off the bonfire which I had compacted with our small excavator. The hob’s been done now though and I’m delighted with the end result. The brash from the felled oak has been processed so that it can be put to use in and around the woods. Chipping Mountain has also added a bit of interest in the woods for Charie and Daisy. I took them to explore it this morning (below).

I’ve strayed from the usual newsletter subjects this week but, because the chainsaw course took up all of my free time last weekend, I haven’t had an opportunity to think about, research and write any other subjects. As living on a narrowboat, for me anyway, is all about being able to live a quieter, more peaceful life close to nature, I thought that you too might be interested in the wonderfully rich nature which surrounds me. After I’ve finished planting 270 new saplings next week the short term projects in the woods will be complete. I’ve removed 120 damaged oak to give the healthy oak more space and coppiced about fifty goat willow. In the process I’ve logged and split enough wood to keep me warm for a couple of years. Talking of keeping warm, did you know that the government would like to help you out with your winter fuel bills, even if you’re living afloat?

Winter Fuel Allowance If you are over 62 and otherwise meet the government’s criteria for winter fuel payments you’ll receive £200 towards your heating costs regardless of whether you live on dry land or on the water. If you have a house and a boat, you won’t receive payments for both. The payment is per property rather than per person so if you share your home, floating or otherwise, with a girlfriend/boyfriend/wife/husband each of you will receive £100. There’s information about how to claim for the winter fuel allowance if you use a friend’s or relative’s address as a postal address on the Association of Continuous Cruisers web site here. Please note that they state that you can receive the winter fuel payment if you are over sixty. However, the qualifying criteria is that, for this winter’s payment, you were born before 5th January 1952 which means that you need to be closer to 62 than 60 before you qualify. Sadly, or maybe I should say happily, I won’t qualify for another nine years, which is a shame considering that my total expenditure for coal last year was £888.

Case Study – NB Progress Kim Wainwright, Deckhand on the forum, registered for this site in April this year while she waited for her own boat to be built. Now she’s living the dream on her new narrowboat Progress with her ex corporate high flyer husband Jim and their five dogs. They’ve been living afloat now for a month and love every minute of it. Here’s their story. ChoosingNarrowboat Secondary Double Glazing Published 1st December 2013 There’s not much been happening on the water over the last week. Our wharf is practically full. All of our twelve hire boats are moored up for the winter. About half of them will make the short journey down through two locks and into our marina for blacking before they start to go out again in April. The four 60′ narrowboats we look after for the Royal Navy are next to our hire boats. The winter hire fleet maintenance programme is under way. Some of the boats will be painted, some will have tired flooring, doors and upholstery replaced and most will be re-varnished. The winter maintenance programme has begun on the grounds too. Projects which Patrick and I don’t have time for in the growing season will be tackled. The wash house roof needs repairing, a new protective sleeper needs to be fitted in the marina entrance, the marina entrance pilings need painting, all of the site’s fencing needs painting, a 200m trench needs to be dug by hand for the armoured cable for our moorings above Calcutt Top lock, more containers need to be added to our new moorer storage in the recently refurbished area of the old tip andthe lock cottage garden adjacent to the canal has to be refurbished. In addition to all of this, I have a fair amount of planting to do. On Wednesday I took delivery of 270 shrubs and trees; field maple, viburnum, hazel, spindle, hawthorn – fifty of each – and twenty holly along with protectors and stakes to guard against rabbits and deer. I began planting them yesterday after I spent a couple of hours cutting down the protectors and stakes from 4′ to 3′. They’re all going into the main six acre wood close to where I’m moored. I have to give careful consideration to the size of the trees and shrubs when full grown. The field maple will take up far more space than any of the shrubs and the holly will need very little space. They will all need light for at least part of the day. The area which I’ve given most thought to is the north east corner which just happens to be close to James. It’s our garden and, naturally, I want it to look particularly pretty in years to come. When I haven’t been working outside this week, I’ve been working – or planning to work – on James.

A Condensation Solution – Secondary Double Glazing For Your Boat In the 20th October newsletter I wrote about dealing with condensation on your boat. Like most narrowboat owners, I’m constantly battling against the detrimental effects of excessive moisture inside the boat. The worst area on James is at the back of the boat in our bedroom, particularly between the mattress and the side of the boat and between the mattress and pillow and the bulkhead between the engine room and the bedroom. The engine room is unheated so there’s usually quite a difference in the temperatures in the engine room and our bedroom, especially when we’re in bed and our bodies are generating additional heat. The condensation problem at the side of the mattress is of course in addition to condensation on the windows. We can significantly reduce the condensation in the bedroom by leaving the window open when we sleep. The downside is that in colder weather the bedroom is particularly cool. As a brief aside, Sally had a bright idea earlier in the week. “If the temperature difference between the engine room and the bedroom is causing condensation to form on the mattress and on the pillows next to our heads why don’t we just sleep with our heads at the other end of the bed until we can do something about the damp?” What a good idea, I thought. We’ve now had two nights of sleeping the wrong way round. It would have been a good idea apart from the fact that the reading lights and the very handy shelving are now next to our feet so we now can’t read in bed and that now, because Sally wants to maintain her positing on the port side of the bed I now have to sleep on her left rather than on her right. It’s a little thing, but in the last twenty years of sleeping with a significant other, I’ve always slept on the right hand side of the bed. I feel slightly disoriented and out of place. I suppose we’ll have to take the bull by the horns and sort out the specific condensation problem in the bedroom. Ultimately we’ll resolve this by installing diesel central heating and adding a radiator in the engine room. The short term solution is to add insulation to the bulkhead between the engine room and the bedroom. We’ll be doing that later today. Now, back to the main subject… If we close the windows to conserve the heat, the moisture laden air is retained within the boat. The air will then condense at the first opportunity on the nearest window throughout the boat and, in the bedroom, on the side of the boat next to the mattress in addition to the windows. On James the condensation is often reduced by the draughts coming into the boat rather than by the fact that the windows are open. James’ port side is fully exposed to the prevailing south westerly. There are five large windows along the port side and another five on the starboard side. in total there’s just over five square metres of single glazing to allow the heat to escape. A solution to the heat loss caused by the draughts from the windows would possibly be to replace the windows. I say possibly because I don’t know whether my thirty six year old windows with top hoppers are any worse than a more modern window with top hoppers. I could always replace the windows with double glazed units but double glazed units on narrowboats have had a great deal of bad press. Popular opinion suggests that the constant vibration and flexing from a moving boat with the engine running causes the seals to break down sooner or later, and it’s normally sooner than later. Less and less companies are providing double glazed units for narrowboats because of the claims they receive under warranty for broken seals. A more effective solution than replacing the existing windows with either single or double glazed units is to add secondary double glazing to the existing windows. I have discussed secondary double glazing with both boat owners and fitters. They all agree that it offers a significant reduction in both heat loss and condensation. I’ve also been in touch with boat owner Roger Gunkel. He fitted secondary double glazing to his boat four years ago. I asked him if he is still happy with them. Here’s his reply… “It must be a few years since I posted the secondary double glazing ideas and I have to say that it has been excellent. We are still using the same original sheets and there are no signs of yellowing or ageing. I replaced a couple of the self adhesive magnetic strips on the wooden frames, although the strips on the acrylic have all stayed firmly in place. We have long grown used to the huge difference in comfort levels through the cold months and the absence of condensation on the windows. There is the occasional light misting on the outer glass, due to a very slow ingress of moisture around the window seals, but it just takes a few seconds to lift off the acrylic and dry the misting. It’s only once every few weeks that we bother to do it as it is only slight. We could probably put some silica gel crystals in the gap to absorb any moisture, but it hardly seems worth it. It all seems a far cry from the constantly dripping and soaked single glazed days. The biggest improvement of course has been the evening out of the warmth throughout the boat. Because there are no massive cold window areas for the heat to escape through, there are also no areas for the cold air to drop down over your shoulders and ankles, so no continuous draughts that we always had before the DG. Previously, in the really cold weather, it only really felt warm near the stove, with areas nearer the windows always feeling much colder. Now, there is a gradual reduction in the heat as you move further from the lounge area, but it is an even reduction, and always feels comfortable. Our boat is a 57ft widebeam, but we only use the one stove in the lounge area for heating, with no radiators or other heat source. We like the front lounge area to be about 72-3 degrees F and as we like a cooler bedroom at the stern end, that stays at about 62 F with no other heat. We stopped using our oil fired central heating several years ago when we fitted the stove and haven’t used it since. One further benefit that we have had is a reduction in our heating costs as we are no longer chucking the heat out of the windows. Finally, we have also found Summer benefits to keeping the DG in place through the Summer. On those days when the sun streams through the windows heating up the inside of the boat, even with the blinds down, we have found that the DG traps the hot air between the glazing sheets, and keeps the boat a little cooler. With the blinds up in the cooler months on sunny days, the DG also retains the heat from the sun in the boat during the day, so less fuel needed. Hope some of that helps, and also helps to keep you warm over the next few months.” That email was the final confirmation I needed before investing in secondary double glazing for James. A popular supplier of polycarbonate sheets for secondary double glazing is Access Plastics Ltd in Ashbourne about fifteen miles north of Dublin. They trade on the web as 365plastics.com. Fitting secondary double glazing is simple, even for someone like myself with DIY dyslexia. Access Plastics will cut the sheets down to the size you need. I have ten windows. Six of them are 94cm x 56cm and four are 92cm x 53cm. You select a sheet size from the three available on the site. Access Plastics will cut the size you need from it. The smallest sheet available is 122cm x 122cm. I can accommodate two of my windows from each of these sheets. The company also sells magnetic tape kits for fixing the sheets to the window frame. The kit comes in two parts; the first part is adhesive on one side and steel on the other, the second is adhesive on one side and magnetic strip on the reverse. After the window frame has been thoroughly cleaned with a degreaser, the adhesive/magnetic strip is stuck around the edge of the sheet. The adhesive/steel strip is then fitted on top of the magnetic strip and held in place by magnetic attraction. The polycarbonate sheet is then pressed against the window’s internal frame. That’s all there is to it. All I need to do to ensure that there’s no moisture buildup between the new sheet and the glass is to place a small silica gel sachet between the two, and block up the window drains to prevent moisture from entering the space between the glass and the polycarbonate. I ordered the ten sheets and three tape kits yesterday. The kits come in two colours; white and brown. I’ve had to order three packs. They come in 15m lengths and, unfortunately, the total length I need is 31m. At least now I have some spare tape to fall back on in case of mistakes. The order including all of the cut to order sheets, the tape kits and delivery from Ireland to the marina has cost me £354. If it works, it will be a small price to pay for enhanced heat retention, condensation free windows and less of an infuriating roar from my neighbours’ noisy diesel heaters.

Living On A Narrowboat Podcasts I’ve started to add audio versions of my weekly newsletters and site articles to YouTube. I have to emphasise that they are audio files rather than videos because (A) I don’t have a video camera and even if I did (B) I don’t like videoing myself. I decided to add content to YouTube after halfheartedly trawling through the site’s thousands of narrowboat themed videos, and after receiving some very negative comments on a video I uploaded in September 2012. Most of the videos I’ve watched about narrowboats are quite disappointing. Many fail to address the topic they indicate in the title or fail to address the subject thoroughly enough. Some actually make claims about life afloat which are absolutely rubbish. My own video has received over 17,000 views in the last fourteen months and quite a few comments. Unfortunately, very few of the comments are positive. I try to remain objective when people tell me they don’t like something I’ve published. I’ve reviewed the comments made on the video, and I have to agree with many of them. I don’t don’t agree with the racist comments on there of course but I treat those with the contempt they so richly deserve. I agree with the comments that my video is nothing but an advert to try and sell one of my books and that it offers no real information about living afloat. The comments are correct. The video’s not good enough and doesn’t reflect the fact that I’ve spent literally thousands of hours creating a site full of free and useful content. I can’t give back the time wasted by 17,000+ viewers but I will try to make amends by adding the same useful content to YouTube as I have on this site. This is an experiment, and it’s in its very early stages. A potential issue is that the files I’ve uploaded aren’t videos as such, they’re audio files. I don’t have a video camera yet but I do have a very good professional microphone though and a half decent voice for audio. I’m considering investing in a camcorder. I don’t want to do half a job. If I’m going to make a professional job of the videos, I need a good camcorder. I’ve done some research and found one which is up to the task. Whether I buy it is up to you. I would like some feedback from you if you don’t mind. To date (Tuesday 26th November) I’ve added just two videos in the new format. The subject of one is narrowboat central heating and the other is collecting mail when you live afloat. Please follow the links to the videos on YouTube and tell me what you think. There’s a very short single question survey here. The survey will take you less than a minute to complete and I really would like your feedback. UPDATE: I’ve added a third video. It’s the downside of living on a narrowboat.

Living on a narrowboat with a disability I received an email recently with a suggestion for a newsletter article. The sender informed me that he’s considered taking a holiday on a narrowboat and even living aboard one but he didn’t know whether it was possible given that he has mobility problems so needs to use crutches most of the time. I know that there are quite a few trip boats which have been modified to allow easier access for those with mobility issues but I haven’t come across any disabled boat owners. The trip boats have been modified so that wheelchair users can roll on and off the boat via a ramp attached to the side of the boat. There is also sometimes a lift to transport both wheelchair and user from the deck to the boat’s cabin. These boats are for day hire only. Anything is possible given enough time and money but the problem with a narrowboat is that it is narrow. The doorways are narrow, as are the passageways through the boat, particularly through the galley, bathroom and bedroom areas. Even for a fully mobile adult moving from one end of a boat to the other is a tight squeeze. At five feet ten and twelve and a half stone I’m quite small but I still have to walk with a crab-like gait when I’m in the boat. There’s another issue which needs considering if you have a disability, you need to think about how you will operate the boat. Most narrowboats are steered by a person who stands on the back deck. Sometimes seats are fitted on cruiser stern narrowboats but they are designed more as bottom rests than seats so aren’t suitable for crew with mobility issues. Other issues such as heating and cooking need thinking about too. Solid fuel stoves need a supply of either coal or wood. The fuel needs to be manhandled on to the boat. Cooking is usually gas. The gas cylinders need to be lifted in and out of quite awkward gas lockers. Of course you could always overcome these problems by relying solely on diesel powered central heating and converting your boat to use electricity for cooking rather than gas. If you have mobility issues and are intent on living afloat, I would suggest that a wide beam is more practical than a narrowboat. Even then, the issues I’ve very briefly covered need careful consideration. I don’t know any seriously disabled narrowboat owners and, in the last four years of working at Calcutt Boats, I’ve only encountered two or three guests on either hire or private boats. They’ve managed to take short breaks but only with a full able bodied crew to assist them. Fitting Secondary Double Glazing Published 8th December 2013 We still have water on our pontoon which is an indication of the mild autumn weather so far. We usually turn the water off to the above ground taps on Meadows marina at the beginning of December when sub zero nights and marginally warmer days can cause damage to the plastic pipes. We’ve only had one or two nights below freezing so far this month but but much higher temperatures on the following days ensured that damage didn’t occur. I’ll have to turn the water off before 23rd December when Calcutt Boats closes down for Christmas. When that happens I’ll have to unreel my hose an extra twenty feet to get water from the nearest underground tap. It’s so hard living aboard a boat in a marina! I’ve had a slightly frustrating week this week. My secondary double glazing arrived on Friday but part of the order was wrong, and the camcorder I ordered from Amazon for adding videos to the site arrived, but without a memory card. I knew a memory card wasn’t included with the camcorder so I ordered one at the same time. Unfortunately it won’t be here until early next week so you’ll have to wait until next weekend before you see my pretty face on the site. I was further frustrated when I started to fit the polycarbonate secondary double glazing panels. Fixing and fitting isn’t something I do terribly well. I try so very hard, but I just can’t accomplish the most basic tasks. Here’s what went wrong this time.

A Condensation Solution – Secondary Double Glazing For Your Boat I placed an online order with Access Plastics for the secondary double glazing kit on 29th November. The ten custom cut sheets and three steel/magnetic tape kits arrived here at Calcutt seven days later all the way from Dublin. I was very impressed with the speed of the delivery. I would have been even more impressed if the steel tape they sent had been the brown that I ordered rather than the white reels they sent. “Never mind”, I thought, as usual like a bull in a china shop, anxious to get the sheets fitted and to hell with the consequences, “the magnetic tape is brown so once the sheet is mounted on the wall, the white steel tape will be masked by the brown magnetic tape.” Happy with my ill thought through reasoning, I laid the first sheet carefully on our dinette table and diligently prepared the first window frame. I unclipped and removed the curtain rail and curtains, thoroughly cleaned the window itself and then cleaned the window frame with a water based solvent to remove any grease on the wood which would prevent the adhesive on the steel tape from sticking. Next I peeled back the sheet’s protective film slightly on one side so that I could carefully stick the adhesive side of the magnetic tape all the way around the sheet making sure that none of the sections of tape overlapped. Then I placed the (unfortunately white) steel tape steel side downwards onto the sheet’s magnetic tape. Then I had a cup of excellent coffee. Sally’s given me an early Christmas present. She knows I love a good cup of coffee. She knows I love a cappuccino with frothed milk so thick you can mould it into small mountains then shower it with chocolate rain. Because she likes to see me happy (and hyperactive) she’s bought me a Nespresso CitiZ coffee machine. I love it. Sally’s daughter, Maricar, has quite an expensive coffee machine. Although it produces decent tasting coffee, it’s never hot. I like coffee which scalds my tongue. My new Nespresso coffee machine makes cappuccinos every bit as good as the high street cafe chains. At 35p a cup it’s an expensive treat at home but it’s about a tenth of the cost of buying one when we’re out. Sally scored ten out of ten with her choice of gift to help satisfy my addiction for good coffee, but just one out of ten in terms of practicality for the boat. The coffee machine draws 1.8KW which, sadly is 200 watts more than our inverter can handle. I’ll just have to make the most of my supply of gourmet coffee when we’re on our home mooring and slum it with instant while we’re out. After my coffee break, one of half a dozen in the course of the day, Sally helped me line up the polycarbonate sheet with the window frame then press the adhesive side of the steel tape firmly against the wood. Job done and an instant and dramatic improvement. The first window we did was the one we have the biggest problem with. It’s on the port side closest to the bow and is opposite the fire. On anything other than a windless day, cold air streams through the ill fitting top hopper and then races down our necks and swirls around our feet before being drawn into the roaring fire. The icy draught has now disappeared completely. There’s not a hint of a breeze on the back of my neck as I sit in a blissful stupor in front of the stove’s flickering flames. We only had time to fit four sheets on Friday; two on opposite sides at the very front of the boat and two in the bedroom. I was particularly keen to see what impact the panels had in the bedroom. Sally sleeps next to the window and suffers from the cold air from the window tumbling down her side of the bed. She made a jumbo “snake” draught excluder to act as a buffer between her and the side of the boat but it hasn’t really been effective. The two new sheets have been in place now for two nights and the snake draught excluder has been thrown away. Sally is now warm at night which means that she gets a better night’s sleep and I don’t get shouted at when she doesn’t get a good night’s sleep. We haven’t quite sorted out the problems in the bedroom yet (No, not that!). I think I’ve mentioned before that we have to be very careful when we fill our water tank. There’s a split in the hose between the water tank filler cap on the front deck and the water tank itself. If we don’t keep a very close eye on the tank as we fill it, the water overflows the tank, surges back up the hose, runs down the outside of the hose and then the outside of the tank before finding its way under the floor where it runs the full length of the boat before ending up in the engine room. Sally left the tank filling while she helped me fit the two panels in the bedroom. Fifteen minutes after we finished fitting the second panel she let out a startled squeak as she remembered the still running water before sprinting the full length of the boat to turn it off. She turned it off many gallons too late. After previously spending a considerable length of time vacuuming every last drop op water out of the engine room and under the bedroom floor to ensure that the back end of the boat was as dry as possible, I now have to do it all again. I spent about an hour and a half with the wet vac yesterday. I’ll finish it off today. Sally’s keeping a low profile at the moment so she’s not quite as vocal as she should be after the two cock ups I’ve made with the secondary double glazing. The first I’ll put down to my general ineptitude when it comes to DIY. The second is down to advancing age and my inability to use the half-decent brain I’ve had for the last fifty three years. After breakfast on Saturday morning, Sally drew back the curtains to let in what passes for light at this time of the year. When she reached the front of the boat where we had fitted the polycarbonate panels the previous afternoon she pulled back the curtains and exclaimed, “These panels are fantastic. You can hardly see that they’re there!”. Then, as she reached forward to caress the almost transparent plastic, “Actually, I can hardly tell that the panel’s there because it isn’t. It’s on the floor!” I’ve learned an important DIY lesson. When sticking adhesive tape to a window frame, it’s important to make sure that the window frame in question has a surface that the adhesive tape is likely to stick to. It’s Sally’s fault. The varnished window frames have been repeatedly polished to achieve a mirror- like finish. I should have lightly sanded the frames first. I’ll do that before I re- fix the fallen panel. The second mistake was with the steel tape. Remember I told you that Access Plastics sent white steel tape rather than the brown tape I ordered? I reasoned that we would probably leave the panels in place all year round because they work well in the summer to keep heat out in addition to retaining heat in the winter. By the time we came to fit the panels in the bedroom I had changed my mind. Sally and I like to sleep with the bedroom windows open in the summer so we can hear the sounds of the birds on the water. I decided to stick the brown magnetic tape against the frame this time instead of against the panel and fix the white steel tape against the panel instead. I was quite pleased with myself. This way, I thought smugly, when we take the panel off in the summer, all we’ll see is the brown magnetic tape against the brown window frame. We fitted the panel to the first window in the bedroom and stood back to admire our hard work. “Why is there a white band running all the way around the window?”, asked a puzzled Sally. Of course it was the white steel tape on the inside of the transparent sheet. I did what I should have done in the first place. I emailed Access Plastics to ask them to send the correct coloured tape. I expect it will come some time next week. When it arrives I’ll take the few panels off which have remained stuck to the shiny window frames, strip the white steel tape off and start all over again. These panels are easy to fit. Honestly. It’s just that I am to DIY what Prince Phillip is to international diplomacy. I am convinced that we are going to enjoy a huge improvement on the boat once they are in place. I guess we’ll just have to wait another week. The photo below is a window without the panel in place. It’s the window with the panel which fell off overnight.

The next one still has a panel in place. Can you see it? And finally, one of the bedroom panels complete with the ill though through addition of the white steel tape.

Living On A Narrowboat Podcasts Thank you, as ever, for your constructive feedback. Last week I asked you if you wanted video on the site. Your collective answer was a clear and resounding YES PLEASE! I’ve taken the bull by the horns and ordered the best quality entry level camcorder I could find. It’s the Sony PJ220 Handycam. It’s had fantastic reviews by bloggers who’ve raved about the quality of the videos that they’ve been able to produce with it. All I need to do now is overcome my “stage fright” – I really don’t like being either photographed or videod – and crack on with the job of translating the site content into beautiful pictures. I’m going to start with a walk-through of James and an explanation of the features which I think make the boat such a comfortable and practical floating home. The camcorder arrived on Friday but I can’t use it until I receive the memory card which I’ve had to order separately. While I wait for the card to arrive, I’ve been learning more about setting up a YouTube channel. It’s fascinating stuff. One of the important factors in determining a YouTube video ranking is how many subscribers a channel has. I have very few at the moment. Can you help me change that? You can see the work I’ve done on my new channel here. So far I’ve just concentrated on getting the layout right and making sure that, when I start to add videos on a regular basis next week, that there’s a degree of organisation and continuity. Each newsletter from now on, once I’ve got to grips with my new toy, will be in two formats; written blog posts and audio visual blog posts, or vlogs as they’re increasingly known. As with livingonanarrowboat.co.uk, my new YouTube channel will contain a number of different sections for different types of information. For example, there will be one section for the weekly newsletters, another based on the articles I’ve published on the site and another for video’s of cruises. I haven’t added the sections yet because I don’t have any videos yet to upload to them. I’ll add more sections over the coming weeks and months. I also need to add an introductory trailer to my channel home page. The introductory video will be in the middle of the page between the banner above and the video thumbnails beneath. You’ll only see this video if you haven’t yet subscribed to the channel. If you are already a subscriber, instead of the welcome video you’ll see a suggested list of videos to watch next based on your previous viewing. If you haven’t subscribed yet, please visit the channel home page and click the subscribe button at the top right hand side beneath the banner. You’ll then receive notification each time I add new content to YouTube. You’ll be helping yourself to learn more about living afloat, and you’ll be helping me to improve my video’s ranking. Thanks in advance for subscribing!

Living on a narrowboat with a disability – Update Last week I wrote about the practicality of living or holidaying afloat with a disability and suggested that hire boats able to accommodate those with mobility issues offered day trips only. There appear to be a few exceptions though. The Bruce Trust has a fleet of four purpose built wide beam boats on the Kennet and Avon canal. They range from six to twelve berth and all have lifts and or ramps, specially fitted showers and toilets, low level bunks and low set windows. The Bruce Trust is a none profit organisation and the hire charges reflect that. At the height of summer the weekly hire rate for their twelve berth boat is just £950 which is far less than a narrowboat of the same length. The boats appear to be ideal for both disabled holiday boaters and their carers. Roses And Castles Canal Art Published 15th December 2013 What a wonderful way to start the week. I was asked to collect a boat from Wigram’s Turn marina at Napton Junction and bring it back to the engineering workshop at the southern end of our Locks marina. The weather was beautiful on Monday. A weak autumnal sun was trying to break through a grey mist over the water. There wasn’t a breath of wind. Just half a dozen mallards disturbing the quiet with their slow mocking quacks and about a dozen juvenile swans gliding aimlessly up and down the canal. Wigram’s Turn marina is less than a mile along the canal from Calcutt but the trip took me just under two and a half hours by the time I had checked an unfamiliar boat and its engine before I set off, cruised along the canal, negotiated the Calcutt flight and then turned into the marina where I moored the boat and shut it down. For the rest of the week I’ve been blitzing the lock cottage garden. The lock cottage adjoins our office, reception and chandlery and is home to marina manager Martyn Tylson and his wife Sue. They’re not really into gardening so the area’s upkeep has been transferred to Calcutt Boats’ grounds team, Pat and I. Pat has been busy digging a 200m long 12″ deep trench for a new power cable for the moorings above the top lock this week so I’ve had the pleasure of attacking the garden on my own. The garden contains quite a few productive fruit trees. There are apple, pear, damson, cherry and a rather impressive walnut tree. The garden is also home to a rather unusual feature. There’s a full size lock running along the inside of the black and white iron railings which separate the garden from the canal footpath. This additional lock was originally used to weigh cargo carrying narrowboats when they left the Grand Union and entered the Oxford canal. I haven’t been able to find out when it was last operational but it’s probably safe to say that its only use has been as a garden water feature for at least the last century. I’ve now reduced the height and spread of the apple and pear trees, removed a truck full of dead reeds from the lock’s stagnant water, leveled the ground around the lock by removing some rather large ant hills, removed some well established willow from the lock wall, dug out six inches of earth and matted roots to reveal the original brick lock edging, removed half a dozen stands of self seeded buddleia and strimmed the garden to within an inch of its life. The garden looks a little bare at the moment but, if you approach Calcutt Boats from Napton Junction next spring, as you reach the top lock glance over to your left. I’m sure the garden will be a thing of beauty. Roses And Castles

As you probably know, I had my wooden cabin over plated with steel in November 2011. The original wooden front, side and rear doors were removed, as were the side and rear hatches. The boat was returned to me with new hatches and doors in unlined steel. Bare steel conducts heat out of the boat very quickly so as soon as possible I had the front and the side doors lined with ply and then painted. I didn’t line the doors in the engine room. The original engine room door panels were painted with “roses and castles”. Roses and castles is the name given to the artwork adorning many traditional narrowboats. The panels had suffered irreparable damage after years of water running down them from a warped and leaking hatch so I had to throw them away. No one knows the true origin of the elaborate artwork adorning traditional narrowboats but the practice became commonplace when working boatmen were forced to move their entire families on boat with them as a result of plummeting wages as the canal carriers tried to compete with a rapidly developing railway network and the boatmen’s inability to afford cottage rent. If you think there is very little space to live on a narrowboat these days, spare a thought for the family of an average working boatman on board a narrowboat. The entire family lived full time in the “boatman’s cabin”. This cabin was at the very back of a working narrowboat just behind the engine room and would offer a maximum living space of roughly six feet by ten feet. In sixty square feet the boatman and his wife had eat, sleep and keep all of their worldly possessions. Their water supply was kept in a can on the roof which could be topped up at standpipes along the canal. Clothes washing was done in the canal itself and hung up to dry on a washing line over the cargo area once the cargo had been discharged. Their toilet facility was either a bucket, a convenient hedge or over the side of the boat into the canal. Think about that next time you use a slightly smelly but very convenient pump-out loo. Boating families were looked down upon by the majority of Victorians living in homes on dry land so they did everything they could to smarten up their boats to show the pride they had in their tiny living space. They decorated the inside of the boat’s rear doors then folded them open for the world to see. They painted hatches, poles and planks, water cans, cupboard doors and food bowls. They created intricate crochet lace trimmings, ornamental and practical ropework and added highly polished brass fittings. The more I learn about traditional narrowboats’ decoration, the more tempted I am to add as much as possible James. I have to be practical though. Although James is thirty six years old, the boat doesn’t have the traditional engine room/boatman’s cabin layout so much of the old canal art would just look out of place. I’ll have to stick to a couple of rather fetching rear door panels. Shortly after the boat was delivered back to me after the new steel shell was added I asked Mel Jeffs, wife of our carpenter Roger at the time – now retired an living an idyllic existence as a continuous cruiser – to paint some canal art on my new rear door panels. She agreed, and she made an excellent job of it. Unfortunately they didn’t end up on my boat at the time. I don’t know what went wrong. It was a classic case of miscommunication. Mel finished painting the panels for me at the same time I left the marina to visit my family in Australia for two weeks. As soon as I returned to work I asked her husband Roger if the panels were ready. He said that they had been ready for two weeks but, because I hadn’t paid for them on time, Mel wasn’t happy to give them to me. I don’t know who to blame for the misunderstanding. I suspect we both had a hand in it but the end result was that Mel kept the two panels on their narrowboat, Beam. Time passed, Roger retired from Caluctt and the pair left the marina to realise their lifelong dream of cruising the network. As the couple left, so did my chances of getting my hands on the beautifully painted door panels. Earlier this week I spotted Beam moored near Caluctt Top lock. Later in the day I spoke to Roger when he walked his dog past where I was working in the cottage garden. Coincidentally, a few days earlier I had asked another retired carpenter who moors at Caluctt to fit some door panels for me. The panels had been decorated by a well meaning but inexperienced budding “artist”. To tell you the truth the end result looked like an accident with half a dozen yoghurt pots. I was keen to have the panels fitted to help retain the heat and combat the draught in the engine room but I would have probably painted over the artistry. So I was delighted to see Roger and delicately touched on the subject of the panels his wife painted two years earlier. He had good news and bad news for me. The good news was that he still had them, carefully wrapped in a spare dog blanket and stored under their dinette table. The bad news was that, just four days earlier, they had offered the two door panels for sale on eBay. Roger agreed to speak to his wife to see if she was (A) prepared to sell the panels to me after our previous misunderstanding and (B) withdraw the listing from eBay. I saw Roger again the following morning. Mel was happy for me to take them off her hands so, as there had been no bids placed, she had already removed them from the auction site. I paid her as soon as could race back to James, find £120 in cash and hurry back to Beam. The panels are now mine, and I am absolutely delighted with them. They are as good as an example of traditional narrowboat art as you will find anywhere. The photograph below is of a traditional narrowboat at the National Waterways Museum at Ellesmere port. The photo above is of one of my own door panels. As you can see, both panels have the traditional romantic “castles” scene on a raised panel at the top, the “roses” art on a sunken panel in the middle and a lower blank panel. I’ m going to have the panels fitted next week. I can’t wait to get out on the cut and casually pin the doors open when I’m moored up to show them off. I would have liked Mel to paint panels for the two pairs of side hatches too, but I don’t think that’s going to happen. I told her that I was going two write about her artistry in this week’s newsletter and asked if I could publish her contact details for anyone who was interested in asking her to paint for them. Mel explained how difficult it is to paint the panels on a narowboat where two people and a rather large and clumsy rottweiler are living full time. They could just about manage it when Roger was away at work for five days a week but since he’s retired having freshly painted panels dotted about the boat just isn’t practical. Maybe I’ll just have to ask young Stuart to refine his yoghurt pot approach.

Secondary Double Glazing Update Last week I told you that I fitted polycarbonate panels to four out of the boat’s ten windows. I also told you that one of the panels had fallen off the frame. This week, I rather embarrassed to report, another panel has headed south. I know the reason. It’s partly because of the varnished and highly polished mahogany window surrounds but also because of the screws holding the surround against the Parana pine cladding. The round headed screws – fourteen to a frame – stand proud of the woodwork so stop the adhesive steel tape which hold the sheets in place from adhering to a flat surface. I spent a couple of hours yesterday removing all of the screws, countersinking the holes a little deeper then replacing them again. Now all I need to do is lightly sand the varnished mahogany while I wait for the replacement steel tape to arrive. Earlier in the week I phoned Access Plastics to tell them that they had sent me the wrong colour tape. They agreed to send out three replacement rolls (after they had asked me to check the tape again just to make sure that I knew the difference between brown and white). They also asked me to package the incorrect tape ready for collection on Friday. The wrong tape has now been collected but the right tape has yet to arrive. The replacement tape was promised on Friday morning. I guess the Christmas post is to blame.

Living On A Narrowboat Video Update I’ve been champing at the bit to record my first video. I was waiting for a mini tripod for the camcorder before I could start. The tripod arrived on Friday. Circumstances have conspired against me since then. There was a question asked on the forum a few days ago about the practicality of downsizing from a house to a boat. I thought that a quick video about a narrowboat’s internal storage space was in order. Sally persuaded me otherwise as I set up the camcorder. “What are you doing?”, she asked suspiciously. I told her. “You must be joking! The boat is a mess.” I disagreed. I think we have a very tidy boat. I disagreed until Sally pointed out that she had just done the washing. Sally works long shifts as a carer at a nearby nursing home. She had just worked forty eight hours over four days and now had three days off. On her days off she’s like a whirlwind going through the boat. She uses some of her free time getting the washing done. The twin tub does a pretty good job of washing and then spinning the water out of the clean clothing but it then needs to be hung up to dry. There’s very little space to hang anything out of sight on a narrowboat, so the washing is usually hung from the curtain rails near the fire for twenty four hours. Sally had been working the twin tub to death ffor a full day before my intended video session so there was washing hanging everywhere. I could see her point. Sally is also in the process of sending one of her regular tea chest sized packages back to her family in the Philippines. They don’t have much money for anything else other than food, so Sally does what she can to make life a little easier for them. Old clothes and unused electrical devices, mismatched sets of crockery and cutlery, battered old shoes… Anything which could possibly be of use is packaged and dispatched. My planned video session coincided not only with Sally’s mission to rid the boat of dirty clothes, but also with one of her let’s-get-rid-of-everything-you-don’t- wear sessions. There were piles of old clothing everywhere. I had to agree. It wasn’t the best impression we could have given of a tidy and organised boat. I was still determined to make a video for the site. If I couldn’t use the camcorder inside, I would have to take it outside instead. I need to make an introductory trailer for both the site and for my new YouTube channel. I thought the perfect location would be standing on the grass covered peninsula next to James, overlooking the marina and with a scenic view of James on its mooring. I spent ten minutes experimenting yesterday before I gave up in frustration. Yesterday was very windy, especially around midday when I foolishly tried to use my lunch break from work to do the recording. The tripod was promptly blown over. I weighed it down so it wouldn’t move and recorded for five minutes. Back on the boat, I played the video back. It was hopeless. I couldn’t hear a word I said over the exaggerated howling of the wind. Still, Rome wasn’t built in a day. Sally’s back at work for four days from tomorrow. I’ll have the boat to myself so I’ll upload the first of the videos by mid week. Please do me a favour though. If you see any items of intimate apparel hanging to dry in the background don’t tell Sally. Narrowboat Storage Space Published 22nd December 2013 I love it when a plan comes together. Over the last two years I’ve been working hard to improve a key area of the site here and one which spoiled an otherwise beautiful marina. Calcutt Boats own 110 acres in total. Seventy acres are accessible agricultural land but the main part of the site is a very impressive forty acres including ten acres of water for two hundred and fifty moored boats. The largest of the two marinas, Meadows marina, was completed in 2006. To reach the moorings you turn off a very quiet lane about a mile south Napton village and drive sedately up a half mile long private drive with stables on either side before reaching the entrance to Calcutt Boats and our three stunning wild flower meadows. The road then bears left past an avenue of disease resistant elms and into the main car park which serves the west side of Locks marina and the east side of Meadows marina. Until recently, just before you reached the car park, you also had to pass our “storage area” (or tip to use a far more accurate term) on the left hand side. The storage area was home to a huge range of dilapidated machinery and engine parts including three redundant earth movers which were used in the construction of Locks marina. You can see one of them here in this post from March 2011. The road past the tip was lined with dozens of unused metal piers, hundreds of steel pilings and several old trailers. The edge of the car park was also used to store our stock of road planings and crushed brick which we needed to frequently repair the potholes in marina road before it was tarmaced. The site’s road roller, dumper and small excavator were also parked there. The area was a mess. Since March 2011 I’ve been slowly improving the area so it’s more in keeping with the rest of the site. The three large yellow machines, several scrap vehicles, three disused trailers and a selection of old machinery has been taken off site, our stock of old engines has been hidden from sight along with the unused piers and pilings, trees have been planted to hide what remains of the tip from public view, a six feet high earth bank has been created to hide the tip from the car park, several hundred tonnes of hardcore have been brought in to provide a level and stable surface to the now cleared front half acre of the tip area and, a couple of weeks ago, the first five of a planned couple of dozen storage containers arrived. Over the last few days I’ve been doing the final landscaping to help hide the new tip area from the container storage area. I’ve planted two hundred mixed hawthorn, quickthorn, blackthorn, spindle, hazel and field maple to form a aesthetically pleasing screen in years to come. I’m looking forward to watching it grow. Living On A Narrowboat Video Update Right! We’re up and running. I’ve overcome my stage fright, taken the bull by the horns and started recording. My first proper video on the subject of living afloat is narrowboat storage space (see below) which I recorded during my lunch break on a rather dismal Monday. I was quite happy with the result so I processed the video, uploaded it to YouTube and proudly showed Sally when she came home from work. She wasn’t quite as happy as me. She wanted to know why I hadn’t “tidied up” before shooting the video. Sally’s idea of tidying up and mine are poles apart. I think I’m pretty clean and tidy but Sally takes tidy to a whole new level. I tried my best. I made sure that there were no dirty dishes in the sink, hid my work clothes under the lower bunk behind my office desk and only popped briefly into our bedroom with the camera because the bed was in a state of disarray due to our ongoing attempts to find a solution to the damp between the mattress and the boat’s port side. My attempts weren’t good enough. Sally feels I’ve let the side down so, on behalf of Sally, I apologise for showing you a scruffy boat. The things I do for a quiet life! (Please don’t tell Sally I said that). I’ve also uploaded two further videos. One is a very short clip as an introduction to the new YouTube channel. You can see it here. You’ll only be able to see the video if you haven’t yet subscribed to the YouTube channel as it’s a trailer for the videos I’m adding there. The other, a five minute clip, is now on the site’s home page and is an introduction to me, my boat and livingonanarrowboat.co.uk. I recorded it on Friday during a lull in the rather strong wind we’ve had over the last week. Unfortunately the wind was still strong enough to sound like a gale on video, but it’s a start. At least you can get a feel for the space I enjoy even though I’m moored in a marina. I’ll be replacing this video next April or early May when the peninsula next to James will be covered with flowers and the trees will be under a heavy cloak of spring blossom. Until then, you’ll have to make do with this one. Please note that all of the videos are HD so they are suitable for watching full screen without any loss of quality. If you want to watch them full screen, just click on the right hand icon on the video tool bar, the one which looks like four brackets. I would love to hear what you think about the video’s so far. Are they too long, short or boring? Are they a useful addition to the written articles on the site? Would you like to see more of them and, if so, what subjects would you like to see. Please let me know.

Narrowboat Storage Space In preparation for recording this video I searched the site to see what I’ve written in the past on the subject. It’s an important issue. I thought I had covered it in detail but I haven’t as far as I can tell. There are over 4,500 posts and pages on the site now so I may have missed a dedicated post on the subject but I don’t think so.

Object 1 It’s very important to give proper consideration to narrowboat storage space before you start to look for a boat in earnest. There’s very little space in which to store all your worldly possessions when you make the move from a bricks and mortar home to a narrowboat. My own boat James is 62′ long but only 48′ of that is internal living space, and that internal living space includes the engine room. James is a traditional (trad) stern narrowboat which means that the engine is housed inside the boat. A semi traditional or cruiser stern narrowboat has a large back deck with the engine under the deck boards. Semi trads and cruiser sterns offer space for a number of people to stand and chat to the helmsman while traveling but the internal storage space is lost. I use the engine room to store wet weather gear, tools, boat cleaning equipment and any other odds and ends which I don’t want inside the rest of the boat. My engine room is currently unheated (which causes damp problems in the bedroom just in front of the engine room, but when I have my central heating system put in early next year, there will also be a heated towel rail to help dry damp clothing. Damp clothing is a big part of life afloat so the ability to dry wet and sometimes dirty clothing away from the boat’s clean interior is a big bonus. My living space is forty eight feet long but the external width of the boat is only 6’10″. The internal width is a foot less. For ease of calculation though I’ll call the internal width 6′ which means that I have a total of 288 square feet of living space. To put that into perspective, just the lounge in my old marital home was 324 square feet. My lounge contained just a three piece suite and a television cabinet. My boat, with just 88% of the space I had in the area which I used to use just to sit mindlessly and stare at a box in the corner of the room, has to house everything both Sally and I plus two spaniels need to live in comfort. There are over 1,000 narrowboats for sale at any one time. Many are described as perfect for living aboard, but beware of boats which are described as either spacious or open plan. These boats simply don’t have any or have very little built in furniture or storage space. Here’s an example.

This boat was advertised on eBay. It was advertised as “designed for those wanting to live aboard”. The boat didn’t actually have a bad specification for a liveaboard boat but as far as I’m concerned the storage space was woefully inadequate. The boat was priced at £40,000 which, given that it was 70′ long and had a decent amount of equipment on board, wasn’t a bad price. It wasn’t cheap but it wasn’t bad. However, boat builders can offer boats like this for less money because they haven’t had to incur the time or the money involved in fully fitting it out. Look at the photo. This shows what is probably half of the internal living space. How many cupboards, drawers or shelves can you see? There’s just the few in the galley area in the foreground and absolutely nothing else. And where do you sit and eat on this boat? There’s no fixed dinette with handy storage underneath like I have on James. You would have to either use a free standing dining table or eat off your lap on the leather sofa. In the same area on James I have a set of three shelves either side of the front doors we use to store books and DVDs. Each set of shelves has a spacious two or three shelf cupboard underneath. one is used for dog toys, grooming equipment, leads etc and the other is used for storing firelighters, kindling and a three or four day supply of logs. Next to the cupboards and opposite the stove are L shaped bench seats. All of them have storage built underneath. One is used to house the (over used) vacuum cleaner and an anchor, chain and rope. I know it’s a strange combination but it works for us. The other is used for storing rucksacks and other bags. Further back towards the galley is the Pullman dinette, a fixed table with bench seats either side. Each of the seats has storage underneath, accessible via drawers in the end, where we keep crockery and cooking utensils and top opening storage next to the windows where we keep spare duvets in vacuum bags. In addition to the above, there is a very handy shelf along the starboard side just beneath the gunnel. In all, there are thirteen shelves, four under seat top opening storage compartments and five end of seat drawers in the front section of James compared to none at all in the “spacious open plan” boat in the photograph. Which do you think is more practical? James has plenty more storage in the back half of the boat. The galley, tiny as it is, has cupboards and drawers under the sink and small work surface then behind the galley we have what Sally refers to as her utility room. This area is home to the set of side doors and hatches either side of the boat. There are two ply bulkheads separating the galley from the bunk/office area. Each bulkhead used to have a folding door fitted but the doors stopped the heat from the stove reaching any further back than the galley so I took them off. Now there’s just an alcove either side of the boat next to the hatches. These alcoves offer really handy additional storage space. We have the twin tub washing machine on a raised platform on the port side. Under the washing machine there’s space for plastic boxes for washing powder and conditioner and a couple of dozen tins of dog food. On the starboard side is another plastic box large enough to hold the contents of a 15kg dog biscuit bag, dog drinking and eating bowls, mops and brushes and a small stock of wine (Apparently the three dozen bottles of red I used to keep here before I met Sally is an unnecessarily large supply). Just above head height in both of the alcoves is a rail for hanging drying washing. In the office/bunk area there is an abundance of storage space. There are three bunks here, but I’ve taken the mattress off the one on the port side and have it set up permanently as a desk to house my laptop, printer, files… and my new gourmet coffee machine. Thank you Sally, but I’m drinking so much of the stuff now that I’m in a permanent state of over excitement. The two bunks on the starboard side are used for storage. It’s the only area of the boat which looks a little untidy. We want to keep the bunks for guests (which we never have) so we don’t want to change the area into more aesthetically appealing permanent storage space. In this area there are also two five drawer chests. Behind the bunk area is our tiny walk through bathroom. It’s just four feet long and the width of the boat. More storage space has been built into every spare inch of space. There’s a shower cubicle on the port side with shelves to one side. On the starboard side is our Porta Potti Elegance toilet, a hand basin with storage underneath and a medicine cabinet. Behind the bathroom is our bedroom. Again, every spare inch has been used. There’s a small double bed – 6’3″ x 4’0″ – with six drawers accessible from the side and a further storage space accessible via a hatch in the bed base once the mattress is lifted. There’s also a wardrobe. a shelf on the port side, another on the starboard side and a third on the bulkhead between the engine room and the bedroom. That’s it. LOADS of storage space. Oh, I nearly forgot. There’s still more storage space on the front deck. When I moved on board James the cratch cover looked very sorry for itself and didn’t do a very effective job of protecting the front deck. I had a new cover fitted plus a cratch board to give the cover support in addition to the existing side rails. I also bought plastic mats for the deck and cut them to shape. We now have a very handy additional twenty square feet of storage space before we go inside the boat. We keep a hose and reel in this area plus a storage box full of coal, another full of logs and muddy shoes and boots. We also keep a towel or two here for drying the underside of wet dogs when they’ve been out for a run on wet days. There’s an additional feature on the front deck which is very handy for the summer months. There’s a bracket just beneath the cratch board where we can fit a table top with fold down legs when we fancy an al fresco meal. The table top is stored clipped vertically to the starboard side inside the boat next to the stove. The cratch cover not only provides additional storage space but also helps prevent draughts through the front doors. It’s a very handy addition to the boat. That’s James for you. I didn’t choose the internal layout but there’s very little about it I would change if I were to have a boat built from scratch. I think that all I would do would be to have my office at the very back of the boat in a traditional boatman’s cabin where I could shut myself off and work without distraction but I wouldn’t change the storage. Maybe, out of necessity, I would reduce the storage slightly. We currently have a cassette toilet. This type has its advantages but there are significant disadvantages too. One of them is that, with a waste holding tank of just twenty one litres, the tank needs to be manually carried to a waste disposal tank every two or three days. A full tank weight slightly less than a bag of coal. It’s hard work carrying it through the boat from the bathroom, lifting it onto the pier then carrying it down a hill to where the car is parked and then driving it to the disposal point. A pump out toilet would be much easier to manage. A pump out toilet has a much larger waste tank. Tanks of three hundred litres or more are not unusual so the period between essential emptying can be extended to weeks rather than days. However, additional space would need to be allocated for the much bigger tank. You often find that the toilet waste tank extends from underneath the toilet in the bathroom to underneath the fixed bed in the bedroom. What you think are waves sloshing against the outside of the boat may be waves of an entirely different kind underneath you. I’ve been on a few liveaboard boats where there hasn’t been adequate storage space and, to be quite frank, they look a mess. They certainly don’t look either comfortable or homely. There’s clothes and equipment piled in corners and on, around and under free standing furniture. The boat owners quite often have to resort to storing stuff they can’t fit inside the boat on the boat’s roof. The large expanse of flat roof is possibly an obvious place to store surplus possessions but you have to think carefully about what you can reasonably store here. The more weight you add to your roof, the higher the boat’s centre of gravity and the more unstable it becomes. There’s an excellent explanation of why this is such a problem here on the forum. Another possible problem you’ll encounter if you have things piled too high on the roof is negotiating low bridges and tunnels. Adequate storage is essential if you’re going to live comfortably on your boat. Sally and I haven’t quite got the balance right yet. To be honest, I think we buy too many gadgets that we don’t really need. Many of them are used for a little while and then taken to our storage container out of the way until we want to use them again (which we never do). We’ve had a storage container now for a year and a half. The twenty foot long container costs us £70 a month. Sally has been slowly but surely emptying it. I’ve left it all up to her because it’s main function is as storage for her house contents. I wrote about the logistics of downsizing from a house to a boat in this post. It’s a useful addition to the information here. Now I’ve told you how important it is to use your space wisely, let me tell you about the still unfitted secondary double glazing panels which are cluttering up the boat.

Secondary Double Glazing Update Last week I told you that I fitted polycarbonate panels to four out of the boat’s ten windows. I also told you that one of the panels had fallen off the frame. This week, I rather embarrassed to report, another panel has headed south. I know the reason. It’s partly because of the varnished and highly polished mahogany window surrounds but also because of the screws holding the surround against the Parana pine cladding. The round headed screws – fourteen to a frame – stand proud of the woodwork so stop the adhesive steel tape which hold the sheets in place from adhering to a flat surface. I spent a couple of hours yesterday removing all of the screws, countersinking the holes a little deeper then replacing them again. Now all I need to do is lightly sand the varnished mahogany while I wait for the replacement steel tape to arrive. Earlier in the week I phoned Access Plastics to tell them that they had sent me the wrong colour tape. They agreed to send out three replacement rolls (after they had asked me to check the tape again just to make sure that I knew the difference between brown and white). They also asked me to package the incorrect tape ready for collection on Friday. The wrong tape has now been collected but the right tape has yet to arrive. The replacement tape was promised on Friday morning. I guess the Christmas post is to blame. Good news! The replacement tape arrived on Tuesday. Bad news! The replacement tape was the same glaring white as the original incorrect tape. Access Plastics also kindly sent me three additional rolls of magnetic tape that I neither need nor want. I telephoned them on Wednesday to ask why they sent white steel tape again. “We don’t have any brown steel tape”, was the mystifying reply. I reminded him that I had placed an order for brown steel tape to match my brown window frames. “I Know”, he acknowledged, “I was the one who processed your order.” I asked him, if he had remembered taking the order for brown steel tape why the company had dispatched white steel tape TWICE. “Because we don’t have any brown steel tape.” I told him how unhappy I was with the white tape and that I was considering asking for a refund. “I SUPPOSE I’LL HAVE TO GET SOME IN THEN!”, he shouted. He actually shouted. I had simply asked him to send me the product that I had ordered from him, a product which he advertises on his site, and he shouted at me. I didn’t seem to be getting anywhere with him so I thought of a solution. I offered to source the brown steel tape myself, buy enough to do the job and ask Access Plastics to refund the full amount I have to pay for it. He agreed. I confirmed the details of our conversation to him via email. He responded saying that they have been having a problem with their brown steel tape supplier for some time now but that he expects to take delivery of an order for the tape at the end of January at the earliest. That won’t help me much during the first month of the year when I want to prevent icy draughts in the boat. I sent the email to Access Plastics two days ago. I haven’t found an alternate supply yet so I’m beginning to think that there’s another and better solution. Maybe I should fit the polycarbonate panels now using the white steel tape that I already have so I get the benefit of the panels immediately and then switch the tape over when Access Plastics receive their supply. The whole thing is a bit of a pain in the bum whatever I do but maybe this will be the most practical solution. I had better call Access Plastics again. I’m not looking forward to that. Managing Christmas Afloat Published 29th December 2013 My working year is over. Over as far as Calcutt Boats is concerned anyway. I have a sneaking suspicion that I’ll be spending quite a few more hours working on this site before I see the annual fireworks over Big Ben. I had an exciting few days before we closed for business on Monday afternoon. I don’t know whether you’ve noticed, but it’s been a tad windy over the last few days. We have three paint/repair tents at Calcutt Boats; two at the end of Locks marina close to the engineering and carpentry workshops and another straddling the old single lock next to the new (80 year old) Calcutt Middle lock at the end of our wharf. We use it for refurbishing our hire fleet boats when the fleet is out of commission during the winter months. Last Wednesday night the heavy duty canvas blew off the steel frame. The canvas has been there for years. It’s never moved an inch in all the years it’s been there but on Thursday morning when we turned up for work the tubular metal frame was bare. Replacing the canvas and securing it took five of us all day. Just pulling the canvas back over the frame took an enormous amount of effort. The job would have been much easier if the collective bulk of the office staff had been available but they were all busy with essential pre Christmas tasks (mainly eating mince pies and checking Facebook accounts). We finished securing the canvas cover at dusk on Thursday. On Friday I was off work and everyone else on the project returned to more pressing duties. On Monday, our last day, the weather was awful. I went to work in the morning expecting to spend my last day felling the final few oak in the woods. The gale force wind and torrential rain put paid to that idea, as did a rather more pressing mission. The wharf paint tent was in danger of taking off again. Although the canvas skirt had been tied down as well as possible, they weren’t tied down well enough to cope with 45-50mph wind. One of the wharf staff, Rob, and I spent a couple of hours in the morning threading scaffolding poles into the sewn sleeve at the bottom of the canvas skirt and then roping them securely to the frame. It was an exciting morning with the wind trying to rip the canvas out of our hands while the horizontal rain soaked us to the skin. I hope for a quieter afternoon somewhere more sheltered than the open wharf but I was out of luck. All of our hire fleet plus the four narrowboats we look after for the Royal Navy were on the moored on the wharf. Unfortunately for us they were moored too far away from the power points we needed to use to connect them to shore power. Getting them plugged into the mains was essential before we finished for the Christmas break. All of the boats have cruiser sterns which means that rain can get into the engine bay after running off the deck boards. Surplus water is removed from the engine bay by the automatic bilge pumps. The bilge pumps will only work of course if there’s power to them. If there’s a lot of rain over the Christmas period, and plenty is forecast, if the batteries fail so will the bilge pumps so we could end up with boats with a dangerous amount of water in the engine bay. We had a very good example of this a couple of years ago. The boat in question belonged to a moorer in Locks marina. One of our fitters noticed that the back end was sitting very low in the water as he passed in another boat. He lifted what was left of the deck board over the engine bay to find that the water level had risen over the bearers and half way up the engine. They batteries were ruined. The boat nearly sank. We managed to pole the boat over to the slipway (the engine wouldn’t start) with water lapping at the top of the gunnels and the boat rocking in an alarming fashion. We managed to pull it of the marina before it became a plaything of the fishes but the remedial work cost the owner a pretty penny. So we had to pull a dozen boats along the wharf closer to the power points in driving rain and a howling gale. Of course, as luck would have it, we had to pull the boats sideways on into the gale. Do you realise how much resistance the side of even a small narrowboat offers? Moving the boats took us the rest of the afternoon and, naturally, as we tied the last rope on the last boat, the rain stopped and the wind dropped. The wind dropping was just a temporary reprieve. It resumed with a vengeance later on in the evening and increased in force after Sally and I went to bed. We are used to a bit of a stiff breeze at Calcutt but this really took the biscuit. I swear that I was in danger of being thrown out of bed a couple of times, and not just by Sally for snoring. The storm reached its peak just after midnight. The boat rocked, the rain lashed against the windows, the wind howled, and Sally howled too as she was treated to an unexpected still-in-the-bed shower. The wind was so strong and the rain so heavy that, for a couple of very interesting minutes, sheets of water were forced upwards until they found the cracks around the closed hopper window in the bedroom before spraying Sally with icy rainwater. Sally temporarily moved her bed to the front of the boat next to the stove and close to a window which didn’t leak. She left me laying in the wet patch. Why always me? We’ve had a few pretty windy days since then but MORE HERE

The Practicality (And Desirability) Of Hosting Christmas Afloat “What’s Christmas like on a narrowboat?”, I’ve been asked a few times recently. “Do you sit down with a group of friends or family for a celebration meal? How do you manage in such a small space?” I’m afraid the simple answer is that we don’t do Christmas on board James. It’s too much like hard work and, to be honest, neither Sally nor I are big fans of Christmas overindulgance. Once upon a time I used to really look forward to a much needed week and a half off over Christmas. I had staff to manage, customers to keep happy and difficult to find payments to find for my bank and for Revenue and Customs. My business became increasingly stressful to manage and Christmas was a time when the world slowed down. If I took a break from work at any other time of the year I was constantly worrying about what was happening in and around the business all the time I was away. During the Christmas break nothing happened at all. Everyone else was on holiday too. I could relax. These days I have no responsibility at work at all. The worst that can happen when I’m away for a week or two is that I’ll come back to slightly longer grass. There’s no stress when I’m away from work at any time of the year so the Christmas break isn’t as important to me as it once was. Christmas is more for children than it is for us olduns. It’s a time for far to high expectations to be dashed and for parents to plunge deeper into debt. I watched Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone over Christmas. The scene where spoiled Dudley Dursley exploded in a fit of rage when he was told that he only had thirty six presents compared with the previous year’s thirty seven reminded me of previous Christmas days with my own children. They weren’t spoiled children but but, like so many modern day children, they expected an extraordinary value and number of gifts to keep up with their peers. Finding the space for presents and a tree to put them round, plus the space to sleep a number of over excited and expectant children is very difficult on a narrowboat. Once the presents have been opened on Christmas day, the main focus is on Christmas dinner. Christmas dinner is better shared with a large group of people rather than just a select few. That’s where the problems begin on a narrowboat. There simply isn’t the space. James is optimised for the comfort of two people, four at a push, and four is a push. Christmas is a time drinking to excess – or at least drinking over the safe drink drive limit – and consequently multi day stays. We have a fixed double on James for Sally and I and then the option of using two of the three bunks we usually use for storage for people to sleep in. The third bunk space is used as my office desk so we can’t use that. Even if we had somewhere for our guests to sleep, creating the usual over-the- top Christmas day feast would be very difficult. I used to do most of the cooking at Christmas. We usually went to my mother- in-law’s house for the festivities. Even though the house was a modest three bed semi, there was a huge amount of space compared to what we have on the boat. I would usually lock myself in the kitchen at about 10am with a huge selection of raw ingredients (and a bottle of good red wine) and emerge five or six hours later with enough food to feed an army. Our kitchen on James is very modest. There’s a work surface shoe horned into the space between the hob and the draining board which, at 500mm square, is just large enough to take a chopping board. There’s another work surface of equal size opposite the hob above the fridge. The cooker isn’t quite full sized so there’s no chance of fitting even a modest turkey in it and there’s certainly no space to put anything else in the oven with the bird. We have a standard waist high fridge with a tiny freezer compartment at the top. On the rare occasions when we overflow the fridge at any other time of the year we use the engine room, the coolest area on the boat, to store perishables. The fridge is just large enough to store food for the two of us for three or four days so there’s no chance of accommodating enough food for a festive mob. Even though there is more storage space on James than there is on most narrowboats, there isn’t enough room to store the mass of utensils, cutlery and crockery needed to both cook and present even the most modest Christmas dinner. And even if I found room to store the vast array of serving dishes, plates and glasses, I certainly wouldn’t have the space to display them when full of food. And then there’s the toilet. We have a Porta Potti Elegance cassette toilet. It works fine for us but it takes a bit of getting used to if you’re used to a normal household toilet where you can flush away your unmentionables with an unlimited amount of water delivered to the toilet bowl with enough force to wash even the most stubborn stains away. There’s a routine to adhere to if you don’t want to leave a disgusting, difficult to clean mess in the toilet bowl. You have to introduce a little water into the bottom of the dry toilet bowl, lay a couple of pieces of toilet paper, crossed like a target, in the water, sit and strain and then, as quickly as possible, open the flap to drop the whole unsightly mess into the 21l waste tank beneath. The process takes a bit of getting used to so isn’t ideal for those with a delicate disposition. It’s an interesting few minutes when we have new, none boating guests on board as either Sally or I take them into the bathroom to explain how to operate the toilet depending on the bodily function required. Their initial look of puzzlement turns to one of dismay as the instruction reaches its grand finalé. Given the amount of eating and drinking done during the festivities, an effective and hassle free toilet is a must. Of course, many boaters have the far more convenient dump through toilets but even these aren’t ideal. The water used for the toilet’s flush is usually – not always – taken from the boat’s main water tank. The water tank holds a finite supply, unlike the mains fed household toilets, so the flush is limited to a moderate trickle at best. Blockages caused by the use of copious amounts of toilet paper aren’t uncommon. Even with these difficulties to overcome, I’m sure there are boaters who host successful Christmas celebrations on board, but I’m not one of them. To tell you the truth, I’m appalled these days at the amount of money which is spent hosting a typical Christmas day. For example, take the last few days Sally and I spent with Sally’s daughter Maricar and her partner Ollie. Maricar and Ollie aren’t wealthy but they have good jobs and spend, to me, a phenomenal amount on the finer things in life. We started the meal drinking Moet & Chandon champagne served with Hibiscus flowers then followed that with two or three bottles of lesser vintage but still prohibitively expensive Châteauneuf-du-Pape. The meal was followed by a ridiculous amount of alcohol. I’ve always enjoyed letting what’s left of my hair down with a drink or two but as I’ve matured I’ve started to resent the financial cost of a good night out (or in) and the cost to my health the following day. To get the party going we downed double shots of Jack Daniels with honey, Wild Turkey and Wild Turkey American Honey Liqueur. Then we progressed to cocktails. We had a quick mojito followed by a couple of slow Old Fashioneds. I think I enjoyed the evening but I’m not really sure what went on. All I know for certain is that the following day was very painful, and not just because of the rare and very unsettling hangover I experienced. Once we had all at least partially recovered from the “pleasure” of the previous evening we decided, I think because we hadn’t spent enough money the previous day, to go to the cinema. Have you been recently? Four of us went. The tickets alone cost us £37. I had barely recovered from the shock when we were forced to pay another £20 for a couple of small bottles of water and boxes of popcorn. The third and final shock was the film itself. I wish Walter Mitty had kept his life secret and not shared it with me. Sally was asleep in her chair within ten minutes. I managed to stay awake. I don’t know why. The end result was that we paid nearly £60 to watch a film which would have cost us about £2 if we waited six months and ordered it through our unlimited £7.99 a month LOVEFiLM account. We also drank nearly £200 worth of alcohol the previous day and stuffed ourselves with too much food costing about the same amount as the drink. We also exchanged presents and cards which none of us need. I have nothing against the concept of Christmas in as much as it’s a time for families to get together and enjoy each other’s company although, quite often, they don’t. What I object to is the expected and often unaffordable extravagance over the festive period. The Co-operative bank claims that most of their customers don’t pay off their Christmas debts until at least March and a staggering 22% don’t envisage paying off their Christmas debts at all during the course of the year! I moved on to a narrowboat after I closed my business as a result of HM Revenue and Customs forcing me into bankruptcy. Although my accumulated debt was over expenditure on the business rather personal spending, the experience still drilled into me the need to only buy what I can afford. I don’t earn much money these days, but I don’t need much money to live happily. Much as I enjoyed the over indulgence on Christmas and Boxing day, I would have been just as happy here on James just with Sally and the dogs. A traditional Christmas isn’t practical on board a narrowboat but typical owners of liveaboard narrowboats are unusual creatures. They don’t need “stuff”. They don’t need to spend money they don’t have as an escape mechanism for stressed and unhappy lives. “Bah, humbug!”, I hear you cry. You may be right, but do you know what, I don’t care. Both Sally and I are supremely happy just being on our boat living close to nature. Long may it continue!

Liveaboard Case Study – The Pearl Tony and Jane Robinson believe in forward planning. They stated their narrowboat fund thirty years before buying their own boat. Now the two retired education workers moor in a marina for the winter then explore the waterways during the warmer months. Here’s their story. Linked Contents Narrowboat Electrics Part 2: Generators and Inverters By Tim Davis This is the second of two articles exploring power generation and use on board narrowboats. The first part is a very detailed look at batteries. You can read it here. Generators come in different types. The petrol hand pull type, and the more expensive “suitcase” type which are now very quiet. Petrol Hand Pull Generators These are very useful but great care must be taken with petrol storage and use – fumes dropping into the cabin from a generator being filled on deck combining with the gas cooker being on have caused many an explosion – so always fill on the bank! These output AC mains 230V which you simply run from the plug on the generator to the socket on the back of the boat. The boats electrics see the power as a landline (you may have a transfer switch that will need to be set to landline position). All your 230v sockets will work as normal, though you will only have the maximum output that your particular generator has to offer. A small generator is typically 1000W and a larger one maybe 3000W, so you do need to choose a generator that will run everything you have on board. If you have a washing machine you will probably need at least a 2000W generator and probably a 3000W. Really importantly, don’t forget that when your generator is running to turn the mains battery charger on too! You may as well get some valuable charge in while the washing machine is on! This is where having a smaller output charger might be a benefit as it will run happily on a lower powered generator- some of my customers have two chargers – a big one when on shore power and a smaller one when using the genny. Most generators do have a 12V charging plug as well, but they generally only output a low taper charge of about 6 amps so you are far better off using the mains output to run your 3 step charger instead. Built in suitcase diesel generators These offer all the benefits of the petrol generator but are built into the boat, enclosed in a sound proof capsule and start by pressing a button inside the boat. I have one of these and it works very well. Generator Use The usual practice is to “save up” things that require a lot of power and do them all at once when the generator is on. So I generally do the washing, vacuum the boat and run the immersion heater to heat my water, and of course put the battery charger on at the same time as watching the television! You get into a routine really quite quickly. Other types of generator A/C Mains generators mounted on the main engine like another alternator. This is actually another alternator on the boats main engine but it outputs 230V mains which is fed into your system through a transfer switch (see below). They are usually 3500 watts and are quite expensive (around £2K). They basically allow you to run heavy 230v loads while the engine is running without having to use the batteries and an inverter. Inverters Now this is the important one and a great source of flat batteries if used incorrectly! An inverter is a device that takes your precious 12V power from the battery bank and converts it into 230V mains electricity which is then fed into your boat through a transfer switch (see below). It sounds great doesn’t it? Mains power with no noise coming from nowhere by magic! However, beware – generating mains this way is VERY costly on battery power. Let’s take an example…. A boater has an electric kettle (bad idea!) that takes 3 minutes to boil and consumes 3kw of power to do so. The boater has a 3kw inverter on board so that’s all fine – it will work! However if we do the sums 3000W divided by 12V = 250 amps -that’s a massive amount to draw from the batteries and remember leisure batteries DON’T like a high current draw. So we have a general rule of thumb here. Avoid using an Inverter to run things that heat up as they all consume VAST amounts of power. The inverter should be used for light duty things like entertainment equipment and such like. If you are in a position where you need to run the washing machine and don’t have a generator of any sort but do have a big inverter then the rule is you MUST run the engine at the same time as drawing that load so that you are at least putting the bulk of the current back in AS you draw it out through the inverter. It also pays to have one of the alternator controllers I mentioned earlier to optimise the charge going in. In fact if you have a big alternator, a charge controller and a decent inverter coupled with a decent sized battery bank then you have kind of got all the benefits of a portable generator BUT you are still running that big main engine, that’s where generators score as they are small engines consuming much less fuel and much quieter. The other golden rule with inverters is to switch them OFF when you don’t need 230 power. They all consume valuable power (around 2 amps typically) just sitting in idle mode, though some new inverters do have a standby function that reduces this I would still adopt the mantra of if you don’t need it right now TURN IT OFF. That goes for ANY device on board not just inverters. Transfer Switches I mentioned that your portable generators just plug into the landline, but if you have a built in one and an inverter there must be some way of separating these 230V power sources in case you were daft enough (by mistake of course!) to have them all on at once! This is done using a Transfer Switch. This is usually a manual switch with either two positions (Land line, Inverter) or three (Land line, Inverter, Generator). So you select your power source then either plug it in or switch it on depending on what the power source is. Some newer boats have automatic transfer switches that will detect the incoming mains power source and select accordingly. Tips and Tricks for getting the best out of your power system. OK, this is a critical bit of the article – there’s lots you can do both technology wise AND with the way you think about and use power that can make a huge difference for those of you living without that marvelous landline plugged in like a soothing umbilical cord! Part of living afloat, if you’ve recently come from land is changing your whole thought process of how you live. Minimising your power draw DO have a12V fridge, and if you really must, a 12V freezer. I have a combined 12V fridge freezer that fits under the counter taking up the space of a normal fridge. Obviously the fridge is smaller but it has an 18 litre freezer compartment with its own door. Advantage: only one compressor to run and takes less space! Many new built boats have a 230v mains fridge – great if you are plugged in but a nightmare to live with on the cut as you have to have an inverter on with all the loss that goes with it for 24 hours every day! Change your lighting for LED bulbs. This is a relatively new invention. LED lights now give fabulous light output in a nice warm tone, but with a fraction of the current draw. If you have say fifteen 20W halogen lights on your boat, when switched on they will draw 25 amps. That’s a huge amount! Replace them with LED bulbs. You don’t have to change the fittings. You will draw around 2.25 amps for a similar level of brightness. For further technical information on LEDs go to www.baddiethepirate.co.uk Note that you can also convert favourite table lamps from 230v to LED and 12V. -You really can’t tell the difference when they are lit! Try to minimise use of an inverter to an absolute minimum – try to run as much as possible on 12V power. There are many good 12V TVs these days for example. What about laptops? Most are a voltage of around 18 or 19 volts but they do vary. As a result most people switch the inverter on to run them. If you are working from the boat this might mean the inverter is on all day – not good! It is possible to buy from shops like Maplin or indeed on line a 12V charger. This takes 12V from your boat and steps it up to the required voltage of the laptop. Be careful with other bits of equipment that run on 12V but normally have a mains adapter. They will likely not like the variable nature of boats voltage (between 14.4 and 11.5) if you just connect them directly to the 12V but it can be done using a voltage stabaliser unit. This sits in the power line to the device and ensures it always gets exactly 12V. Please contact me for further info. So there is one critical message in here. You need 12V sockets throughout the boat! Interestingly older boats tend to have them while newer boats only have 230V sockets backed up by a big inverter, in which case I would advise having some 12V sockets fitted. 12V sockets are either 3 round pins so you can put a plug on the end of your old 230 table lamp and plug it into the 12V socket, or the car cigar type. They are however invaluable. I have three in the saloon dotted around, one in the galley and one in the bedroom. Have solar panels (see my last article) these provide a low amp charge but plenty to cover the use of a fridge and lighting and make a REAL difference to life afloat. I recommend them highly! If you use the inverter to run the washing machine, make sure the engine in running and consider an alternator controller to improve the charge. If you use an inverter beware of the silent battery killers! Most common problem is many boats have electric water heaters (immersion heaters), great when you are plugged in, but if you “accidentally” leave it on when the inverter is on it will silently drain the batteries VERY quickly! It’s another good reason to have a monitoring panel. When I switch my genny off I always glance at the panel to see if its drawing an unusually high amount as it is so easy to leave something on by mistake! The other killer is leaving the battery charger on when the inverter is on. This most commonly happens when the generator has been running and the charger quite correctly switched on to get a bit of charge, then the boater switches over to inverter when the generator is turned off leaving the charger on – well you can’t charge batteries from batteries can you?! So all that happens is they drain down fast trying to! I encourage new boaters to write a check list to help get into the routine – it doesn’t take long but saves you the heartache of running out of power prematurely! If you decide to have a portable generator, make sure it is big enough to run the heaviest load, and make sure your battery charger is switched on when the generator is on for another reason. DON’T even consider having an electric kettle or toaster unless you are plugged in at a marina. If you are off grid then use the gas cooker! In the winter I have a kettle on top the stove all the time so I always have a bowl full of hot water when I need it. Remember – if you are not using it SWITCH OFF most importantly if you have been using the inverter to say run the sewing machine, don’t just turn the sewing machine off when you’ve finished, turn the inverter off too! In a later article I may well talk all about heating and water so watch this space! Building the Perfect Power System OK what would I do with an unlimited budget? Batteries and charging:- 1. A battery bank of 6 x 110 ah batteries 2. A 100 amp or more alternator with a smart controller 3. 300W of solar panels with an advanced controller 4. Built in diesel generator giving 3.5KW of mains 5. 100 amp 3 step 230V charger Power use: - 1. 1500W inverter for occasional light 230v loads 2. LED Lighting throughout 3. All entertainment equipment 12V 4. A laptop running through a 12V charger 5. A full power monitoring and management panel Of course you would struggle to achieve all of these goals. I know I haven’t achieved them all but it’s important to aim for perfection! I hope this article has been of interest, anyone who has specific questions please feel free to email me at [email protected] I can supply and fit any of the systems talked about as well and a lot of my work is taking a boat and just adding the bits and providing the knowledge to make it better! My full contact details are on my website www.onboardsolar.co.uk I am considering the following future articles, any feedback you can give with regard to this OR suggested other articles to do with the technical side of boats would be welcome. Tim is considering writing one of the following articles. Please let him know which one you are interested in most by completing this lightning fast survey 1. Wiring up your narrow boat – what are the issues? 2. Heating your boat 3. Water systems Useful Reading The 12 Volt Bible – Miner Brotherton An American book so some of the standards a different but a good insight into all things electrical Electrics Afloat – Alastair Garrod A great book with lots of diagrams and pictures Boat Owner’s Illustrated Wiring Handbook – Charles Wing A great book for those wanting deep technical stuff! If you haven’t done so already, read the first part of this two part series: Narrowboat Electrics Part 1: Batteries Back to the newsletter Narrowboat Heating Part 1 – Stoves By Tim Davis Onboard Solar As a long term live aboard and ex boat builder I have been involved with many different heating systems over the years. The aim of this article is to look at all the options and to give some insight into the relative advantages and disadvantages of each of the different options. When we look at heating systems on a boat we are generally considering two things. 1. Heating the cabin space 2. Heating the domestic water First, let’s tackle the heating of the cabin. This broadly divides into two common methods. 1. The solid fuel (or “multi fuel”) stove 2. Some form of central heating Part 1 – Solid Fuel Stoves Let’s start with solid fuel stoves. The first point to make here is that heating using a solid fuel stove is generally the most reliable way of heating the cabin space. The vast majority of boats out there have a stove in the saloon area. Traditional boats with a back cabin will almost certainly have a small cooking range just inside the aft doors on the port side. In the days of working boats when this was the only accommodation this would have been the source of heat, hot water (via a kettle) and cooking and would have been used 24 hours a day all year round. Many historic boats that have been converted by having extra cabin added over the hold space retain this range as do newer boats built in a replica style to a vintage boat. This can be an advantage – in my boat for example which is a replica BCN tug, I have a stove in the saloon and a range in the back cabin. The solid fuel stove is generally the most reliable and effective source of heat in a boat. Once up to temperature the saloon is kept very warm. It is a dry heat too, sucking in any moist air from the cabin and effectively drying it out so and condensation is quickly dispersed. Boat stoves are of the multi fuel variety which means they can burn coal and wood. For the most effective heat a mix of the two works well. A bed of coal to start with then use logs on top once it has got well under way. Care needs to be taken in the choice of both the coal and the logs though! Coal generally is available as either “house” coal or “smokeless” and within smokeless there are many different makes. The house coal is traditional coal that has been used for centuries. It lights very easily and quickly and gives a very good heat with lots of flame BUT gives a lot of smoke which, depending on where you moor, might cause problems. This also means that both chimney and fire get quite sooted up and thus need regular brushing and cleaning. The general feel of using house coal is that it is quite dirty all round. House coal also does not tend to stay “in” very well – that is, it does not stay alight all night as it’s a much quicker burn. Smokeless coal however comes in the form of manmade “briquettes” which are smooth in appearance. These take a lot more effort to light so lots of kindling wood and paper or firelighters are needed to get it going. It also takes a lot longer to come up to temperature, once there though it will burn for hours on end. Normal procedure is to get the fire up to temperature with all the vents open then close the vents right down so the fire just simmers with a red glow. There tends not to be much in the way of flames with smokeless coal but it is very clean burning compared to house coal. I tend to have both house and smokeless in. I use the house coal to get the fire up quickly and easily, then add smokeless – this is a good mix. To enhance smokeless coal a log or two can be added to a hot fire in the evening to give flames and a rapid boost of heat. Logs of course have the great advantage that you can find them close to the towpath and collect for free. However beware! It is important that logs are well “seasoned” that is left to dry out all of the liquid sap that was present when the wood was growing or “green”. It takes around a year to season logs but often you will come across trees by the cut that have blown down and may well already be seasoned. You can soon tell if they are seasoned enough when you saw through them. If they are seasoned the saw will cut trough like butter with very dry sawdust if not then you will feel the saw bind up and have a very damp like sawdust in which case they will need to be kept for next year. You will also notice the off cut log is very light in weight. Alternatively of course, if this foraging for logs all sounds a bit much, you can buy logs ready seasoned either in net bags or by the load which is cheaper (When short I have looked in news agent windows wherever I am moored – you often see signs for people offering a load of logs for not much money. Non seasoned logs will burn, but not as well as seasoned logs and they will cause a nasty sticky tar which runs everywhere, often down the inside of the chimney and onto the roof and down the side of the boat! There is a new type of manmade log available now which is made of compressed wood shavings. I tried some this year and they were very good and not too expensive. Types of Stove There are many different makes of stove. You may have heard of Arrow, Morso, Torgem, Boatman to name a few. They all work in the same way and usually have two vents on the front, one below the fire which must be fully open to light the fire and one above the glass which acts as an air wash to help clean the glass. Which one is best? This is a question I am often asked.

In my experience the Morso Squirrel seems to be excellent. It has a good size so can hold a lot of fuel, it has good vents so draws really well which is important when lighting and has two doors the bottom, one of which can be opened to rapidly assist in the lighting process. Another good one is the Corner Bubble multi fuel. This is an unusual triangular shaped stove that sits neatly in a corner of the boat and again burns very well. At the budget end of the market is the Boatman Stove made by Northern Fabrications. A simple little stove but one that burns really well and takes up a small amount of space. A good tip from old working boatmen is always have a kettle on top of your stove – it means you’ve always got a bit of hot water for tea or washing up – very useful I find. What about heating the rest of the boat? A solid fuel stove outputs a lot of heat and will comfortably keep the saloon and immediate area very cosy indeed, but what if you want heat at the other end of the boat where the bedroom typically is? The first important “must have” accessory is the “Eco Fan” This is a two or three bladed fan that sits on a stand on the top of the stove. It uses technology called a “Peltier” plate which generates electricity from heat to drive a small electric motor that turns the fan. It very effectively directs the heat away from the stove and “spreads” it around the boat. A small boat of say 30 to 40 ft with a stove and eco fan would have no problems heating that entire cabin space. There is a new stove fan available that uses a tiny heat driven piston engine (a Sterling engine). A friend has one and it is very impressive with the joy of a little engine driven by heat from the fire (I know – boys toys!).

Back Boiler Another way of spreading the heat is to have a back boiler on the stove. This is simply a steel tank with an inlet at the bottom and an outlet at the top. The stove is connected into a circuit of radiators – standard household type radiators – and filled with water via a small header tank at the end of the pipe run. This system can be setup in one of two ways; gravity fed or circulation pump. The gravity fed system required large bore pipe work (28mm typically) and has to be setup very carefully so the hot water leaving the fire from the outlet at the top rises away from the fire and the return to the fire drops via a gentle slope back to the inlet at the bottom of the fire. There is quite a bit of “science” behind getting a gravity fed system to work well and not boil when the fire is too hot, so it is not for the faint hearted! More common these days is a pumped system. Here the pipe work can be kept hidden low down with a small 12v pump located close to the inlet of the fire (the bottom) and pumps water towards the fire. These work reliably but have the big downside of consuming power and of course must be switched on the whole time the fire is lit otherwise the water will boil and then explodes out of the header tank (which is normally located in a wardrobe!). Back boilers are great. On a long boat with many cabins they work very well BUT as a user of them you need to be aware of them potentially boiling. It is possible to rig up a temperature controlled switch that will turn the pump on when the fire is hot enough and turn it off when it cools. I highly recommend this if you have a pumped back boiler system – it makes it much easier to manage! It’s also important to have a simple bleed valve at the hot water outlet of the fire to make it easy to bleed off any stream that builds up – I use a simple drain cock for this purpose. See diagram showing the layout of a pumped back boiler system. Back Cabin Ranges There is another way to heat the whole boat. Use the stove in the saloon to heat that part of the boat. Then if you have a traditional, vintage or replica type boat, light the range in the back cabin as well! I have this arrangement on my boat and sometimes have both stoves lit but it does get quite expensive running two The range prefers to run on coal rather than wood (apart from lighting of course) and has the great advantage of a cooking plate and a small oven. On a cold winters day its great standing at the tiller with a range just inches in front of you perhaps with a casserole in the oven! One of the most popular ranges you will see is the Epping. Oil Stoves Another alternative to the solid fuel stove is the oil stove. This looks the same from the outside as a solid fuel stove, and they are available with and without a back boiler just like a solid fuel stove. Popular makes are the Bubble (from Haworth who also make the solid fuel Bubble) and Kabola to name two. The main difference is these stove run from the same diesel oil that is used to propel the boat. They are often fitted with their own tank separate from the main engine tank and often located in one of the bow lockers. These stoves were very popular for a time around 10 years ago when diesel was very cheap (I recall it was about 19p a litre then – happy days!). They are called a “natural draft” oil burner. The main problem with diesel oil is it is actually difficult to light – if you drop a match in diesel it will go out. These diesel stoves work by allowing diesel to drip feed onto a tray inside the stove, this is then lit using either a piece of tissue paper or better still breaking up a fire lighter into small pieces and using a small piece to start the fire. Basically you light the piece of fire lighter and drop it into the stove, drop in a cage called the catalyst which will shape the flame once its lit, then turn the diesel tap on, as the diesel slowly reaches the firelighter it heats and the vapour ignites. This can be a bit fiddly and there is a definite knack to getting a diesel stove going! Once lit you have a tap allowing you to vary the height of the flame, however care must be taken as a very high yellow flame will cause a lot of sooting up inside the stove. Compared to a solid fuel stove the heat is less too. In part because of the fiddly lighting process and the need to clean the fire out after use which is quite messy coupled with soaring diesel prices mean this type of stove has become much less popular and many boats have replaced them with solid fuel types which is not difficult as they are physically very similar. Indeed a corner Bubble oil stove could be replaced with the much better corner Bubble solid fuel stove with ease. It’s important to consider the issues with diesel stoves when buying a used boat. Narrowboat Electrics Part 2: Generators and Inverters By Tim Davis This is the second of two articles exploring power generation and use on board narrowboats. The first part is a very detailed look at batteries. You can read it here. Generators come in different types. The petrol hand pull type, and the more expensive “suitcase” type which are now very quiet. Petrol Hand Pull Generators These are very useful but great care must be taken with petrol storage and use – fumes dropping into the cabin from a generator being filled on deck combining with the gas cooker being on have caused many an explosion – so always fill on the bank! These output AC mains 230V which you simply run from the plug on the generator to the socket on the back of the boat. The boats electrics see the power as a landline (you may have a transfer switch that will need to be set to landline position). All your 230v sockets will work as normal, though you will only have the maximum output that your particular generator has to offer. A small generator is typically 1000W and a larger one maybe 3000W, so you do need to choose a generator that will run everything you have on board. If you have a washing machine you will probably need at least a 2000W generator and probably a 3000W. Really importantly, don’t forget that when your generator is running to turn the mains battery charger on too! You may as well get some valuable charge in while the washing machine is on! This is where having a smaller output charger might be a benefit as it will run happily on a lower powered generator- some of my customers have two chargers – a big one when on shore power and a smaller one when using the genny. Most generators do have a 12V charging plug as well, but they generally only output a low taper charge of about 6 amps so you are far better off using the mains output to run your 3 step charger instead. Built in suitcase diesel generators These offer all the benefits of the petrol generator but are built into the boat, enclosed in a sound proof capsule and start by pressing a button inside the boat. I have one of these and it works very well. Generator Use The usual practice is to “save up” things that require a lot of power and do them all at once when the generator is on. So I generally do the washing, vacuum the boat and run the immersion heater to heat my water, and of course put the battery charger on at the same time as watching the television! You get into a routine really quite quickly. Other types of generator A/C Mains generators mounted on the main engine like another alternator. This is actually another alternator on the boats main engine but it outputs 230V mains which is fed into your system through a transfer switch (see below). They are usually 3500 watts and are quite expensive (around £2K). They basically allow you to run heavy 230v loads while the engine is running without having to use the batteries and an inverter. Inverters Now this is the important one and a great source of flat batteries if used incorrectly! An inverter is a device that takes your precious 12V power from the battery bank and converts it into 230V mains electricity which is then fed into your boat through a transfer switch (see below). It sounds great doesn’t it? Mains power with no noise coming from nowhere by magic! However, beware – generating mains this way is VERY costly on battery power. Let’s take an example…. A boater has an electric kettle (bad idea!) that takes 3 minutes to boil and consumes 3kw of power to do so. The boater has a 3kw inverter on board so that’s all fine – it will work! However if we do the sums 3000W divided by 12V = 250 amps -that’s a massive amount to draw from the batteries and remember leisure batteries DON’T like a high current draw. So we have a general rule of thumb here. Avoid using an Inverter to run things that heat up as they all consume VAST amounts of power. The inverter should be used for light duty things like entertainment equipment and such like. If you are in a position where you need to run the washing machine and don’t have a generator of any sort but do have a big inverter then the rule is you MUST run the engine at the same time as drawing that load so that you are at least putting the bulk of the current back in AS you draw it out through the inverter. It also pays to have one of the alternator controllers I mentioned earlier to optimise the charge going in. In fact if you have a big alternator, a charge controller and a decent inverter coupled with a decent sized battery bank then you have kind of got all the benefits of a portable generator BUT you are still running that big main engine, that’s where generators score as they are small engines consuming much less fuel and much quieter. The other golden rule with inverters is to switch them OFF when you don’t need 230 power. They all consume valuable power (around 2 amps typically) just sitting in idle mode, though some new inverters do have a standby function that reduces this I would still adopt the mantra of if you don’t need it right now TURN IT OFF. That goes for ANY device on board not just inverters. Transfer Switches I mentioned that your portable generators just plug into the landline, but if you have a built in one and an inverter there must be some way of separating these 230V power sources in case you were daft enough (by mistake of course!) to have them all on at once! This is done using a Transfer Switch. This is usually a manual switch with either two positions (Land line, Inverter) or three (Land line, Inverter, Generator). So you select your power source then either plug it in or switch it on depending on what the power source is. Some newer boats have automatic transfer switches that will detect the incoming mains power source and select accordingly. Tips and Tricks for getting the best out of your power system. OK, this is a critical bit of the article – there’s lots you can do both technology wise AND with the way you think about and use power that can make a huge difference for those of you living without that marvelous landline plugged in like a soothing umbilical cord! Part of living afloat, if you’ve recently come from land is changing your whole thought process of how you live. Minimising your power draw DO have a12V fridge, and if you really must, a 12V freezer. I have a combined 12V fridge freezer that fits under the counter taking up the space of a normal fridge. Obviously the fridge is smaller but it has an 18 litre freezer compartment with its own door. Advantage: only one compressor to run and takes less space! Many new built boats have a 230v mains fridge – great if you are plugged in but a nightmare to live with on the cut as you have to have an inverter on with all the loss that goes with it for 24 hours every day! Change your lighting for LED bulbs. This is a relatively new invention. LED lights now give fabulous light output in a nice warm tone, but with a fraction of the current draw. If you have say fifteen 20W halogen lights on your boat, when switched on they will draw 25 amps. That’s a huge amount! Replace them with LED bulbs. You don’t have to change the fittings. You will draw around 2.25 amps for a similar level of brightness. For further technical information on LEDs go to www.baddiethepirate.co.uk Note that you can also convert favourite table lamps from 230v to LED and 12V. -You really can’t tell the difference when they are lit! Try to minimise use of an inverter to an absolute minimum – try to run as much as possible on 12V power. There are many good 12V TVs these days for example. What about laptops? Most are a voltage of around 18 or 19 volts but they do vary. As a result most people switch the inverter on to run them. If you are working from the boat this might mean the inverter is on all day – not good! It is possible to buy from shops like Maplin or indeed on line a 12V charger. This takes 12V from your boat and steps it up to the required voltage of the laptop. Be careful with other bits of equipment that run on 12V but normally have a mains adapter. They will likely not like the variable nature of boats voltage (between 14.4 and 11.5) if you just connect them directly to the 12V but it can be done using a voltage stabaliser unit. This sits in the power line to the device and ensures it always gets exactly 12V. Please contact me for further info. So there is one critical message in here. You need 12V sockets throughout the boat! Interestingly older boats tend to have them while newer boats only have 230V sockets backed up by a big inverter, in which case I would advise having some 12V sockets fitted. 12V sockets are either 3 round pins so you can put a plug on the end of your old 230 table lamp and plug it into the 12V socket, or the car cigar type. They are however invaluable. I have three in the saloon dotted around, one in the galley and one in the bedroom. Have solar panels (see my last article) these provide a low amp charge but plenty to cover the use of a fridge and lighting and make a REAL difference to life afloat. I recommend them highly! If you use the inverter to run the washing machine, make sure the engine in running and consider an alternator controller to improve the charge. If you use an inverter beware of the silent battery killers! Most common problem is many boats have electric water heaters (immersion heaters), great when you are plugged in, but if you “accidentally” leave it on when the inverter is on it will silently drain the batteries VERY quickly! It’s another good reason to have a monitoring panel. When I switch my genny off I always glance at the panel to see if its drawing an unusually high amount as it is so easy to leave something on by mistake! The other killer is leaving the battery charger on when the inverter is on. This most commonly happens when the generator has been running and the charger quite correctly switched on to get a bit of charge, then the boater switches over to inverter when the generator is turned off leaving the charger on – well you can’t charge batteries from batteries can you?! So all that happens is they drain down fast trying to! I encourage new boaters to write a check list to help get into the routine – it doesn’t take long but saves you the heartache of running out of power prematurely! If you decide to have a portable generator, make sure it is big enough to run the heaviest load, and make sure your battery charger is switched on when the generator is on for another reason. DON’T even consider having an electric kettle or toaster unless you are plugged in at a marina. If you are off grid then use the gas cooker! In the winter I have a kettle on top the stove all the time so I always have a bowl full of hot water when I need it. Remember – if you are not using it SWITCH OFF most importantly if you have been using the inverter to say run the sewing machine, don’t just turn the sewing machine off when you’ve finished, turn the inverter off too! In a later article I may well talk all about heating and water so watch this space! Building the Perfect Power System OK what would I do with an unlimited budget? Batteries and charging:- 1. A battery bank of 6 x 110 ah batteries 2. A 100 amp or more alternator with a smart controller 3. 300W of solar panels with an advanced controller 4. Built in diesel generator giving 3.5KW of mains 5. 100 amp 3 step 230V charger Power use: - 1. 1500W inverter for occasional light 230v loads 2. LED Lighting throughout 3. All entertainment equipment 12V 4. A laptop running through a 12V charger 5. A full power monitoring and management panel Of course you would struggle to achieve all of these goals. I know I haven’t achieved them all but it’s important to aim for perfection! I hope this article has been of interest, anyone who has specific questions please feel free to email me at [email protected] I can supply and fit any of the systems talked about as well and a lot of my work is taking a boat and just adding the bits and providing the knowledge to make it better! My full contact details are on my website www.onboardsolar.co.uk I am considering the following future articles, any feedback you can give with regard to this OR suggested other articles to do with the technical side of boats would be welcome. Tim is considering writing one of the following articles. Please let him know which one you are interested in most by completing this lightning fast survey 1. Wiring up your narrow boat – what are the issues? 2. Heating your boat 3. Water systems Useful Reading The 12 Volt Bible – Miner Brotherton An American book so some of the standards a different but a good insight into all things electrical Electrics Afloat – Alastair Garrod A great book with lots of diagrams and pictures Boat Owner’s Illustrated Wiring Handbook – Charles Wing A great book for those wanting deep technical stuff! Detailed narrowboat running costs for February 2013 Here are my bang up to date expenses for my own liveaboard narrowboat James. Not all narrowboat owners will incur the costs that I do. Many of the costs below will apply though so if you’re considering buying your own narrowboat, you need to be aware of the costs. You may wonder why I have included costs for items and services that aren’t directly related to running a narrowboat. They’re included because they are typical lifestyle costs that you may well incur. You can discount them if you want, but just bear them in mind. Electricity: Each mooring has a 230v electrical supply which is charged at 20p per unit and topped up cards available from our reception. I generally buy 3 x £10 electricity cards at a time. I bought cards twice this month @ £30 a time. Once on 2nd and then again on 20th – £60 Gas:Back to the normal single cylinder purchase this month after having to buy two last month after forgetting to buy one in December – £22.95 Coal: I get a better deal if I buy ten bags at a time. Ten 25kg bags of Pureheat last me about a month. I bought ten last month then another ten this month on 4th. I then bought a pack of 10 softwood heat logs on 20th. I keep a pack of the heat logs on standby in a dry cupboard inside the boat. If they get wet, they expand to twice their normal size and are impossible to light. They’re very handy for providing a quick burst of heat if it’s particularly cold when we get up in the morning like this morning. It’s particularly cold this morning. I’m writing this on 12th March 2013. The overnight low was minus four but with a strong north easterly wind, the wind chill brought it down to minus ten. The temperature in the warmest part of the boat – at the front near the stove – was down to eighteen degrees, thirteen degrees in my “office” half way down the boat, and a rather chilly six degrees in the bedroom right at the back of the boat. At times like this I wish I had central heating. I also bought a 10kg sample bag of Ecofire Oak Nuggets. Waterways World oublished the results of their stove fuel test in the March 2013 edition of the magazine. Here’s what I thought of them. – £126.63 Mooring: Mooring costs £2,300 a year – £191.66 Maintenance & Repairs: There were no repairs as such this month but I record sundry boat expenses here. This month we bought quite a few bits and pieces for the boat; A bottle of One Chem for the cassette toilet. Added to the flush water and waste tank, it keeps the toilet smelling fresh. I’ve tried quite a few of the popular brands. One Chem suits us best – £8.49 A boat cleaning brush. It’s one of those fancy affairs with a Hozelock connection at one end so that you can enjoy a constant flow of water through the brush. Unfortunately the connection leaks, so all I enjoyed was a constant flow of water down my leg as I cleaned the boat. I went to a great deal of trouble painting James in April 2012. I’m doing all that I can to make sure that the paintwork stays in good condition. – £20.78 Bullet Polish. After I’ve cleaned the boat, I can further protect the paintwork with a good quality wax. Bullet polish’s main ingredient is Carnauba wax which is widely acknowledged as the best wax to use to protect your boat. Mindland Chandlers were offering two for just… £25 Hozelock connectors and a broom handle – The hose that we used to fill the water tank had given up the ghost. I think it was less than a year old. It was one of those very convenient flat hoses on a reel that is very easy to store. It was a waste of money to be honest. The cheap plastic reel fell apart after half a dozen uses. The hose itself developed dozens of pinprick holes along its full length which made fulling the tank a wet and unpleasant affair. We were given a 30m Hozelock hose. The Hozelock connections were for either end. The broom handle was to provide two hanging rails in the middle of the boat next to the side hatches. Sally uses them to hang damp clothes after they’ve been washed. They’re usually dry within 24 hours. Hozelock connectors and broom handle – £12.08 LED light and adaptor – I’m slowly replacing all of the 12v lights on board. There are eighteen of them. The LED lights are brighter than the old bulbs, use very little electricity and have a very, very long life, 50,000 hours I think. Just to put that into perspective the lights I use most often, above my laptop, are on for two hours in the morning and three in the evening. At that rate the new lights will last for 10,000 days or 27.39 years! Although they’re expensive at £8.50 for each light and adaptor, I think they’re a good investment. I bought just one this month – £8.50 I bought a torch in February. It’s an essential bit of kit for a boater. My last torch was a bit of a disappointment. If I turned it on at night and held it very close to my wrist, I could sometimes see my watch. It was useless. The new torch is superb. It’s incredibly bright and its range is stunning. It can easily light up the island 50m away in the centre of the marina (which is great for identifying the Canada geese before scaring them off with a – harmless – laser). The torch came with rechargeable batteries and charger. – £20.99 Ecofan – They use the heat from the stove to power the fan blade, they’re horribly expensive but they do a great job of moving the stove’s heat into the rest of the boat. I’ve really noticed a difference – £78.50 Rain hat (also knows politically incorrectly as a Coolie or Chinese hat) and two doormats – The rain hat sits on top of your chimney to keep rain, and leaves if you’re moored under a tree, out of the chimney. This is my fourth in three years. The first two disappeared in high winds. The third was screwed to the chimney and lasted over a year before it finally rusted through earlier in February. The rubber backed door mats are to be used in the continuing battle against mud on paws. We’ve put one on the bench seat on the front deck and another just inside the front doors. They work very well in reducing the amount of dirty liquid on the dogs’ paws when they come into the boat. Rain hat and two door mats – £33.13 The rest of the sundry purchases in February were Sally continuing to make the boat into a very comfortable and aesthetically pleasing home. I’m not naturally and untidy person but Sally is very tidy and very organised. She bought a pen and magazine tidy for my office area, a “snake” draught excluder to go under the door from the bedroom to the engine room, oven gloves and a tea/coffee/sugar jar set for the galley a very posh red kettle for the gas hob (Is it wrong to think that our new kettle – pictured – is very, very attractive? It’s almost a shame to put water in it) and, my favourite purchase this month, a Breville 1kw sandwich toaster. We both love toasted cheese and onion sandwiches… or rather, we did before we bought the sandwich toaster. After having them for breakfast, lunch and dinner for a few days, they’ve lost a little of their appeal. Sally’s sundry purchases – £104.43 Total maintenance and repairs for February – £311.90 Total boat expenses for February – £713.14 Other expenses for February… Of course, the boat expenditure is only a part of the cost of life on the boat. Here’s what we spent on our day to day expenses in February. Internet: I’m still using the excellent 15GB per month mobile broadband service from Three – £19.80 Telephone (Mobile): Sally and I both have mobiles on contract and Sally has an iPad, also on contract. I’ve also included the cost of our Skype to landline/mobile calls – £133.15 Laundery: Calcutt Boats as two washing machines and a dryer for moorers’ use. We only use the washing machines. Sally hangs the damp washing inside the boat. It’s dry within 24 hours. The washing machines take tokens which we buy at reception. Each token costs £1 and keeps the washing machines going for 45 minutes. – £20 Groceries: We eat well but not extravagantly. The total includes £23.95 for wine £324.67 Eating out: We enjoy a coffee in a cafe and the occasional meal out. In February we dined out on just two occasions; once at an all your can eat Sunday lunch buffet in a very good Thai restaurant in Banbury and one visit to Costa Coffee for a coffee and a slice of cake – £45.20 Entertainment: I love to read. I love my Kindle. It’s so easy to finish a book, use my laptop to browse through the Kindle books on Amazon, click a button and open my new book within a minute or two. I don’t read as much as I would like because of the time I spend adding content to this site. However, I still get through three or four books a month. I overdid my reading in February with five books downloaded – £25.03 Car: A low cost month for motoring. Forty pounds for fuel and the rest to add Sally to my policy – £54.19 Clothing: I’m still trying to spend as little as possible on clothing but I needed a new fleece work shirt and yet another pair of wellies. I bought a good pair of wellies in January for £35 but by mid February one of them had split. I was given the choice of either sending them back to Dunlop for a possible refund or biting the bullet and buying another pair at the discounted price of £24. I chose the latter- £46.29 My total none-boat-related living costs for February were £668.33 bringing my overall total for January to £1,381.47. It’s the calm before the storm. In March we’re fitting solar panels and new flooring. God help us,and our bank account! This is an example of the monthly expenses detailed in my guide Living on a Narrowboat: The REAL Cost of a Life Afloat. If you’re seriously considering buying a narrowboat to live on it’s an essential read. Some of the costs listed in this article are optional. You may be able to live on less than we do, but many of the costs that apply to us will also apply to you too. Many potential boat owners mistakenly think that a narrowboat floating home is a low cost alternative to bricks and mortar. Nothing could be further from the truth. Please read the guide before you make a very expensive mistake. Back to the newsletter. A Case Study Of Liveaboard Narrowboat Xanadu Mike is a kindred spirit. He moved onto his boat after his marriage failed although his first floating home was far more of a challenge than mine… a 27ft GRP cruiser. His current 50′ wide beam must feel SO spacious after that!

Who are you? (and your significant other and, of course, your dog if you have one) My name is Mike, no significant other or pets, unless you count the spiders, I haven’t got around to naming them yet but do talk to them…

Tell me a little about yourself and why you decided to live a life afloat Same old story, separated after 35 years marriage, (second one at that) and it was all I could afford! I already owned a 27 foot GRP cruiser so I lived on that for well over 3 years, now that’s what you could call challenging…

What is your boat called and why did you decide on that name? The boat is called Xanadu, it was already named and it seemed appropriate.

Do you have a permanent mooring? She is moored at Hartford Marina at a permanent berth, a pontoon, with electricity (prepaid card) and water. I look out over the open basin and have my cruiser moored next door (divorce not settled yet so that will probably have to go!!!!)

What is your boat style and length I admit to being a bit of a fraud here now as it is a 50 foot all steel widebeam, but hey, what’s a widebeam but a stretched narrowboat?

How long have you been a narrowboat owner? Not withstanding the above confession I have owned it for just over 12 months.

How did you finance your boat? Cashed in all my sayings whilst I still had the chance!!

How much time do you spend on your boat each year? Most of the time although I did spend September in Australia.

Are you still working? (If so, what do you do?) I work as a Lead Internal Verifier at a local FE college (will be 65 next March so hope to retire then)!

What do you like least about narrowboat life? Condensation and the chilly mornings

What do you like most about narrowboat life? Freedom to move if I get fed up here! If you could change just one thing about your boat, what would it be? That’s a difficult one, it is an on-going project so couldn’t put my finger on one thing.

When you are cruising how do you resupply (How do you get to the supermarket without a car)? No problem as I have a permanent mooring and a supermarket within a couple of miles.

How do you do your washing when you are cruising? Again no problem as I have a washing machine.

What type of toilet do you have on board and are you happy with it? Now there’s a story! Up until a few months ago I had smart sea toilet. Great piece of kit until the foul water tank under my bed decided to leak in spectacular fashion! The carpet I had just fitted floated out the door closely followed by my socks and slippers. Fortunately for me, if you can call this fortunate, I had worked over 20 years in the water industry and had spent many a happy hour up to my armpits in the smelly stuff so I wasn’t too fazed by that side of the disaster. I spent the whole day mopping, cleaning and disinfecting before I could locate the problem. The tank had rusted through in the bottom corner and was beyond repair without some serious upheaval. I removed the toilet and put a porta potty in its place!

How do you connect to the internet when you are on your boat and are you happy with the service you receive? I have a 3G PAYG sim in a dongle. The reception can be patchy and slow but it’s ok for emails and browsing the web but not much else.

What is your favourite canal or section of canal? As I live on the Great Ouse and my cruiser is a widebeam I have only ever used the wide canals but I guess the section of the Trent that uses the Nottingham Canal is OK.

How do you generate electricity when you are cruising and how much do you use? I have access to mains electricity but also have a generator, a decent solar panel that keeps the batteries charged up, that is when the sun comes out, and an inverter. Whilst I use power for the washing machine, fridge and freezer plus all the other random equipment that has a plugtop on, I only need to feed the meter with a £5 card once a week!

How warm is your narrowboat in the winter? Mmm, can be rather cool! I don’t have a stove but rely on an Eberspacher feeding a conventional 5 radiator wet system. It’s ok at the weekends but it is not cheap to run or easy to keep the fuel tank full. When I lived on the cruiser, during that bad winter a couple of years ago, the water pump, filter, shower and pipework froze and split during the night while I lay and shivered in bed!

What advice can you offer someone considering living on a narrowboat? Buy the best you can, trying to carry out major refurbishments whilst living on board can be difficult. Also have a very good relationship with your partner, there aren’t many places to hide on a boat, whether it be narrow or wide!!

What obvious questions have I missed from this list? Would I change the lifestyle – definitely not! In can be a pain sometimes but I love waking up in the morning and listening to the wild fowl. On a summers evening (what summer I hear you ask) there’s nothing better than sitting up on deck with a good book and a cold beer, although a good woman… Back to the newsletter A Case Study Of Liveaboard Narrowboat Lucky Duck Amy and James have been living on their narrowboat since their early twenties. They love the lifestyle. In fact, they’re about to sell their current boat so that they can buy and restore their own historic narrowboat. Rather them than me!

Who are you? (and your significant other and, of course, your dog if you have one) My name’s Amy and I live afloat with my partner James and our cat Lyra

Tell me a little about yourself and why you decided to live a life afloat Both of us come from families who enjoy boating but we came to love narrowboats through some friends who lived afloat. We both thought that it sounded like a wonderful way of life, so we decided to get one of our own.

What is your boat called and why did you decide on that name? Our current boat is called Lucky Duck and it came with the name. We wanted to change it but it stuck! We are known as “The Ducks” to many! We are now in the process of selling it, to buy a historic boat. We wouldn’t dream of changing this boat’s name as it is part of the boat’s history.

Do you have a permanent mooring? Yes, we have a residential mooring in Cambridge for which there is a very long waiting list – took us several years to get to the top of it, but it was worth the wait. We love it.

What is your boat style and length Lucky Duck is a 48′ trad stern boat. How long have you been a narrowboat owner? Four and a half years!

How did you finance your boat? We took out a marine mortgage with Royscot Larch

How much time do you spend on your boat each year? We live on it full time!

Are you still working? (If so, what do you do?) We are 27 and 25 respectively, so yes, very much still working! I am a research student and James works in a primary school as their IT specialist

What do you like least about narrowboat life? Difficult! There’s not a lot I don’t like. But it is frustrating that we are not allowed to store anything on the bank next to our mooring so we have to keep our solid fuel in a garage 15 mins walk away.

What do you like most about narrowboat life? I like being off-grid and in touch with nature and the changing seasons, but the best thing is the community – boaters are such amazing people and we’ve made many firm friends on the water.

If you could change just one thing about your boat, what would it be? Its age and history – we want to live on a historic boat and be part of its story. We hope that we will soon achieve this!

When you are cruising how do you resupply (How do you get to the supermarket without a car)? We use Google Maps to locate the nearest one accessible by foot!

How do you do your washing when you are cruising? Use Google Maps to locate launderettes

What type of toilet do you have on board and are you happy with it? We’ve got a cassette toilet and I think it is the best type – it’s a cheaper and more flexible arrangement.

How do you connect to the internet when you are on your boat and are you happy with the service you receive? Using mobile broadband – we use our mobile phones as wifi hotspots or use the iPad

What is your favourite canal or section of canal? The BCN!

How do you generate electricity when you are cruising and how much do you use? When cruising we use the engine, and when stationary we use our solar panel or the petrol genny. In the summer we are self sufficient for electricity.

How warm is your narrowboat in the winter? Toasty warm, when the Morso Squirrel stove is going!

What advice can you offer someone considering living on a narrowboat? Unless you will be continuously cruising, find a mooring before you find a boat. Don’t treat it as cheap housing because it isn’t, do it because you have fallen in love with the lifestyle!

What obvious questions have I missed from this list? Collecting post? We get post delivered to my work address. Type of engine? We have a reliable BMC 1.8 – simple and easy to service and maintain. You can read about Amy’s life afloat here. If you are interested in buying the boat, the advert is here. Back to the newsletter. A Case Study Of Liveaboard Narrowboat Doublefracture Mick and Marlene are committed to their life afloat. They burned their bridges and sold their house to fund the purchase of their liveaboard narrowboat Doublefracture. Wierd name, lovely boat!

Who are you? (and your significant other and, of course, your dog if you have one) We are Mick and Marlene Masters. I am a retired civil servant and Marlene is a retired housewife(she may not agree with that). Originally we were from Yorkshire but lived in Cambridgeshire for 21yrs up to retirement.

Tell me a little about yourself and why you decided to live a life afloat We have three children(two boys one girl). They are all grown up and left home with families of their own now. When the boys were younger we did a lot of camping, including backpacking along the Leeds and Liverpool canal. We lived near to the Aire and Calder. While visiting a nearby marina we were speaking to the owner who told us he had boated round most of the system. The seed was sewn. Then in 2005 we decided to buy a boat so we could do the same when we retired. Which we did in 2009.

What is your boat called and why did you decide on that name? We named our boat Doublefracture. This name was chosen because in 2002 we both fractured two bones in a road accident. As you can imagine we explain this quite a lot.

Do you have a permanent mooring? We have had a permanent mooring at Sawley Bridge Marina since last July. Prior to this we cruised all summer and over wintered at Barton Turns Marina. We decided to have a permanent mooring at Sawley because of the easy transport links to Derby and Nottingham, so on the dark winter nights we can go to the theatre and get home on the 24hr Skylink bus. The Marina has all the facilities we need and the staff are great. What is your boat style and length

O ur boat is a 57ft traditional style narrowboat.

How long have you been a narrowboat owner? We have owned our boat since 2005.

How did you finance your boat? We made the full commitment and sold our house to finance the boat.

How much time do you spend on your boat each year? The only time we are not on the boat is when we visit family or take a winter holiday.

Are you still working? (If so, what do you do?) No as I said we are both retired.

What do you like least about narrowboat life? The maintenance.

What do you like most about narrowboat life? The freedom. If you could change just one thing about your boat, what would it be? Marlene says she would put in a side hatch near the kitchen.

When you are cruising how do you resupply (How do you get to the supermarket without a car)? We find quite a few supermarkets within walking distance of the canal. Failing this we use our bus passes on the local buses.

How do you do your washing when you are cruising? We use a small camping twin tub and a rotary dryer.

What type of toilet do you have on board and are you happy with it? We have both a pump out and a chemical toilet, so the best of both worlds.

How do you connect to the internet when you are on your boat and are you happy with the service you receive? We use our iPad with a Vodaphone 3G connection. It is OK most of the time but there are dead areas on the canal network.

What is your favourite canal or section of canal? If we have to pick one, probably the Macclesfield and Peak Forest(I know that’s two but they seem to go together) or where we happen to be at the time.

How do you generate electricity when you are cruising and how much do you use? We have three domestic batteries which charge of the engine and go through a 1800 inverter. We also have two 60kw solar panels.

How warm is your narrowboat in the winter? Up to this year very warm,however these cold winds seem to have caused some drafts. For the first time we have used the central heating as well as the wood burner.

What advice can you offer someone considering living on a narrowboat? Make sure you are both committed to the life.

What obvious questions have I missed from this list? he only thing I can think of is how we get any repeat perceptions when cruising. To answer we usually get a three month supply from our Doctor, then cruise back to our home area t re stock. Alternatively call at any practice we are near and explain the situation. You can read about life on board Doublefracture here. Back to the newsletter. A Day Trip To Braunston I don’t get out much. Sorry; on reflection I should say, I don’t go out cruising on James much. On further reflection, I’ll revert to I don’t get out much. Whatever the case, I’ve decided to do much, much more cruising in the future. The main problem has been my lack of confidence in the engine. As you’ll know if you’ve been visiting the site on a regular basis, James was in a sorry state when I moved on board. Because I viewed James as a place to live rather than a vehicle to explore the canal and river network with, I spent all of my time, energy and money on making my accommodation watertight, functional and comfortable. I’ve had a steel cabin fitted over the original 36 year old ply cabin and sandwiched an additional layer of insulation between the two. Then I spent three weeks painting the new cabin and blacking the hull. I’ve had a new cratch cover fitted to create an extra “room” on the front deck. The soft furnishings have been reupholstered, the curtains have been replaced, new oak effect laminate flooring has been fitted to replace the tired and very old beige wafer thin carpet. I’ve upgraded the electrics. I’ve doubled the battery bank from two to four 135ah batteries and replaced the 110ah starter battery. I’ve added a charger which keeps the batteries topped up when the boat’s plugged in to a land line. I’ve had a 2.1KW Sterling pure sine inverter so that we have 230v power when we’re cruising. A few weeks ago I finally reached the back of the boat and the engine room. I’ve been told repeatedly that James has a good engine. A very good engine. It’s a 38HP Mercedes OM 636. The trouble is, I haven’t been able to believe these reassurances on the few occasions I’ve taken James out. Sally and I took Sally’s two grown children, Maricar and Michael, for a cruise to Braunston last Christmas. We enjoyed a bracing cruise to Braunston, moored up, had lunch at the Boat House pub (Two meals for the price of one) and returned to the boat for the journey home. The engine coughed and spluttered into life and then, after a mile, died completely. I couldn’t get the engine started again so had to walk six miles back to Calcutt to collect my car to bring everyone back to Sally’s house in nearby Woodford Halse. James had to be towed back to Calcutt where my guardian angel, Russ, spent most of the day identifying and fixing the problem. The problem turned out to be minor. The fuel filter was blocked. Unfortunately, the engine has been installed very close to the bulkhead between the engine room and the bedroom so the fuel filter was very difficult to get to. Fitting a pre-filter is another job to be done. I was very nervous when I took James out for a while after that, and then I had another problem. The engine wouldn’t stay in gear. I managed to limp back to the mooring with the engine dropping in and out of drive. The problem had been the result of very little oil in the gearbox. One of our engineers topped the oil up for me. The next time I took James out, I had the same problem. I decided to ask River Canal Rescue to service and assess my engine. They visited me a couple of weeks ago. An expected one hour service took three and a half but, by the end of it, I had far more confidence in the engine and a list of things to put right. One of the items on the list was to replace the perished leads off the gearbox. I had that done a few days later. The lead replacement cured the engine drive problem immediately. So, with much of the boat renewed, replaced or refurbished, I thought it was high time to get out on the cut again. On Thursday night as soon as I finished work and a plateful of Sally’s delicious spicy spare ribs (tenderised in the pressure cooker and then finished off in the oven), we set sail. Sally hasn’t worked a lock before. At 5′ tall and slim, there’s not a lot to her but she was determined that the locks weren’t going to defeat her. After half an hour and much huffing and puffing we surged through the Calcutt flight of three locks, arrived at Napton juntion, turned left towards Braunston and then, because of the late hour, decided to moor almost immediately. I spent five minutes looking at the damage done in Calcutt Bottom Lock to my broadband dongle roof pole. I had fixed the pole to the roof in order to raise the height of my broadband dongle to help get a better signal. Of course I had forgotten to consider boat handling needs when fitting it. I don’t have fairleads fitted to the boat near where the centre line is fixed to the boat so when attached to a bollard the taught centre rope swept the pole off its fixings. Another expensive lesson learned. I’ll fit fairleads next week. I’ll also have to fit a new dongle pole or invest in a dedicated aerial for my WiFi setup. It’s wonderful just to be out and about. One of the many marvellous aspects of living on a narrowboat is your ability to change the view from your house windows whenever you please. The view we chose on Thursday evening was of a tranquil canal complete with overhanging trees and a mallard with five brand new chicks. We lit the fire, opened a bottle of red and sat down for an evening of peace and quiet. On Friday morning we ambled along to Braunston junction. Sally walked part of the way with the dogs. Daisy, our terminally stupid cocker spaniel, only fell into the water once. I don’t know how she does it, but she ends up in the canal at least once a week, and looks shocked every time she does it. Braunston was very busy. We hadn’t been able to find a place to moor by the time we reached the junction and Midland Chandlers. Their customer mooring was free so we stopped to buy some bits for the boat. They were closed for stock taking. Every cloud has a silver lining though. One of the staff said that, as they were closed, we could stay on their mooring for as long as we pleased. We popped next door to the Boat House for a slap up lunch. We had a drink, a main course and a sweet each for just under £20. The pub is great value for money and a great spot for sitting with a drink watching boats drift by.

We stayed on Midland Chandler’s mooring for a couple of hours sitting in the sun on the front deck watching the boats go by. We felt as though we were on holiday but we were still at home on our lovely boat. Unfortunately I had to be back at work on Saturday so the holiday was brief. We set off at 4.30pm for the cruise back to Calcutt and spent the next two and a half hours alternately basking in the sunshine and dodging heavy showers, and allowing for the stiff breeze which plays havoc with a narrowboat’s steering. We tied up on our mooring at 7pm. The cruise was so different from the previous trips I’ve had out on James. I’ve not had much faith in the engine after a breakdown and an intermittent gear box problem. All of that could have been cured with some fairly simple maintenance. I’ve never been very good with engines which is why I now value RCR’s service so highly. RCR membership and regular servicing is now written in my budget. All my boat needed was a little tender loving care. As Roger Preen – Calcutt Boats owner and James’ previous owner – said to me,“Do you know, I expect that engine will outlive you!”. I hope he’s right, but I also hope that it’s many years before I find out. Back to the newsletter. A Case Study Of Liveaboard Narrowboat Miss George After testing the lifestyle by taking a narrowboat holiday in the depths of winter, Jaks and Andy have now lived on their own narrowboat for four years on a rustic farm mooring on the cut with no facilities.

Who are you? (and your significant other and, of course, your dog if you have one) Jaks & Andy , with Bruno 9 and Freddie 4, the 2 mad staffies who bark at most boats who cruise past our mooring on the Ashby.

Tell me a little about yourself and why you decided to live a life afloat We were caravaners to start with, then had a boating holiday in February cheap off ebay. It was cold with cat ice on the cut but we loved it, a few years later we found Miss George on eBay not far from our house and with the kids doing there own thing we did it.

What is your boat called and why did you decide on that name? She was called Miss George when we bought her, we would like to know why!

Do you have a permanent mooring? A farm non towpath linear mooring which came with the boat. we have no facilities.

What is your boat style and length A 1984 62 ft Peter Nichols trad, with a very unusual offside engine with lots of pulleys to the prop. we would love to know more about her!

How long have you been a narrowboat owner? 4 years

How did you finance your boat? A loan

How much time do you spend on your boat each year? More than we do in a house

Are you still working? (If so, what do you do?) Both work for a agency have done so for a year, but planning to cruise some of the network next year!(we work 6 days 6am- 2pm) in a warehouse, we go to bed early which saves on electric! What do you like least about narrowboat life? This year has quite bad our engine ceased and we had to buy and fit a second hand one, the gear box coupling is broken at the minute,which Andy is hopefully going to fix next week as we are on holiday. condensation in the winter, no long lingering hot baths.

What do you like most about narrowboat life? The out doors and simple life, the boating community take you back to a time gone by when you could leave your back door open and borrow a cup of sugar!

If you could change just one thing about your boat, what would it be? Nothing really, we are easy to please and have a cosy cottage style boat!

When you are cruising how do you resupply (How do you get to the supermarket without a car)? Plan ahead, walk you are never far away from a shop.

How do you do your washing when you are cruising? We have a full size washing machine, as we have a generator, powered by the engine.

What type of toilet do you have on board and are you happy with it? Pump out with macerator, and back up Porta Potti.

How do you connect to the internet when you are on your boat and are you happy with the service you receive? Orange dongle, yes and no, would like better.

What is your favourite canal or section of canal? Anywhere. when we not a work, home is nice.

How do you generate electricity when you are cruising and how much do you use? When be bought the boat it had been upgraded by rose narrowboats, we have 4 leisure batteries,inverter, Mastervolt charger, and a on board generator, we are sensible we only use high power equipment when the engine is running,we plug in phones laptop etc. only when we put engine on, we try and be organised with rechargeable stuff. we do have 2 old small solar panels and are planning to upgrade. we also have some led lights which help.

How warm is your narrowboat in the winter? In the last few very cold winters we were warmer than in our house, and it was cheaper as we burn anything and everything. What advice can you offer someone considering living on a narrowboat? Try before you buy in cold weather, go to boating pubs or chat to boaters Back to the newsletter.