A Case Study Of Liveaboard Narrowboat Morialta 11

Here’s another couple who have sensibly decided to retire early to enjoy life in the slow lane. They keep their boat at the bottom of their riverside home when they aren’t cruising, which doesn’t appear to be very often. I particularly like the iconic photo’s they sent me to include with their case study.

We are Mark 55yrs and Helen Meopham (confidential! ). We took early retirement from Police Force/Optician after deciding too many folks never get to enjoy retirement because they put it off for too long.

Like many people we headed to the sun, and rented in Ibiza, Spain. Now whilst its a great fun island, for a holiday, we did start to suffer from island fever even though the social side was great with wonderful street cafes etc. Looking back, perhaps we were just too young to sit in the sun all day.

We returned to UK late 2011, and decided we would like a home on a river or canal and having spent a few years after school working on Phobus, a converted narrowboat, we decided one option was to buy a narrowboat and commence our search from the water.  We purchased Morialta 11, a 2006 55ft semi trad, and off house hunting we went. The search took longer than we had initially thought mainly due to the high prices of water front homes.

It had never been our intention to remain on the boat in the depths of winter. We are far too soft for that, so the first winter saw us travel to Florida to follow up reports on very cheap waterside property, and boy were we in for a pleasant surprise. For the price of a one bed flat in Ibiza, you could buy a 3 bed villa, with pool and dock with direct Gulf of Mexico boat access.  It needed a tidy up but painting in the Florida winter sun was not too much of a hardship. Spring of 2012 saw us back on Morialta 11 and in the August we cruised by a river front home in Evesham on the River Avon, so after 3000 miles and 2000 locks we had a home.

The fact of being on a River means we don’t have to pay mooring fees, and when the river Floods Morialta 11 just rises and falls on her 5 metre tall mooring posts kindly constructed by the Avon Navigation Trust. So at last we had a home but rather missed our nomadic existence so in spring 2013 we set sail again. We advertised the Avon house on a web site for weekly vacations and much to our surprise received lots of interest. We shall never get rich from the income but it does give you a warm glow, when you know the house is helping to pay for its self. Initially we had concerns about arranging the cleaning on change over days, but Enterprise with there cheap weekend rates came to the rescue, they actually pick us up from where ever we are, we drive back to Evesham clean and check the house,see in the new renters and have a car to use till Monday morning.

We purchased Morialta 11 as a 4 year old boat, and have to say the saving against a brand new boat are even better than buying a second hand car. The Hospital silencer and extra engine room insulation make for an extremely quiet passage. In fact on the Thames were they like you to stop engines in Locks, the Lock keepers all ways assume we have complied !!!!!!!

We have a Washer/Dryer which if used with the engine running is no different to a house. Shopping is a breeze as many supermarkets have set up in canal side locations and if we can’t see one from the towpath then we have the excellent “First Mates” guide which kindly points out shops etc, often just out of sight from the towpath.

Internet comes and goes. We have a dongle from 3 which works well. The TV has always been hit and miss so this winter we called an engineer, bought a cheap aerial ( Ours loves to headbutt bridges) and an even cheaper booster.  Now, for the first time, we can get a great signal. We have a Cassette toilet with two cassettes which has worked great.

Things I would change on the boat would be lower cabin windows so we could see out whilst sitting in Saloon and a larger front deck so we could sit out in comfort on those summer evenings.

The thing we most enjoy living afloat is the other boaters we meet on our travels. Our favorite waterway is the Thames. We love the way they do all the locks for you! The thing we like least is muddy, wet towpaths.

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Are you one of the lucky few who lives the dream on board your own narrowboat full time? Would you like to share your experience with some of the thousands of potential floating home owners who visit this site? If you can spare the time to answer a few simple questions, I would love to hear from you. Just let me know so I can email the questions to you. I’ll create a post like the one above complete with a link back to your own blog or website.

Building An Aluminium Narrowboat – Part 9

Continued from part eight

9th & final Sea Otter Boat progress report.

16th of January 2014.

Me and my Sea Otter Boat are now on the Lancaster Canal, and I’m looking back over the last two and a half years.  I have had a few major teething problems a couple of years ago, and some were avoidable.  For example, that concerning the calorifier.

But I can’t blame Sea Otter for my faulty gearbox, which needed changing after two days usage.  That must be down to Nanni, or their agents Peachments.

Remember the bill I paid from Kate Boats for £1,107.08 for the gearbox to be replaced, along with my first service ?  Peachments (the agents for my Nanni Engine) eventually only supplied a new gearbox and paid the £350.00 + VAT, which was  the labour cost of replacing the gearbox, but not the £400.00 + VAT for the craning in and out.  The craning was necessary because Sea Otter do not recommend replacing the gearbox when the boat is in water, because of the particular type of stern-gear that they fit.  The boat could sink if the work is carried out with the boat in the water, they say !  Sea Otter advised me to chase Peachments for that cost, their reasoning being that, if there hadn’t been a problem with the gearbox, there would have been no need for the craning.

But Peachments turn the coin and say that :-  (Quote)

“We have never understood why the boat had to be taken out of the water to change a gearbox?
This is not covered under Nanni warranty and we did not give the go ahead for the boat to be lifted so we are unable to cover the cost of the boat lift.”

In the end, and as a gesture of goodwill, Sea Otter pay me half of the £400.00 + VAT for the cranage for which and I am very grateful.  Peachments paid nothing towards that.

Despite my teething problems I CERTAINLY DO NOT regret buying a boat from Sea Otter.   It was fun helping to plan it, and I thank Paul and Anthony for all the time they’ve spent discussing the various aspects and design features with me.  Some of my original ideas were used, and some were not, by mutual consent.  They permitted me unlimited access during the building of the boat.  They provided all the right paperwork including a purchase form approved by the RYA which protects both sides.   The stage payments were requested (and of-course paid) at all the correct times.  Okay, it was completed a little later than promised, but that’s better than corners being cut to rush the job through on time.  And very importantly I have a “Boat Safety Certificate” !   This gives me great peace of mind.  No nasty surprises when the boat is 4 years old and out of guarantee.

There will always be teething problems with a new boat, and I commend Sea Otter and their team for resolving all my problems, small and large, efficiently and as quickly as possible, which is all very reassuring.

So far I’ve just told you about my experiences.  I haven’t been giving advice.  But here’s some.

If you are considering having a boat built, in addition to the usual precautions, I advise you to specify the following :-

1)     Get a RYA approved agreement form filled out by both you and the builder from square one.

2)     Have it in writing that you will be supplied with a Boat Safety Scheme certificate (BSC) on completion and before the final payment needs to be paid, even if you need to pay for the examination yourself, but preferably not.

(It should be noted here that my BSC examination was carried out by Peter Hopley, from Denton, Manchester, and that Sea Otter paid for and arranged for the examination for me…..so you may smell a rat.  But the fact that Peter initially failed my boat on five points proves to me that there was no collusion, and I have the greatest respect for both the very thorough examination process, and for Peter himself, and for the integrity of all concerned.)

3)     Get the following in writing :-

“The builder will be responsible for the costs of removing the boat from the water, and returning it to the water, if the undertaking of any warranty work by the builder or his agent/s necessitates this.”

Get the builder to agree to these 3 conditions right from the start.  And finally…..

4)     When you take delivery of your new boat, choose, if you can, a mooring close to the builder for the first few weeks, if not a month or two !  It will make it easier for them to solve your teething problems (and you will have them) so they’re more likely to be rectified quickly !

I like my boat very much, but before concluding my report I’d like to tell you about the 14 things that I PARTICULARLY like about it :-

1)     I like my engine.  This Nanni 43HP engine produces no unpleasant fumes whatsoever during normal use. At no time have I detected fumes in deep locks.  Combined with its reassuringly regular heart-beat, it makes a perfect engine for my boat.

2)     I like my trace heating, which will maintain my piece of mind through the winter months.  I know I’ve mentioned it before, but just in case you missed it, the trace-heating wires run alongside the water pipes throughout the boat, except those already protected by having anti-freeze inside.  This is a photograph of the thermostat which is located in the drying (calorifier) cupboard.

When the temperature drops to near freezing, the thermostat permits mains electricity to flow through the wire, it heats up, and stops the water within the pipes freezing.  No need to drain water systems down.  But for obvious reasons you DO NEED A DEPENDABLE 240V SUPPLY !

Sea Otter will fit this system for you as an optional extra.

3)   I like my “Smart Gauge”.   What a great bit of kit this is, the most useful feature is that it tells me the power left in my battery bank as a percentage of when fully charged.  That is so useful !  Let me give you four examples why.  (Bear in mind my battery bank has a 540 amp-hour capacity, and I have two 100 amp alternators fitted.)

a)     I know that if I have my microwave on full power for 10 minutes through the inverter I use
3.5% of the power in my battery bank.

b)     My Webasto boiler uses 4% of my battery bank power per hour.

c)     It can take 2 hours of cruising to charge my batteries up by 10%.

d)     I can recharge my batteries by 8% per hour by running the engine at 1200 rpm in neutral.

Just the sort of information you need to ensure that you maintain a good charge in your batteries.

4)    I like my boarding plank !  I like it VERY much, because it typifies the attention to detail that Sea Otter pay when building their boats, even when fabricating such a mundane item of equipment.  It’s made of aluminium so it’s light;  It’s painted to match the boat;  It is well located in retaining brackets, along with a very nice aluminium pole with a wooden handle;  It doubles up as a water escape ladder, with anti-slip paint, and complete with foot-holes !

(Actually, the “plank” wasn’t finished when the boat was launched, so Anthony posted it to me to Crick Marina !  But it was just a little bit wider than the supporting brackets on the top of my boat.  Luckily I carry a suitable file in my heated tool-store, which I used to remove a couple of mm off the bracket….and left it at that !  On a normal steel boat I would have needed to prime the open wound with a rust-prevention product, followed by a coat or three of red-oxide, and then apply a couple of coats of green paint, AND collect up all the iron filings before they rusted on the top of the boat!)

Incidentally, in the photograph of my boarding plank, see what I mean about my tiller being longer than usual  ?

5)     I like my lounge.   The two settees allow us to relax sitting looking forward, with a back-rest, and  feet up, rather than compulsorily looking sideways across the boat.

This photograph shows the front end of the lounge, with my home-made log-box (under a cushion) between the end of the starboard side settee and television cabinet:-

With the addition of 3 wooden in-fills (one of which doubles as an excellent fold-up-table) the gap between the settees converts into a massive full-width bed.

Both of my lounge radiators are hidden behind the sofa backs, but easily exposed by the simple removal of a specially made back cushion on each side.

Here is the starboard settee in normal “Summer Mode” :-

And in “cold-winter-night-mode”, radiator exposed :-

And my heated tool-store under the same settee, with access from side or top :-

6)     I like my sky-lights !  Two of the eight are shown on the same photograph as my boarding plank.  Their main job is as a ventilator, and very important for the BSS, but they also let lots of light in !  I really don’t need roof-hatches, houdini hatches or prisms with eight of these !  And they look good from the outside too….low, inconspicuous, and not likely to be nicked !  The one in the kitchen does a THIRD job, because in addition to letting air & light in, it incorporates a dual-speed dual-direction fan.  The one in the shower does a FOURTH job, because it has a fan AND a 12v light in it !  All standard on a Sea Otter Boat of this length.

7)     I very much like the fact that I haven’t run aground in the relatively shallow waters experienced by almost everyone on the Lancaster Canal this year.  And in the last two and a half years I have not had to remove anything to speak of wrapped around the prop !  And I was most definitely moored closer to the sides than any other boat in the location on many occasions !

8)     I like the fact that my engine bay looks as good as the day I took delivery.  No rust down there, just sparkling shiny aluminium!   Any leak easily spotted !

9)     I washed and waxed my boat the other week, and it was a much more pleasant job than I thought it would be.  In doing so I appreciated how very smooth the paintwork is, and because of that,  the end result was very satisfying.  You get to know the irregularities very intimately when doing this job, and I can tell you that there are very few.

10)     I actually like my airing cupboard very much, even though the leaking calorifier was a problem for a day or two all that time ago.  I was told that the modern calorifiers are so well insulated that the amount of heat escaping is not enough to dry clothes.  But most of the heat in the cupboard doesn’t come from the calorifier…but from all the pipes leading to and from it !  I can tell you, that after I’ve been cruising for an hour I can put a selection of wet clothes and a wet towel on the rails inside, and they’ll be dry within a couple more hours.  I would NOT want all that useful heat to be dissipated in my engine bay where it is least needed.

11)     I like my Squirrel Stove.  And of-course it’s aluminium surround !  I quickly learnt how to keep the stove going all night, and get it going quickly in the morning.  Even in the wintery months we use the Webasto and the mains heaters only very rarely.  Of-course the bedroom won’t be very warm, but that suits us fine.

12)     I like my Wesley windows.   They have attractive curved tops incorporating removable hoppers, which can be left in the open position in most rainy conditions for ventilation.  Below the hopper is a large sliding glass section half the size of the window, which allows excellent air-flow on hot days.

As it happens, I did have a leak from one, but Gary from Wesley came to my boat to fix my problem the very next day….from Newark !

13)     I like my television aerial !  Sea Otter do not fix television aerials to their boats as standard bits of kit, because everyone wants something different.  So I thought I’d use my old magnetic clamp to support my Omni globe aerial……well we all have our bad days.  Fortunately I realised, before going to a lot of trouble, that magnets and aluminium are not in the least bit attracted to each other, so I asked Sea Otter to add an aluminium tube somewhere to support an aerial.  As usual they thought of an excellent solution, by welding an aluminium tube behind the starboard grab-handle on the bow bulkhead, and of-course they painted it to match the boat.  Within this aluminium tube is another smaller one, and an even smaller one within that, and some stainless steel wing nuts too.  I now have an inconspicuous aerial mast which can telescope up to about 20 feet high, on the top of which I can clamp a decent DM Log aerial in a matter of moments for a perfect picture.

I hope you can see it on this photograph taken just 2 months ago, when the boat was well over two years old !

14)     I particularly like my fenders, because I don’t need any !  You’ll see from the photograph above that there are two thick rubber strakes fitted right along the sides of the boat.  These are very thick and very strong, and very well glued on, and I don’t require additional ones hanging down the side of the boat (even though Sea Otter did provide 8 recessed fender eyes, which I tend to use for other purposes).     The exception is when I’m moored up for the evening, and I drop one or two of my big white fenders down between the boat and the bank, as shown here, which promotes a peaceful nights sleep.

You may notice an additional thick rubber pipe (reinforced internally with steel) hanging down at the bow, which is held on by rope passed through it.  One end of the rope is tied to the chain holding the bow fender on.  The other end of the rope is tied to the first of the recessed fender eyes along the side of the boat.  Well, I added that rubber pipe myself, just as additional protection, which I also did to my previous steel boat.  It is actually 2″ fuel delivery hose, from Centre Tank Services.

Incidentally, in that photograph I’m moored at the Tewitfield picnic corner, the most Northern and most shallow part of the presently navigable Lancaster Canal, and I’m almost against the bank, despite being on a bend !  Most boats can’t get within 2 foot of the bank at that spot !

And you may notice I have my shorter Morso “cruising” chimney” on, not my longer mooring chimney !

It is hard for me to think of some things that I don’t particularly like about my boat, but after much thought, I ‘ve come up with only 4 :-

1)     The first.  My “intercalated generator” which is attached to the end of my Nanni Engine.  The reason I’ve chosen that is because it cost me 2.5 grand, and it only generated 240volts at the relatively high revs required to stop me going South on the River Severn.  It’s a nice bit of kit if you can maintain 1,600 revs to 2,000 revs on your canal cruise.  I can sometimes if I really need to, but I don’t often want to.  I cannot blame Sea Otter for my bad decision regarding that.

2)     The second.  I had a little problem with light switches……I usually enter the boat at the stern, where there are 2 handy light switches.  One of these turns the lights on in the bedroom, and the other turns the lights on in the corridor up to the loo, approaching the kitchen.  But once I’ve reached the next switch bank in the kitchen, I need to backtrack, because there isn’t a switch in the kitchen to turn off either of the aforementioned lights in bedroom or corridor.  But, I’ve got round the problem, by locating LED sensor lights on top of the radiator pipes.  If it’s dark (and only when it’s dark) they come on as I walk towards them, and go off a few minutes later.  Perfect !

3)     The third.  I did experience condensation in some of the cupboards in the Winter.  Particularly in my small kitchen cupboard fitted under the gunnels on the starboard side, but also in the shower-room vanity unit.  But I’ve found that fitting vents into the doors almost eradicates the problem.  I’ve fitted quite a few measuring 165 X 75mm from www.sdslondon.co.uk part number 51044 and they’re under a couple of quid each.

I’m very happy with the type of sheet foam insulation that they used in my boat, and the way it was fitted.  I get no condensation anywhere else apart from the windows and frames, and I’ve devised ways of coping with that.

I don’t know the facts here, but I sometimes wonder if aluminium transmits heat more quickly than steel !  Because…..the inside of my boat cools down more quickly than I remember my previous steel boat doing, and conversely, seems to heat up more quickly when the Sun shines on it !!  But this is not a big problem with 3 heating systems, and large openings in all the windows.

4)     The fourth & final one, and I really can’t blame Sea Otter for this extra expense, but over the last two years I’ve felt it necessary to change all 31 of my Halogen bulbs for LEDS (from Midland Chandlers) thus reducing my 12v lighting power consumption by 90%.

And finally I’ll correct a few commonly-held misconceptions about Sea Otters :-

My Sea Otter gets blown about in the wind no more than my previously-owned steel boat of about the same length.   Some folk think because it’s made of aluminium it’ll be too light……not with the water ballast system and all my gear in it it isn’t !

I’ve given my boat a couple of really good whacks against parts of locks.  Of-course I did both deliberately to test the strength of the boat, but as a consequence it suffered no damage except for a minor tear to the “rubber bumper” which surrounds the boat, bits of which can easily be replaced or repaired.  None of my experiences indicate that my Sea Otter boat is less strong than my previous steel boat.

A final word on water leak detectors !  Every boat should have AT LEAST ONE !  Here’s just a few of my 11 !

(The water detector contacts in the last photograph are held in position a couple of inches above the base plate with the black velcro)

IN CONCLUSION

I have every reason to think that this boat will last and look good for many years to come, with relatively little maintenance.  With no rust preventative measures to take, I should have a lot more time to relax on it rather than working on it !  And that, if you remember reader, was the main reason I chose Sea Otter to build my boat in the first place.  Well done Sea Otter.

Useful contacts & numbers ?

Sea Otter Boats.  Paul & Anthony.  01246 470005  Tell them Brian (On Cloud Wine) sent you.

Me.  Brian. 07774 141916.  ibex32@aol.com

10% discount for my reader at my Spanish beach-side holiday rental apartments:- www.marazul.iowners.net

2″ Fuel delivery hose from www.centretank.com   Part number WH1

Kitchen sliding baskets.  www.scottsofstow.co.uk  Part number 106 4025

B & Q pull-out sliding rack.  Part number 3082478

Kate Boats.  ALWAYS just across the canal when needed. Nick, Molly & Cheryl. 01926 492968

Stratford Marina.  John & Heather.  01789 778358

Peter Hopwood.  BSC examiner (Manchester) 0161 336 2680

Water-leakage detectors.  I’ll advise on application !  ibex32@aol.com

Heat-trace freeze protection.  www.tracehaeaters.co.uk.  Martin.  01483 825193

Vents for cupboard doors.  www.sdslondon.co.uk 020 7228 1183

Wesley Marine Windows, Newark.  Angie & Gary.  01636 704363

What it’s all about and Willington pubs too.

Good morning everyone and with the sunshine streaming through my windows and warming my legs up as well as the cockles of my heart it feels good so thought I’d share my ramblings.

As you may have spotted yesterday was glorious so after checking my oil, water and gearbox fluid, on which I have a small drip come leak of which I’m keeping a close eye on. I decided it was time for a little mosey on down to Stenson to see how the gearbox acts under pressure. All looked quite good on my return with a couple of drips after about 3 hours cruising.

It was just so lovely to be out in the sunshine careering along at speeds of upto 2mph at times. As Paul said in his newsletter the sunshine just makes you feel like boating. There were quite a few walkers out with their dogs, it’s a well used bit of towpath round Willington, a popular place. There wasn’t many boats about really, I think I saw 4 others. It just felt lovely to be in the sunshine with a few ducks, robins and I saw the Oyster Catchers we have here at Mercia which were feeding in one of the many large puddles in one of the fields. Didn’t know we had oysters in the fields but I’m no orthadontist anyway. Thoughts of the summer were stiring and thoughts of painting the boat, I’m veering towards doing a cheap job myself as there are other things which are higher up the list of requirements if and when money is available. Must book in for a blacking.

Days like this are what makes it all seem so wonderful even if not all my life is quite how I’d like it but then………… Returned to the marina and call in for  a pumpout while I’m there then back to my mooring and a chat with others all enjoying the sun and the warmth. My thermometer on the back of the boat read 21C at one point and wasn’t in direct sunshine.

After lunch and resting a while it was time to sample some of Willington’s night life, and actually be a part of it too, as they have an open mike night which is now at the Rising Sun. I’d not been in before and it’s quite nice. Only went in the bar where the open mike was but a proper bar with a proper pub feel to it. Nice and clean with plenty of wood and a good selection of real ales, friendly staff and a friendly atmosphere.

Gordon, who lives at Mercia, had talked me into going up as he more or less runs it and sets everything up. I had been threatening to get out and play more at open mikes and folk clubs. I’ve become quite settled over the winter with just not doing a great deal and going to bed early but it was a good night and Ken and Keith a couple of my neighbours came up too. Some good performers there and I got to do 5 songs and had folks singing along with Paul Simon’s Mrs Robinson, Me You and Julio, then Lay Lady Lay, Light my Fire and threw in a Fred Astaire, I Won’t Dance and I thoroughly enjoyed myself. One or two thanked me and said they hoped I come again which made me feel good even taking into account the level of drinking which had taken place.

There were probably at least a dozen of us from the marina there all told and I assume the others were regulars and locals and all seemed friendly. A good night was had by all.

We discussed the building progress of the new shops and bistro which is taking place at Mercia and think it will make a social difference having a bar on site so there is a meeting place and people will get to meet more of the other moorers.

Right time for some studying as the Cheltenham Festival starts tomorrow and if I’m going to throw my money away on sick animals I will do it scientifically after spending hours working out why this horse can’t lose and that one can’t possibly win only to find out how wrong I was. No I won’t be putting my boat on any horses only small stakes but for me it’s the highlight of the sporting year.

Have a great time in the sun while we’ve got it and write you all soon.

Our Nige

2014 03 09 Newsletter – Narrowboat Knots

I don’t want to go on holiday again. I spent a month doing very little physical work so I’ve found the last week pretty hard. Fellow groundsman Patrick went into hospital to have an operation on his shoulder just before I went away. He had a piece of bone removed. The surgeon recommended that he rested for six weeks after the operation. Unfortunately, resting means staying off work and staying off work without pay for a month and a half just wasn’t an option for him.

Patrick was holding the fort while I was away. He’s done a wonderful job of keeping the site neat and tidy but there are a few jobs he just couldn’t tackle in his weakened state. One of them was cutting the grass on the banks bordering the small car park close to our office. The car park is thirty feet higher than the access road to the east side of our locks marina. The forty five degree hundred metre long bank between the car park and the access road is grassed. During the growing season, which has started about a month early this year because of the non existent winter, the bank needs cutting about every two weeks.

The company has spared no expense to ensure that we have the very best equipment for the job. It’s a Flymo mower on a rope. We lock down the dead man’s handle with Velcro straps then haul the mower up and down the slope for six hours to get the job done. After ten minutes I’m usually tired. After six hours I need to lie down in a darkened room for about a week to recover. It’s not my favourite job.

I haven’t enjoyed coming back to the work my body’s no longer used to, but I have enjoyed skipping a dreary winter month and returning to marina which is beginning to show some colour again. The snowdrops are in full bloom, the daffodils are displaying a hint of yellow, and there are green buds on many of the spindle, hawthorn, blackthorn, wayfaring trees and field maple which I planted in the woods towards the end of last year.

The water fowl are particularly lively at the moment. We have to be vigilant for low flying mallards while two or more drakes with glossy green heads chase solitary brown harried looking females. Our breeding Canada geese have arrived and are busy honking at each other twenty four hours a day. At least they don’t have our resident pair of mute swans to contend with.

Last year the cob lost his partner. I don’t know how long they had been together but the pair had been breeding here since I arrived in 2010. Each year in late February or early March we would see them courting, then the pen would spend a couple of weeks building her gigantic nest in the reed choked runoff from the old single lock next to Calcutt Bottom lock. She would then sit on the nest for six weeks before taking her brand new brood of seven or eight cygnets on  a tour of the marinas to show them off.

There’s been no courting or nest building this year and no chance of enjoying watching the cygnets grow from fluffy little balls to graceful young swans over the coming months.

The cob might have found a new mate, or he might just have found another male to keep him company. He’s had another bird with him over the last few weeks. An indication of the sex of the bird is the size of the bump on its beak. A larger bump is an indication that it’s either a male, or an older female. There’s no sure way of telling without carrying out blood tests and the penknife and magnifying glass I keep on the boat probably aren’t up to it.

Our swan’s new friend has a large beak bump. So maybe he’s found himself an older woman to keep him company or maybe he’s just settled for another old bloke to moan to in his dotage. Either way, I hope he’s happy.

I’ve settled back down to life afloat now. We’re approaching that frustrating time of the year for those of us who only have a solid fuel stove. The temperature is still close to zero overnight but it’s been warm enough on a few days over the last week to almost allow the fire to go out.

There’s some quite warm weather forecast for next week so for the next few months we’ll be burning coal on average less and less time each day. Last year I think it was June before I closed the coal box for the last time. We then managed just over three months before I lit it again towards the end of September.

I was hoping to have the central heating system installed by now. The original plan was to have the work done while we were on holiday. Unfortunately I made the mistake of not sharing this information with Calcutt Boats until too late. I hadn’t realised just how much work they had booked in.

The earliest they could manage was mid March, but now we are approaching the start date mid March looks more like mid April. They’re actually turning work away at the moment because they can’t cope with the demand. I suspect this job is going to drag on for a few more months.

Composting Toilets

Last week I published an article about composting toilets. Since then I’ve received a few emails asking how many boaters use these toilets and whether the users are happy with them.

I know that composting toilets aren’t the most popular toilets in narrowboats. I suspect that two factors are the larger size than dump through or cassette toilets and the fact that the boat owner needs to be much more “hands on” with this type of toilet to get them to work properly in the cooler more humid UK climate. I promised that I would ask site users to establish whether they have one on board and if so, whether they are happy with them.

Over to you then. If you are one of the lucky/unlucky few who has a composting toilet on your boat, please email me to let me know how you get on with yours. I’ll publish the results in next week’s newsletter.

If you are considering this type of toilet, or would like to know more about how they operate, you’ll find Allan’s post very useful.

The Best Knots For Narrowboat Owners

Knots are so simple to learn and very important to boat owners. A poorly or incorrectly tied knot can have disastrous consequences. An untied mooring rope usually just leads to mild embarrassment on usually placid water where the worst that can happen is that you’ll wake up in the middle of the night to find yourself floating gently in the centre of the canal, but if a knot slips when you’re moored on a fast flowing river, you’re in real trouble.

Boating is also a much more pleasant experience if you are in control of your mooring ropes. I’m often frustrated at the marina by a particular staff member who just can’t be bothered to learn a few simple knots. Rather than a few quick and effective turns, he uses yards of rope to form what can only be described as an untidy bird’s nest. If the boat stays put it’s more good luck than management. When another member of staff has to move the boat he’s tied up, valuable time is wasted trying to work out what he’s done and pulling great lengths of rope through the knot rather than releasing a loop or two.

I’ve learned from my own mistakes. At my first ever lock on my very first cruise I tied my boat, the company’s show boat which I was taking down to Beale Park on the Thames for the IWA festival, to a bollard below the bottom lock in the Napton flight.

I left my twelve year old son Brook on board while I prepared the lock. I raised the paddle, secured it then glanced down to the boat to see if Brook had made my coffee to find an empty spot where the boat should have been.

Brook was standing, coffee mug in hand, on the front deck with a startled look on his face as the wash from the lock pushed our boat away from me down the centre of the canal.

A couple of nearby live aboard boaters retrieved both the boat and my son and with a collective good natured shaking of heads brought both back to me. I learned to both tie secure knots and to constantly watch my boat at locks after that.

One of the first posts I wrote for this site was on the subject of knots. Four years later, I have some more information to add to add to the post. Site subscriber Colin Jarman has published two books on knots and splicing. He kindly agreed to write a few words on the best knots for narrowboat owners to use. Here’s what he has to say on the subject.

Philippines Blog

I’ve done it. I’ve completed fourth part of my holiday blog. If you’re squeamish, or if you’re just about to eat, I suggest you skip the section about Filipino snack food. Other than that, I hope you find the blog entertaining.

If you’ve missed them, here’s the first, second  and third part of my Philippine experience.

Building An Aluminium Narrowboat

I’ve run out of time again. I hoped to publish the final part of Brian Colling’s Sea Otter narrowboat build this week, but I just haven’t had the time to put it together. I promise you that I’ll include it in the newsletter next week but, for now, you’ll just have to make do with the first eight parts. Sorry!

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
part 7
part 8

Case Study Joannie M

Peter Early (Pearley on the forum) and his wife Jeanette live a nomadic life as genuine continuous cruisers. They’ve been cruising the network non stop since their new boat was launched in 2007. It’s a lifestyle many boaters aspire to.

When Peter isn’t cruising, he spends much of his time either answering questions on the forum or single-handedly adding vast amounts of useful information to the Cruising Guides section of the forum (thank you Pete!). Here are this week’s notes on the Rochdale canal.

Here’s their case study.

Helpful Hints

Another cooking and energy saving tip, this time courtesy of Keith and Nicky on NB Badger Sett…

“You’ll probably be checking the date as you read this, but trust me, it’s no April Fool.

Nicky’s brother and wife live in Switzerland and brought us a Wonder Bag for Christmas. (http://www.nb-wonderbag.com) See, no April Fool, there’s even a website. Anyway, it’s simply a foam filled bag that retains heat or cold apparently although we haven’t tried the latter yet and works as a slow cooker and continues to cook in its retained heat. We’re currently using it three or four times a week with two primary benefits. The first being the obvious saving of gas that may be of interest to the lady in your latest newsletter and secondly the resulting condensation from cooking. Take the most simplest thing we cook, rice. Just put two parts water to one part rice (whatever amount you want so long as its 2:1) bring it to the boil and pop it in the bag. One hour later the rice is ready and without having spent 10-15 mins of gas with the resulting 10-15 mins of condensation.

We’ve cooked Moroccan Lamb Tagine, various stews, curries, bolognaise, a joint of braising steak, soups, chillie con carni. We normally just follow the basic recipes and then pop it in the bag for an hour or two or whatever is needed. We’ve also started doubling up on portions so we cook it the once and then re-heat the second portion a few days later that is usually just a case of bringing it up to boiling on the hob for a few minutes, pop it in the bag and have it an hour later.

I’m sure you’ll go as far as checking out the website and as I’m sure something like this will be a hit with boaters, you might even try your hand at getting a free one out of them to demo and then maybe link to their website so you get some sort of commission. Maybe this could speed up your dream of going off grid.

And finally, just a couple of pictures of rice being cooked…”

 Another one for you from John Bird…

“Top tip for narrowboat cooking is to wrap potatoes in foil and place in the (empty) ash can under the stove for an hour or so before supper. Fluffiest and tastiest baked potatoes in the UNIVERSE.”

MaxMon Update

While I was away I wrote briefly about the MaxMon remote boat monitoring application. I was using it to keep a virtual eye on James from the other side of the world. Unfortunately after about two weeks the regular email reports stopped. I suspected that the reason was a payment issue with my Three contract broadband account. Just before we went on holiday I replaced a cracked debit card, the same card which I used to pay for many of my services. I forgot to update my card details through my Three account and, because Three offer their broadband dongle users the most frustrating account log in process known to man, I couldn’t access my account while I was away without physically getting hold of my dongle.

I’ve contacted their customers services a couple of times over the last week to determine the problem. I’ve established it’s not a payment issue, but I can’t get any further than that. I spent one and a half very frustrating hours with Randall from Bangladesh on Friday. We couldn’t get it working through verbal fault finding so he logged remotely into my laptop to try and sort it out.

He failed. I suspect that the dongle was damaged during the extreme weather across the UK while I was away. The wind here was stronger than anyone can remember. My chimney had to be fished out of the marina by a neighbour. I can’t say for sure that the dongle has been damaged by the wind and rain, and I’m not keen on mentioning to Randall that the dongle spends 24 hours a day on the boat roof, even though it’s kept dry inside a latex glove.

I’m able to connect to the internet from the boat at the moment via the marina’s WiFi service, but the aerial which receives the WiFi signal is plugged directly into my laptop so other devices can’t connect to it.

MaxMon was working perfectly until my Three broadband failed and this is the first time that my Three broadband has failed in the four years I have been at the marina. It’s frustrating, as is often the case living on a narrowboat, but I’ll have it sorted out soon and then I can continue with the MaxMon reports.

A Case Study Of Liveaboard Narrowboat Joanie M

Peter Early (Pearley on the forum) and his wife Jeanette live a nomadic life as genuine continuous cruisers. They’ve been cruising the network non stop since their new boat was launched in 2007. It’s a lifestyle many boaters aspire to.

Who are you? (and your significant other and, of course, your dog if you have one)

Peter and Jeanette Earley

Tell me a little about yourself and why you decided to live a life afloat

About 10 years ago a good friend died. He was only a year older than me and it made us think that there were other things we wanted to do rather than working. An opportunity came to sell our business and in 2007 with no family ties we had Joanie M built for us and sold our house.

What is your boat called and why did you decide on that name?

‘Joanie M’. We wanted to call the boat after Jeannette’s mum. There were several Joans on the register, 2 or 3 Joanies so we added the M, for Maurice, Jeannettes dad, to make the name unique.

Do you have a permanent mooring?

Continuous Cruisers although we have sometimes taken a winter mooring, on one occasion taking and paying for it then getting stuck in the ice about 5 miles from getting there!

What is your boat style and length

57 ft 6 ins trad.

How long have you been a narrowboat owner?

20 years of hiring, 7 years of shared ownership then Joanie M since 2007

How did you finance your boat?

From the sale of house.

How much time do you spend on your boat each year?

Are you still working? (If so, what do you do?)

No. Retired vehicle electrician so at least I know how to look after my batteries.

What do you like least about narrowboat life?

Nothing

What do you like most about narrowboat life?

Freedom. We get to see different parts of the country, if we don’t like the view we can move, if we don’t like our neighbours we can move.

If you could change just one thing about your boat, what would it be?

Second bathroom

When you are cruising how do you resupply (How do you get to the supermarket without a car)?

Walk but often use supermarket delivery services for wine! When your stuck in the ice you tend to drink more!

How do you do your washing when you are cruising?

Washing machine & tumble dryer on board

What type of toilet do you have on board and are you happy with it?

Dometic vacuum cassette. Gives conventional style bowl at normal height. Yes very happy although like every other boat toilet it has its peculiarities. If it is going to play up it will be when we have visitors.

How do you connect to the internet when you are on your boat and are you happy with the service you receive?

T Mobile wireless pointer. Makes inside of boat wireless.

What is your favourite canal or section of canal?

Mine is Calder & Hebble but Jeannette is not keen on rivers so next would be BCN

How do you generate electricity when you are cruising and how much do you use?

Joanie M is gas free so have a 7 kVa diesel generator built in.

How warm is your narrowboat in the winter?

Solid fuel stove and Ecofan makes it very warm. Cannot rely on Webasto for long term heating

What advice can you offer someone considering living on a narrowboat?

Try it out before committing, not just in the summer but during the winter months.

____________________________________________________________________

Are you one of the lucky few who lives the dream on board your own narrowboat full time? Would you like to share your experience with some of the thousands of potential floating home owners who visit this site? If you can spare the time to answer a few simple questions, I would love to hear from you. Just let me know so I can email the questions to you. I’ll create a post like the one above complete with a link back to your own blog or website.

2014 03 02 Newsletter – Composting Toilets

I’m back. I had a gentle introduction to the English weather after a month of constant thirty degree daytime highs. We stopped at Hong Kong to changes planes. The temperature had dropped ten degrees and, just to make me feel really at home, there was a grey mist hanging over the water next to the airport.

Now we’re back at the marina dodging puddles, squelching through sodden grass and wondering where the marina ends and where the landscaping begins. I understand that there’s been a shower or two while we’ve been away and a little more than the expected gentle breeze.

The boat’s chimney and coolie hat blew off on a particularly breezy day but was rescued by neighbour and fellow Calcutt worker Steven Cox (Thank you Steve). He also re fixed the cratch cover after the wind threatened to carry it across the marina on a couple of particularly unpleasant days.

Other than that, the boat was fine. Twenty eight days away was fourteen days longer than my previous maximum time away from the boat when I visited my parents in Australia two years ago.

As a boat owner you have the same worries as a house owner when you’re away from the property for any length of time plus the worry about whether the mooring lines have come undone, whether there’s been any water ingress or whether there’s been any unwanted attention from a ne’er-do-well taking advantage of hatches, doors and windows which are often far more easy to force open than they are in a bricks and mortar home.

During moments of unusual and unwelcome paranoia I also had visions of returning to the mooring to find the boat, my home, no longer there after being spirited away by crafty thieves.

Of course, the boat was still there in the more or less the same condition as it was on the day we left. I say “more or less” because a phenomenal amount of dust settled in just four weeks much to the disgust of the Queen of Clean, and the boat was unpleasantly but not dangerously cold.

We arrived back at the boat at midnight after twenty seven hours of solid and exhausting travel including a five hour wait at Manila airport and then a three hour wait at Hong Kong.

The temperature was just above freezing and although the two Dimplex greenhouse heaters had done their job protecting the boat’s delicate pipes and pumps, the boat was very chilly. The first job was to get the fire going. I realised that this would be a priority before we left so there was a plentiful supply of Zip fire lighters, dry oak twigs for kindling and coal to pile on top once the oak was burning.

Within five minutes the fire was roaring, half an hour later the boat was noticeably warmer, and five minutes after that we were in bed.

Saturday was spent trying to do something useful but failing miserably due to jet lag. Today, Sunday, I’m almost back to normal so it’s back to the normal Sunday routine of an early rise and five or six hours sitting in front of my laptop putting the week’s newsletter together.

I’ll dive straight in to the deep end, the deep end of the toilet bowl in this case, and give you some more information about one of boat owners favourite topics of conversation, toilets.

Composting Toilets

If two narrowboat owners meet, sooner or later the subject of toilets will be discussed, often passionately and usually at great length. Toilet talk is not something which bricks and mortar home owners usually indulge in but the type of toilet installed on your boat can have an impact on how much you enjoy narrowboat ownership and how much the boat costs to maintain.

I wrote this post about narrowboat toilets a few years ago. I knew enough at the time to write a quick post about the pros and cons of the two main types of narrowboat toilets, the pump out and the cassette toilet. Long term narrowboat owner and continuous cruiser Allan Cazaly on narrowboat Pengalanty was quick to mention that I had omitted a third type of toilet sometimes installed on boats which, although quite expensive to purchase, has very low maintenance costs.

A composting toilet, if installed and maintained correctly, can provide years of low cost and virtually odourless waste disposal. However, Allan noticed that his own composting toilet failed to work correctly when he first installed it. Now he has tweaked the system, he’s very happy with the way it operates and wouldn’t want to change it for anything else.

If you are considering this type of toilet, or would like to know more about how they operate, you’ll find Allan’s post very useful.

Philippines Blog

After flying back from the island of Negros to Manila, spending three days there showing Sally’s sister and brother in law the sights, then spending three days on the paradise island of Boracay before a final night in Manila before the painful flight home, I’m now back on James, my permanent holiday home.

The last week’s travel has played havoc with my holiday blog writing. We’ve spent sixteen hours in the air, fourteen hours waiting in terminals and eight hours getting to and from the various airports. I tried to do as much as I could while I was waiting for flights but, to tell you the truth, my heart really wasn’t in it.

I’ve managed to finish the third part of the blog (link below) and write a little of the fourth part. I’ll finish the fourth and final part some time next week.

If you’ve missed them, here’s the first, second  and third part of my Philippine experience.

Building An Aluminium Narrowboat

Here are part seven and part eight of Brian Colling’s excellent Sea Otter narrowboat build blog. In case you’ve missed them, links to the first six parts are below.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6

Case Study Victoria Plum

Here’s a story with a happy ending. Don Wilkinson was made redundant at the tender age of fifty three (my age). Since then he’s spent seventeen years cruising the canal and river network on his own boat. He’s still cruising and still enjoying every minute of it.

Helpful Hints

Here’s another cooking tip for you, this time from Jo Blythe…

“Just a little tip; a spatchcock chicken on the stove took me about an hour and a half. The majority of them are bought ready prepared in a foil tray so I just popped it on a cooking tray covered in foil and left it to its own devices. It was fabulous! I’ve done my boiled potatoes, roast beef — wrapped in plenty of foil — and left overnight to cook slowly. It was amazing. That’s how I always cook it now. Why waste a great source of heat? Oh, and pork chops, have a go.”

Have You Had Problems Contacting Me?

A Month In Paradise Part Four

Continued from part three

We left Manila after an exhausting, expensive and rather tedious three days. We were there as treat for Sally’s sister and her husband Corizon as a thank you for taking such good care of Sally’s house in her absence. At the end of the three days, I’m not entirely sure whether they viewed it as a treat or as a slow and increasingly painful torture.

They hadn’t been off the island before, hadn’t flown in a plane, hadn’t experienced the dubious pleasure of being waited upon in a hotel, hadn’t ridden in a lift, been to a cinema, shopped in a large department store for clothes or eaten out in a decent restaurant.

They’ve done all that now. I don’t think they’ll want to do it again.

They live on the lower slopes of a beautiful volcano close to an abundant supply of crystal clear mountain water, in a comfortable home surrounded by trees bowed under the weight of delicious fruit, surrounded by a dazzling display of flowers and surrounded by a network of supportive friends and family.

We “treated” them by removing them from all of this and subjecting them to seventy two hours of traffic noise and chaos, dirty, crowded streets populated by insistent street vendors, beggars with intrusive outstretched hands and the knowing and suggestive looks from the ladies and gentlemen of the night.

Instead of enjoying an evening enjoying a simple meal on a shaded terrace, they endured mediocre food in crowded restaurants at prices which left them speechless.

They were far too polite and appreciative to complain or to comment, but I know that one of the experiences they enjoyed the most was an evening spent in their room with Sally and I and their son, Paul, who travelled six hours by bus to spend the evening in Manila with us.

While we were waiting for him to arrive we had a meal of takeaway barbecued chicken and rice bought from a fast food outlet eaten in their room sans cutlery and washed down with cans of tepid Coke.

Boracay

Our flight from Manila to the island of Boracay was uneventful. Our taxi ride to the airport was not.

We left the hotel with plenty of time to reach the airport. Plenty of time that is if the airport had been anywhere other than Manila in the rush hour and our taxi driver had been focussed on the people who were paying for his services.

I understand that the early morning city traffic is bad at the best of times but with the main road around the bay partially closed for resurfacing, our progress was reduced to an unsteady crawl.

To make matters worse, the taxi driver decided to stop en route to do his weekly shop, have a chat with his mates and I think, all though I may be wrong, to have his hair done.

He left us parked at the side of the road with the engine running, parked directly in front of three other taxis, two of them occupied, blocking them in completely.

Almost immediately, the driver of one of the blocked vehicles wanted to move his car. Seeing that there was no one in our taxi’s driving seat he climbed in himself and moved our taxi further up the road, without a word to us and without a glance in our direction.

Our taxi driver returned after an eternity, looked slightly puzzled when he couldn’t immediately find his vehicle, then smiled in relief as he spotted it before loading a week’s worth of groceries on top of our luggage.

Sally isn’t the most tolerant of people and poor customer service is one of her pet hates so I wasn’t surprised when she quite reasonably pointed out that we were feeling a little anxious about the delay as Gill and Corizon’s flight back to Negros was due to leave in an hour and a half.

The taxi driver was either having a particularly bad day, or he was particularly unstable and on the verge of a nervous breakdown. I don’t know what he said as his monologue was in Tagalog. I do know that, to put it very mildly, he wasn’t happy.

He spent the rest of the journey gesticulating wildly, often with both hands removed from the steering wheel while he complained passionately about the treatment of taxi drivers in general and him in particular.

At one stage he actually climbed out of the taxi so that he could stand in front of the vehicle facing us as we cowered in the back seat, reinforcing many of his points by slapping the palms of his hand on the bonnet.

At one stage he burst into tears as he complained bitterly about his treatment then swerved from lane to lane as he bent down to look under the dashboard looking for something to dry his face.

When we thankfully arrived at the airport he refused to either speak to us to tell us how much we owed him or open the taxi boot for us so that we could remove our luggage. He just sat sulking pointing at the taxi’s meter with his head turned away from us.

We didn’t leave him a tip.

The journey’s stress wasn’t quite over. The terminal where Sally and I needed to catch the hour long flight to Cataclan airport was another twenty minute taxi ride away from the terminal where the taxi deposited us and where Gill and Corizon would catch their flight back to the island. The original plan had been to drop Gill and Corizon off, say a quick goodbye and then use the same taxi to take us to the new terminal. As the sulky ten year old wasn’t speaking to us we had to change our plans.

Fortunately there is no shortage of taxis at the airport so within half an hour and five hours before our own scheduled afternoon flight we arrived at the correct terminal.

I wasn’t looking forward to the five hour wait so we were both delighted when we were offered the next flight to leave which was four hours earlier than our scheduled flight.

Cataclan airport only has one short runway so can only accommodate small turboprop aircraft. Ours was a dainty little fifty seater with just two cabin crew and no in flight services apart from an old plastic crate lugged up and down the isle by the two cabin crew offering extortionately priced family sized bags of crisps.

After passing through Heathrow, Hong Kong and Manila airports, landing at Cataclan airport is like coming down on a driveway next to someone’s garden shed. The plane landed, applied the brakes rather harder than I’m used to, reached the end of the short runway, turned a hundred and eighty degrees then taxied slowly back to the small single storey airport building.

The single building held a solitary baggage carousel, a toilet, an enquiries desk , a couple of dozen seats, our flight’s fifty passengers and another fifty Chinese tourists from a plane which landed as soon as ours had cleared the runway.

The Chinese are to Filipinos what American tourists are to the English; they’re very loud. The one big difference is that the Chinese men like to spit, and they’re very good at it. It’s quite surreal to watch an expensively dressed man startle the birds out of the trees as he hawks as much phlegm from the back of his throat as possible before launching it from a great distance into the nearest receptacle, and then watch is equally expensively dressed wife wander over to the bin to admire his handiwork.

There was a mini bus waiting outside the terminal to take us to the ferry port where we needed to catch a boat to take us to the smaller island of Boracay. The mini bus took longer to load than it did to transport us the 400m to the ferry port entrance.

It was here that I fell foul of one of the many baggage boys who frequent the airports in many areas of the Philippines hoping to earn some easy money from tired and confused travellers.

Our baggage boy looked like a very stocky and not very well dressed Ronald McDonald. Before we could say a word, he had opened the back of the mini bus, picked up three of the sports holdalls we use as suitcases and disappeared through the gates towards the ferry.

By the time I caught up with him, he had carried the bags onto the boat and put them down, gently and very neatly, on the boats’s covered front deck. Then he turned towards me and waited for his tip.

I was tired and not really in the mood for an argument so, even though he had carried the bags without us asking him to do so, just to get rid of him I fished a 20 peso note (27p) from my pocket. This might not sound very much but on the island we had just spent three weeks an agricultural worker would have to endure two hours of hard physical labour in energy sapping heat to earn this amount. Mr. McDonald had spent just two or three minutes carrying our bags before demanding his fee.

He would accept the tip. He pointed out, with a very effective and, I suspect, often used mime that as he had carried three bags he expected twenty pesos for each of them. He now wanted six hours pay at agricultural rates for a couple of minutes work.

I refused. He became quite vocal. So did I. He tried to take our bags back off the boat. I shouted for the police. He disappeared instantly and without a word, and without even the twenty peso note I had initially offered him. I think that these guys are tolerated by the authorities but not given very much latitude.

We saw the same guy on the return trip trying the same scam on a Korean father holding a very unhappy screaming toddler. The father also reluctantly offered him a twenty peso note before being told that he “owed” sixty pesos. He didn’t have the energy to argue as the child was trying to throw itself out of his arms over the side of the boat into the sea. He handed over a 100 peso note to be told, of course, that Ronald didn’t have any change. With a shake of his head the frustrated father indicated that he could keep his ill gotten gains.

The scenery as we chugged through choppy water for ten minutes from the ferry port to the island was breathtaking. Boracay was voted as the Asia’s best island in their World’s Best Awards 2012 and Pukka (shell) beach to the north of the island is listed in CNN’s top 100 beaches in the world.

There was another mini bus waiting for us when we climbed off the boat. The island is shaped like an upright dog’s bone and is just six miles long and no more than a mile wide. The best beaches are on a three mile strip along the west coast with the livelier bars and restaurants at the north end. The southern section of the beach is for those who don’t think that a good night out involves diving open mouthed into a bath of local rum. Our accommodation was as far away from the noise as possible.

Because of the size of the island and the very narrow streets, the cars and trucks are pocket sized Suzuki and Isuzu. We crawled along the full length of the main street down the centre of the island and then turned off down an impossibly narrow side street choked with tourists.

There are no roads on to the beach or to the hundreds of low rise hotels and apartments which sit about fifty metres back from the water. To reach the accommodation you have to carry your luggage the final two or three hundred metres through powdery white sand.

We threw our bags into our ground floor room then made ourselves comfortable on the café terrace where we sat for much of the time over the following three days. The terrace was a wonderful place for me to sit, shaded from the constant thirty degree heat, catching up on my emails courtesy of the apartment’s free WiFi or just watching the world go by. Here’s the view from my seat on the terrace.

After an hour on the terrace drinking far too much coffee we walked the length of the beach. Every few steps we were accosted by the street vendors. They’re far more polite and far less intrusive than in many third world countries I’ve visited so it was fairly easy to just ignore them and enjoy the walk. I was fascinated by the variety of products and services on offer.

We were offered straw hats, sunglasses (even though both Sally and I had a pair on at the time), designer watches, genuine pearl necklaces, authentic Filipino sculptures, excursions displayed on tiny dog eared laminated cards, diving experiences, restaurant meals, pedicures, manicures and massages with and without a “happy ending” and a variety of snack foods.

My favourite was bags of sour mango slices with sugar dips. The mango was the consistency of sliced apple and very refreshing without the sugar. I also quite enjoyed regular cups of taho.  Looks like mixture of curdled milk, flat coke and frog spawn, only not quite so appealing.

Sally talked about it enthusiastically and called one of the beach taho sellers over as soon as she spotted one. They carry what look like two small milk churns connected by a wooden pole which they balance on a shoulder as they plod along the beach.

One churn contains the tofu (curdled milk) and the sago pearls (frog spawn), the other holds the amibal sweetener and flavourer (flat coke). The sweet takes a bit of getting used to but is really tasty.

The Filipino snack food which I refused to try – I feel a little queasy just thinking about it – is balut.

Balut is a hard boiled duck egg… with a little extra flavouring and texture courtesy of the developing embryo inside. Balut is eaten much as you would eat a normal hard boiled egg straight from the shell.

Balut is currently quite popular is high end restaurants in the Philippines where the unsightly mess is served cooked but without the shell floating in a pool of hot sauce and vinegar.

On our second day I made the mistake of leaving Sally alone on the beach for half an hour. When I returned she was clutching a plastic bag containing two small and weighty spheres. She had bought two balut from a passing pedlar.

She had bought two so that I could try one. Given that I nearly threw up when she told me what they were, there was no chance of me actually eating one. I’m still not entirely convinced that Sally actually wanted to eat one herself. She viewed both of the eggs with suspicion when I asked her when she intended eating them.

She doesn’t like to look at the contents but said that they are both tasty and nutritious. She managed to eat the eggs without seeing them by shutting herself in our en suite bathroom with the lights off while she peeled them then quickly swallowed the contents.

I don’t like to think about balut even now when I’m safely back on the boat. I’ll stick to the much more normal food available in the UK such as grilled heart, liver and kidneys and fried pigs’ blood mixed with oatmeal.

Boracay is a small island surrounded by crystal clear water teeming with fish and crustaceans. Many of the restaurants display the day’s catches on beds of ice.

We eat at two different seafood restaurants during our three days on the island. On our first evening we visited one which offered an all you can eat buffet with unlimited iced tea for just 500 pesos (£6.75) each.

The choice included a variety of different rices and vegetables and some wonderful seafood. There were buckets full of boiled crabs, bowls of shrimp and mussel, two whole tuna and a mountain of oysters cooked to order and served with calamansi, small local limes.

Both Sally and I love oysters just warmed through so that the flesh is still soft and slippery. We had two dozen each, washed down with about a pint of iced tea. It was a wonderful meal.

On our last day on the island we decided to treat ourselves. As the sun set at 6pm, half of the beach was transformed. The sun loungers were taken away for the day and replaced with tables and chairs for restaurant diners.

We picked the restaurant with the largest, freshest looking shrimps on display. Calling them shrimps is doing them an injustice. These were Asian tiger shrimps which can grow over thirteen inches long. We picked one for me which must have been approaching a foot long and a slightly smaller one for Sally.

The restaurants sold their fish and crustaceans by weight. Ours, including a portion of rice each, cost £27. Boracay is not a cheap place to eat compared with most of the Philippines but a similar meal in the UK would cost much, much more.

Anyway, we weren’t paying just for the food, we were paying for the experience and for the idyllic setting. Our table was on one of the most beautiful beaches in the world, surrounded by coconut trees, just feet away from gentle surf caressing powdery white sand.

The location was perfect. The meal was not.

The tiger prawns sally and I buy from the Thai shop in Banbury are much, much tastier than our slightly rubbery and largely flavourless monsters and the portion of rice they served with our costly crustaceans wouldn’t have satisfied a mouse. We had to order an additional portion each. At least I was able to keep myself busy while we waited fifteen minutes for the rice. My plastic chair had such thin legs that, even with my modest weight, the back legs were forced so deep into the sand I had to move it every two or three minutes to stop myself rolling backwards off the chair.

Overall the experience was good though. Once we’d accepted that we had just paid as much to feed the two of us as we had paid for a 50kg sack of rice on Negros three weeks earlier I just ordered another San Miguel for myself and another mango shake for Sally and settled down to wait for the next cute five year old beggar to stand by my chair asking for money.

Three days on the island was wonderful, but three days was enough. Neither of us like to sunbathe. For an Asian woman, white it good, brown is bad. And for me, direct sun means more lobster red than brown.

There were plenty of excursions which could have entertained us. I would really have enjoyed going on one of the island hopping trips but Sally isn’t comfortable on or in the water and I didn’t want to leave her on her own. The cost was also prohibitively expensive.

There were also plenty of businesses offering scuba diving trips. I took a scuba diving course in the Dominican Republic thirty years ago. I thoroughly enjoyed the sensation of weightlessness suspended fifty feet beneath the surface surrounded by brightly coloured reef fish, the occasional predatory barracuda and a worryingly large lone shark.

Thirty years ago is a long time to forget everything I learned so I would have had to take an expensive refresher course and, once again, leave Sally behind. Again, I decided not to bother.

We left the island at midday on Thursday then spent five hours en route for our last night in a hotel in Manila again via mini bus, boat, mini bus, plane and taxi.

We spent much of our remaining free time in Manila with quite a surreal visit to Ronbinsons Place.

Robinsons Place is a high quality shopping mall in the centre of Manila. There are hundreds of designer shops, including many UK brands, over three spacious floors. The contrast between the surrounding area and the mall’s interior is staggering.

We spent some time in the afternoon wandering around the shops before returning there for something to eat in the evening. The evening is when the difference is most noticeable.

The surrounded streets and are crowded with tricycles, jeepneys, taxis and cars, all moving slowly, all honking horns and weaving from lane to lane trying to move forward in the congestion. The pavements and roadsides are packed with parked tricycles and their haggard drivers.

As the evening progresses, the less savory elements become more and more noticeable. Beggars, some with limbs missing, many with small children in tow, thrust outstretched grimy hands in the faces of every passing European. Sadly, many of the passing Europeans are overweight, middle aged, unattractive men looking for some affection from Filipinas a third or a quarter their age. And then there are the ladies, and the men, of the night, all wearing their skimpy best, all with direct, come to bed eyes.

You have to force your way through these crowds to get to the mall’s entrance, but then the crowds melt away.

The mall is for people with money. The authorities have very effective measures in place to ensure that undesirables stay outside. A soldier  stands thirty feet from the entrance with an assault rifle in his hands. At the entrance mall visitors have to walk through a metal detector watched by armed security guards. More security guards complete with the default baton, pepper spray and pistol patrol each floor of the shopping centre.

No undesirables can stroll along the spotlessly clean walkways between the shops or eat at any of the dozens of restaurants dotted throughout the mall, which is a shame really because they could have gladly had the glutinous, tasteless pig swill we were served in a Japanese restaurant.

The flights home the following day were monotonous and tiring but uneventful. We left the hotel at 5am on Friday, spent twenty seven hours travelling but thanks to the time difference, when we reached the boat, it was still Friday.

We’ve been back for just over a week now. I’m back into the normal routine at work and enjoying most of it immensely. I love living on the boat at all times of the year but the time I like least is towards the end of the winter when we’ve endured weeks on end with overcast skies, slippery mud and bare trees.

Much as I love the boat, the marina and the lifestyle, I’m really looking forward to escaping the English winter again next year, this time for at least six weeks.

Building An Aluminium Narrowboat – Part 8

Continued from part 7

6th of August 2011

My gearbox has been replaced, and my 20 hour service has been carried out.  We’re at Kate Boats at Stockton Locks, and there is now a crew of 6 family members including 1-year old Chloe on board, all ready for a cruise to Stratford.  All goes swimmingly, until…..

8th of August 2011.

It is now the morning of my 61st birthday, and we’re about to set off from a mooring in Warwick.  Since my flood I am even more paranoid about water leaks.  I have now installed a seventh water-detector into the lowest point of the bilge, accessible through the small trap-door under the stern-step that I showed you earlier, but I still visually check it from time to time, and I did this morning……and there’s water there !  It’s just creeping towards the detectors’ contacts.

None of the other six water-detectors have indicated a leak, so I’m pretty sure the water is coming from the very back of the boat, and sure enough I find a drip from the elbow taking the cold water supply into the calorifier.

It is very difficult to reach and even more difficult to get a spanner to, so I ring Sea Otter Boats for advice.  They offer to come out to me, but it will be the next day.  They offer to pay for the job if I can get a local boat-yard to fix it.  I look across the canal and what do I see …..no, it’s not a mirage…..or an hallucination…..or an imaginary reflection of a previously visited location……..can it possibly be…….another Kate Boats !

I feel quite at home as I meet Molly and Cheryl again, and I duly push my boat across the canal (again ! ) into their capable hands.  Rob comes up from their Stockton boat-yard in the afternoon to look at my problem, but there is bad news…..the elbow cannot be tightened any more because it is already hard up against the bulkhead in the direction for tightening !  The calorifier will need to be, at least, loosened from its mounting, or removed altogether, and they daren’t start the job today in case they can’t finish it.  With 6 of us on board, including a baby, all requiring water, preferably hot, at some time or another over the next 12 hours, I don’t argue with that.   So I erect a drainage channel into a large bowl for the drips from the elbow, we play Monopoly, and we later walk to the Cape Of  Good Hope.  I wasn’t allowed to win at Monopoly on my birthday, but the pub was an excellent choice for the celebration, and it wasn’t as far away as the name suggesed.

I also took the opportunity that day to take a few photographs of the boat’s internals.

I believe in using any space available in a boat to the full, and I’m constantly figuring out ways of doing so.  But, perversely, I think one of the most useful spaces in a boat is……an empty cupboard!

There’s many a time that there’s a requirement for temporary and easily accessible storage, say, for a big bag of shopping (you just didn’t have time to unpack it before your friends arrived), or for a bag of rubbish (awaiting the next refuse point), or for that bag of washing (you’ll be calling to the launderette with it later this afternoon), or even for the kettle when you’ve folded down the cooker lid to provide extra work-top space.

So, with that in mind, this is my only large kitchen cupboard :-

The two top wooden containers move from side to side on the top shelf, and so do the two chrome baskets (on runners) on the bottom shelf.  (They are just visible on the left and right of the bottom shelf.)  The lid for my tin-store under the cupboard base is shown in its closed position.

In the next photograph, of my open tin-store, the lid is hinged backwards and leaning against the side of the boat, and the wooden containers on the top shelf have been moved sideways to access other items.

In another photograph, the top wooden containers have been moved again, to gain access to different items in the left-hand-one, and the tin-store lid has been lowered, allowing the chrome baskets to slide towards each other.

A storage unit (from B&Q) slides out from next to fridge, as shown in this photograph.

And a well-made “soft-close” drawer to the right of the sink, but normally hidden behind the right-hand kitchen cupboard door, is shown in this photograph.

Like many kitchen sinks in narrowboats, this has no emergency outlet anywhere within the sink.  If a tap is left on accidentally, water will overflow the bowl and run along the work surface and eventually onto the floor.  I don’t like this.  This photograph shows my kitchen sink flood prevention scheme.

I have modified one of those microwave anti-splatter lids by cutting holes into the sides of the rim (not visible unfortunately), and it is ALWAYS kept under the sink bowl.  If water overflows the bowl, it goes down the sides of the bowl, and finds its way down into the plug-hole via the holes in the sides of the microwave lid.  As a final and audible flood defence mechanism another water-detector lurks in the background!    Paranoid ?   …..most definately yes.

Here is a photograph of my very large dinette table, which converts into a double bed utilising the back cushions :-

The under-dinette-floor wine & beer store keeps those valuables out of sight, and surprisingly very cool ! :-

Another photograph shows the double rubbish bins pulled out from under one of the dinette seats.

And the bedroom.

9th of August 2011.

Chris arrives first thing, and drains the calorifier.  Mine doesn’t drain into the canal, but into the engine bay, so I spend my time mopping up.  Much more fun than using my bilge-pump and it’s a nice day to be outside.  He loosens it at the back, enabling him to remove the offending elbow, and re-seal into position.  The job is completed by lunch-time, I pay the £168.00 invoice, which Sea Otter Boats subsequently and very quickly refunded to me.   (It would have been possible for the calorifier to have been removed completely from the cupboard if need be.  Sea Otter built the cupboard with that in mind.)

I thank Kate Boats again for helping me out efficiently, again, at a time of need, and I feel a tinge of panic as I venture forth along canals that I know are devoid of any more Kate Boats boatyards. It is 2.00pm, and we have the two Cape Locks and the Hatton 21 to cope with before our next meal.

11th of August 2011.

We eventually arrive at Stratford Upon Avon to a nice reception from John & Heather Dews, the very pleasant owners of Stratford Marina (01789 778358) and what a delightful location to moor up at….right by the river, grassy banks and picnic-tables to relax on, all within a minutes walk of pubs & restaurants, and five minutes to the town centre.  A very fine jewel in a very fine crown.

I realised I’d not checked to see if anything was wrapped around the prop since Crick !  So I did, and nothing was, which I think is perhaps testament to a good combination of the Axiom prop, the attached rope-cutter, and the shape of the hull.

I realised too that, despite the very shallow water that many other boaters had been complaining about on the way across country, I had never knowingly touched the bottom, or had any problems in mooring up against the sides.  Again perhaps thanks to the v-shaped hull, and the comparatively shallow draft of Sea Otter Boats.

The boat is booked into Stratford Marina for 9 nights, and I look forward to seeing how the boat performs at OVER 4 MPH on the Rivers Avon and Severn.

20th of August 2011.

We amble along the river Avon, cruising for about 3 or 4 hours a day, and arrived at nicely spaced-out towns by about midday each day….Bidford, Evesham, Pershore, and Tewksbury.  Pershore was our favourite for general ambiance & the quality of its moorings and pubs.

Again, throughout this period in which the river levels were low, we never knowingly scraped the bottom even on the approach to locks, and nothing caught around the prop.

24th of August 2011.

I’m touching wood as I write this.  Everything has worked perfectly over the last several cruising days.

We passed through the tricky manned Tewksbury lock yesterday, and today, now travelling against the flow of the river Severn, the engine needs to work harder.

I am very surprised how much extra throttle I had to apply to move up-stream at a reasonable speed just after turning wide onto the wider River Severn to avoid an unseen sandbank that the lock-keeper, and the canal books, had warned us about.

Today was to be the first in which my generator light showed green for any length of time, indicating that mains voltage was being produced at the higher engine revs required to cruise against the flow.

The boat behaved impeccably, and there was very little turbulence from the stern considering that the engine was running at about 2,400 rpm to give a speed of about 5 mph.

The tiller did vibrate a little more than normal, but there again it’s a little longer than tillers usually are.  Despite the higher revs, the engine temperature gauge stayed well within the normal range, possibly thanks to the twin keel-cooling tanks fitted.  The boat didn’t need steering at these speeds, it just went straight !

We make Upton Marina in a little more than an hour, and we have planned to leave the boat here for a couple of weeks.  Tingdene, who run the marina, are also Sea Otter agents, and  we have made a deal that permits me to moor at a cheaper than normal rate, in exchange for offering my boat for viewing by potential purchasers of a Sea Otter Boat while it’s there.

My next and final report covers the next two and a half years, and I tell of my particular likes & dislikes of my boat after living with it for quarter of a decade.

Concluded in part nine.

Building An Aluminium Narrowboat – Part 7

Continued from part 6

26th of May 2011

Today I have to search around for signs of progress.

There is a craftsman at work, and to do his crafting to his level of competence, Carpenter Nigel needs space and a great deal of time.  Much of his work is done behind the scenes, and the parts he’s working on may not be on the boat.

As an example I find my glazed side-hatch doors, the bow and stern doors, and the bow-step in the varnishing bay.

Observe the surfaces of the wood left where holes have been cut out of the green unglazed stern doors, which the louvred ventilation panels will eventually cover…….they’ll be forever out of view, but the bare wood has still been protected by sealant and then painted.  I know from experience that not all boatbuilders do this, so instead, on some other new boats,  the wood around the vents will soon discolour, the varnish and paint will peel off, and rot will set in within just a few years.  I could give you many examples of such things, but suffice to say, the vast proportion of the quality of the work that I see being done on my boat can only be descibed as excellent.

It is now the day before my boat was due to be transported to the Crick Show.  Even though the lads worked late some nights, and the last few weekends, it just isn’t finished in time.  Cutting corners wasn’t an option to Paul and Anthony, and the boat was not completed until the following week.

We decide to keep in part to the same plan, by making Crick Marina the launching site for the boat on the 3rd of June, but there’s a lot still to be done before that.  Just before I leave on the 26th of May the soft furnishings arrive for my boat.

1st of June 2011.

My boat has now been painted, and is still in the paint oven when I arrive.

Their spray booth is really an oven, in which the 2-part paint is baked on, and there are very large heaters and ducts in the roof so that the temperature can be controlled during that baking process.  When built this was one of the largest paint ovens in the UK.   I’m told the paint job on my boat should last 25 years.  I can vouch for the longevity of the paintwork on some elderly Sea Otters that I’ve seen previously.

The trouble is, because my boat is now longer than 56 feet, (because of the engine generator), as you can see…….it doesn’t quite fit in !   Earlier, it had to be manoeuvred diagonally before the the oven doors would close !

There’s a flurry of activity inside the boat.  The installation of the stove is nearing completion, and I see that the new rules are being complied with, hence the wide gap behind the aluminium plates.  But Mark tells me that they have always fitted them that way, which must be reassuring to existing Sea Otter Boat owners with fitted stoves.

There’s less space in the biggest bedroom cupboard now, since the fitting of, from left, the two control boxes for the engine generator, the blue switch-over unit, then the consumer unit, and finally, on the right, the blue 3.5KW inverter.

At the stern the work on the prop shaft is complete, the Axiom prop has been fitted, and just behind that is the small but lethal blade of a “rope-cutter”.  (A label on the weed-hatch cover plate is a reminder to the unwary of its presence !)

2nd of June 2011.

My boat is unceremoniously launched in Sea Otters own test-tank, and thankfully it floats.  Anti-freeze is added to the engine cooling systems (incorporating two keel tanks) and to the central heating system (Webasto) and all the operating systems are now being tested, including engine and transmission, charging, heating, and all electrical installations.

A leak is found, and fixed, in a bathroom radiator, and tomorrow is the big day.

3rd  of June 2011.

The boat has been in the spray-booth overnight for sign-writing and few final paint-jobs.

It is now returned to the workshop for a few final checks.

The transport arrives, and my boat is loaded on….watch your hands Paul !

It’s a good opportunity to photograph the V-hull.

And a side view of the bow-thruster setup in association with the V-hull.  You can see the holes drilled into the V-hull !

And the big moment !

There is a worrying moment during the launching when the water around the boat seemed to take on a life of it’s own, as if a thousand fish were thrashing around just under the surface…..but it’s all to do with the water flowing into the V-hull and displacing the air which escapes within big bubbles all around the boat.

My boat was moored up in the new part of the marina, and I make myself at home.

There are bound to be teething problems with a new boat.  It’s like buying a house and a car both together…there are a many systems that can prove troublesome, and I had my fair share of problems.  Nothing major at this time, but I managed to compile quite a list for subsequent rectification.

On the top of my list was a reference to very weak water pressure in the shower, which was later found to be caused by a kink in the pipe behind it.

The diesel tank gauge didn’t work, which we later found was a stuck float.

I reported the fact that there was only one stern navigation light –silly me.

There were a few minor leaks from radiator joints, and a more serious leak from under the kitchen sink, and a slight leak from the engine fuel filter, and the starter battery was not being charged by the battery charger when on shore-power.    [All were quickly remedied.]

Paul had promised me a “Boat Safety Scheme Certificate”, but there hadn’t been time to have the boat tested in the factory.  Sure to his word he arranged a visit by an examiner at Crick.  BSS certificates are NOT normally given out with a new boat, but more usually faults are discovered four years later, by which time the test is mandatory, and also by which time the boat is well out of its guarantee period.

So it is a sign of their faith in their boats that Sea Otter arrange the BSS test when the boat is new.

Worth mentioning the Alde gas-tester which Sea Otter fit to their boats.  You can test your own gas system for a leak, and it saves the examiner a lot of time too.

I didn’t have a gas-leak, but my boat did fail the BSS test !    On five points !

Number one was that the battery boxes were not secured to the hull.  Sea Otter admit that this was an oversight.

Number two was that two main battery leads ran across the route of the Webasto fuel line.  There had to be a barrier fitted between the two.

Number three was that there were only 2 fire-extinguishers, not three, but that was previously known about and was in hand.

Number four was that the gas cylinders in the bow-locker were not secured.  They need to be chained down so they can’t fall over and roll about and damage the pipework.

Number five was that the rubber hose that joins the copper cooker pipe to the cooker was not of the correct specification.  Apparently, even though the system operates at low-pressure, the hose has to be of the high-pressure type !  Which is usually orange in colour and labelled BS3212-2, and mine was black and wasn’t.

ALL the above problems were rectified quickly by two subsequent visits to Crick Marina by Mark and John from Sea Otter Boats.  And a week later I had my first BSS certificate.

So things were looking up, until one night the red hose from the bottom of the calorifier came adrift, the pump came on as it would, and pumped the entire140 gallons contents of my full water tank out of the open end of the hose and into the back of my boat…..and I slept right through it.  I blame both the strength of the beer at the Red Lion and the fact that the hose was only held on by one jubilee clip, not two.  Fortunately I had a manual pump on board and spent from 3 am to 6 am pumping the water out.  Paul’s advice about installing the calorifier in the engine bay might have been echoing in my ears but it wasn’t because I was too bloody busy pumping.

As if I didn’t have enough on my mind at that time, my Webasto central heating turned ITSELF on TWICE while I was pumping !  I found out later it was because I had accidentally sprayed some water into the time clock positioned near the stern door.  It subsequently dried out with no apparent consequential damage.

The professionally laid carpets had to be ripped out, and dried off on the jetty, which that morning resembled a Crick-second-hand-carpet-sellers-market-stall.

I had fitted 6 water-detectors to my old boat, and had already fitted 6 to this boat, the seventh couldn’t yet be fitted into the bilge because it was still drying it out since the kitchen sink leak.  I was going to fit it the very next day !

It took a long time to dry the carpets out completely, and I think I was lucky that they shrank only minimally.  The wood dried out okay, and the carpets are back down, and things are back to normal, but I won’t forget that morning.  In future I’ll stick to the 4% and not the guest ale at the Red Lion, and I thank Sea Otter for not fitting any MDF.

18th of July 2011.

I was now ready for my first cruise, which was to be a leisurely four-day trip from Crick to Warwick.  Plunging into the mile long Crick Tunnel created a learning curve, the angle of the curve tightening as we passed two boats on the way through and my right hand couldn’t locate the throttle which wasn’t surprising when it’s not on that side but my last boat’s was !

I was impressed how the boat handled, and how quickly I could stop it.  That was reassuring but it didn’t prevent the first bit of damage to my new boat when the side-wind caught it when entering the Watford staircase top lock, and the boat was pushed into the side of the lock entrance, and where was my bow-thruster when I most needed it ?  It had turned itself off !   I had heard a type of warning buzzer in the tunnel, but didn’t know where it came from.  Apparently, when this particular bow-thruster hasn’t been used for 30 minutes, it gives you two audible warning buzzes, then promptly turns itself off.   What nonsense.  But no serious damage, just a torn rubber strake but that’s just what its for, and it can be easily mended, and no-one saw me do it, and that helped.

Just a note for anyone considering paying extra for a 240 volt in-line (“intercalated”) generator attached to a Nanni Engine.  It is worth knowing that, by default, it doesn’t kick-in until about 1,600 revs are reached, and doesn’t really work properly ’till 2,000rpm.!   And by then the boat is normally going too fast !  Apparently the system can be modified, but, as I understand it, then the onus is on the owner to ensure that the revs are high enough to produce the power for 240v appliances turned on within the boat, otherwise non-warranty damage may occur !  There’s a 3-year warranty on this Nanni engine, as long as the services are carried out when advised, and I’m doing nothing to prejudice that at this stage.

That evening we moored at Braunston, and then the next night, just before Stockton locks.  It was there that I raised the engine hatch and peered into the depths and it all looked very red.

The red was the contents of my gearbox.

It was after 5.00 pm, so I ‘phoned River Canal Rescue.  As usual, in my experience, they arrive quickly and courteously and they find that all my gearbox oil had escaped from a triangular plate near the back of the gearbox, the plate being held on by 3 bolts, and behind which was an “O” ring seal which was supposed to keep the oil in but hadn’t.  The seal, and the groove in the plate in which it lived, were cleaned and re-installed but oil still leaked when tested.  I was advised to contact the engine agents the next day for the gearbox to be repaired under warranty.

The offending plate can be seen clearly on this photograph (taken previously)…..follow the central vertical black tube down to where it joins the engine and go a little further down and come forward a bit…it’s that triangular plate held on with 3 bolts just behind the flexible coupling of the prop-shaft :-

There was only one thing that cheered me up that night…the boat Inn.  But thankfully no guest beers.

Over a pint that evening I pondered over the possibility that I had run the engine without gearbox oil for up to 5 hours that day, because I had no way of knowing when the oil had escaped, so the next morning I ‘phoned Peachments, the Nanni engine distributor and agent, and requested a new gearbox, and they agreed to send one out.

I wonder if you can guess where to ?   It depends on how well you know the canal system of-course.  But not only was I moored opposite a really good pub, I was also virtually opposite a Nanny Engine Agent by the name of “Kate Boats”.  [I didn’t know them then, but I subsequently get to know them quite well ! ]  Forward planning at its finest I’m sure you’ll agree.  Well done me.

The new gearbox was duly delivered the next day, and I pushed my boat across the canal to Kate Boats !

But the plot thickened.  Four thickenings.

The first, which I never got to the bottom of, was why the original gearbox oil was red, and yet the handbook says to use normal engine oil (AP1 CD SAE 15W40) .

The second, because of the type of water-lubricated stern-gland fitted to Sea Otter Boats, the boat would have to be craned out of the water to replace the gearbox !  Where was the nearest crane?  At Kate Boats of-course.  Well done me.

The third, when Nick removed the gearbox he found that the drive plate had been wearing down part of the gearbox casting (or was it the other way round ?) in the 11 hours since Crick !   So a new drive plate had to be ordered.

The fourth, a bracket that holds a heat exchanger onto the top of the engine, had cracked.  You can see the bracket on the above photograph, right between the tops of the two vertical hoses.  It is retaining a blue cylinder (heat exchanger) with a hose at each end.  A new bracket had to be ordered too.

All the above resulted in my new boat being out of commission for two weeks after only 2 days of cruising.

5th of August 2011.

Over the last few days the boat has been craned out to facilitate the replacement of the gearbox, the drive plate has been replaced, Nick has made a bracket for the heat-exchanger which is much better than the original, and the boat is back in the water.  This photograph shows the wear to the gearbox casting (left) and the wear to a corner of the drive plate (right).

Nick gives me permission to run my engine in gear in his marina, and I’m now approaching 20 hours, just right for its first service, which Kate Boats promise to carry out tomorrow.

5th of August 2011.

All goes smoothly with the running-in, and Rob arrives as promised to carry out my 20 hour engine service, after which I’m presented with a bill for £1,107.08 which I need to pay.  The three biggest chunks of the bill are for the craning in and out of the water (£400.00 + VAT) and the labour for the gearbox change (£350.00 + VAT) and the 20 hour service including parts (£132.00 + VAT).

I’m responsible for paying for the 20 hour service, but I’m hoping to claim the first two chunks back in due course.  Do you think I’ll get them back ?  I’ll let you know in the next report.

And….are my teething troubles over yet ? ……..no

Continued in part 8