2014 November | Living on a Canal Boat

2014 11 30 Newsletter – A Virtual Tour Of A Narrowboat Equipped For Continuous Cruising

I planned to have a quiet afternoon in front of the fire last Sunday to escape the heavy November rain, but an afternoon of doing nothing more than turning the pages of a good book didn’t materialise. The rain stopped at lunchtime so I decided to take the boat up to our wharf and vacuum some rainwater out of the bilge. Rain trickles through the hinged steel plate above the weed hatch where it collects in a channel and then, in theory, drains through a hole and into a hose where it is directed through the side of the boat and into the canal.

Unfortunately the drain hole has quite a small diameter so it often gets blocked from dirt falling into the channel from the deck above which means that rainwater overflows the channel into the engine bay. It’s a bit of a nuisance because rain flows from the roof onto the back deck too so there’s plenty of water cascading down on to the back deck and then into the engine bay after overflowing the blocked channel.

In theory, the trip should have taken me no more than an hour and a half; fifteen minutes for each of the two locks on the way up, another half an hour for the locks on the way down, and half an hour for a quick blitz with our man sized wharf wet vac. Of course, as soon as I entered “canal time”, the minutes stretched into hours.

I arrived back on my mooring just as the light was fading after removing every drop of water from the engine bay, freeing up the hinge on the flap over the weed hatch, and tidying up the engine room. All in all, it was a very enjoyable afternoon spent pottering.

Sunday afternoon was far more pleasant than most of my working week. I felled and logged a dozen ash on Monday, which I enjoyed, then spent the rest of the week pressure washing the walkways, which I didn’t enjoy nearly so much. Seven hours a day of trying to remove a high pressure hose from the gaps between the wooden boards nearly drove me mad. Just to make matters worse, I discovered that my waterproof leather rigger boots are far from waterproof. I’m sure the synthetic fur lining will dry out eventually.

On Tuesday I received an email from Waterways World announcing that tickets were available for the Crick show next year. For a moment, as in previous years, I was poised to delete the email instinctively thinking of all the time restricting reasons I couldn’t go or couldn’t stay for very long. Then I remembered, there’s nothing stopping me from staying as long as I want next year!

I’ve ordered a three day pass and an online mooring in zone one close to the show. I actually think I’ve overdone it. I’ll probably have seen all I want to see in half a day and, as I like peace and quiet on the boat, a zone one mooring is possibly the worst place for me to moor, but time will tell.

On Friday I was reminded yet again that I need to get my new headlight fixed. After yet another thoroughly enjoyable discovery day cruising through rural Warwickshire I inched my way back into the marina in total darkness. I was very fortunate to have 6’3″ tall Richard Baven with me who helped navigation no end by holding my five million candle power tunnel torch above his head pointed in the general direction of my mooring. I managed to get where I needed without crashing the boat or falling in, so it was a pretty good day all round.

I spent another very pleasant day out on the cut again today. The weather was perfect; a light and not too chilly wind, patches of brilliant sunshine but a grey and overcast sky when we headed west back to Calcutt Boats in what can often be very difficult cruising conditions if the sun is low on the horizon and shining brightly.

We returned today with just enough light to see what we were doing. Estelle, my copilot for the day, left the boat tired but happy that she’s going to be a confident and competent single lady boater in the very near future.

Cruising in London

I published an article in last week’s newsletter about the pros and cons (mainly cons) of cruising in London. I invited comments from newsletter readers in general and newsletter readers who live on boats in London in particular. Sadly I didn’t hear from any London boaters, but here are a few comments from those who have visited the capital by canal.

“I hated London last year, nowhere to moor, cyclists racing each other up and down the towpaths and the potential danger. I was told that at Little Venice, 3 boats had been set fire to so far that year by immigrant kids from local council estate and although police knew who did it, they would not act for fear of stirring up racial tension!”

Tim Wood

“We went down the Grand Union to Paddington Basin and back this summer. We were very disappointed! It was ok down to Bulls Bridge but the Paddington Arm was full of rubbish causing us to stop several times to go down the weed hatch to clear rope, wool, polythene, dog bags of excrement etc. Not nice! When we arrived at Paddington there were very very limited moorings, maybe enough for 6 boats. On coming out of Little Venice the locals were not encouraging, warm or friendly and we just wanted to get out of there! Boats had been moored on the 14 day Visitor Moorings for months and so Kensal green next to the Cemetary was the only place to safely moor. We got back on to the Grand Union and chugged back to Northamptonshire at a steady pace. As for the capital…I wouldn’t bother again! I’ve been but do not have fond memories at all.”

Bob Green

“Reading the piece on London’s “Continuous cruisers” I was reminded of a couple I met recently on the painting course I attended.

They were a lovely couple and I liked them very much, however I did not like the way in which they used / misused the waterways. Peter and Jane (Not their real names) were attending the painting course to acquire the skills to repaint their existing narrow boat which at 45 feet was a bit small for them as they live aboard. They were planning on starting a family and released that if they were to continue to live aboard then they needed something bigger.

They both work in Central London and commute from the boat each day. I asked them where they moored and how much a residential morning cost. The answer from Jane surprised me “oh no, we don’t have a mooring, we are continuous cruisers” I asked her how this worked she replied “ We are on the Regent canal at he moment, we always stay within or close to zone 1 and 2 for the tube. If we have any hassle from CRT we move to the next tube station. When we move we text our mates and we all, that is several of us, all move at the same time, keeping somebody on the tow path to hold the spot. We have been doing this for about two years. I asked if they thought that this was within the rules and Peter responded “ Everybody does it, it is the only way we can afford to live in London as the rents are so high. If we could find a flat then obviously that would be better, but we simply will never be able to afford one”.

This couple had hired a car to drive from London to Northampton, stayed for two nights in an hotel and paid several hundred pounds to attend the course. I would suggest subsidised by those of us who pay for a CRT license and have a paid for mooring or stick to the rules for continuous cruising. As an amusing aside Peter and Jane had brought their toilet caskets with them to empty at the yard where the course was being held, amazing the lengths people will go to. I imagine that Peter and Jane are paid extra for working in Central London, for a start they will get London Weighting allowance (£4000 each per annum) How much is an official mooring?

I would love to visit London in our boat, sadly this is a pleasure that will be denied to me until the rules that we have our enforced by CRT. Incidentally the Kennet and Avon is also clogged with boats, some of which have been there for years on the 14 day moorings between Bathampton and Bath. This means that one is reduced to a crawl at tick over for mile after mile on this stretch. Perhaps we ought not to slow down for the selfish freeloaders that overstay?”

Simon Birt

A Walk Through Of My Own Live Aboard Narrowboat

When potential boat owners visit me for a discovery day, while we are having coffee and before we venture out onto the cut for the helmsmanship aspect of the day, I walk them through my boat showing them various features, layouts and items of equipment on board. I discuss the pros and cons of each item or area and what, if anything, I could do to improve the situation on my own boat given the wisdom of hindsight and with the benefit of living on board for nearly five years, working at a boatyard and handling and getting to know the more than two hundred and fifty boats we have moored here at any one time.

I’ve been told that the exercise is very useful indeed. I thought that you might find a virtual walk through of my boat useful too if you are considering buying your own in the near future, of if you have recently purchased a boat and are still at the stage of thinking of ways to try and improve it.

My boat isn’t perfect by any means but the layout and equipment on board works for me. Even if you don’t like what I’ve got, maybe this virtual tour will give you a few ideas.

Of course it’s much easier to explain everything if you’re in front of me, but you’re not and you won’t have the opportunity to walk through my lovely soon-to-be-VERY-mobile floating home unless you book yourself on a discovery day. My explanation will mean so much more if you can see what I’m talking about so here’s a virtual tour for you. It’s a video I made about narrowboat storage space about a year ago which accompanies an article on the same subject

Have you watched the video and read the article? You have? Good. Now everything will make sense.

Here are some statistics for you…

My boat, full name James No 194, built ib 1977 at Norton Canes, is 62′ long with 48′ of internal cabin space. I have a “traditional” stern narrowboat which means that the cabin comes nearly all of the way to the back of the boat giving more internal living and storage space but less space at the back of the boat for people to stand while cruising.

The boat has a far larger than normal diesel tank. The Mercedes OM636 engine uses 1.24 litres per hour so, in theory, I could cruise for 282 hours or forty days at seven hours a day without refueling the three hundred and fifty litre tank.

I cook using gas only, heat the boat using just a solid fuel stove burning coal briquettes and heat my water either via the boat’s engine when it’s running or via an immersion heater if I’m plugged into the national grid.

My on board electrics consist of four 135ah batteries in the leisure bank and a dedicated 110ah battery to start the engine. The batteries are kept topped up via a charger when I’m plugged in to the national grid and by three 100w solar panels with an MPPT controller and the engine’s single alternator when I’m not.

My toilet is a Porta Potti Elegance with a twenty one litre waste tank. I don’t have a pump out toilet.

That’s the overview, now let’s start the tour at the front of the boat. If you’ve watched my narrowboat storage video, you’ll be able to relate to what follows. You’re not on the boat with me, so I won’t make you a coffee. You’ll have to make your own, which is a shame because I have a wonderful Nespresso coffee machine.

At the very front of the boat is the bow locker. It’s where my propane gas is kept which is used both for cooking and to power my suitcase generator. I have four propane cylinders in the locker; two 13kg for cooking and two 6kg for the generator. I was using one 13kg propane cylinder every twenty one days when I had a gas on demand water heater. With that removed and the propane used for cooking only, the same size cylinder is lasting four times as long.

The bow gas locker is a bit of a pain when changing empty cylinders for full ones. Thirteen kilos is the weight of the propane inside. The cylinder probably weighs the same again, so the two together weigh about the same as a bag of coal. The easiest way of getting the full cylinder down into the locker is by carefully lifting it on to the bow to avoid scratching the paint with the often rough metal of the cylinder bottom, holding it steady with one hand while you leap cat-like onto the bow, then lowering it slowly through the hatch. Of course, you need to remove the empty cylinder first. You have to be very careful you don’t slip if the bow is wet or icy.

Cruiser stern narrowboats often have the gas lockers on the rear deck where they are much easier to access.

Behind the bow is the front deck. Like most narrowboats, mine has a well deck as apposed to a low flat tug style front deck. My front deck has a cratch board, a triangular wooden frame standing vertically between the bow and the front deck, which supports the cratch cover which encloses the front deck. The cratch cover converts a space which is rarely used in the winter into very useful and dry additional storage space.

Inside the boat there are cupboards and shelves either side of the front doors, then about four feet from the front bulkhead on the starboard side is my old and very faithful Torglow stove. The same stove has been in the boat since it was built in 1977. The flue has been replaced a couple of times and the glass in the stove door has been changed regularly. It’s a reliable and dependable heat source which I wouldn’t want to be without, but it’s not perfect.

I would change the for a Morso Squirrel in an instant if I could. My stove has quite a small footprint so there’s no room on top to place pans for food cooking or warming. The space isn’t even big enough to hold an Ecofan to help push the stove’s heat towards the back of the boat. Not that the Ecofan would work on my stove anyway. It has a double skin on the top plate so even with a fire raging within, I can place my hand quite comfortably on the top. The Ecofan needs the heat from the fan to make it work.

Unfortunately, I can’t switch to a Squirrel because of its size. It is three inches deeper than my Torglow so the new stove would stick out three inches further into the centre of the boat and be three inches closer to the upholstered seating opposite. The only way I could fit a new Squirrel in the boat would be to change the stove position to the front of the boat which would necessitate removing the front bulkhead cupboards on the starboard side. However, the new position would then be classed as a new installation and subject to the new BSS regulations. This would increase the price by several thousand pounds.

Opposite the stove is bench seating in an “L” shape. I have sat on more comfortable seats before but the big advantage is the storage space they offer underneath. We have an anchor and chain, vacuum cleaner, summer folding camp chairs and a box for files under the seats, all hidden neatly away.

Aft of the lounge seating area is the dining area. It’s a Pullmans dinette which is bench seating either side of a fixed table. The dinette is a great place to sit and eat while engaging in the old fashioned pastime of conversation rather sitting with a meal on your lap vegetating in front of a television. It’s also a wonderful location to spend an hour or two on a wet and windy Sunday afternoon with a newspaper spread in front of you. The dinette, like the bench seating near the stove, has storage space underneath.

Behind the dinette is the galley. Ours is small, but still big enough to cook a Sunday dinner if we choose. There’s a four ring Vanette hob, grill and oven. All run on gas. There’s also a 98 litre fridge. Ours, like most narrowboats, is twelve volt and because it’s twelve volt, it’s horribly expensive. In an electrical superstore a similar sized 240v fridge would cost about £150. Our fridge cost just under £500 but it’s worth every penny.

The problem with a 240v fridge is powering it when you are off grid. The fridge would need to be powered via the boat’s inverter. It’s not something that I would want to do for two reasons; firstly the inverter itself uses power so you would be increasing the drain on your battery bank for an appliance which, for most boat owners, would be on twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. The second reason is noise. Most inverters are in or near the engine room. Many engine rooms are next to the main sleeping area. Our inverter is in the engine room fixed to the pine cladding just three feet away from our heads when we are laying in bed. We often have the inverter on just before we go to sleep while we are laying in bed reading. The noise is very annoying and drowns out the natural sounds from outside which we enjoy so much. Having the inverter droning away all night long while we are trying to sleep would drive us mad.

Next to the galley is our “utility room”. This is a three feet wide section between two sapele bulkheads which is home to our washing machine and where there is a side and a roof hatch on both the port and the starboard side.

Two very popular narrowboat washing machines are the Candy and Zanussi compacts. They are good machines but use a fair amount of power. We have this twin tub washing machine. It’s cheap and cheerful but does the job very well indeed. We can fit everything we want to wash on the boat into the machine. What we like most about it though is that it uses about a tenth of the power that the more popular machines use. The wash cycle uses 120w and the spin cycle 180w. The twin tub comes with hoses to attach to the mains supply but we haven’t risked it as the hoses look as substantial as drinking straws.

Next to the washing machine area, much too close as far as I’m concerned, is my “office”. It’s a second bedroom which contains two full size bunks and a compact bunk for a small child. This area also has two five drawer chests built in.

I’ve kept the two bunks just in case we ever make any friends and they want to stay the night, but I use the base for the smaller bunk as a dedicated office desk. On the desk are my laptop and printer/scanner/copier and my beloved Nespresso coffee machine. The machine makes wonderful cappuccino and latte coffees but isn’t very practical when we’re off grid. It needs 1800w. Unfortunately the boat’s inverter can handle just 1600w. I’ve had to buy a suitcase generator to power it when we ‘re cruising!

I spend many hours each day on t’internet researching or adding content to this site so a reliable internet connection is very important to me. I’ve been using mobile broadband dongles by Three for about four years now. The earlier dongles needed to be outside of the boat in order to pick up a half decent signal so I had a long USB extension lead plugged into my laptop then then out through one of the boat’s roof vent’s to a mast on the roof. These days the dongles are much more powerful. I now have their latest MiFi dongle. I have it stuck on my office window with Velcro pads where it nearly always picks up a strong enough signal for me to send and receive emails and usually a strong enough signal to stream video from BBC iPlayer, YouTube or similar.

Next is the boat’s bijou walk through bathroom. It’s just four feet long and 5’10” wide (the internal boat width). One one side is the shower, on the other the sink and toilet.

We have a cassette toilet. It’s a Porta Potti Elegance. The two main types of toilet on narrowboats are cassette and pump out. Pump out toilets look like conventional toilets. They store the waste in a coffin size tank beneath the toilet. The waste tank often extends out of the bathroom into the bedroom and under the bed.

A cassette toilet sometimes has a conventional looking toilet but sometimes, like ours, looks like a square plastic box with a toilet bowl in the top. The waste is stored in a removable tank under the toilet. Ours hold 21 litres so when it’s full it weighs about the same as a 25kg sack of coal. Our cassette needs emptying every three or four days if we’re in the marina or every two or three days if we are cruising and using it more often.

The advantages of a cassette toiletare that it’s free to empty at Elsan points and it can be taken off the boat to empty even if the boat is frozen in during a particularly cold spell. The disadvantages are the relatively small waste tank and the need to lug the unwieldy sloshing tank out of the boat twice a week and the need to get that much closer to the previous night’s dinner when you unscrew the cap and empty the tank contents down the Elsan point’s open sewer.

Many, maybe most, owners of pump out toilets also carry a cassette toilet on board for emergencies. Personally, I don’t see the point but I may revise my opinion next year when I’m cruising for extended periods and need find Elsan points as and when I need them.

The bathroom now has a wonderful shower. It’s a joy to wash my dirty little body now that the gas powered instant water heater has been removed. Getting the shower water temperature right was a nightmare. If the water was too hot and I turned the control know a millimetre the temperature would plummet to near freezing. I would turn the knob in the opposite direction and and need to move pretty quickly to avoid jets of scalding steam. Having a shower wasn’t a pleasant experience.

Now all that has changed. I had the gas heater removed and a 55l horizontal calorifier fitted under our double bed. The water in the calorifier can be heated in three different ways; when we are connected to the national grid via our shore line, a 1kw immersion heater does the job. If we are away from the marina, the engine heats the water, but the engine needs to be run at either end of the day to provide a constant hot supply. That’s no problem though because I just split the battery charging regime into two different sessions. The calorifier has a twin coil so I can also heat water using the boat’s diesel central heating system, or I will be able to once the central heating system is installed IF I can ever find a heating engineer who is interested in doing the work!

The penultimate area of the boat is our bedroom. It’s just big enough to house our 6’3″ long, four feet wide double bed, a wardrobe at the bottom of it and a corridor down the side. Sally and I are both fairly short and slim so the size suits us. Having said that, even at just 5’10” tall, I have to sleep on the corridor side of the bed so my feet can hang over the end of the bed to give me a little more space.

We could create a wider bed by having an infill piece made to drop into the corridor space but then we would need somewhere to keep the additional bed part when we weren’t cruising. We’re happy with what we have, especially as there are six spacious drawers under the corridor side of the bed.

Last, but far from least, is the heart of the boat, the engine room.

Because we have a traditional stern narrowboat, the engine is enclosed within the cabin space rather than underneath an open deck as it is with cruiser stern narrowboats. The advantage of having the engine in the cabin is that the space above the enclosed engine can be used for storage.

I have a comprehensive selection of tools stored here. I’m not entirely sure what most of them do, and I’m sure they would be of more use if I took them out of the original packaging, but they’re there if I ever need them.

I have the bulkhead between the engine room fitted with a selection of hooks and brackets to store my mooring pins, chains, lump hammers, spare ropes and a set of jump leads which are very handy for starting the engine if the starter battery goes down and there’s still a charge in the domestic bank.

On another wall I have shelving to hold a wide range of paints and brushes for touching up the boat, spare grease for the greaser, a high power tunnel torch, recovery magnet and reel of paracord, engine oil, three in one oil, WD40, varnish and I’m sure one or two other items I’ve forgotten.

The shelf unit sits next to the charger which allows me to keep the batteries topped up when I’m connected to the shore supply, an MPPT controller for the three 100w solar panels on the boat roof and my Sterling 1600w pure sine inverter. Beneath this equipment is my battery bank of one 110ah starter battery and four 135ah leisure batteries.

On the starboard cabin side are a couple of coat racks for hanging waterproofs, hats, gloves, waterproof map case, binoculars, camera and, on occasion, my chain saw.

Of course, the most important item in the engine room is the engine itself. I’m very happy with my 38HP Mercedes OM626. In the thirty seven years since it was installed in 1977 it’s clocked up a very modest 4,526 hours, nearly 10% of which have been added in the last twelve months. I’m not worried about the increased use in the last year though. I’ve been told by a couple of engineers who know these engines that it should be good for 100,000 hours which means that no matter how much cruising I do, the engine is going to outlast me.

There’s one feature of the engine that I would probably change if I could. It’s raw water cooled which means that water is drawn directly from the canal to help cool the engine. Most engines these days are keel cooled.

To stop it drawing engine clogging debris into the machinery, there’s a fine mesh grill in the side of the boat and then a mud box to catch the finer stuff. I haven’t had a problem with either the mesh or the mud box being blocked yet but I’m sure the time will come. I have to take the mud box apart periodically and clean the accumulated much out. It’s a painful process as the mud box sits in the bilge near on the port side near the bulkhead between the engine room and the bedroom. The mud box is very difficult to reach because of the steel frame which was welded around the engine a couple of years ago to support the deck boards which now cover it.

A couple of months ago I had the engine cover renewed, improved and insulated. The work has made an enormous difference to my cruising.

Before the engine insulation was fitted I could hear very little else other than the engine when I was at the helm. I had to endure shouted conversations with anyone standing on the back of the boat with me. I also found communicating with passing boaters or anyone on the towpath virtually impossible. I’m sure in the past that I’ve nodded and smiled in complete agreement with other boaters who were telling me what an idiot I was. Now I can hold a normal spoken conversation when I’m travelling. I’m a very happy bunny.

My boat is far from perfect and probably wouldn’t suit a lot of boat owners. However, it’s a very different boat than the one I moved on to in April 2010. It’s warm, dry and looks pretty good. It’s going to allow me to live in comfort and cruise long distances with total confidence in the months and years to come. There’s nothing about the boat now that I would either change or improve. Not much anyway.

I feel very lucky to own this boat and I can’t wait to unleash it on the unsuspecting waterways network next spring.

Discovery Day And Narrowboat Helmsmanship Training

If you’re new to this site you might not know about the service I launched in June 2014. I host narrowboat experience days on board my own 62′ long narrowboat James No 194. The ten hour days are a combination of discussion about the pros and cons of living on board, narrowboat designs and the best equipment for live aboard boaters, and a six to eight hour helmsmanship training cruise along the Oxford and/or Grand Union Canals. Here’s what a recent participant had to say…

“Firstly, I must apologise for taking so long to get back to you with this feedback after doing the Discovery Day with you, but unfortunately I have been extremely busy since I arrived back off shore and don’t seem to have had five minutes to myself.

Secondly, I would like to thank you for fitting me in at such short notice, and the coffee, gloves, etc. that you supplied. Greatly appreciated!

The day itself, being a little windy, and rainy (I’m so glad your checklist of items to bring with me included wet weather gear), gave me a real insight (as a complete novice) into what living and travelling on a narrowboat is about. Exactly what I was wanting. I feel that if it had been a calm and sunny day, although also highly enjoyable, I would not have learned anywhere near as much as I did.

My initial apprehension at being let loose with your home soon disappeared, thanks to your clear and easily understood instruction, and, by the end of the day, I was feeling a growing confidence in my ability to handle James.

There was a lot of patiently presented information to take in about bridges, locks, lines around bends, cross and tail winds, etc., but I think that I managed to take most, if not all of it, on board.

All the information, tips, and advice you gave me about solar panels, solid fuel stoves, cooking aboard, layout, etc., etc., was extremely useful, and has been stored away for future reference for when I come to purchase my own boat, hopefully saving me a lot of unnecessary mistakes and expense.

It was a pleasure to meet Sally, and I loved the feeling of tranquility that I experienced whilst we were heading back in the rain, with just the rhythmic sounds of the engine and the water lapping against the hull, watching the countryside passing slowly by, whilst the smell of Sally’s cooking wafting up from below.

All in all a memorable day, and I would recommend the Discovery Day to anyone who is thinking of buying their own boat. It gives an excellent base of knowledge and hands on experience to build on.”

Davie was unusual in that he had driven down from Inverness to learn more about life afloat, but with a view to buying and living on a boat close to where he works in Scotland. The majority of attendees intend to explore the English and Welsh canal network.

You can find out more about my discovery days and availability here.

I Need Some Help!

Each time I write a newsletter, I tick another subject off the list of things which those new to boating have told me that they want to read about. The hardest part of the process isn’t the writing itself, it’s constantly thinking of new content for each issue. The trouble is, I don’t know what you want to read. I think I keep the newsletters reasonably interesting but I don’t know for sure. That’s where I need your help.

Can you let me know what you would like to read in the future? Are there any areas of narrowboat life you don’t think I’ve covered enough or areas which I’ve missed completely? Please let me know what you want to read about. Thanks for your help.

Newsletter Index

I created the site just over four years ago to provide a source of information for anyone interested in narrowboats and the possibility of living on one full time. The site has grown to encompass a comprehensive listing of inland marinas in England and Wales, dozens of articles, a forum and regular newsletters. I’ve already created (below) indexes of the site articles and the more popular forum posts. I thought it was about time I created an easy to use index of the newsletter content. Here’s the index so far.

23rd November 2014

London cruising – Every week I receive emails from potential boat owners who want to live on board in London or who want to visit the capital as part of a holiday cruise. This advice from a very experienced boater will be of great interest to you if you’re one of them.

16th November 2014

Narrowboat fuel consumption – How many miles to the gallon can you get out of your floating home?

9th November 2014

How to spot bogus narrowboat adverts – Beware narrowboats for sale at bargain basement prices. Here’s a cautionary tale to make you think twice about reaching for your wallet.

2nd November 2014

Narrowboat CO2 emissions – Is living on a boat a green alternative to a home on dry land? You’ll have to read this newsletter to find out.

26th October 2014

Finding reliable tradesmen on the cut – They are out there but it’s not always easy to sort the wheat from the chaff. Here’s a new service on the site which is going to make the job much easier for you.

19th October 2014

Anti social behaviour on the cut – How common are the unpleasant incidents you sometimes hear about on the canal network and who are the worst offenders? You’ll probably be surprised.

12th October 2014

The pros and cons of buying an ex hire boat to live on – How suitable are ex hire boats for living on board full time?

5th October 2014

I ran short of time during this week and couldn’t think of much to write about anyway, so I just detailed an idyllic week we spent away from the marina, pottering about for a few days in Braunston and then finishing off the week on the south Oxford canal down as far as Fenny Compton. Six months before the start of our continuous cruising lifestyle, it was just what we needed to whet our appetites.

28th September 2014

Emergency food on board – Some of the most pleasant places to moor are a long way from the nearest supermarket. Here are some suggestions to ensure that you’re never short of a tasty meal on your idyllic canal-side retreat.

21st September 2014

Cruising in adverse weather conditions part two – A continuation of the previous week’s newsletter.

14th September 2014

Cruising in adverse weather conditions – Steering a narrowboat over the glassy surface of a placid canal on windless day in the middle of summer is child’s play. Here’s what you need to do on a “normal” day’s cruise.

7th September 2014

Following your dream – Is your goal to some day spend a life of leisure out on the canal network? This article might encourage you to make a move sooner rather than later.

31st August 2014

Route finding for narrowboat owners – Here are the popular paper and digital route finders to help make navigating the network child’s play

24th August 2014

Long term narrowboat hire – Is hiring a boat long term a realistic alternative to buying one?

17th August 2014

living on board in the winter, the cost of living afloat generally and where you can moor your floating home are all subjects which are misunderstood by many aspiring narrowboat owners. Here’s what you need to know.

10th August 2014

Narrowboat heating, electrics and engine specifications – How is the perfect live aboard narrowboat configured? Here are a few suggestions

3rd August 2014

Essential boating equipment – Here’s the stuff every boater should carry on board

27th July 2014

The pros and cons of a wide beam boat – More and more wannabe boaters are considering more spacious wide beams rather than narrowboat. There is clearly more living space on board but how practical are wide beam boats on the inland waterways?

20th July 2014

The dreaded weed hatch – Sooner or later your engine will start to overheat, you’ll lose propulsion and you’ll know that you need to dive down your weed hatch to free an obstacle or two from the propeller. Here’s how to do it properly and a list of the tools you’ll need.

13th July 2014

Digital aids for narrowboat owners – Digital applications and maps for inland waterways boaters

6th July 2014

Practical experience for lone boaters. Here’s an account of a day’s cruise with a nervous single boater. He wanted enough confidence to deal with locks on his own. I spent the day with him, designed a route to include twenty six locks and spent ten hours helping him hone his locking skills.

29th June 2014

Extending your boat’s storage space – The pros and cons of fitting covers to your front and rear decks

22nd June 2014

Naming your boat – The legal requirements when naming, renaming and displaying your boat plus the inland waterways’ two hundred most popular boat names

15th June 2014

Speeding boats – Are rocking stationary boats the fault of speeding passing boats or the fault of boat owners who can’t moor securely?

8th June 2014

Boat Handling – lock and paddle gear types.

1st June 2014

Boat handling – Swing and lift bridges

25th May 2014

Single handed boating – Negotiating locks.

18th May 2014

Single handed boating – Choosing the right type of boat for single handed cruising and equipment to make your solo journeys safer and more enjoyable.

11th May 2014

How to avoid common narrowboat accidents. They happen far more often than you might think. Here’s what you need to keep yourself out of harm’s way.

4th May 2014

If you want to live on your boat and don’t want to, or can’t, cruise full time, you must have a residential mooring. Here’s how to find one.

27th April 2014

What makes a perfect live aboard narrowboat. Two experienced boaters discuss layout, size and essential equipment

20th April 2014

A cautionary tale if you are considering buying a wide beam boat to live on.

13th April 2014

A further update to the site content index.

6th April 2014

The A -Z of everything narrowboat – With over 5,500 posts and pages on the site now, quickly finding exactly what you want can sometimes be a problem. For this newsletter I started creating and A-Z index of all the site content.

30th March 2014

How do you continue to earn money to support your boating lifestyle as you cruise the network?

23rd March 2014

Sharing your narrowboat space – The practicalities of sharing living accommodation the same size as a large shed.

16th March 2014

Paying for a narrowboat – What practical steps can you take to ensure you’ve established legal ownership and how do you deal with the transfer of monies between buyer and seller?

9th March 2014

Narrowboat Knots – At my first lock on my first cruise I watched my boat drift into the centre of the canal along with my twelve year old son. If you want to avoid the same embarrassment and potential damage to both your boat and your self esteem, you need to know how to tie your boat securely in a number of different situations.

2nd March 2014

Toilets is a subject often discussed by narrowboat owners but they usually talk about either pump out or cassette toilets. There is a third type though and it’s one which is both environmentally friendly and cheap to run. Here’s all you need to know about composting toilets.

23rd February 2014

Boat owners who live on board are considered to have a pretty simple and basic life by many living in bricks and mortar homes. Compared with the lifestyle of the farmers I’ve been staying with in the Philippines though, my UK life seems overly materialistic and expensive. Cou

16th February 2014

Here’s an account of my very first winter on board and that of one of the site’s subscribers, Nigel Buttery. They’re very different experiences. My first winter was the coldest on record. Nigel’s is one of the mildest winters we’ve had for a long time.

I’ve also included to links to my Philippines blog. I spent the whole of February living in a rural farming community on the island of Negros.

9th February 2014

Have you ever wondered how a narowboat is built. Here are the first two parts of a very detailed account of the building of a Sea Otter aluminium narrowboat. You’ll be particularly interested in Sea Otters if you don’t fancy the constant battle with rust that you have with traditional steel narrowboats.

2nd February 2014

Condensation is something all boat owners have to deal with. Here’s an explanation of why it occurs and what to do about it. I also tested a remote boat monitoring application in this issue.

26th January 2014

Cold floors, cold air above the floors and cold hull sides. It’s a combination which can cause your bottom half quite a bit of discomfort. Here’s what I do to deal with the problem.

19th January 2014

Weil’s disease – It’s an often talked about and often feared aspect of living, working or playing close to inland waterways but just how dangerous is it and what can you do to keep yourself safe?

12th January 2014

If you’re on a budget maybe a self fit our sailaway is the way to go for you. Here’s the story of a wide beam self fit out to give you inspiration (or put you off completely)

5th January 2014

Planning for the year ahead – Written plans and goals have always been important to me. They help me see into the future. Here’s what we’ve planned for our lovely floating home in 2014.

29th December 2013

The practicality of hosting Christmas afloat – How do you achieve a floating festive event (and do you really want to)?

Liveaboard case study, The Pearl – Tony and Jane Robinson believe in forward planning. They stated their narrowboat fund thirty years before buying their own boat. Now the two retired education workers moor in a marina for the winter then explore the waterways during the warmer months.

22nd December 2013

Narrowboat Storage Space – How much space is there to store your worldly goods on board a narrowboat? Here’s a video walk-through of my own boat James.

15th December 2013

Roses and Castles Canal Art – What is it and why do boaters spend so much money decorating their boats with it?

8th December 2013

Fitting secondary double glazing – Fitting the panels is a simple operation for those with the most basic DIY skills, something which I sadly haven’t developed. As you might expect then, the fitting didn’t go as well as it should.

Narrowboat videos – I launched the Living On A Narrowboat YouTube channel

1st December 2013

Secondary double glazing for your boat – The pros and cons of double glazing on a boat and why secondary double glazing is a much better bet and a fraction of the cost.

Living on a narrowboat vidoes – My first hesitant steps into the world of video production for site content

Can you either live or holiday on a narrowboat if you have a disability? – Here’s what you need to know.

24th November 2013

Winter fuel allowance – Do you qualify for one if you live on a boat?

Case Study – NB Progress. Kim Wainwright recorded her journey on the forum from nervous anticipation to current liveaboard boat owner. Here’s her story.

17th November 2013

Narrowboat central heating – I don’t have any. All that is about to change. Here’s the system I’m going to install and why I’ve chosen it.

10th November 2013

Narrowboat running costs – I compare my own running costs to those of a prominent YouTube video blogger and detail my exact costs for October 2013

3rd November 2013

Popular narrowboat terminology – Hundreds or words or phrases used to describe parts of boats and the waterways they cruise through.

27th October 2013

The wind chill factor – How strong the wind is blowing and which direction it’s coming from can determine how difficult it is to heat your boat. Here’s what you need to know.

Case study – Another couple from down under living the dream on the inland waterways.

20th October 2013Condensation. It’s a common problem on boats. Here are a few suggestions how to keep your boat’s interior dry.

A new organisation for liveaboard boaters

13th October 2013

On demand water heater problems – Discover a common fault with these water heaters and what you can do to resolve the problem.

Know your firewood – Not all timber burns well. Find out which is best and which to avoid.

6th October 2013

Managing your boat’s water supply. You can use your water supply as and when you need it when you live in a house with all mod cons. You can pretty much do the same when you’re on a marina mooring with a water supply just a hose length away. It’s a different kettle of fish when you’re on an online mooring.

Liveaboard case study – A prime example of mooring without a water supply on tap.

29th September 2013

The folly of using unseasoned wood as a fuel – Here’s essential information if you plan to use logs you find to heat your boat for free

Creating lasting memories of your cruises – Slightly off topic, but please bear with me. You’ll have some wonderful adventures as you travel throughout the network. They’ll be adventures worth remembering but will you remember them? I have a very poor memory but instant and total recall of all my cruises is just a click away.

22nd September 2013

A tragedy at Calcutt. Sudden Oak Dieback hits our 1,500 twenty year old oak trees

Forum private messaging – Now you can email other forum users from within the site

15th September 2013

Managing your water supply

An American blogs about his travels

1st September 2013

Solving engine room leaks – A simple solution to a dripping stern tube

All about the weed hatch – Removing debris from your propeller

8th September

A disaster – I inadvertently deleted this week’s newsletter and there wasn’t a backup on the server. What a shame. It was all about the damage you can do to your boat if you don’t watch what you’re doing in a lock. You would have loved it!

25th August 2013

Effective fly killers for boats

The downside to living on a narrowboat

Liveaboard Case Study – American Richard Varnes has taken a year out from work to cruise the canal network and write about his adventure. Here’s his case study and a few stories from his journey so far.

18th August 2013

CART Guide Approval – The waterways’ governing body is now promoting the information packages available from this site. Yippee!

Narrowboat Insurance – A summary of insurance quotes from the major narrowboat insurers

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

Downsizing from a 3 bed semi to a narrowboat – What do you do with a lifetime’s accumulated possessions?

11th August 2013

A free download – Living On A Narrowboat: 101 Essential Narrowboat Articles

Narrowboat tips – Handy hints from experienced narrowboat owners

The cost of a continuous cruising lifestyle – How one liveaboard boater manages on a shoestring

4th August 2013

The perfect narrowboat washing machine? – It’s low cost and doesn’t need plumbing in, but does it actually clean clothes?

The cost of a continuous cruising lifestyle – How much does living the life of a water gypsy really cost?

28th July 2013

The cost of living on a narrowboat – An article in the Daily Mail… and why most boaters disagree with what they said.

21st July 2013

Hire boat expectations – Fully understanding what facilities will be available to you is essential if you’re going to enjoy a narrowboat holiday. Here’s what not to do.

14th July 2013

Fenland river cruising – Another boater’s maiden voyage to whet your appetite.

7th July 2013

Anticipating winter weather – You may well be enjoying unusually warm winter weather but the winter will be with us all too soon. Now is the time that you need to plan for the cold weather ahead.

30th June 2013

Keeping your stove glass clean – Maybe you think it’s an odd subject for the summer but you can’t trust the English weather. Late June and the stove was still on now and again. At least now I have a crystal clear view of the fire I shouldn’t need to light.

Traffic chaos caused by Braunston’s historic boat rally – On a day with high winds and a canal full of working boats returning home after the rally, I had the pleasure of taking some very nervous hirers out on the cut.

23rd June 2013 – The cost of a two week cruise. If you live on your own boat, what’s the real cost of taking it away for a two week break?

Case Study – Mary Anne swapped dry land home rental for floating home ownership. Now she loves life afloat and works from home.

Life as a continuous cruiser – The Holy Grail of narrowboat ownership. The ability to travel where and when you like. Peter Early tells all.

16th June 2013

The Ashby canal cruise part two – We spent a bit more time on the Ashby before heading south again, joining the Coventry canal, this time following it into Coventry’s rather depressing and disappointing city centre, then retracing our steps back to Calcutt

Most popular narrowboat names – Here’s the definitive list of the top 200 most popular narrowboat names and a resource you can use to find out if any other boat has the same name as yours

Considerate boating – An article prompted after a near head on collision with another boat trying to avoid a fallen oak.

9th June 2013

I was on holiday for the first two weeks of June. Sally and I cruised from Calcutt to Braunston, north along the north Oxford where we joined the Coventry canal briefly before taking a very sharp right turn onto the Ashby canal. Here’s a daily report of the first week of our holiday.

2nd June 2013

An encounter with two poorly prepared holiday boaters and my own impending two week cruise encouraged me to put together a pre cruise check list

26th May 2013

Laptop hacking – An update on the problems I encountered after buying a brand new laptop which I suspect was tampered with before I bought it.

Diary of a new narrowboat owner – Frequent forum poster “Our Nige” finally moved on to his new floating home. Here’s his story

19th May 2013

My comments about an encounter on the Oxford/GU section between Napton and Braunston sparked a debate about the pros and cons of wide beams on the cut.

Keeping dry – You don’t really need to limit your cruising to sunny summer days. There’s something very special about standing on the back deck in the pouring ran protected by a set of bomb proof waterproofs.

Do you really need a car? Living on a narrowboat is all about enjoying a simple and stress free life. Sally and I had a car each. Mine cost £2,000 to run in the previous 12 months so I decided to get rid of mine to see if I could manage without one.

12th May 2013

An encounter with a wide beam boat and why they aren’t suitable for much of the canal network

An interview with the Trust’s head of boating. Sally Ash talks about the Trust’s approach to the thorny issue of residential moorings

5th May 2013

Narrowboat fuel tanks – How much do they hold

Meet one of your legless canal side companions

The canal network’s largest floating hotel

28th April 2013

Narrowboat blogs – My own first cruise, Our Nige takes his new home on its maiden voyage and a chance for you to have your very own blog section on this site.

21st April 2013

The Trust target illegal moorers but just what does the Trust consider to an illegal mooring?

Identity theft – The ongoing saga of my hacked laptop

RCR engine servicing – River Canal Rescue (RCR) are well known as the waterways equivalent of the AA but did you know that they will also come to your mooring to service your boat?

14th April 2013

The perils of exceeding your monthly broadband data allowance. Learn from my mistakes.

7th April 2013

Narrowboat security – A spate of burglaries from boats and a break in at my former family home encouraged me to write this article

Case study – You need to committed to sell your home to fund the purchase of your narrowboat. That’s what Mick and Marlene have done.

31st March 2013

Case study – Sarah lives on wide beam Antioch on the Leeds Liverpool canal. She can do man things with her hands. Here’s her story.

Be inspired – There are always reasons why you don’t make the move from bricks and mortar to steel and water. Here’s an anecdote which demonstrates once and for all that there really aren’t any worthwhile excuses.

24th March 2013

Here’s an example of what happens when you really don’t understand how your narrowboat works.

Essential boating equipment – Here’s a low cost item which has paid for itself over and over again.

Whilton marina boat sales – Sometimes things aren’t what they appear to be. This alleged fact about the boat sales at Whilton has come to me from several different sources.

17th March 2013

Where can you find residential moorings? Here’s a great place to start

Getting rid of unwelcome visitors – Geese used to regularly disturb a peaceful night’s sleep where I moor. Not any more. Here’s my solution

Know your narrowboat costs – Detailed costs for my own boat for February 2013

Half a dozen boaters now have access to their own blog section on the site. You can too. Here’s how.

11th March 2013

James’ upgrade – Adding solar panels and replacing carpets with oak effect laminate flooring

3rd March 2013

Stove fuel test – What works best; coal, wood, briquettes or something else entirely – Here’s my own take on a Waterways World test

Essential stove maintenance – Here’s what you need to do to make sure that your stove always performs well.

Internet connectivity – I use the internet four or more hours every day. This is the setup I have on my boat to make sure that I’m always connected.

Detailed running costs for my own boat for January 2013

20th February 2013

The real cost of going cheap. An in depth look at the cost of my 36 year old boat, and how much I spent (and still need to spend) before it will be a comfortable full time cruising boat.

8th January 2013

Case Studies – I put together 21 of the best case studies and analysed and summarised the data in this low cost guide. If you want ton save yourself hundreds of hours of research and costly mistakes, you need to read this guide.

Case Study – Mike’s circumstances are similar to my own. He moved onto his boat after a failed marriage. He’s upgraded from a 27? GRP cruiser to a 50? narrowboat

24th December

Narrowboat electrics part 2 – The concluding article from Tim Davis

I asked newsletter subscribers to send me detailed breakdowns of their bricks and mortar expenses so I could compare them with the cost of running a narrowboat. Quite a few subscribers obliged. I added the breakdowns to my narrowboat costs guide and the budgeting application.

18th December 2012

Understanding narrowboat electrics – Another excellent article from Tim Davis

Satellite television for narrowboats – Information from a system installer

2nd December 2012

Low cost narrowboat ownership – A low cost solution to the problem of funding your first narrowboat

Solar power – All you need to know about installing solar panels on your boat. Written by the inland waterways most popular solar system installer

Case Study – Mr. Solar Panel Tim Davis writes about life on board his own narrowboat

21st November 2012

First tests and reviews of the budgeting application

The best aerial for a narrowboat television

6th November 2012

The first release of the new spreadsheet based narrowboat budgeting application

28th October 2012

An unscheduled dip in the marina prompted me to write about safety on the waterways

Living on a narrowboat – Through the eyes of a young lady who would clearly prefer to be somewhere else

17th October 2012

I started to develop the narrowboat budgeting software. This newsletter detailed the concept and the progress to date

14th October 2012

Practical flooring for narrowboat dogs

Case study – Mike and Mags use a double redundancy payment to pay for their new floating home

30th September 2012

The best tip for a wannabe narrowboat owner – Advice from existing boat owners

18th September 2012

I published my guide Living on a Narrowboat: The REAL Cost of a Life Afloat. When this newsletter was published it was only available as a Kindle edition. Now it’s available in both Kindle and PDF format and is bundled with Narrowbudget, the site’s bespoke narrowboat budgeting application.

VAT on narrowboat sales

20th July 2012

Dealing with pests on a narrowboat – spiders and swans

Posh boats – My personal favourite: S.M. Hudson

7th July 2012

Repeat prescriptions, diesel heating systems and solar panels

10th June 2012

Survey – Do you want a forum on the site? (You already know the answer to that!)

27th May 2012

How to clean your stove glass – One of the real pleasures of a living fire is watching the flames on a cold winter’s eve. Here’s what you need to do to ensure you can actually see the fire.

Smoking on board – An alternative to smelly smoke

13th May 2012

DIY narrowboat painting – I’ve broken down the complete cost of painting your own boat and

Dealing with wind on the river – A guest article from liveaboard narrowboat owner Alan Cazaly

29th April 2012

DIY narrowboat painting – I spent three weeks in April painting my boat. Here’s the first of my progress reports

15th April 2012

Life on the river Cam – A guest article on the pleasures of river life by wide beam liveaboard Luther Phillips

Case Study – Freelance writer Anne and her South African farmer partner John reveal all

Case Study – Toni cruises constantly with ex husband Allan. They cruise together but they live apart… on separate boats

1st April 2012

As a result of the article about the downside of living on a narrowboat published in the 18th March newsletter, I asked liveaboard narrowboat owners to complete a survey to give a balanced view of the issues raised by Pauline. Here are the survey results and a much more positive article by liveaboard narrowboat owner and frequent forum contributer Peter Early.

18th March 2012

The downside of living on a narrowboat – This was a very controversial post. Liveaboard Pauline Roberts wrote about the less pleasant aspects of life afloat… and attracted a storm of comments

Case study: The Woodsman – Pauline Roberts again giving an insight into the life that you may think she doesn’t like.

4th March 2012

Reviewed: The Liveaboard Guide by Tony Jones. A great guide to living afloat

eBay Narrowboat scam (and a little bit of flack for me from another forum)

Case Study: Author Toby Jones on his own liveaboard narrowboat

A review of Debdale Wharf marina

22nd January 2012

Two more case studies. One of them waxed lyrical about life on the waterways and enjoyed every minute of her life afloat. Now (April 2013) she’s selling up to follow another dream in Spain.

8th January 2012

The first four narrowboat case studies published

I’ll start with myself; Paul Smith, living on my own, moored in a marina and working full time. Narrowboat James case study

Meet Peggy. She has a husband and two small children, works full time and cruises the network during the summer months. Narrowboat Violet Mae case study

Fancy spending your retirement cruising the waterways of England and Wales? Meet Barry and Sue Horne. They’re living the dream! Narrowboat Adagio Case Study

Here are another working couple. Lina and Warren cruise the cut with their two cats.Narrowboat Olive Rose case study.

2nd February 2011

Article – Living on a narrowboat in winter

1th January 2011 – 1st Newsletter

Dealing with the coldest winter on record
Digital reading – A detailed review of the Kindle, the perfect solution for book loving boat owners

Comprehensive Site Article Listing

There are dozens of helpful and interesting articles on the site, but have you found them all? I thought you might appreciate a list of the more popular articles that you can glance through and click on the ones that take your fancy. Here it is.

Useful Links

Living on a Narrowboat: The REAL Cost of a Life Afloat – Narrowboat costs explained in detail. My own maintenance and living cost on narrowboat James for a full year. Use this information to work out your own costs.
CRT (Canal & River Trust) maintain the waterways. Here’s their site.
Find out what parts of the canal are closed and for how long. Essential cruising information for you.
Do you need to find a home for your boat? Here’s a comprehensive list of the narrowboat friendly marinas in the UK
Do you want to see where these marinas are on a map? Here it is.
Here’s a map of all the canals on the system to help you plan your route.
Newsletter Archive – Browse through a wealth of useful content in the newsletters over the last year.
Find out more about narrowboat central heating costs here.

2014 11 23 Newsletter – Cruising In London

I am weak. I should know better by now, but I don’t seem to learn.

Over the last couple of months I’ve had the occasional request for recommendations for decent local bed and breakfast establishments close to the marina for those travelling to me from far and wide for my discovery days. The one I’ve always suggested first has been Wigram’s Canalside which overlooks Napton Junction and which is literally a five minute walk from the marina along a very pleasant towpath.

The owner, Ben Heaf, emailed me a couple of weeks ago to thank me for the additional customers. I replied telling him that he was more than welcome but, at some stage, he would need to buy me a couple of pints as a token of his gratitude.

The end result was him offering to take me to the King’s Head in Napton so that I could collect my reward, so on Wednesday evening after a quick shower to wash off the working day’s dirt and an even quicker dinner, a banana, I walked a mile and a half along dark country lanes for our 6.30pm appointment.

I arrived fifteen minutes early, searched in vain for a lonely looking man – not something I’m in the habit of doing when I’m out on my own I hasten to add – ordered a pint of of Old Hooky and settled down on a stool in the corner of the bar with a good view of the door.

The scheduled time came and went but no one came into the pub. I was annoyed. I don’t like being late for appointments. I like the people I’m supposed to be meeting being late even less. I sent a quick email to Ben asking if he was on his way, and ordered another pint.

I was just finishing my second drink of the evening when a guy I had seen at the bar earlier, and who I had wrongly assumed was with with a party sitting in an alcove hidden from where I was sitting, rushed up to the bar and asked a guy with long grey hair sitting next to me if he was Paul Smith. I knew I shouldn’t have cut my own hair last week!

Anyway, we had a very pleasant chat for an hour over another couple of pints and then, much to my disappointment, Ben told me he had to go.

Was it something I said?

This is where I made a huge mistake. The sensible thing to do was to leave at the same time as him, but I wasn’t quite ready to go back to the boat. I don’t get out often, so when I’m out I like to make the most of the occasion.

I plonked myself down at the bar again and ordered myself a glass of merlot, a large one of course. I pulled out my wallet to pay and realised that I didn’t have any cash No problem, I thought, I’ll pay with a debit card.

“There’s a ten pounds minimum if you want to use plastic”, the barman gleefully told me.

So, an hour and a half later, and with £18.98 less in my bank account thanks to my lack of willpower, another large glass of merlot and a few single malts from the top shelf, I rather unsteadily made my way out of the pub and back along the pitch black lane to the marina.

It’s was a lovely walk home. I talked to the trees, barked back at the two unseen but ferocious sounding dogs guarding a farm house, mooed back at the cows and baa’d in tune with the sheep. I sang as I walked and sat on the hump backed bridge over the Oxford canal to admire the boats I couldn’t see in the darkness below.

I had a great time.

Thursday morning wasn’t so pleasant though. My recovery time after a night out isn’t what it used to be. I went to work with a thumping head forgetting that thumping things was what the day had in store for me. I had 40 three feet long oak posts to install. Most of them were to block off the grass car parking area which is used by holiday hirers in the drier summer months. Over the winter the ground softens but is often used by unsuspecting winter visitors to our chandlery. They get on to the grass easily enough thanks to a slight downhill slope, but getting off again invariably involves plenty of wheel spinning, sliding across the grass and ultimately being towed off.

I spent the day driving a mooring stake into the ground to make holes for the posts’ metal spikes, synchronising thumping stakes with my thumping head. Still, post fitting was preferable to the job Pat and I have to do over the coming couple of weeks.

At this time of the year, everything is damp. The sun spends much of the time hidden behind thick grey cloud and even when the clouds break for long enough to allow the sun to brighten the landscape, there isn’t enough heat in it to dry the wet ground. The grass is fine. Soggy, but not a problem.

The wooden walkways around the marina are a different kettle of fish.

There are nine mooring bays on Meadows marina, the newest of the two marinas at Calcutt. Each has a wooden walkway parallel with the bank and a number of fingers at right angle to the bank out into the marina. There are nine main walkways and seventy fingers, all wooden, all slippery and all needing pressure washing. The walkways’ total length is just over 5,000 feet or almost exactly one mile.

Pat and I will take turns using fairly low power pressure washer to clean the accumulated algae and lichen off the wooden piers. Each of the nine bays will take about two days to complete and will include a quick wash down of all the moored boats to remove any dirt splashed against them by the pressure washer.

It’s not going to be a pleasant week or two.

I booked a one to one service with River Canal Rescue on Friday. I’ve used their service twice before. Once two years ago for James’ first proper engine service and then again last year for another. On both occasions the office administration was awful. I had to phone three times for the first service before they finally confirmed that they had booked me in. They have the strangest system. It went something like this…

I phoned in to tell them that I wanted to book a service. They reluctantly agreed that they could accommodate me, a non member, and took my details. Rather than book me in while I was on the phone, they promised to call me back. Now, to me, that appears to be a difficult way of completing a simple task. Surely the engineer’s appointments are computerised so it should be a simple process to go through the available slots on the phone with a customer who has a boat,who is possibly on his boat, and who is probably in an area with a poor phone reception. I’m not running the office though, so what do I know?

Anyway, I waited eagerly for the return call to tell me when the engineer was scheduled.

I didn’t get a return call.

I phoned them again to establish my service date. They had no record of me on their system. I gave my details again, told them that they were unlikely to reach me by phone, but that they could leave me a voice mail message if I didn’t answer, gave them my email address too so that they could still contact me if phoning me or leaving me a message didn’t work and once more waited for them to contact me.

They didn’t.

On my third call I insisted that I waited on the phone until they unearthed the engineer’s schedule and fitted me in.

The engineer they sent out, Kerry, was excellent. He turned up on time, did an excellent job of explaining the workings of my engine, speaking slowly and very clearly as he knew that what he was saying wasn’t sinking in, and quickly and effectively serviced my engine.

In spite of the lack of the organisation in the office, I booked another service last year purely because of Kerry. This time I only needed to phone twice to book the work in. I wasn’t terribly surprised to discover that they didn’t have any record of me for the previous year’s service and, as expected, they failed to call me back, but we got there in the end.

Kerry once more arrived when he should, but this time he wouldn’t service my engine. He had a quick look at it, asked how many hours it had run since his last minute, then decided that the service didn’t need doing. It’s this kind of service at the sharp end of the business which more than makes up for the poor office admin.

I’m going use the engine more in the next year than it’s been used for the last twenty years so I need to make sure that it’s well maintained. Next year’s discovery days alone will necessitate running it for up to four hundred hours and then, there’s also eight months continuous cruising to fit in.

I need to be able to service my own engine so I’ve booked the one to one service this year so Kerry can tell me what to do then watch me as I do it. It might not seem a big deal for you, but for someone who isn’t sure which end of a screwdriver to hold, it’s a little bit scary.

Of course, the lady from RCR didn’t call back on Friday, or Saturday or today. I’ll call them again on Monday expecting them to have lost my details once more. It’s all very frustrating but I should be getting used to it by now. On the canals, nothing happens quickly.

Engine Fuel Consumption

In last week’s newsletter I mentioned that my fuel consumption over the course of this year has been 1.24 litres per hour. Three boat owners emailed me with their own figures. I’ve included the details below so that you get a more balanced idea of fuel consumption. Ian and Tim have also shared some thoughts on single handed locking.

“Couple of things might interest you regarding your latest newsletter:

My fuel consumption works out at about 3/4 litre per hour. I do not have diesel heating.

I find the easiest way to deal with locks single handed is to pull the boat in and out of locks using the centre line. I am too old to dance around on the roof and those lock ladders are too close to the wall to be able to get more than my toes on them which makes them dangerous, especially in winter. I find that I can usually pull lock gate closed behind me with one hand while holding centre line with other.”

Tim Wood

“Hi Paul I’m just lying on the bed at 2.30 pm in our lodging in Jakarta, outside temperature is 30C. I’m enjoying your latest newsletter on fuel consumption and single handed locking. I carried out my own consumption survey and get about the same as you about 1.3 ltrs/ hr.

Alchemy is a 60 ft Colcraft with beta 42hp. It has an Invicta square bladed prop ( i think that’s the name.). Most of my cruising is at very leisurely 1200 rpm. I rarely see a wake at all and I can hold conversations with folks walking dogs for 15 minutes or so before they pull away from me so i assume i,m doing about 2 -3 mph. I regularly do Braunston to Barby moorings in 1.5 hours. I only do emergency sprints at 1800 rpm to beat oncoming boats to bridge holes on rare occasions of bloody mindedness. I really don’t like to hear a high revving engine on the cut, i believe its a sign of poor anticipation. If I’m not mobile I would run the engine for 2 hours to charge batteries and heat water. I have 1 starter battery and 3 leisure batteries.

On the subject of single handed locking, I gained some experience over last summer. Mostly I walk “Alchemy ” into locks with the centre rope, always open one plate slowly to control water flow and boat stability, pull her out by hand, tie up, reset lock, climb aboard and motor away. I really don’t enjoy climbing up n down the slimy slippery ladder and negotiating the cabin roof, and at 60, with a bad back, climbing into the cockpit is a pain. I think I told you before, on one occasion heading south at whilton, in my haste i slipped down the ladder and between the cabin side and slimy wall onto the gunwhale. Could have been dangerous but was more messy from sliming my faded jeans and sky blue shirt . That slime has impregnated the cloth and is still visible.. But still reminded me on the return journey north I was leading her in by the centre rope at the top lock when suddenly realised there was a slim steel footbridge over the lock gate !! “Alechemy ” had inertial way on and I frantically tried to pass the rope under the bridge but impossible. I had no option but to drop the rope onto the roof and watch helplessly as she slowed but impacted the cill with her bow. I climbed down quickly and retrieved the rope to the top again. Not a nice experience. I must pay attention to every eventuality. I seem to be able to do a lock single handed in about 25 minutes. Unless I’m pushed by traffic I have no intention of breaking speed records or breaking my neck in the attempt. Canal cruising should be leisurely and safe.

Ian Roberts

“We averaged 1.48 litres per hour during 2013 over 480 hours of engine running. Over half of that would be with the washing machine running. Joanie M is 58 ft long with a Beta 43, PRM 150 with 2:1 reduction driving an 18 x 12 prop.”

Peter Earley

Peter and Tim are continuous cruisers who are out on the cut all year round. Ian, as he reminds me frequently, prefers the much warmer weather of Indonesia during the English winter. He leaves his boat at a marina close to Caluctt while he’s away.

Capital Cruising – Finding Your Way Around London By Boat

Peter Earley has provided an enormous amount of information for this site and after twenty years of hiring, six years of shared ownership and the last seven years continuous cruising on his own boat Joanie M, Pete has a great deal of experience to share.

Pete sent me the following article earlier in the week. It’s an important topic to cover because of the enormous number of potential boat owners who are considering living aboard and working in the capital. At least once a week this year I have met new boat owners who were on their way down to London where they intended to find a new canal-side home, often with little or no research into the availability of long term moorings. Several times a week this year I also received emails from potential London live aboard boater, many stating that they didn’t really have an interest in boat ownership but rather in a cheap way to live in the capital.

This is a subject which I haven’t written about before, simply because I don’t know enough. Pete does though, so if you’re considering a life afloat close to the city, or if you are thinking about adding a cruise through the capital to next year’s itinerary, you’ll find Pete’s information very useful.

“So, having read the articles in the Guardian, Independent, et al, or you’ve heard the Radio 4 programme extolling the cheap way you can live in London on the canals, you think you might join them. After all, you can pick up a boat for a few thousand pounds and a license is only another few hundred quid. I could say, ‘don’t do it’, but you won’t take any notice of me so instead I’ll give you some advice that you might take notice of.

You may be an experienced boater but you will still have a steep learning curve to climb. If you’re inexperienced then its a mountain so my first bit of advice is don’t start your new life in the winter. Why? Because everything takes twice as long and is twice as hard. Wait for the Spring when things get easier. Read on and you will see why.

The Canal & River Trust estimate there to be 1100 continuous cruisers in the London area. This is assumed to be within the M25. Doesn’t sound too bad for the amount of waterway that covers but the National Bargee Travellers Association reckon that 800 of these are in Central London. The reason is easy to understand, it’s because this lies within Zone 1 and 2 so cheaper travel. And you are dependent in public transport because, even if you have a car, where are you going to park it. All the areas near to the canal are resident parking only.

Being a continuous cruiser you have to move every 14 days. That doesn’t mean from Little Venice to Camden and back to Little Venice. It means from Little Venice to Camden to Kings Cross to Broadway Market to Mile End and so on. And, to make sure you get the message, CRT will text you when your 14 days are up to remind you to move. In practice, because the working week for most people is Monday to Friday, it means most of these 800 boats are all trying to change location at the weekend meaning queues everywhere and everyone is jostling around to get a space. Large lengths of the towpath in Central London are concreted over to protect the high voltage cables underneath. You could try hammer a pin in the cracks but it is not recommended. But it means you will have to moor alongside another boat, or even two boats.

Then, of course there are the basic needs of water and toilet disposal. You may use it sparingly and make use of facilities at work or the pub but at some point you have to get water. In the whole of London there are, I think, 13 water and 7 elsan points. With everyone trying to make use of them at weekends I am sure you can imagine the congestion this causes. This is made worse by the poor positioning of some of these where boaters using the facilities have to block lock access because otherwise their hoses wouldn’t reach.

Most liveaboard boaters will use some 10 to 20% if their battery capacity each night which needs to be replaced by recharging, either from your engine, generator or solar. Fine if you work nights and can run your engine during the day otherwise, you leave for work at 8am, arrive back home by 6pm giving you just 2 hours in which you can charge. That’s probably OK, with your batteries getting a long charge at the weekend to bring back to full charge. Failure to do this though, because you have to go home to see Mum, visit the launderette (that’s if Mum isn’t going to do it) or a hot date, means your batteries will enter a downward spiral from which there is no recovery. Of course, I’ve forgotten solar but then I’m writing this in November when the charge for most of us is fairly negligible.

London cruising is sort of split into 3 areas. Hanwell/Uxbridge to Kensal Green is about 16 miles of lock free cruising and has plenty of mooring space with easy access to Underground or railway stations and easy parking for a car. But you have to balance the extra travel cost and time of being in the outer zones against the freedom to moor wherever you want.

You know when you are approaching Zone 2 at Kensal Green as that’s when the long line of moored boats starts. From here until Victoria Park or Mile End, every possible place where it is possible to tie up, whether it be rings, bollards or fencing, is occupied by a boat, often 3 deep. Don’t be too concerned about mooring next to another boat. Provided you are not causing an obstruction, and remember this is a wide canal, it is the accepted thing to do. Make your number with the person you’re moored against as soon as you can. Find out when he is moving next. You don’t want to return home to find your boat floating free because he’s gone and he shouldn’t have the worry of having to secure your boat. If you’re sharing his mooring pins it’s important to ensure he can take his pins and still leave you moored.

Moving onto the Lee Navigation you might think that the mooring situation hasn’t improved much. But at least these boats are only moored singly and there are some spaces if you look. The mooring gets easier the further you go upriver. In fact, the area around the only sanitary, or rather insanitary, station at Stonebridge, has plenty of space and it’s still in Zones 3 or 4, again with opportunities to park a car.

I’ve mentioned water but sooner or later you will need diesel and coal. This needs a lot of forward planning or foresight and quite a bit of luck. There are several coal and diesel boats that operate in the area. I would urge you to join the London Boaters Facebook page which will give you contact details and some idea of which boat is what area and when. However, these boats don’t operate to any sort of timetable, of necessity they will be around when you are at work meaning you may have to leave cash hidden in an agreed place, and from my short experience, they don’t answer phones or texts often because they are too busy. Often, they will have run out before they get to you and then there is ICE.

I mentioned at the start, don’t move to London at the beginning of winter, wait for spring. You have a lot to learn and winter only adds more problems. It is colder, the days are shorter and the canal will, at some time, freeze. That is not the time to run out of water, have full toilet cassettes or run out of coal or diesel.

There is an added problem during the winter in that a large proportion of the moorings are sold off as Winter Moorings. These are of two types. Either a specific location, at a high cost, such as Paddington Basin, where you are guaranteed a space. Or a General Towpath Mooring where the payment of £100 a month relieves you of the necessity of moving every 14 days. However, as none of the designated places have their own water points you will have to move at some point anyway!”

Within a couple of days of receiving this article from Pete, I also received an email asking me about the availability of visitor moorings in and around London. I didn’t know, so I turned to Pete again. Here’s what he had to say…

“There are no sensible visitor moorings.

Paddington Basin is 7 days and is heavily policed by the security staff of Merchant Square aka M & S who own the bank side. There are about 20 narrowboat moorings there so should find a space in the summer months. It is all winter moorings until April. You can book a mooring at the London Canal Museum for £8 a night inc electricity. Then there is a policed 24 hour mooring at Limehouse.

If I was visiting for the summer I would aim to be at Kensal Green overnight so as to arrived at Paddington mid morning when other boats might have moved. The moor at the museum which would give an easy run to Limehouse. Limehouse to Tottenham Hale is an easy days run in the summer.

There is also the chance that he could book the moorings at Rembrandt Gardens at Little Venice for £10 a night. I’m assured by CRT that the scheme will be up and running for next year.

London is further compromised at present by large chunks of the towpath being fenced off at Kings Cross because of redevelopment and also by the Olympic Park. Two years after the Olympics and you still can’t moor there or explore the back waterways!”

If you are one of the estimated thousand plus live aboard boat owners somewhere inside the M25, I would love to hear from you. I received an email from one London boater last week. He said that I was beginning to annoy him – he put it rather more strongly than that – with my rose tinted view of the live aboard lifestyle. He said that living on a boat in London is all about survival and that the problem is getting worse every day. He said that, over the previous four weeks, he had personally seen at least half a dozen new live aboard boat owners a day heading into the city. If you would like to comment on the situation as you see it, please email me. I’ll include your response in next week’s newsletter.

I Need Some Help!

Discovery Day And Narrowboat Helmsmanship Training

Secondly, I would like to thank you for fitting me in at such short notice, and the coffee, gloves, etc. that you supplied. Greatly appreciated!

You can find out more about my discovery days and availability here.

Newsletter Index

16th November 2014

Narrowboat fuel consumption – How many miles to the gallon can you get out of your floating home?

9th November 2014

How to spot bogus narrowboat adverts – Beware narrowboats for sale at bargain basement prices. Here’s a cautionary tale to make you think twice about reaching for your wallet.

2nd November 2014

Narrowboat CO2 emissions – Is living on a boat a green alternative to a home on dry land? You’ll have to read this newsletter to find out.

26th October 2014

19th October 2014

Anti social behaviour on the cut – How common are the unpleasant incidents you sometimes hear about on the canal network and who are the worst offenders? You’ll probably be surprised.

12th October 2014

The pros and cons of buying an ex hire boat to live on – How suitable are ex hire boats for living on board full time?

5th October 2014

28th September 2014

21st September 2014

Cruising in adverse weather conditions part two – A continuation of the previous week’s newsletter.

14th September 2014

7th September 2014

Following your dream – Is your goal to some day spend a life of leisure out on the canal network? This article might encourage you to make a move sooner rather than later.

31st August 2014

Route finding for narrowboat owners – Here are the popular paper and digital route finders to help make navigating the network child’s play

24th August 2014

Long term narrowboat hire – Is hiring a boat long term a realistic alternative to buying one?

17th August 2014

10th August 2014

Narrowboat heating, electrics and engine specifications – How is the perfect live aboard narrowboat configured? Here are a few suggestions

3rd August 2014

Essential boating equipment – Here’s the stuff every boater should carry on board

27th July 2014

20th July 2014

13th July 2014

Digital aids for narrowboat owners – Digital applications and maps for inland waterways boaters

6th July 2014

29th June 2014

Extending your boat’s storage space – The pros and cons of fitting covers to your front and rear decks

22nd June 2014

Naming your boat – The legal requirements when naming, renaming and displaying your boat plus the inland waterways’ two hundred most popular boat names

15th June 2014

Speeding boats – Are rocking stationary boats the fault of speeding passing boats or the fault of boat owners who can’t moor securely?

8th June 2014

Boat Handling – lock and paddle gear types.

1st June 2014

Boat handling – Swing and lift bridges

25th May 2014

Single handed boating – Negotiating locks.

18th May 2014

Single handed boating – Choosing the right type of boat for single handed cruising and equipment to make your solo journeys safer and more enjoyable.

11th May 2014

How to avoid common narrowboat accidents. They happen far more often than you might think. Here’s what you need to keep yourself out of harm’s way.

4th May 2014

If you want to live on your boat and don’t want to, or can’t, cruise full time, you must have a residential mooring. Here’s how to find one.

27th April 2014

What makes a perfect live aboard narrowboat. Two experienced boaters discuss layout, size and essential equipment

20th April 2014

A cautionary tale if you are considering buying a wide beam boat to live on.

13th April 2014

A further update to the site content index.

6th April 2014

30th March 2014

How do you continue to earn money to support your boating lifestyle as you cruise the network?

23rd March 2014

Sharing your narrowboat space – The practicalities of sharing living accommodation the same size as a large shed.

16th March 2014

Paying for a narrowboat – What practical steps can you take to ensure you’ve established legal ownership and how do you deal with the transfer of monies between buyer and seller?

I’ve also included to links to my Philippines blog. I spent the whole of February living in a rural farming community on the island of Negros.

9th February 2014

2nd February 2014

Condensation is something all boat owners have to deal with. Here’s an explanation of why it occurs and what to do about it. I also tested a remote boat monitoring application in this issue.

26th January 2014

Cold floors, cold air above the floors and cold hull sides. It’s a combination which can cause your bottom half quite a bit of discomfort. Here’s what I do to deal with the problem.

19th January 2014

12th January 2014

If you’re on a budget maybe a self fit our sailaway is the way to go for you. Here’s the story of a wide beam self fit out to give you inspiration (or put you off completely)

5th January 2014

Planning for the year ahead – Written plans and goals have always been important to me. They help me see into the future. Here’s what we’ve planned for our lovely floating home in 2014.

29th December 2013

The practicality of hosting Christmas afloat – How do you achieve a floating festive event (and do you really want to)?

22nd December 2013

Narrowboat Storage Space – How much space is there to store your worldly goods on board a narrowboat? Here’s a video walk-through of my own boat James.

15th December 2013

Roses and Castles Canal Art – What is it and why do boaters spend so much money decorating their boats with it?

8th December 2013

Narrowboat videos – I launched the Living On A Narrowboat YouTube channel

1st December 2013

Secondary double glazing for your boat – The pros and cons of double glazing on a boat and why secondary double glazing is a much better bet and a fraction of the cost.

Living on a narrowboat vidoes – My first hesitant steps into the world of video production for site content

Can you either live or holiday on a narrowboat if you have a disability? – Here’s what you need to know.

24th November 2013

Winter fuel allowance – Do you qualify for one if you live on a boat?

Case Study – NB Progress. Kim Wainwright recorded her journey on the forum from nervous anticipation to current liveaboard boat owner. Here’s her story.

17th November 2013

Narrowboat central heating – I don’t have any. All that is about to change. Here’s the system I’m going to install and why I’ve chosen it.

10th November 2013

Narrowboat running costs – I compare my own running costs to those of a prominent YouTube video blogger and detail my exact costs for October 2013

3rd November 2013

Popular narrowboat terminology – Hundreds or words or phrases used to describe parts of boats and the waterways they cruise through.

27th October 2013

The wind chill factor – How strong the wind is blowing and which direction it’s coming from can determine how difficult it is to heat your boat. Here’s what you need to know.

Case study – Another couple from down under living the dream on the inland waterways.

20th October 2013Condensation. It’s a common problem on boats. Here are a few suggestions how to keep your boat’s interior dry.

A new organisation for liveaboard boaters

13th October 2013

On demand water heater problems – Discover a common fault with these water heaters and what you can do to resolve the problem.

Know your firewood – Not all timber burns well. Find out which is best and which to avoid.

6th October 2013

Liveaboard case study – A prime example of mooring without a water supply on tap.

29th September 2013

The folly of using unseasoned wood as a fuel – Here’s essential information if you plan to use logs you find to heat your boat for free

22nd September 2013

A tragedy at Calcutt. Sudden Oak Dieback hits our 1,500 twenty year old oak trees

Forum private messaging – Now you can email other forum users from within the site

15th September 2013

Managing your water supply

An American blogs about his travels

1st September 2013

Solving engine room leaks – A simple solution to a dripping stern tube

All about the weed hatch – Removing debris from your propeller

8th September

25th August 2013

Effective fly killers for boats

The downside to living on a narrowboat

18th August 2013

CART Guide Approval – The waterways’ governing body is now promoting the information packages available from this site. Yippee!

Narrowboat Insurance – A summary of insurance quotes from the major narrowboat insurers

Downsizing from a 3 bed semi to a narrowboat – What do you do with a lifetime’s accumulated possessions?

11th August 2013

A free download – Living On A Narrowboat: 101 Essential Narrowboat Articles

Narrowboat tips – Handy hints from experienced narrowboat owners

The cost of a continuous cruising lifestyle – How one liveaboard boater manages on a shoestring

4th August 2013

The perfect narrowboat washing machine? – It’s low cost and doesn’t need plumbing in, but does it actually clean clothes?

The cost of a continuous cruising lifestyle – How much does living the life of a water gypsy really cost?

28th July 2013

The cost of living on a narrowboat – An article in the Daily Mail… and why most boaters disagree with what they said.

21st July 2013

Hire boat expectations – Fully understanding what facilities will be available to you is essential if you’re going to enjoy a narrowboat holiday. Here’s what not to do.

14th July 2013

Fenland river cruising – Another boater’s maiden voyage to whet your appetite.

7th July 2013

Anticipating winter weather – You may well be enjoying unusually warm winter weather but the winter will be with us all too soon. Now is the time that you need to plan for the cold weather ahead.

30th June 2013

23rd June 2013 – The cost of a two week cruise. If you live on your own boat, what’s the real cost of taking it away for a two week break?

Case Study – Mary Anne swapped dry land home rental for floating home ownership. Now she loves life afloat and works from home.

Life as a continuous cruiser – The Holy Grail of narrowboat ownership. The ability to travel where and when you like. Peter Early tells all.

16th June 2013

Most popular narrowboat names – Here’s the definitive list of the top 200 most popular narrowboat names and a resource you can use to find out if any other boat has the same name as yours

Considerate boating – An article prompted after a near head on collision with another boat trying to avoid a fallen oak.

9th June 2013

2nd June 2013

An encounter with two poorly prepared holiday boaters and my own impending two week cruise encouraged me to put together a pre cruise check list

26th May 2013

Laptop hacking – An update on the problems I encountered after buying a brand new laptop which I suspect was tampered with before I bought it.

Diary of a new narrowboat owner – Frequent forum poster “Our Nige” finally moved on to his new floating home. Here’s his story

19th May 2013

My comments about an encounter on the Oxford/GU section between Napton and Braunston sparked a debate about the pros and cons of wide beams on the cut.

12th May 2013

An encounter with a wide beam boat and why they aren’t suitable for much of the canal network

An interview with the Trust’s head of boating. Sally Ash talks about the Trust’s approach to the thorny issue of residential moorings

5th May 2013

Narrowboat fuel tanks – How much do they hold

Meet one of your legless canal side companions

The canal network’s largest floating hotel

28th April 2013

Narrowboat blogs – My own first cruise, Our Nige takes his new home on its maiden voyage and a chance for you to have your very own blog section on this site.

21st April 2013

The Trust target illegal moorers but just what does the Trust consider to an illegal mooring?

Identity theft – The ongoing saga of my hacked laptop

RCR engine servicing – River Canal Rescue (RCR) are well known as the waterways equivalent of the AA but did you know that they will also come to your mooring to service your boat?

14th April 2013

The perils of exceeding your monthly broadband data allowance. Learn from my mistakes.

7th April 2013

Narrowboat security – A spate of burglaries from boats and a break in at my former family home encouraged me to write this article

Case study – You need to committed to sell your home to fund the purchase of your narrowboat. That’s what Mick and Marlene have done.

31st March 2013

Case study – Sarah lives on wide beam Antioch on the Leeds Liverpool canal. She can do man things with her hands. Here’s her story.

24th March 2013

Here’s an example of what happens when you really don’t understand how your narrowboat works.

Essential boating equipment – Here’s a low cost item which has paid for itself over and over again.

Whilton marina boat sales – Sometimes things aren’t what they appear to be. This alleged fact about the boat sales at Whilton has come to me from several different sources.

17th March 2013

Where can you find residential moorings? Here’s a great place to start

Getting rid of unwelcome visitors – Geese used to regularly disturb a peaceful night’s sleep where I moor. Not any more. Here’s my solution

Know your narrowboat costs – Detailed costs for my own boat for February 2013

Half a dozen boaters now have access to their own blog section on the site. You can too. Here’s how.

11th March 2013

James’ upgrade – Adding solar panels and replacing carpets with oak effect laminate flooring

3rd March 2013

Stove fuel test – What works best; coal, wood, briquettes or something else entirely – Here’s my own take on a Waterways World test

Essential stove maintenance – Here’s what you need to do to make sure that your stove always performs well.

Internet connectivity – I use the internet four or more hours every day. This is the setup I have on my boat to make sure that I’m always connected.

Detailed running costs for my own boat for January 2013

20th February 2013

The real cost of going cheap. An in depth look at the cost of my 36 year old boat, and how much I spent (and still need to spend) before it will be a comfortable full time cruising boat.

8th January 2013

Case Study – Mike’s circumstances are similar to my own. He moved onto his boat after a failed marriage. He’s upgraded from a 27? GRP cruiser to a 50? narrowboat

24th December

Narrowboat electrics part 2 – The concluding article from Tim Davis

18th December 2012

Understanding narrowboat electrics – Another excellent article from Tim Davis

Satellite television for narrowboats – Information from a system installer

2nd December 2012

Low cost narrowboat ownership – A low cost solution to the problem of funding your first narrowboat

Solar power – All you need to know about installing solar panels on your boat. Written by the inland waterways most popular solar system installer

Case Study – Mr. Solar Panel Tim Davis writes about life on board his own narrowboat

21st November 2012

First tests and reviews of the budgeting application

The best aerial for a narrowboat television

6th November 2012

The first release of the new spreadsheet based narrowboat budgeting application

28th October 2012

An unscheduled dip in the marina prompted me to write about safety on the waterways

Living on a narrowboat – Through the eyes of a young lady who would clearly prefer to be somewhere else

17th October 2012

I started to develop the narrowboat budgeting software. This newsletter detailed the concept and the progress to date

14th October 2012

Practical flooring for narrowboat dogs

Case study – Mike and Mags use a double redundancy payment to pay for their new floating home

30th September 2012

The best tip for a wannabe narrowboat owner – Advice from existing boat owners

18th September 2012

VAT on narrowboat sales

20th July 2012

Dealing with pests on a narrowboat – spiders and swans

Posh boats – My personal favourite: S.M. Hudson

7th July 2012

Repeat prescriptions, diesel heating systems and solar panels

10th June 2012

Survey – Do you want a forum on the site? (You already know the answer to that!)

27th May 2012

How to clean your stove glass – One of the real pleasures of a living fire is watching the flames on a cold winter’s eve. Here’s what you need to do to ensure you can actually see the fire.

Smoking on board – An alternative to smelly smoke

13th May 2012

DIY narrowboat painting – I’ve broken down the complete cost of painting your own boat and

Dealing with wind on the river – A guest article from liveaboard narrowboat owner Alan Cazaly

29th April 2012

DIY narrowboat painting – I spent three weeks in April painting my boat. Here’s the first of my progress reports

15th April 2012

Life on the river Cam – A guest article on the pleasures of river life by wide beam liveaboard Luther Phillips

Case Study – Freelance writer Anne and her South African farmer partner John reveal all

Case Study – Toni cruises constantly with ex husband Allan. They cruise together but they live apart… on separate boats

1st April 2012

18th March 2012

The downside of living on a narrowboat – This was a very controversial post. Liveaboard Pauline Roberts wrote about the less pleasant aspects of life afloat… and attracted a storm of comments

Case study: The Woodsman – Pauline Roberts again giving an insight into the life that you may think she doesn’t like.

4th March 2012

Reviewed: The Liveaboard Guide by Tony Jones. A great guide to living afloat

eBay Narrowboat scam (and a little bit of flack for me from another forum)

Case Study: Author Toby Jones on his own liveaboard narrowboat

A review of Debdale Wharf marina

22nd January 2012

Two more case studies. One of them waxed lyrical about life on the waterways and enjoyed every minute of her life afloat. Now (April 2013) she’s selling up to follow another dream in Spain.

8th January 2012

The first four narrowboat case studies published

I’ll start with myself; Paul Smith, living on my own, moored in a marina and working full time. Narrowboat James case study

Meet Peggy. She has a husband and two small children, works full time and cruises the network during the summer months. Narrowboat Violet Mae case study

Fancy spending your retirement cruising the waterways of England and Wales? Meet Barry and Sue Horne. They’re living the dream! Narrowboat Adagio Case Study

Here are another working couple. Lina and Warren cruise the cut with their two cats.Narrowboat Olive Rose case study.

2nd February 2011

Article – Living on a narrowboat in winter

1th January 2011 – 1st Newsletter

Dealing with the coldest winter on record
Digital reading – A detailed review of the Kindle, the perfect solution for book loving boat owners

Comprehensive Site Article Listing

Useful Links

2014 11 16 Newsletter – Narrowboat Fuel Consumption

I’ve been feeling sorry for myself this week. I am very lucky. I work outside all of the time, away from often crowded heated work places which breed germs. I’m sometimes cold after a day’s work, often wet but, generally, supremely fit and healthy. My last day sick day off work was Boxing Day 1983. I can’t remember when I last had a cold, but I’ve got one now, and I don’t like it at all.

I’ve been working our larger woodland area for the last few days. The squirrels have been at it again. This spring they chewed the bark off about fifty oak and nearly all the hornbeam we have on site. The oak aren’t too much of a problem. One thousand five hundred were planted fifteen years ago. The trees are now twenty five to thirty feet tall and many are far too close together. The oak, and the seven hundred and fifty ash, want thinning out if the trees are to remain healthy and have enough room to grow. I’ll choose which ash to remove, but the squirrels have chosen the oak.

Removing some bark doesn’t kill the tree, but if it’s removed from the trunk’s full circumference, “ring barked”, nutrients can’t reach the part of the tree above the missing bark, so it dies. If the tree is in an open space, the lower section of the tree will survive as a healthy but visually unappealing bush.

In our densely packed woodland though, the ring barked section becomes brittle, then usually snaps off in the autumn’s high winds. In subsequent years, the neighbouring trees form a canopy over the damaged tree depriving it of light. The overshadowed tree eventually dies.

Many of the damaged trees still look relatively healthy but they will die and are currently taking up valuable space. The crowns have blown out of some but, because of the density of trees, they’ve been left suspended above the woodland footpaths waiting to drop on unsuspecting walkers beneath.

So for much of this week I’ve been cutting down trees while trying to cope manfully with a streaming cold. The lethargy and listlessness is bad enough, even if it does give me an insight into how one of our younger members of staff apparently feels all of the time, but the constantly runny nose is driving me made, especially when I’m using my chainsaw.

When I’m using the saw I have to wear protective clothing which includes safety gloves and a helmet with a perspex visor. If I’m felling a tree I can’t stop to blow my nose and if I can’t blow my constantly running nose when I’m bending down, the inevitable result is most of the contents of my head pouring out of my face on to my visor. It hasn’t been very pleasant. The experience reminded me of looking through a scuba mask when diving at a fluid and rippling landscape… only in this instance with far more trees.

Life hasn’t been much better indoors. I’ve fallen out with Sally again. I don’t really understand why she’s so angry with me.

I don’t like to waste money on hair cuts so for the last three or four years my boat has been a DIY barber shop. Once a month I sit on a stool in the only free space we have on the boat. Unfortunately it’s next to the stove so haircuts in the winter can be quite a warm affair. I sit on the stool while part time hair dresser Sally goes to town on my grey head. She does a very good job.

Recently Sally has been working night shifts and she’s also been working quite a few extra shifts, also at night, to save up for her planned three or four month return to the Philippines in January. She comes back to the boat after a twelve hour shift just after I’ve left for my own nine hour shift at Calcutt Boats. When I get back from work in the evening, we say a quick hello, eat the evening meal together, then she’s off again.

On most of my days off I run discovery days and on what few days off Sally has at the moment, I’m working. There’s very little time for my monthly hair cut.

On Tuesday my regular monthly hair cut was overdue by nearly a month so, as Sally is so short of free time, I thought I would do it myself.

Have you ever tried to cut your own hair?

It’s not easy. I started off with the No 6 attachment. I ran it over my unruly mop until there was a mountain of grey and white hair cascading over the dogs laying at my feet. I had a quick look in a mirror and decided that there was more work to do. I couldn’t see well enough to trim the edges around my ears or the back of my neck so I decided that the best solution was to shorten it a bit, and then a bit more, and then a bit more.

Eventually I achieved the neatness I was after but only for one very simple reason. I had very little hair left. I had become so obsessed with neat edges that I didn’t really focus on which attachments I was using. The fact that I was on my second glass of a very pleasant Australian red, and that I was further distracted by Sean Lock on 8 Out of 10 Cats probably didn’t help. Now I have an all over No 2 and, according to Sally, I look either like a convict or an ardent National Front supporter.

She isn’t very happy.

I spent Wednesday and Thursday felling and logging more damaged oak, ash growing too close to neigbours and a large shallow rooted larch which was about to fall across an often used woodland path, and then I breathed a sigh of relief, brought a copy of December’s Waterways World home with me from work, had dinner, spent an hour on my laptop and then took myself and my magazine to bed.

I don’t usually read for very long. I’m too tired, and the cosy bed plus the sound of the wind and rain lulls me to sleep. The sound of the wind and the rain lulls me to sleep providing the wind isn’t blowing from the east.

An east wind howls across the marina, skirts around the island behind me and then slams into the back of the boat. The wind doesn’t cause any problems. It’s the waves that the wind creates on its trip across the open water. They hit the boat with a rhythmic and rather loud SLAP, SLOP, SLAP, SLOP. It’s not the most relaxing sound in the world.

I didn’t sleep very well on Thursday night. The stiff easterly was still blowing on Friday morning bringing plenty of heavy rain with it. The rain was still bouncing off the roof at 8am when Brent Smith was due to arrive.

The furthest travelled discovery attendee was Davie McLachlan who was with me the previous weekend. Davies drove down from Inverness to see me. OK, he was also visiting relatives on Merseyside but part of the reason for the trip was to come out on James for the day. Five hundred miles was a fair way to travel for a day out on a boat but Brent beat the record by a wide margin. He flew in from Australia.

OK. Again, he didn’t come just to see me. He was over here for five weeks for a variety of reasons, including visiting brokers looking at boats for sale. Friday was his last day in England before the arduous flight back to warmer weather.

At quarter past eight when he still hadn’t arrived I put on my waterproofs and went looking for him. I found him driving through a rain soaked car park on site. I brought him back to my boat, made a coffee and then spent an hour discussing the pros and cons of various aspects of my boat, all the time looking out of the window hoping the rain would ease.

It didn’t and Brent, because he was travelling light, didn’t have any waterproofs with him. As luck would have it, I had some spares on board so we set off with heavy rain being blown into our faces by a chill wind.

We were lucky. By 11am the rain stopped, the wind died, and the sun came out. We enjoyed a very pleasant cruise to Braunston and a bit of a challenging trip back to Calcutt with a low sun dazzling us from a cloudless sky. By the time this newsletter goes out, Brent will be back on the other side of the world with, hopefully, some very pleasant memories of boating in Warwickshire.

Narrowboat Engine Fuel Consumption

“How many miles does it do to the gallon?” It’s a question which is often asked of cars, but rarely of narrowboats. The problem is, miles to the gallon is a difficult figure to work out on a narrowboat. The boat’s diesel tank is often used to supply the central heating system as well as the engine so it’s quite difficult to work out how much is used by the engine and how much is used by the heating system.

There’s another issue too. The boat’s engine is often used for hours at a time to charge the battery bank when the boat is stationary. Some boaters use the engine more for battery charging than they do to move from A to B.

And when the boat engine is used to move the boat, for a varying proportion of the cruising day, the boat can be sitting still is a series of locks so no distance is covered.

Because of these variables, the figure which is usually quoted, if a figure is quoted at all, is the average number of litres an hour that the engine uses when it’s running regardless of whether the engine is being used to move the boat through the water or just to charge the batteries.

I keep accurate records of my expenditure on diesel and the number of litres I put in each time I top up. I also make a note of the boat engine hours running total. I know that when I last topped the tank up just over a week ago the total hours for the year was 332. Unfortunately very little of that was used by me exploring the network.

Sally and I had two weeks out in June and then another at the end of September. We went from the marina to Market Harborough and back in June and then pottered about without going far at all in September. The majority of the diesel I’ve used and the engine hours I’ve run up this year have been on discovery days. The engine’s generally running for six or seven hours on each day, and nearly all of that time the boat is cruising.

Because I have all of this information to hand, I can say with confidence that my boat’s thirty seven year old 38hp Mercedes OM636 uses an average of 1.24 litres of diesel per hour and for most of this time the engine is running at between 1300rpm (passing moored boats) and 1800rpm (top cruising speed without creating breaking wash).

As a completely pointless but, to me, interesting exercise, as I know the average hourly fuel consumption, I’m also able to calculate the fuel consumption in terms which would mean something to a car owner.

Many boaters talk about an average speed of 4mph but they don’t take into consideration delays at locks, passing moored boats, negotiating congested spots, tight bends and bridge holes. I used the excellent CanalPlan route planner to work out the distance and the time taken for two routes; one from Calcutt marina to Llangollen and one from Calcutt marina to Bath. The average speed for both routes was roughly 1.8 miles per hour. I had guessed that my own average was just over two miles an hour but I’m sure the CanalPlan formula is more accurate.

For the sake of this exercise, if I say the average distance travelled by a narrowboat in an hour is two miles, and I know that my boat uses 1.24 litres per hour, I can work out that a gallon of diesel will run my boat for 3.67 hours (1 gallon = 4.55 litres so 4.55/1.24 litres per hour = 3.67 hours).

If a gallon of diesel will run my engine for 3.67 hours and the average distance my boat travels in an hour is two miles, my boat achieves 7.34 miles to the gallon.

Just over seven miles to the gallon is two and a half times as thirsty as my old gas guzzling Nissan Pathfinder. In fact, my lovely floating home gets slightly less miles to the gallon than a Hummer. Mind you, the boat may well use more fuel per mile travelled than the American monstrosity, but I’m pretty sure it’s much more comfortable to live in.

Single Handed Locking

I received the following email earlier in the week from live aboard wide beam owner Trevor Martin concerning single handed locking, and as I spent all Saturday locking single handed (and getting paid for it. It’s not a bad way to earn a living!), I though I would include the email in the newsletter and add a few comments of my own. Trevor mentions in his email that each lock took him forty five minutes. I questioned him on the figure and admitted that three quarters of an hour was the time taken to negotiate the first lock of the day when the flight had completely drained overnight. The flight actually took him just over nine hours in total to complete, which is still a fair day’s work.

“I recently had the “opportunity” to navigate the Caen Hill flight on my own, 29 locks in under 4 miles with the actual flight made up of 16 locks tightly spaced to raise/lower over 200 feet. I was helped going down the flight by the “crew” of a Fat Boat following me but still took 45 minutes per lock on my own, (moor up, fill lock, open, cast off, manoeuvre into the lock, empty, manoeuvre out, moor up, close lock and cast off again).

The best way I found when operating locks single handed is to slowly open one paddle while the boat is inside so that the boat moves forward toward the gates. Use a centre line on the roof to loop around a bollard toward the aft end, and control the boat movement from outside the lock by using the centre line. Only one paddle to be opened, otherwise the rush of water will make the boat move too quickly for some “crew” to handle in this way. Once the lock is emptied, the gates can be opened. I have found at this stage, the best way to proceed is to tie the boat in the lock, run (or walk) to the next lock to fill and fully open the gates. Now, once back on the boat, manoeuvre out of the lock and straight into the next. Tie up inside the lock, run (or walk) back to the previous lock to close it and start the process all over again. It’s much easier with travellers helping but when I had to navigate the flight on my own, it was last week and not many boats going through the locks.

I’m sure this method has been in use for years by seasoned travellers, but being fairly new to canal boating, I seem to learn things by trial and error :-)”

Leaving your boat in a lock while you walk to the next lock to prepare it is a great way to save yourself a lot of effort. Rather than set the lock, get back on to your boat, bring it out of the lock, move over to the towpath, secure the boat, set the next lock, walk back to your boat, untie it and push it away from the side, climb on board and navigate, often from an awkward angle, into the new lock, you can just head pretty much in a straight line from one lock into the next.

There is a problem with this technique though. You can only do it when the canals are quiet. It’s not acceptable to leave your boat in a lock while you prepare the next one if there’s any traffic waiting to use the lock so you’ll find that this technique works best for you either early in the morning or late in the evening or out of season.

What Trevor hasn’t mentioned in his email is how you are supposed to get on and off your boat in an empty lock. You can either use your centre line to pull your boat out of the lock before getting on board, or you can climb onto your boat in the lock.

I made a mistake when I had my solar panels installed. I have three of them taking up much of the space between the centre and the rear of the boat. Much of the remaining space is covered by the pole and plank and the brackets they sit on on the starboard side. Single handed locking is now a bit tricky for me.

If I enter an empty lock, sometimes I can slow the boat almost to a stop as I enter the lock, then step off on the lock landing with the centre line then run up the steps, flick the rope over the balance beam and then tie the boat off on a bollard and bring it to rest. If I can’t use this technique, I have to take the boat in to the lock and then climb out of the lock if I’m going up or climb down into the lock when I’m ready to exit if I’m going down.

Regardless of the direction of my climb I have to carefully negotiate the clutter on the roof. It’s potentially dangerous, especially when the roof is either wet or icy.

The mistake I made was not installing the solar panels on the front section of boat’s roof. It would have meant running a cable the full length of the boat back to the engine room, but at least I would have a clear section of roof to walk on in locks. In the meantime, I’ll just have to practice keeping my balance.

Discovery Day Update

I’ve finally pinned down the availability for next year’s discovery days and updated the calendar. I’ll be holding the days on the first two weekends of every even months plus the week days between those two weekends. For the sake of clarity, here are the dates.

3rd – 12th April

5th – 14th June

31st July – 9th August

2nd – 11th October

4th – 13th December

Of course, if you are one of the many future attendees who believe in forward planning who have already booked a date for next year, even if those dates fall outside of the new schedule, those dates will be honoured. I’ll hot foot it back from wherever I’ve been exploring on the network to meet you.

If you want to book a date, or just want to check the current availability, here’s a link to the calendars for the single, exclusive single and couple discovery days.

If you’re sitting on the fence, not really sure whether a discovery day will be of real use to you, I urge you to read this feedback from people who have already joined me for the day. Without exception, the comments I’ve received have been overwhelmingly positive. I’m trying not to sound as though I’m blowing my own trumpet, but I’m constantly told what a productive and enjoyable day it is.My apologies for the layout of the testimonials page. As usual, I can’t find the time to add all the bells and whistles. Roll on April when I’ll have so much more time on my hands!

If you’re serious about living afloat, and want to combine a day discussing the pros and cons of various boats, the equipment in them and the lifestyle itself with plenty of hands on training along a challenging and beautiful route, then I sincerely hope you’ll pay me a visit.

I Need Some Help!

Newsletter Index

9th November 2014

How to spot bogus narrowboat adverts – Beware narrowboats for sale at bargain basement prices. Here’s a cautionary tale to make you think twice about reaching for your wallet.

2nd November 2014

Narrowboat CO2 emissions – Is living on a boat a green alternative to a home on dry land? You’ll have to read this newsletter to find out.

26th October 2014

19th October 2014

Anti social behaviour on the cut – How common are the unpleasant incidents you sometimes hear about on the canal network and who are the worst offenders? You’ll probably be surprised.

12th October 2014

The pros and cons of buying an ex hire boat to live on – How suitable are ex hire boats for living on board full time?

5th October 2014

28th September 2014

21st September 2014

Cruising in adverse weather conditions part two – A continuation of the previous week’s newsletter.

14th September 2014

7th September 2014

Following your dream – Is your goal to some day spend a life of leisure out on the canal network? This article might encourage you to make a move sooner rather than later.

31st August 2014

Route finding for narrowboat owners – Here are the popular paper and digital route finders to help make navigating the network child’s play

24th August 2014

Long term narrowboat hire – Is hiring a boat long term a realistic alternative to buying one?

17th August 2014

10th August 2014

Narrowboat heating, electrics and engine specifications – How is the perfect live aboard narrowboat configured? Here are a few suggestions

3rd August 2014

Essential boating equipment – Here’s the stuff every boater should carry on board

27th July 2014

20th July 2014

13th July 2014

Digital aids for narrowboat owners – Digital applications and maps for inland waterways boaters

6th July 2014

29th June 2014

Extending your boat’s storage space – The pros and cons of fitting covers to your front and rear decks

22nd June 2014

Naming your boat – The legal requirements when naming, renaming and displaying your boat plus the inland waterways’ two hundred most popular boat names

15th June 2014

Speeding boats – Are rocking stationary boats the fault of speeding passing boats or the fault of boat owners who can’t moor securely?

8th June 2014

Boat Handling – lock and paddle gear types.

1st June 2014

Boat handling – Swing and lift bridges

25th May 2014

Single handed boating – Negotiating locks.

18th May 2014

Single handed boating – Choosing the right type of boat for single handed cruising and equipment to make your solo journeys safer and more enjoyable.

11th May 2014

How to avoid common narrowboat accidents. They happen far more often than you might think. Here’s what you need to keep yourself out of harm’s way.

4th May 2014

If you want to live on your boat and don’t want to, or can’t, cruise full time, you must have a residential mooring. Here’s how to find one.

27th April 2014

What makes a perfect live aboard narrowboat. Two experienced boaters discuss layout, size and essential equipment

20th April 2014

A cautionary tale if you are considering buying a wide beam boat to live on.

13th April 2014

A further update to the site content index.

6th April 2014

30th March 2014

How do you continue to earn money to support your boating lifestyle as you cruise the network?

23rd March 2014

Sharing your narrowboat space – The practicalities of sharing living accommodation the same size as a large shed.

16th March 2014

Paying for a narrowboat – What practical steps can you take to ensure you’ve established legal ownership and how do you deal with the transfer of monies between buyer and seller?

I’ve also included to links to my Philippines blog. I spent the whole of February living in a rural farming community on the island of Negros.

9th February 2014

2nd February 2014

Condensation is something all boat owners have to deal with. Here’s an explanation of why it occurs and what to do about it. I also tested a remote boat monitoring application in this issue.

26th January 2014

Cold floors, cold air above the floors and cold hull sides. It’s a combination which can cause your bottom half quite a bit of discomfort. Here’s what I do to deal with the problem.

19th January 2014

12th January 2014

If you’re on a budget maybe a self fit our sailaway is the way to go for you. Here’s the story of a wide beam self fit out to give you inspiration (or put you off completely)

5th January 2014

Planning for the year ahead – Written plans and goals have always been important to me. They help me see into the future. Here’s what we’ve planned for our lovely floating home in 2014.

29th December 2013

The practicality of hosting Christmas afloat – How do you achieve a floating festive event (and do you really want to)?

22nd December 2013

Narrowboat Storage Space – How much space is there to store your worldly goods on board a narrowboat? Here’s a video walk-through of my own boat James.

15th December 2013

Roses and Castles Canal Art – What is it and why do boaters spend so much money decorating their boats with it?

8th December 2013

Narrowboat videos – I launched the Living On A Narrowboat YouTube channel

1st December 2013

Secondary double glazing for your boat – The pros and cons of double glazing on a boat and why secondary double glazing is a much better bet and a fraction of the cost.

Living on a narrowboat vidoes – My first hesitant steps into the world of video production for site content

Can you either live or holiday on a narrowboat if you have a disability? – Here’s what you need to know.

24th November 2013

Winter fuel allowance – Do you qualify for one if you live on a boat?

Case Study – NB Progress. Kim Wainwright recorded her journey on the forum from nervous anticipation to current liveaboard boat owner. Here’s her story.

17th November 2013

Narrowboat central heating – I don’t have any. All that is about to change. Here’s the system I’m going to install and why I’ve chosen it.

10th November 2013

Narrowboat running costs – I compare my own running costs to those of a prominent YouTube video blogger and detail my exact costs for October 2013

3rd November 2013

Popular narrowboat terminology – Hundreds or words or phrases used to describe parts of boats and the waterways they cruise through.

27th October 2013

The wind chill factor – How strong the wind is blowing and which direction it’s coming from can determine how difficult it is to heat your boat. Here’s what you need to know.

Case study – Another couple from down under living the dream on the inland waterways.

20th October 2013Condensation. It’s a common problem on boats. Here are a few suggestions how to keep your boat’s interior dry.

A new organisation for liveaboard boaters

13th October 2013

On demand water heater problems – Discover a common fault with these water heaters and what you can do to resolve the problem.

Know your firewood – Not all timber burns well. Find out which is best and which to avoid.

6th October 2013

Liveaboard case study – A prime example of mooring without a water supply on tap.

29th September 2013

The folly of using unseasoned wood as a fuel – Here’s essential information if you plan to use logs you find to heat your boat for free

22nd September 2013

A tragedy at Calcutt. Sudden Oak Dieback hits our 1,500 twenty year old oak trees

Forum private messaging – Now you can email other forum users from within the site

15th September 2013

Managing your water supply

An American blogs about his travels

1st September 2013

Solving engine room leaks – A simple solution to a dripping stern tube

All about the weed hatch – Removing debris from your propeller

8th September

25th August 2013

Effective fly killers for boats

The downside to living on a narrowboat

18th August 2013

CART Guide Approval – The waterways’ governing body is now promoting the information packages available from this site. Yippee!

Narrowboat Insurance – A summary of insurance quotes from the major narrowboat insurers

Downsizing from a 3 bed semi to a narrowboat – What do you do with a lifetime’s accumulated possessions?

11th August 2013

A free download – Living On A Narrowboat: 101 Essential Narrowboat Articles

Narrowboat tips – Handy hints from experienced narrowboat owners

The cost of a continuous cruising lifestyle – How one liveaboard boater manages on a shoestring

4th August 2013

The perfect narrowboat washing machine? – It’s low cost and doesn’t need plumbing in, but does it actually clean clothes?

The cost of a continuous cruising lifestyle – How much does living the life of a water gypsy really cost?

28th July 2013

The cost of living on a narrowboat – An article in the Daily Mail… and why most boaters disagree with what they said.

21st July 2013

Hire boat expectations – Fully understanding what facilities will be available to you is essential if you’re going to enjoy a narrowboat holiday. Here’s what not to do.

14th July 2013

Fenland river cruising – Another boater’s maiden voyage to whet your appetite.

7th July 2013

Anticipating winter weather – You may well be enjoying unusually warm winter weather but the winter will be with us all too soon. Now is the time that you need to plan for the cold weather ahead.

30th June 2013

23rd June 2013 – The cost of a two week cruise. If you live on your own boat, what’s the real cost of taking it away for a two week break?

Case Study – Mary Anne swapped dry land home rental for floating home ownership. Now she loves life afloat and works from home.

Life as a continuous cruiser – The Holy Grail of narrowboat ownership. The ability to travel where and when you like. Peter Early tells all.

16th June 2013

Most popular narrowboat names – Here’s the definitive list of the top 200 most popular narrowboat names and a resource you can use to find out if any other boat has the same name as yours

Considerate boating – An article prompted after a near head on collision with another boat trying to avoid a fallen oak.

9th June 2013

2nd June 2013

An encounter with two poorly prepared holiday boaters and my own impending two week cruise encouraged me to put together a pre cruise check list

26th May 2013

Laptop hacking – An update on the problems I encountered after buying a brand new laptop which I suspect was tampered with before I bought it.

Diary of a new narrowboat owner – Frequent forum poster “Our Nige” finally moved on to his new floating home. Here’s his story

19th May 2013

My comments about an encounter on the Oxford/GU section between Napton and Braunston sparked a debate about the pros and cons of wide beams on the cut.

12th May 2013

An encounter with a wide beam boat and why they aren’t suitable for much of the canal network

An interview with the Trust’s head of boating. Sally Ash talks about the Trust’s approach to the thorny issue of residential moorings

5th May 2013

Narrowboat fuel tanks – How much do they hold

Meet one of your legless canal side companions

The canal network’s largest floating hotel

28th April 2013

Narrowboat blogs – My own first cruise, Our Nige takes his new home on its maiden voyage and a chance for you to have your very own blog section on this site.

21st April 2013

The Trust target illegal moorers but just what does the Trust consider to an illegal mooring?

Identity theft – The ongoing saga of my hacked laptop

RCR engine servicing – River Canal Rescue (RCR) are well known as the waterways equivalent of the AA but did you know that they will also come to your mooring to service your boat?

14th April 2013

The perils of exceeding your monthly broadband data allowance. Learn from my mistakes.

7th April 2013

Narrowboat security – A spate of burglaries from boats and a break in at my former family home encouraged me to write this article

Case study – You need to committed to sell your home to fund the purchase of your narrowboat. That’s what Mick and Marlene have done.

31st March 2013

Case study – Sarah lives on wide beam Antioch on the Leeds Liverpool canal. She can do man things with her hands. Here’s her story.

24th March 2013

Here’s an example of what happens when you really don’t understand how your narrowboat works.

Essential boating equipment – Here’s a low cost item which has paid for itself over and over again.

Whilton marina boat sales – Sometimes things aren’t what they appear to be. This alleged fact about the boat sales at Whilton has come to me from several different sources.

17th March 2013

Where can you find residential moorings? Here’s a great place to start

Getting rid of unwelcome visitors – Geese used to regularly disturb a peaceful night’s sleep where I moor. Not any more. Here’s my solution

Know your narrowboat costs – Detailed costs for my own boat for February 2013

Half a dozen boaters now have access to their own blog section on the site. You can too. Here’s how.

11th March 2013

James’ upgrade – Adding solar panels and replacing carpets with oak effect laminate flooring

3rd March 2013

Stove fuel test – What works best; coal, wood, briquettes or something else entirely – Here’s my own take on a Waterways World test

Essential stove maintenance – Here’s what you need to do to make sure that your stove always performs well.

Internet connectivity – I use the internet four or more hours every day. This is the setup I have on my boat to make sure that I’m always connected.

Detailed running costs for my own boat for January 2013

20th February 2013

The real cost of going cheap. An in depth look at the cost of my 36 year old boat, and how much I spent (and still need to spend) before it will be a comfortable full time cruising boat.

8th January 2013

Case Study – Mike’s circumstances are similar to my own. He moved onto his boat after a failed marriage. He’s upgraded from a 27? GRP cruiser to a 50? narrowboat

24th December

Narrowboat electrics part 2 – The concluding article from Tim Davis

18th December 2012

Understanding narrowboat electrics – Another excellent article from Tim Davis

Satellite television for narrowboats – Information from a system installer

2nd December 2012

Low cost narrowboat ownership – A low cost solution to the problem of funding your first narrowboat

Solar power – All you need to know about installing solar panels on your boat. Written by the inland waterways most popular solar system installer

Case Study – Mr. Solar Panel Tim Davis writes about life on board his own narrowboat

21st November 2012

First tests and reviews of the budgeting application

The best aerial for a narrowboat television

6th November 2012

The first release of the new spreadsheet based narrowboat budgeting application

28th October 2012

An unscheduled dip in the marina prompted me to write about safety on the waterways

Living on a narrowboat – Through the eyes of a young lady who would clearly prefer to be somewhere else

17th October 2012

I started to develop the narrowboat budgeting software. This newsletter detailed the concept and the progress to date

14th October 2012

Practical flooring for narrowboat dogs

Case study – Mike and Mags use a double redundancy payment to pay for their new floating home

30th September 2012

The best tip for a wannabe narrowboat owner – Advice from existing boat owners

18th September 2012

VAT on narrowboat sales

20th July 2012

Dealing with pests on a narrowboat – spiders and swans

Posh boats – My personal favourite: S.M. Hudson

7th July 2012

Repeat prescriptions, diesel heating systems and solar panels

10th June 2012

Survey – Do you want a forum on the site? (You already know the answer to that!)

27th May 2012

How to clean your stove glass – One of the real pleasures of a living fire is watching the flames on a cold winter’s eve. Here’s what you need to do to ensure you can actually see the fire.

Smoking on board – An alternative to smelly smoke

13th May 2012

DIY narrowboat painting – I’ve broken down the complete cost of painting your own boat and

Dealing with wind on the river – A guest article from liveaboard narrowboat owner Alan Cazaly

29th April 2012

DIY narrowboat painting – I spent three weeks in April painting my boat. Here’s the first of my progress reports

15th April 2012

Life on the river Cam – A guest article on the pleasures of river life by wide beam liveaboard Luther Phillips

Case Study – Freelance writer Anne and her South African farmer partner John reveal all

Case Study – Toni cruises constantly with ex husband Allan. They cruise together but they live apart… on separate boats

1st April 2012

18th March 2012

The downside of living on a narrowboat – This was a very controversial post. Liveaboard Pauline Roberts wrote about the less pleasant aspects of life afloat… and attracted a storm of comments

Case study: The Woodsman – Pauline Roberts again giving an insight into the life that you may think she doesn’t like.

4th March 2012

Reviewed: The Liveaboard Guide by Tony Jones. A great guide to living afloat

eBay Narrowboat scam (and a little bit of flack for me from another forum)

Case Study: Author Toby Jones on his own liveaboard narrowboat

A review of Debdale Wharf marina

22nd January 2012

Two more case studies. One of them waxed lyrical about life on the waterways and enjoyed every minute of her life afloat. Now (April 2013) she’s selling up to follow another dream in Spain.

8th January 2012

The first four narrowboat case studies published

I’ll start with myself; Paul Smith, living on my own, moored in a marina and working full time. Narrowboat James case study

Meet Peggy. She has a husband and two small children, works full time and cruises the network during the summer months. Narrowboat Violet Mae case study

Fancy spending your retirement cruising the waterways of England and Wales? Meet Barry and Sue Horne. They’re living the dream! Narrowboat Adagio Case Study

Here are another working couple. Lina and Warren cruise the cut with their two cats.Narrowboat Olive Rose case study.

2nd February 2011

Article – Living on a narrowboat in winter

1th January 2011 – 1st Newsletter

Dealing with the coldest winter on record
Digital reading – A detailed review of the Kindle, the perfect solution for book loving boat owners

Comprehensive Site Article Listing

Useful Links

2014 11 09 Newsletter – How To Spot Bogus Narrowboat Adverts

The countdown continues. By the time you read this there will be just 143 days to go before the Grand Cruise. One hundred and forty three days is just a hop, skip and a jump away, but I’m not sure I’ll make it. I nearly finished myself and the dogs off on Wednesday evening.

As is usual these days, I came back from work just after 5,30, tired and very hungry. Sally had a steaming wok full of adobo waiting on the dinette table. Adobo is a popular Philippines dish consisting of meat, in this case chicken, marinated in soy sauce, garlic and vinegar, and in our case three chopped chillies to give it a little something extra, then simmered in the marinade. It’s delicious. After the spicy dish, served with rice and asparagus, Sally showered and changed into her work uniform while I put some more fuel on the fire in anticipation of a cold night.

Normally I would just add a dozen coal briquettes from the coal box next to the stove, open the stove’s bottom vent and within half and hour relax in the welcoming waves of warm air from the flickering flames dancing above the glowing coals. On Wednesday evening though I took advantage of some free fuel.

We had a sample bag of heat logs in our reception area. I’m not sure where they came from but the half empty bag was shared between office based Douglas and myself. My share was just two dozen compressed “logs”, each slightly smaller than a tennis ball and the same shape as the machine rolled hay bales you see in fields at the end of summer.

Heat logs are usually a waste of time. They burn too quickly, cost too much and expand uselessly to about three times their normal size if they get wet but, not wanting to look a gift horse in the mouth, I threw half of them on the fire just as Sally left for work.

Heat logs normally burst into flames almost immediately if added to an already hot fire. These didn’t. They smouldered and smoked for fifteen minutes before finally limping to life. They burned in a very half hearted fashion for about half an hour before smouldering and smoking again. Just to get them out of the way, I threw the remaining dozen pieces on the fire expecting the same result.

The new logs smoked and smouldered with much more enthusiasm than the first batch. In fact they smoked so much that thick grey clounds billowed out from the stove door’s top edge into the cabin filling the space with a choking haze. I couldn’t remove the glowing and crumbly logs from the fire because of the likelihood of dropping them and burning me, the boat or both.

I opened all the cabin windows, turned on the kitchen extractor fan, threw the front doors open and rolled up both sides of the cratch cover to allow the now frigid marina breeze to clear the smoke inside the boat.

The heat logs carried on smoking for a further two hours. All I could do was sit and wait. I couldn’t go to bed and leave the fire as it wasn’t a certainty that the dogs or I would wake up in the morning.

When I could finally open the stove door without filling the boat completely with smoke, I tried to work out why the normally very effective flu hadn’t drawn the smoke out of the boat. The cause of the problem was obvious. An inch high layer of thick ash from the logs had settled on the plate above the fire and just beneath the flue effectively stopping smoke from leaving the stove.

I cleaned out the crud before putting some briquettes in the fire and normal service was resumed. I then spent twenty minutes the following morning cleaning the thick black layer of soot off my normally clear stove door glass, and a further quarter of an hour standing on the gunwale on Thursday morning rattling a length of heavy chain inside the flu to make sure that there was nothing else blocking it.

Douglas took his share of heat logs back to his house in the original bag so I can’t warn you about the particular brand but there’s still a lesson to be learned. It’s important to test new fuel in a controlled environment. I hate to think what would have happened if I had thrown the heat logs into the stove and then left the dense smoke to fill up the boat for a couple of hours.

Apart from the excitement inside the boat on Wednesday, my week has been as gentle and relaxing as usual. I had a rest on Monday after three consecutive discovery days on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. I spent the day on my Husqvarna mower cutting the grass for about the third “last time” of the year. The very mild October temperatures and frequent showers have kept the grass growing at the normal summer rate. I’m pretty sure that’s it now though. We’ve had a couple of frosts this week so that should have finished the grass off for the season.

On Tuesday the highlight of the day was taking a couple of boats from the wharf down to the marina. The hire season has finished so we have our own fleet of twelve boats moored on the wharf as well as four narrowboat which we look after for the Royal Navy. They offer them to all staff at a subsidised rate. All four boats are out most of the time during the season but like our own fleet they’re finished now.

All of the boats will have some work done on them before the new season starts next April. Some of them will be repainted completely. First in line this year were two of the navy’s boats. Rob and I took them from the wharf, put them into the middle lock and roped them both together. Roping them together allowed Rob to set the locks while I took the two boats from the middle to the bottom lock.

Once the bottom lock was drained and I had slowly brought the pair outside the lock gates so that Rob could close them behind me, we untied both boats so that we could get them through the marina entrance one at a time, then tied them both onto the rusting dump barge we use for mooring our hire fleet over the winter.

It’s wonderful getting paid to take boats for a cruise.

On Wednesday I was back in the cottage garden next to Calcutt Top Lock. It’s a wonderful place to work surrounded by healthy fruit trees and close enough to the canal to watch passing traffic and to have the occasional shouted conversation.

The garden orchard, a mix of apple, pear, walnut and damson has been somewhat neglected in recent years. The solitary pear tree was far too high. I cut a little off it last year which sparked the first pear production for a few years but the fruit was till too high to be picked.

The orchard’s dominant tree was an unproductive damson which overshadowed the garden’s best producing apple tree. Both the damson and the pear needed cutting down to size. Pat held the ladder for me while I spent a couple of hours lopping off branches.

The end result is a much tidier orchard and one which should be far more productive in the years to come. I won’t be working at the marina when the next crop ripens, but I’ll be able to see them from the towpath when I return every six to eight weeks to run my discovery days.

Discover The Joy Of Autumn Cruising

Talking of discovery days, the response since inception has been wonderful. Every date since late June has been booked and the post event feedback has been fantastic.

The season is now drawing to a close. I’ll be running the days up until late December and then taking a three month break before starting again at the beginning of April. I’ve decided not to take bookings for the first three months of the year purely because of the potential for disruption.

The two most likely causes for disruption are winter stoppages and ice.

Stoppages are both scheduled and unscheduled work to sections of the canal network. The scheduled stoppages are carried out during the winter months when there is less traffic on the canals. For example, the three lock flights closest to the marina here are all going to be closed at some stage over this coming winter.

The Napton flight will be closed for a month and a half to carry out a range of repairs and improvements including the repair of a collapsed lock approach wall which caused a bit of a traffic jam in the middle of the season this year when a substantial section of the wall tumbled into the water narrowly missing a passing boat.

The Braunston flight will close for a month early in the new year to repair leaking gates and the structure of several locks and the Stockton flight will be closed for two weeks in March to repair leaking gates.

The stoppage section of the Canal & River Trust’s site gives full details and the estimated stoppage period so boaters can at least make cruising plans around these delays. What boaters can’t plan for is the weather.

Cruising in torrential rain is possible. In fact it’s very enjoyable if you have a decent set of waterproofs and the right attitude. Cruising is strong wind is a bit of a challenge but the wind’s strength doesn’t often prevent a determined boater from getting from A to B. A frozen canal on the other hand isn’t something you should play around with.

Last year was very mild indeed. We only had slightly sub zero temperatures on three nights during the winter months and no ice on the canal at all. The year before was pretty good too but the first year I moved on board was a different kettle of fish.

From the last week in November to the first week in January the canal was impassible. Four to six inches of ice locked boats into their moorings for a month and a half. In theory, it’s possible to move your boat along the canal even if it’s covered with an inch or more of ice. It’s possible, but not advisable. Even a relatively thin layer of ice will scour away the hull’s protective paint and the ice will remove most of the paint from the waterline which is the area of your boat most at risk from rust. So you can take your boat cruising through the ice… as long as you don’t mind paying five or six hundred pounds to have it blacked again when you return.

Because of the uncertainty of the weather and stoppages I won’t do any discovery days between the end of December and the beginning of April but there’s still a chance to book one before then.

There are currently four places still available for single boaters (I’m afraid that all of the slots for couples and exclusive singles are taken). The free dates are Friday 14^th, Sunday 16^th and Friday 28^th November and Sunday 14^th December. Find out more and book a date here.

I’ve noticed that as the temperature drops and the days get shorter potential attendees are more reluctant to book a date. I can understand the appeal of a lazy day on the still waters of a reed fringed canal drenched in summer sun and a relaxing midday break sitting in a comfortable canal-side camp chair watching streams of happy boaters float by. It’s a wonderful way to spend the day, but a day spent out on the canal at this time of the year is actually far more productive.

In the autumn it’s often fairly windy. Wind is the enemy of narrowboat owners. The combination of a flat bottom – the boat, not you – and extensive near vertical sides creating substantial wind resistance mean that you have to employ a completely new set of skills to control your floating home.

Three weeks ago I had the pleasure of Ian Hopkinson’s company for the day. Ian owns a 70′ narrowboat but he wanted a few pointers to help him control his craft. Our day out on the water was, shall we say, a little blowy. Here’s what Ian had to say about his experience…

“The day turned out to be tailor-made for my needs. I did state that I required help and guidance with single handed narrowboating and that’s exactly what you gave me. The’ icing on the cake’, as it turned out, were the very windy conditions, which really put me on my metal! Several hours of battling difficult conditions, has seared a lasting impression on my memory!

Thanks Paul for the cool,calm way you corrected my mistakes, considering it was your boat, your home and livelihood that you had trusted me with!

I was given a shed load of very helpful tips throughout the day, on boat handling, particularly with regard to bridge holes,bends and locks. All questions were answered in detail.

By the end of the day I was tired but elated,having completed the day without any major mishaps and my confidence level boosted by 100 % !

I am now looking forward to handling my own boat and putting into use everything I have learnt.

I would recommend the Discovery day to anyone new to narrowboating. You give an excellent grounding on which to build upon future experiences. The Discovery day also gives anyone new to living on a narrowboat the chance to avoid some potentially expensive mistakes and help with the pros and cons of choosing the type of boat.”

If I had taken Ian out on a calm day in the middle of summer, I’m sure that he would still have had a very pleasant day and would have picked up some very valuable tips. However, the adverse weather conditions we encountered allowed me to demonstrate the necessary techniques to keep a boat out of harms way, especially when approaching narrow bridge holes in a cross wind.

A windy day in autumn is a very rewarding and enjoyable experience. I took another soon-to-be boat owner out on a windy day yesterday. Davie McLachlan is my furthest travelled discovery day attendee to date. He drove down from Inverness to visit relatives on the Wirral peninsula then joined me for a day of wet and windy boating. We had a great time.

Inappropriate clothing rather than bad weather is what usually spoils the day. Both Dave and I were kitted out for the worst the day could throw at as but despite forecast torrential rain all day we spent the afternoon cruising in dry but blustery conditions. Dave booked an exclusive discovery so he had the boat to himself for the six hour cruise up through the Caluctt flight of three locks then six often narrow, winding and windswept miles to Braunston where we turned in the entrance to Braunston marina behind the Gongoozler’s Rest cafe.

We didn’t pass a huge number of moving boats while we were out but out of the intrepid few, we saw three which were pinned against the towpath by the wind and one at Braunston junction trying repeatedly to turn against the wind from the north Oxford onto the combined Grand Union and Oxford canals heading towards Napton On The Hill.

Yesterday was Dave’s first taste of narrowboat helmsmanship but within a couple of hours he was confidently negotiating tight bends in a strong cross wind, anticipating the boat’s drift and maintaining his line. He arrived in the morning quite nervous about handling the boat but left in the afternoon supremely confident in his ability to handle a 62′ narrowboat on his own.

The autumn is a fantastic time of the year to hone your narrow driving skills so if you are seriously considering investing a considerable sum in a floating home, here’s the perfect opportunity to experience a day afloat before the end of the year. Click here to find out more or to book one of the four remaining dates.

Beware Bogus Narrowboat Adverts… Again

In February 2012 I published this article about fake adverts detailing narrowboats for sale on eBay. The adverts were, and are, quite common. They show well specified and comfortable looking boats being sold at prices which sound too good to be true. The prices are too good to be true because they aren’t true. They’re scams perpetrated by individuals whose first language doesn’t appear to be English.

I know I’ve covered the subject before but it’s worth mentioning again. Many aspiring boat owners dreams are thwarted by the high costs of boats. These bogus adverts offer an affordable if scarcely believable solution to the problem.

I received the following email from Jess a few weeks ago. Jess has asked me not to publish her surname to save her embarrassment. She realises now that her heart ruled her head. If the person behind the scam had been a little smarter, they would have been able to con Jess out of a £500 deposit for the bargain boat.

Unfortunately I don’t have any photo’s of the boat, nor can I find any now because the listing has been removed. However, anyone who has done a little research to get the feel for narrowboat prices by simply browsing the 1,000 plus narrowboat listings on Apolloduck would realise that an asking price of £30,000 would have been far more realistic than the non negotiable £5,500 requested by this seller.

“Hi Paul,

It seems as though my partner and I have almost been victim to the Ebay boat scam- I now know has circulated in the past thanks to googling it- and funnily enough an article of yours came up from a few years ago.

My incident is very similar to the one you described, it was a beautiful boat and all seemed too good to be true- luckily enough we said we weren’t going ahead- to which I recieved a very robot like response, and after being very disappointed at having to say no (the logistics weren’t right for us) as I’ve come round to realise it was a scam, I feel very relieved.

I think its really important to let the rest of the boating community know- let me know if you’d like more information so you can include it in a newsletter.

It came with a very detailed back story, and we came scarily close to going ahead with it. It would have been our first boat, and all of my savings! It would be great to share my story and make the rest of the boat community aware so it doesn’t happen to them!

Thank you,

Jess”

Jess forwarded all of the emails too and from the seller. Here’s the first response from the seller “Ana Katherine Palmer” after Jess’s initial enquiry;

“Hello,

This boat its just perfect, Immaculate condition, no damages, once with the boat you will also get all the equipment my husband had.

The final price is not negotiable: £5500. My husband died 2 months ago and I can’t even use it because I don’t have a driver’s license. I had a buyer just 1 week ago but that person really scared me. He came with 2 friends and wanted to pay me with fake notes. I was lucky that my father in law was close and noticed that. Since I’m getting a lot of messages regarding the sale, I decided to list it on eBay with a buy it now option and whoever wins it will be the next owner. I assume you already have an eBay account. If not, please register and let me know when you are ready so I can email you the link.

If you’d like to secure the deal before anybody else does, then please buy it on eBay. Feel free to ask me any questions.

Thanks”

Jess noted that the seller hadn’t addressed her by name in the email but didn’t pick up the reference to needing a driving license for the boat. Here’s Jess’s reply;

“Hi Katherine- I completely agree- what a beauty she is. Very sorry to hear of your husbands passing- you can certainly tell all of his hard work and care that went into it. I’m ready to buy it now if you could send the link please? Desperately scared someone else is going to buy it- I’m at work today so will respond as soon as I can.

Many thanks,

Jess”

And then when Jess didn’t hear from the seller she sent another email;

“Hi again Katherine,

As I’m at work today and need to transfer some money in to my account in order to make the full payment to you. I was wondering if you could possibly reserve the boat for me? I can pay you a deposit of £500 this afternoon and any additional costs it may have spent you to take it down from eBay. The full payment would be with you this evening.”

Jess then received the following template reply without any reference to her suggested deposit but which mentioned the seller’s reluctance to allow potential buyers to see the boat, something which Jess hadn’t mentioned in her email. The seller also advised Jess of the boat’s location. The location was hundred’s of miles from Bedford which was on the original listing.

“Hello,

After my last experience I’m not welcome visits any more, sorry. The best way to complete this transaction, because of the distance problem (I’m in Ellon in Scotland, the boat is also here with me), is to use eBay Money Back Guarantee.

They will handle everything for both of us, including transportation and transfer of the boat papers to your name. You don’t have to pay anything extra, the total price that you must pay for this boat is £5,500, including transportation and transfer of the papers to your name.

Here is how the transaction will go on:

-I will make a private eBay listing for you.

-You will have to click “buy it now”, fill in the forms and follow the instructions.

-eBay will send you an invoice with all the transaction details and the payment instructions.

-You will have to secure the funds to eBay.

-After the funds will be secured to eBay, the delivery will begin and the boat will arrive to you in max. 48 hours.

-When the boat will be in your custody, you will have a 3 days inspection period.

If everything is alright, the transaction ends and eBay will release the money to me. If there is something wrong with the boat, you will be fully refunded and I’ll get my boat back too, without any extra fees.Everything is covered by eBay. I will get paid only after you confirm that you received it. I would need your ebay username so I can send you the link. I’m waiting for your reply.

Thank you.”

At this stage, even though Jess was still keen to buy the boat at this price, because she had thought about the logistics of getting the boat off the back of a lorry into the water and the costs involved, she reluctantly sent the following;

“Hi Katherine, thankyou so much for your correspondence.

It breaks my heart to say we can’t continue with our payment to you. As you can respect- it has happened very quickly, we can’t afford the additional payments to get the boat in the water, neither can we arrange time off at such late notice to oversee things.

It really is the perfect boat, but has come to us at the wrong time.

I’m very sorry for wasting your time, and I hope you find a suitable owner soon, thanks again,

Jess

Unsurprisingly she received a further stock response;

“The boat will be delivered to you with Shiply, eBay’s official shipping company with a lorry. You are not resonsable for any damage that could happen on the route. As about the payment, the payment is not directly to me. The money must be sent to eBay payment agent. The payment instructions, as I told you, will be sent to you by eBay once the purchase is complete. Also you will have 3 days to inspect and test the boat before the money will be released to me by eBay. If there is something wrong with the boat, you will be fully refunded and I will get it back too without any extra fees. The shipping procedure will begin only after the funds will be secured to eBay, after the money will be deposited into eBay’s payment agent bank account. I’m waiting for your reply.

Thanks”

And then another, this time offering a reduction in the price. Remember, this price is for a well specified fifty five feet long narrowboat;

“Hello,

They will handle everything for both of us, including transportation and transfer of the boat papers to your name. You don’t have to pay anything extra, the total price that you must pay for this boat is £3,450, including transportation and transfer of the papers to your name.

Here is how the transaction will go on:

-I will make a private eBay listing for you.

-You will have to click “buy it now”, fill in the forms and follow the instructions.

-eBay will send you an invoice with all the transaction details and the payment instructions.

-You will have to secure the funds to eBay.

-After the funds will be secured to eBay, the delivery will begin and the boat will arrive to you in max. 48 hours.

-When the boat will be in your custody, you will have a 3 days inspection period. If everything is alright, the transaction ends and eBay will release the money to me. If there is something wrong with the boat, you will be fully refunded and I’ll get my boat back too, without any extra fees.

Everything is covered by eBay. I will get paid only after you confirm that you received it. I would need your ebay username so I can send you the link. I’m waiting for your reply.

Thank you.”

I am very grateful to Jess for sending me her correspondence. In hindsight she knows she was very naive to believe the authenticity of either the initial advert or any of the subsequent emails but she said that she was “blinded by the boat” and no doubt the thought of living a tranquil life afloat.

If you are currently considering buying your own boat, always remember the old adage, if an offer seems to good to be true, it probably is.

I Need Some Help!

Newsletter Index

2nd November 2014

Narrowboat CO2 emissions – Is living on a boat a green alternative to a home on dry land? You’ll have to read this newsletter to find out.

26th October 2014

19th October 2014

Anti social behaviour on the cut – How common are the unpleasant incidents you sometimes hear about on the canal network and who are the worst offenders? You’ll probably be surprised.

12th October 2014

The pros and cons of buying an ex hire boat to live on – How suitable are ex hire boats for living on board full time?

5th October 2014

28th September 2014

21st September 2014

Cruising in adverse weather conditions part two – A continuation of the previous week’s newsletter.

14th September 2014

7th September 2014

Following your dream – Is your goal to some day spend a life of leisure out on the canal network? This article might encourage you to make a move sooner rather than later.

31st August 2014

Route finding for narrowboat owners – Here are the popular paper and digital route finders to help make navigating the network child’s play

24th August 2014

Long term narrowboat hire – Is hiring a boat long term a realistic alternative to buying one?

17th August 2014

10th August 2014

Narrowboat heating, electrics and engine specifications – How is the perfect live aboard narrowboat configured? Here are a few suggestions

3rd August 2014

Essential boating equipment – Here’s the stuff every boater should carry on board

27th July 2014

20th July 2014

13th July 2014

Digital aids for narrowboat owners – Digital applications and maps for inland waterways boaters

6th July 2014

29th June 2014

Extending your boat’s storage space – The pros and cons of fitting covers to your front and rear decks

22nd June 2014

Naming your boat – The legal requirements when naming, renaming and displaying your boat plus the inland waterways’ two hundred most popular boat names

15th June 2014

Speeding boats – Are rocking stationary boats the fault of speeding passing boats or the fault of boat owners who can’t moor securely?

8th June 2014

Boat Handling – lock and paddle gear types.

1st June 2014

Boat handling – Swing and lift bridges

25th May 2014

Single handed boating – Negotiating locks.

18th May 2014

Single handed boating – Choosing the right type of boat for single handed cruising and equipment to make your solo journeys safer and more enjoyable.

11th May 2014

How to avoid common narrowboat accidents. They happen far more often than you might think. Here’s what you need to keep yourself out of harm’s way.

4th May 2014

If you want to live on your boat and don’t want to, or can’t, cruise full time, you must have a residential mooring. Here’s how to find one.

27th April 2014

What makes a perfect live aboard narrowboat. Two experienced boaters discuss layout, size and essential equipment

20th April 2014

A cautionary tale if you are considering buying a wide beam boat to live on.

13th April 2014

A further update to the site content index.

6th April 2014

30th March 2014

How do you continue to earn money to support your boating lifestyle as you cruise the network?

23rd March 2014

Sharing your narrowboat space – The practicalities of sharing living accommodation the same size as a large shed.

16th March 2014

Paying for a narrowboat – What practical steps can you take to ensure you’ve established legal ownership and how do you deal with the transfer of monies between buyer and seller?

I’ve also included to links to my Philippines blog. I spent the whole of February living in a rural farming community on the island of Negros.

9th February 2014

2nd February 2014

Condensation is something all boat owners have to deal with. Here’s an explanation of why it occurs and what to do about it. I also tested a remote boat monitoring application in this issue.

26th January 2014

Cold floors, cold air above the floors and cold hull sides. It’s a combination which can cause your bottom half quite a bit of discomfort. Here’s what I do to deal with the problem.

19th January 2014

12th January 2014

If you’re on a budget maybe a self fit our sailaway is the way to go for you. Here’s the story of a wide beam self fit out to give you inspiration (or put you off completely)

5th January 2014

Planning for the year ahead – Written plans and goals have always been important to me. They help me see into the future. Here’s what we’ve planned for our lovely floating home in 2014.

29th December 2013

The practicality of hosting Christmas afloat – How do you achieve a floating festive event (and do you really want to)?

22nd December 2013

Narrowboat Storage Space – How much space is there to store your worldly goods on board a narrowboat? Here’s a video walk-through of my own boat James.

15th December 2013

Roses and Castles Canal Art – What is it and why do boaters spend so much money decorating their boats with it?

8th December 2013

Narrowboat videos – I launched the Living On A Narrowboat YouTube channel

1st December 2013

Secondary double glazing for your boat – The pros and cons of double glazing on a boat and why secondary double glazing is a much better bet and a fraction of the cost.

Living on a narrowboat vidoes – My first hesitant steps into the world of video production for site content

Can you either live or holiday on a narrowboat if you have a disability? – Here’s what you need to know.

24th November 2013

Winter fuel allowance – Do you qualify for one if you live on a boat?

Case Study – NB Progress. Kim Wainwright recorded her journey on the forum from nervous anticipation to current liveaboard boat owner. Here’s her story.

17th November 2013

Narrowboat central heating – I don’t have any. All that is about to change. Here’s the system I’m going to install and why I’ve chosen it.

10th November 2013

Narrowboat running costs – I compare my own running costs to those of a prominent YouTube video blogger and detail my exact costs for October 2013

3rd November 2013

Popular narrowboat terminology – Hundreds or words or phrases used to describe parts of boats and the waterways they cruise through.

27th October 2013

The wind chill factor – How strong the wind is blowing and which direction it’s coming from can determine how difficult it is to heat your boat. Here’s what you need to know.

Case study – Another couple from down under living the dream on the inland waterways.

20th October 2013Condensation. It’s a common problem on boats. Here are a few suggestions how to keep your boat’s interior dry.

A new organisation for liveaboard boaters

13th October 2013

On demand water heater problems – Discover a common fault with these water heaters and what you can do to resolve the problem.

Know your firewood – Not all timber burns well. Find out which is best and which to avoid.

6th October 2013

Liveaboard case study – A prime example of mooring without a water supply on tap.

29th September 2013

The folly of using unseasoned wood as a fuel – Here’s essential information if you plan to use logs you find to heat your boat for free

22nd September 2013

A tragedy at Calcutt. Sudden Oak Dieback hits our 1,500 twenty year old oak trees

Forum private messaging – Now you can email other forum users from within the site

15th September 2013

Managing your water supply

An American blogs about his travels

1st September 2013

Solving engine room leaks – A simple solution to a dripping stern tube

All about the weed hatch – Removing debris from your propeller

8th September

25th August 2013

Effective fly killers for boats

The downside to living on a narrowboat

18th August 2013

CART Guide Approval – The waterways’ governing body is now promoting the information packages available from this site. Yippee!

Narrowboat Insurance – A summary of insurance quotes from the major narrowboat insurers

Downsizing from a 3 bed semi to a narrowboat – What do you do with a lifetime’s accumulated possessions?

11th August 2013

A free download – Living On A Narrowboat: 101 Essential Narrowboat Articles

Narrowboat tips – Handy hints from experienced narrowboat owners

The cost of a continuous cruising lifestyle – How one liveaboard boater manages on a shoestring

4th August 2013

The perfect narrowboat washing machine? – It’s low cost and doesn’t need plumbing in, but does it actually clean clothes?

The cost of a continuous cruising lifestyle – How much does living the life of a water gypsy really cost?

28th July 2013

The cost of living on a narrowboat – An article in the Daily Mail… and why most boaters disagree with what they said.

21st July 2013

Hire boat expectations – Fully understanding what facilities will be available to you is essential if you’re going to enjoy a narrowboat holiday. Here’s what not to do.

14th July 2013

Fenland river cruising – Another boater’s maiden voyage to whet your appetite.

7th July 2013

Anticipating winter weather – You may well be enjoying unusually warm winter weather but the winter will be with us all too soon. Now is the time that you need to plan for the cold weather ahead.

30th June 2013

23rd June 2013 – The cost of a two week cruise. If you live on your own boat, what’s the real cost of taking it away for a two week break?

Case Study – Mary Anne swapped dry land home rental for floating home ownership. Now she loves life afloat and works from home.

Life as a continuous cruiser – The Holy Grail of narrowboat ownership. The ability to travel where and when you like. Peter Early tells all.

16th June 2013

Most popular narrowboat names – Here’s the definitive list of the top 200 most popular narrowboat names and a resource you can use to find out if any other boat has the same name as yours

Considerate boating – An article prompted after a near head on collision with another boat trying to avoid a fallen oak.

9th June 2013

2nd June 2013

An encounter with two poorly prepared holiday boaters and my own impending two week cruise encouraged me to put together a pre cruise check list

26th May 2013

Laptop hacking – An update on the problems I encountered after buying a brand new laptop which I suspect was tampered with before I bought it.

Diary of a new narrowboat owner – Frequent forum poster “Our Nige” finally moved on to his new floating home. Here’s his story

19th May 2013

My comments about an encounter on the Oxford/GU section between Napton and Braunston sparked a debate about the pros and cons of wide beams on the cut.

12th May 2013

An encounter with a wide beam boat and why they aren’t suitable for much of the canal network

An interview with the Trust’s head of boating. Sally Ash talks about the Trust’s approach to the thorny issue of residential moorings

5th May 2013

Narrowboat fuel tanks – How much do they hold

Meet one of your legless canal side companions

The canal network’s largest floating hotel

28th April 2013

Narrowboat blogs – My own first cruise, Our Nige takes his new home on its maiden voyage and a chance for you to have your very own blog section on this site.

21st April 2013

The Trust target illegal moorers but just what does the Trust consider to an illegal mooring?

Identity theft – The ongoing saga of my hacked laptop

RCR engine servicing – River Canal Rescue (RCR) are well known as the waterways equivalent of the AA but did you know that they will also come to your mooring to service your boat?

14th April 2013

The perils of exceeding your monthly broadband data allowance. Learn from my mistakes.

7th April 2013

Narrowboat security – A spate of burglaries from boats and a break in at my former family home encouraged me to write this article

Case study – You need to committed to sell your home to fund the purchase of your narrowboat. That’s what Mick and Marlene have done.

31st March 2013

Case study – Sarah lives on wide beam Antioch on the Leeds Liverpool canal. She can do man things with her hands. Here’s her story.

24th March 2013

Here’s an example of what happens when you really don’t understand how your narrowboat works.

Essential boating equipment – Here’s a low cost item which has paid for itself over and over again.

Whilton marina boat sales – Sometimes things aren’t what they appear to be. This alleged fact about the boat sales at Whilton has come to me from several different sources.

17th March 2013

Where can you find residential moorings? Here’s a great place to start

Getting rid of unwelcome visitors – Geese used to regularly disturb a peaceful night’s sleep where I moor. Not any more. Here’s my solution

Know your narrowboat costs – Detailed costs for my own boat for February 2013

Half a dozen boaters now have access to their own blog section on the site. You can too. Here’s how.

11th March 2013

James’ upgrade – Adding solar panels and replacing carpets with oak effect laminate flooring

3rd March 2013

Stove fuel test – What works best; coal, wood, briquettes or something else entirely – Here’s my own take on a Waterways World test

Essential stove maintenance – Here’s what you need to do to make sure that your stove always performs well.

Internet connectivity – I use the internet four or more hours every day. This is the setup I have on my boat to make sure that I’m always connected.

Detailed running costs for my own boat for January 2013

20th February 2013

The real cost of going cheap. An in depth look at the cost of my 36 year old boat, and how much I spent (and still need to spend) before it will be a comfortable full time cruising boat.

8th January 2013

Case Study – Mike’s circumstances are similar to my own. He moved onto his boat after a failed marriage. He’s upgraded from a 27? GRP cruiser to a 50? narrowboat

24th December

Narrowboat electrics part 2 – The concluding article from Tim Davis

18th December 2012

Understanding narrowboat electrics – Another excellent article from Tim Davis

Satellite television for narrowboats – Information from a system installer

2nd December 2012

Low cost narrowboat ownership – A low cost solution to the problem of funding your first narrowboat

Solar power – All you need to know about installing solar panels on your boat. Written by the inland waterways most popular solar system installer

Case Study – Mr. Solar Panel Tim Davis writes about life on board his own narrowboat

21st November 2012

First tests and reviews of the budgeting application

The best aerial for a narrowboat television

6th November 2012

The first release of the new spreadsheet based narrowboat budgeting application

28th October 2012

An unscheduled dip in the marina prompted me to write about safety on the waterways

Living on a narrowboat – Through the eyes of a young lady who would clearly prefer to be somewhere else

17th October 2012

I started to develop the narrowboat budgeting software. This newsletter detailed the concept and the progress to date

14th October 2012

Practical flooring for narrowboat dogs

Case study – Mike and Mags use a double redundancy payment to pay for their new floating home

30th September 2012

The best tip for a wannabe narrowboat owner – Advice from existing boat owners

18th September 2012

VAT on narrowboat sales

20th July 2012

Dealing with pests on a narrowboat – spiders and swans

Posh boats – My personal favourite: S.M. Hudson

7th July 2012

Repeat prescriptions, diesel heating systems and solar panels

10th June 2012

Survey – Do you want a forum on the site? (You already know the answer to that!)

27th May 2012

How to clean your stove glass – One of the real pleasures of a living fire is watching the flames on a cold winter’s eve. Here’s what you need to do to ensure you can actually see the fire.

Smoking on board – An alternative to smelly smoke

13th May 2012

DIY narrowboat painting – I’ve broken down the complete cost of painting your own boat and

Dealing with wind on the river – A guest article from liveaboard narrowboat owner Alan Cazaly

29th April 2012

DIY narrowboat painting – I spent three weeks in April painting my boat. Here’s the first of my progress reports

15th April 2012

Life on the river Cam – A guest article on the pleasures of river life by wide beam liveaboard Luther Phillips

Case Study – Freelance writer Anne and her South African farmer partner John reveal all

Case Study – Toni cruises constantly with ex husband Allan. They cruise together but they live apart… on separate boats

1st April 2012

18th March 2012

The downside of living on a narrowboat – This was a very controversial post. Liveaboard Pauline Roberts wrote about the less pleasant aspects of life afloat… and attracted a storm of comments

Case study: The Woodsman – Pauline Roberts again giving an insight into the life that you may think she doesn’t like.

4th March 2012

Reviewed: The Liveaboard Guide by Tony Jones. A great guide to living afloat

eBay Narrowboat scam (and a little bit of flack for me from another forum)

Case Study: Author Toby Jones on his own liveaboard narrowboat

A review of Debdale Wharf marina

22nd January 2012

Two more case studies. One of them waxed lyrical about life on the waterways and enjoyed every minute of her life afloat. Now (April 2013) she’s selling up to follow another dream in Spain.

8th January 2012

The first four narrowboat case studies published

I’ll start with myself; Paul Smith, living on my own, moored in a marina and working full time. Narrowboat James case study

Meet Peggy. She has a husband and two small children, works full time and cruises the network during the summer months. Narrowboat Violet Mae case study

Fancy spending your retirement cruising the waterways of England and Wales? Meet Barry and Sue Horne. They’re living the dream! Narrowboat Adagio Case Study

Here are another working couple. Lina and Warren cruise the cut with their two cats.Narrowboat Olive Rose case study.

2nd February 2011

Article – Living on a narrowboat in winter

1th January 2011 – 1st Newsletter

Dealing with the coldest winter on record
Digital reading – A detailed review of the Kindle, the perfect solution for book loving boat owners

Comprehensive Site Article Listing

Useful Links

2014 11 02 Newsletter – Narrowboat CO2 Emissions

My world is dark. I cannot see, and I don’t like it.

The clocks went back last Sunday so this week I started coming back from work in the dark. Most of the year as I wearily trudge up the gravel path from my battered old Nissan pickup to my beautiful floating home I enjoy a brief glimpse of James tied securely to the wooden pontoon and the tree covered island with its healthy population of squabbling water fowl fifty metres behind the boat.

There are often neighbouring boat owners enjoying the view while they pretend to work on their boats. I often stop and chat for a minute or two before climbing on to the boat and, if Sally is off work, the rich smell of her spicy food.

For the next three months I won’t have the pleasure of a stunning view at the end of a long and tiring day. Sunset now is 4.30pm. For the next seven weeks there will be a little less daylight each day until the shortest day on 21st December when I’ll be going to work in the dark and feeling my way around the site as I work for the last hour and a half of each day.

It’s a depressing time of the year. The firm ground underfoot softens under frequent rain until I’m constantly wading through mud in my fur lined steel toed rigger boots. The trees will be bare and devoid of colour. Everything will be a drab brown. The weather and the landscape is depressing but this year there is a very bright light at the end of the tunnel.

By the time I reach the shortest day of the year, there will be just 132 days of full time work left before I enthusiastically break the shackles which bind me to unrelenting toil and head off for a summer of exploration. Each of those remaining one hundred and thirty two days will be a little lighter. By 2nd April, my proposed cruise launch date, there will be a full thirteen hours of light each day and al fresco dining on the towpath will be just a hop, skip and a jump away.

At the moment though the disappearing light has been compensated for by unusually warm and pleasant autumn temperatures. Because of the higher than usual temperature and because of the increasingly frequent showers, I’m still cutting the grass once a week. Earlier this week I had the pleasure of whizzing around the site on my Husqvarna mower for a day, and then much less pleasure hauling our ancient Flymo up and down the steep grass banks by the small car park next to the canal for another full day.

On Thursday I started the winter’s tree felling. Thirty years ago a modest Christmas tree was planted in the cottage garden once it had served it’s fortnight’s duty inside the cottage. The tree flourished to such an extent that it dominated the garden orchard. After an hour with my little chainsaw the tree was down and logged. I love the smell of fresh cut pine.

On Friday, Saturday and today I was out on discovery days. The weather has been fantastic for this time of the year. In fact, the weather has been fantastic for any time of the year. On Friday the temperature was higher than we often have in the middle of summer. And even though we had a couple of soakings today we’ve mainly enjoyed wonderful cruising weather.

The discovery days are proving very popular indeed, but I hope to make them more popular still for the large number of potential solo boaters who have expressed an interest in the day.

New EXCLUSIVE Solo Discovery Days

I’ve been running discovery days on my own boat now since June this year. I’ve been fully booked since I introduced the service with a mixture of couples and soon-to-be solo boaters. I limit the days to a maximum of two people because of the limitations of accommodating larger numbers of guests and because I want to be able to focus as much as possible on individual requirements.

The day starts at 8am with a walk through of my boat and a (usually lengthy) discussion about the boat’s configuration and the equipment on board. After four and a half years on board and five years working at Calcutt Boats with some very knowledgeable staff, I think I have the boat just about right to provide me with a comfortable home while cruising for extended periods off grid. I’m frequently told how useful this part of the day is. After the walk through and a gourmet coffee – I have a wonderful and quite useless when off grid Nespresso coffee machine but you can have tea if you’re a heathen – we begin the exciting stage of the day. We go for a six to eight hour cruise.

There are three routes available to us. Most of the time we head out of the marina, go up through the Calcutt flight of three locks, cruise for half a mile to Napton Junction then turn left and twist and turn our way through stunning rural Warwickshire countryside to Braunston. Alternatively if plenty of lock experience is required, we can go up the seven locks of the Napton flight, say a quick hello to the two hundred strong heard of water buffalo, turn around and do them all again. We can do another similarly lock intensive route by turning left at our marina entrance and heading down into the Leam valley via the Stockton flight of eight wide locks.

At ten hours, the day is long but not long enough for some attendees. One of them was Tanya Murray. As with all single attendees on discovery days, she shared the experience with another person. While Tanya really enjoyed the company on the day she made the following comment when I emailed her asking for feedback.

“I had a lot of fun, and broke my duck with lock gates, which was probably my biggest fear. Hearing that you are introducing solo days is a great idea – I would have gone with one of those, simply so I could have monopolised your time more. Your style of delivery is great, cool calm, and confident even when I was steering your house into a wall. (Well, except for the hat. You seemed quite exercised by the hat. I am glad you fished it out!). Had I had you to myself, I would have liked to have spent a bit more time practising boring but necessary stuff – different options for mooring, actually doing mooring, coming in, doing it, pulling away again, how to tie the knots (I really don’t know any), doing that threading rope through the chain thing you did, and so on. I would also have benefited from more practice simultaneously operating the throttle and tiller, and seeing how the boat reacts at different speeds to that, if there was a safe open stretch somewhere to do that – some of the fast time manoeuvres you had to do to save the situation going through narrow bridges at the wrong angle,for example. (Only for practice, without the bridge, obviously.)”

The hat she mentioned was my ridiculously over the top Australian kangaroo skin leather “cowboy” hat with crocodile teeth sewn into the hatband. The cat cost me a fortune and I’m very fond of it. A strong gust of wind whipped it off my head as we battled a strong head wind as we took the boat through a bridge hole. I wrestled control of the boat off Tanya, threw the boat into reverse, backed up through the bridge and nearly threw myself overboard as I dived over the side to retrieve my pride and joy.

The solo day she talked about is a new exclusive day for singe boaters. Maybe, like Tanya, you would prefer to spend a day on your own with me on my boat, get twice as much helmsmanship training and discuss only the subjects which are of interest to you. The exclusive days where only an idea when I talked about them to Tanya, but I thought I would make them available to see if anyone was interested.

If you are interested in attending a discovery day either as a couple, a single soon to be boater sharing the day with someone in the same boat as you (sorry!) or coming here on your own for an exclusive day on the water, you can find out more about the days here. Just click on one of the book now links to check availability and pricing. And if you are interested but can’t find a day which suits you, please let me know. I’m sure we can work something out.

The New Tradesman Directory

Thank you taking a moment to complete last week’s one click survey. I didn’t realise that quite so many boat owners subscribe to the site. Forty seven per cent of newsletter recipients are either residential or leisure boat owners and the majority of the others plan to purchase a boat some time in the future. If you’re one of the few who told me that although you’re very interested in the way of life but don’t ever plan to buy a boat, you’re very welcome too!

I’m hoping the fact that there are literally thousands of boat owners receiving the newsletters and visiting the site will make the creation of a comprehensive narrowboat services directory a slightly easier project.

I have already made a start. I have purchased some directory creation code which has been bolted on to the site and which is currently being tested. The software will allow both site users and service providers to create a listing. I’ve started to add categories to the application and, oh boy, there are a lot to add.

My original plan has expanded somewhat. I originally wanted to create a directory of just waterways tradesmen but then I thought a logical and much needed progression would be to also include moorings, especially residential moorings.

There are a few inland waterways directories on t’internet which you can find with a little diligent searching but even the best of them just lists a service’s basic details. You don’t know anything about the service in question or whether you can trust the provider with your beloved boat and your hard earned cash.

If you already own a boat, you’ll know the problems involved in finding a decent tradesman. This directory will be different because boat owning site users will be encouraged to add trades people they know to the site and then provide a review of their services. I’ve already made a start by adding three tradesmen in three different categories and writing a review for each of them. Two of them provide an excellent service. One of them doesn’t. I haven’t pulled any punches but I’ve been as accurate and objective as possible in my review. One of the reviews is for the joiner who has recently completed or rather, failed to complete, some work for me.

I’m also going to allow other site users and the tradesmen themselves to respond to the review which has been written about them. In the joiner’s case, I’ve already emailed him with the URL of the review offering him the opportunity to respond to my criticism. However, given that my main problem with him was with his exceptionally poor communication rather than the quality of his work, I don’t expect a reply.

I’ve spent much of this week configuring the software and, as expected, trying to sort out the problems which arise when there are conflicts with other bits of code on the site. Once I know it’s working correctly, I’ll need a few willing boat owners to test the new directory for me. If you’re a boat owner and you’re prepared to help, I’ll need you to create a few listing and then add reviews to them. Once that’s done, I’ll need you to report back to me and let me know what you think of the new directory, what you like, what you don’t like, what works and what doesn’t.

I’m prepared to invest a significant amount of time and effort into ensuring that the directory is a really useful resource for boat owners but I can’t do it without your help. How about it then? Can you spare me a little time to help get this project off the ground? If you can, I would love to hear from you. Just send me an email to indicate your interest or to make any comments or suggestions about the concept.

Greenhouse Gas Emissions – Are You Helping Save The Planet By Living Afloat?

The ice caps are melting, sea levels will rise, land will disappear and the canal network will just be underwater channels covered by salt water lapping at the foothills of our modest inland mountain ranges. The changing weather patterns will cause the Gulf Stream to shift away from the UK and English winters will be as hard as they are in Canada. We’re all doomed unless we all do our bit to slash CO2 emissions.

There’s no sign of plummeting temperatures at the moment. Friday was the warmest Halloween on record with a high of 23.6C in Gravesend in Kent. I was out on a discovery day with two soon-to-be solo boaters. Both of them booked a date at the end of October because they wanted to experience what life on a narrowboat is like in the cooler months but when they arrived at my mooring my stove was cold and the early morning sun made boating in a tee shirt very pleasant indeed. I couldn’t manage winter temperatures but I was able to provide them with a stiff breeze to make the day more interesting.

The above has nothing at all to do with CO2 emissions as far as I know but we seem to be getting more extremes in weather conditions these days which some people attribute to global warming so who knows?

The subject of a narrowboat’s carbon footprint was brought to my attention by site user Martin Povey. He told me that he suspected that a boat owner’s carbon footprint was much smaller than someone who owned a house and he knew that I was anal enough to keep accurate and extensive records of my on board fuel consumption. He asked me to send him some figures so he could calculate my boat’s impact on the planet. The results surprised him. Here they are…

“For comparison purposes I chose a 3 bedroom semi-detached house with two occupants.

Your emissions expressed in UK Tonnes:-

Electricty          1.184
Coal                5.208
Diesel              0.614
Propane Gas     0.364

TOTAL 7.371

House emissions

3 Bed Semi
Elec & natural gas 7.379

TOTAL 7.379

Advantage to the narrowboat, only just though. As I am sure you can see, the coal burning has a detrimental effect on the figures. I am quite surprised by the results, just goes to show what a difference energy sources make to emissions. Incidentally I calculated the coal being replaced with wood, the advantage to the same weight of wood is 5.017.

The coal emissions go something like this…

2 (tonnes of coal) x 2.815 (conversion factor) is equal to 5630 kg (of co2 emissions) 5630kg converts to 5.541 (UK Long tonnes)
From a CO2 perspective coal is a bad boy. This revised calculation takes the total CO2 output for the boat to 7.703 tonnes. The advantage goes to the dwelling because they burn natural gas only in this comparison.

Martin Povey, carbonreductiontechnology.com”

There you go. I’m sure that I could think of something either witty or intelligent to say about his findings if I wasn’t so tired as I try to finish off the newsletter after a long day on the cut, and if I was either witty or intelligent. Unfortunately it’s only 7.45pm but I’m just about ready for bed. If you would like to comment on his findings please let me know, but please don’t disturb me until I’ve had a good night’s sleep.

I Need Some Help!

Newsletter Index

26th October 2014

19th October 2014

Anti social behaviour on the cut – How common are the unpleasant incidents you sometimes hear about on the canal network and who are the worst offenders? You’ll probably be surprised.

12th October 2014

The pros and cons of buying an ex hire boat to live on – How suitable are ex hire boats for living on board full time?

5th October 2014

28th September 2014

21st September 2014

Cruising in adverse weather conditions part two – A continuation of the previous week’s newsletter.

14th September 2014

7th September 2014

Following your dream – Is your goal to some day spend a life of leisure out on the canal network? This article might encourage you to make a move sooner rather than later.

31st August 2014

Route finding for narrowboat owners – Here are the popular paper and digital route finders to help make navigating the network child’s play

24th August 2014

Long term narrowboat hire – Is hiring a boat long term a realistic alternative to buying one?

17th August 2014

10th August 2014

Narrowboat heating, electrics and engine specifications – How is the perfect live aboard narrowboat configured? Here are a few suggestions

3rd August 2014

Essential boating equipment – Here’s the stuff every boater should carry on board

27th July 2014

20th July 2014

13th July 2014

Digital aids for narrowboat owners – Digital applications and maps for inland waterways boaters

6th July 2014

29th June 2014

Extending your boat’s storage space – The pros and cons of fitting covers to your front and rear decks

22nd June 2014

Naming your boat – The legal requirements when naming, renaming and displaying your boat plus the inland waterways’ two hundred most popular boat names

15th June 2014

Speeding boats – Are rocking stationary boats the fault of speeding passing boats or the fault of boat owners who can’t moor securely?

8th June 2014

Boat Handling – lock and paddle gear types.

1st June 2014

Boat handling – Swing and lift bridges

25th May 2014

Single handed boating – Negotiating locks.

18th May 2014

Single handed boating – Choosing the right type of boat for single handed cruising and equipment to make your solo journeys safer and more enjoyable.

11th May 2014

How to avoid common narrowboat accidents. They happen far more often than you might think. Here’s what you need to keep yourself out of harm’s way.

4th May 2014

If you want to live on your boat and don’t want to, or can’t, cruise full time, you must have a residential mooring. Here’s how to find one.

27th April 2014

What makes a perfect live aboard narrowboat. Two experienced boaters discuss layout, size and essential equipment

20th April 2014

A cautionary tale if you are considering buying a wide beam boat to live on.

13th April 2014

A further update to the site content index.

6th April 2014

30th March 2014

How do you continue to earn money to support your boating lifestyle as you cruise the network?

23rd March 2014

Sharing your narrowboat space – The practicalities of sharing living accommodation the same size as a large shed.

16th March 2014

Paying for a narrowboat – What practical steps can you take to ensure you’ve established legal ownership and how do you deal with the transfer of monies between buyer and seller?

I’ve also included to links to my Philippines blog. I spent the whole of February living in a rural farming community on the island of Negros.

9th February 2014

2nd February 2014

Condensation is something all boat owners have to deal with. Here’s an explanation of why it occurs and what to do about it. I also tested a remote boat monitoring application in this issue.

26th January 2014

Cold floors, cold air above the floors and cold hull sides. It’s a combination which can cause your bottom half quite a bit of discomfort. Here’s what I do to deal with the problem.

19th January 2014

12th January 2014

If you’re on a budget maybe a self fit our sailaway is the way to go for you. Here’s the story of a wide beam self fit out to give you inspiration (or put you off completely)

5th January 2014

Planning for the year ahead – Written plans and goals have always been important to me. They help me see into the future. Here’s what we’ve planned for our lovely floating home in 2014.

29th December 2013

The practicality of hosting Christmas afloat – How do you achieve a floating festive event (and do you really want to)?

22nd December 2013

Narrowboat Storage Space – How much space is there to store your worldly goods on board a narrowboat? Here’s a video walk-through of my own boat James.

15th December 2013

Roses and Castles Canal Art – What is it and why do boaters spend so much money decorating their boats with it?

8th December 2013

Narrowboat videos – I launched the Living On A Narrowboat YouTube channel

1st December 2013

Secondary double glazing for your boat – The pros and cons of double glazing on a boat and why secondary double glazing is a much better bet and a fraction of the cost.

Living on a narrowboat vidoes – My first hesitant steps into the world of video production for site content

Can you either live or holiday on a narrowboat if you have a disability? – Here’s what you need to know.

24th November 2013

Winter fuel allowance – Do you qualify for one if you live on a boat?

Case Study – NB Progress. Kim Wainwright recorded her journey on the forum from nervous anticipation to current liveaboard boat owner. Here’s her story.

17th November 2013

Narrowboat central heating – I don’t have any. All that is about to change. Here’s the system I’m going to install and why I’ve chosen it.

10th November 2013

Narrowboat running costs – I compare my own running costs to those of a prominent YouTube video blogger and detail my exact costs for October 2013

3rd November 2013

Popular narrowboat terminology – Hundreds or words or phrases used to describe parts of boats and the waterways they cruise through.

27th October 2013

The wind chill factor – How strong the wind is blowing and which direction it’s coming from can determine how difficult it is to heat your boat. Here’s what you need to know.

Case study – Another couple from down under living the dream on the inland waterways.

20th October 2013Condensation. It’s a common problem on boats. Here are a few suggestions how to keep your boat’s interior dry.

A new organisation for liveaboard boaters

13th October 2013

On demand water heater problems – Discover a common fault with these water heaters and what you can do to resolve the problem.

Know your firewood – Not all timber burns well. Find out which is best and which to avoid.

6th October 2013

Liveaboard case study – A prime example of mooring without a water supply on tap.

29th September 2013

The folly of using unseasoned wood as a fuel – Here’s essential information if you plan to use logs you find to heat your boat for free

22nd September 2013

A tragedy at Calcutt. Sudden Oak Dieback hits our 1,500 twenty year old oak trees

Forum private messaging – Now you can email other forum users from within the site

15th September 2013

Managing your water supply

An American blogs about his travels

1st September 2013

Solving engine room leaks – A simple solution to a dripping stern tube

All about the weed hatch – Removing debris from your propeller

8th September

25th August 2013

Effective fly killers for boats

The downside to living on a narrowboat

18th August 2013

CART Guide Approval – The waterways’ governing body is now promoting the information packages available from this site. Yippee!

Narrowboat Insurance – A summary of insurance quotes from the major narrowboat insurers

Downsizing from a 3 bed semi to a narrowboat – What do you do with a lifetime’s accumulated possessions?

11th August 2013

A free download – Living On A Narrowboat: 101 Essential Narrowboat Articles

Narrowboat tips – Handy hints from experienced narrowboat owners

The cost of a continuous cruising lifestyle – How one liveaboard boater manages on a shoestring

4th August 2013

The perfect narrowboat washing machine? – It’s low cost and doesn’t need plumbing in, but does it actually clean clothes?

The cost of a continuous cruising lifestyle – How much does living the life of a water gypsy really cost?

28th July 2013

The cost of living on a narrowboat – An article in the Daily Mail… and why most boaters disagree with what they said.

21st July 2013

Hire boat expectations – Fully understanding what facilities will be available to you is essential if you’re going to enjoy a narrowboat holiday. Here’s what not to do.

14th July 2013

Fenland river cruising – Another boater’s maiden voyage to whet your appetite.

7th July 2013

Anticipating winter weather – You may well be enjoying unusually warm winter weather but the winter will be with us all too soon. Now is the time that you need to plan for the cold weather ahead.

30th June 2013

23rd June 2013 – The cost of a two week cruise. If you live on your own boat, what’s the real cost of taking it away for a two week break?

Case Study – Mary Anne swapped dry land home rental for floating home ownership. Now she loves life afloat and works from home.

Life as a continuous cruiser – The Holy Grail of narrowboat ownership. The ability to travel where and when you like. Peter Early tells all.

16th June 2013

Most popular narrowboat names – Here’s the definitive list of the top 200 most popular narrowboat names and a resource you can use to find out if any other boat has the same name as yours

Considerate boating – An article prompted after a near head on collision with another boat trying to avoid a fallen oak.

9th June 2013

2nd June 2013

An encounter with two poorly prepared holiday boaters and my own impending two week cruise encouraged me to put together a pre cruise check list

26th May 2013

Laptop hacking – An update on the problems I encountered after buying a brand new laptop which I suspect was tampered with before I bought it.

Diary of a new narrowboat owner – Frequent forum poster “Our Nige” finally moved on to his new floating home. Here’s his story

19th May 2013

My comments about an encounter on the Oxford/GU section between Napton and Braunston sparked a debate about the pros and cons of wide beams on the cut.

12th May 2013

An encounter with a wide beam boat and why they aren’t suitable for much of the canal network

An interview with the Trust’s head of boating. Sally Ash talks about the Trust’s approach to the thorny issue of residential moorings

5th May 2013

Narrowboat fuel tanks – How much do they hold

Meet one of your legless canal side companions

The canal network’s largest floating hotel

28th April 2013

Narrowboat blogs – My own first cruise, Our Nige takes his new home on its maiden voyage and a chance for you to have your very own blog section on this site.

21st April 2013

The Trust target illegal moorers but just what does the Trust consider to an illegal mooring?

Identity theft – The ongoing saga of my hacked laptop

RCR engine servicing – River Canal Rescue (RCR) are well known as the waterways equivalent of the AA but did you know that they will also come to your mooring to service your boat?

14th April 2013

The perils of exceeding your monthly broadband data allowance. Learn from my mistakes.

7th April 2013

Narrowboat security – A spate of burglaries from boats and a break in at my former family home encouraged me to write this article

Case study – You need to committed to sell your home to fund the purchase of your narrowboat. That’s what Mick and Marlene have done.

31st March 2013

Case study – Sarah lives on wide beam Antioch on the Leeds Liverpool canal. She can do man things with her hands. Here’s her story.

24th March 2013

Here’s an example of what happens when you really don’t understand how your narrowboat works.

Essential boating equipment – Here’s a low cost item which has paid for itself over and over again.

Whilton marina boat sales – Sometimes things aren’t what they appear to be. This alleged fact about the boat sales at Whilton has come to me from several different sources.

17th March 2013

Where can you find residential moorings? Here’s a great place to start

Getting rid of unwelcome visitors – Geese used to regularly disturb a peaceful night’s sleep where I moor. Not any more. Here’s my solution

Know your narrowboat costs – Detailed costs for my own boat for February 2013

Half a dozen boaters now have access to their own blog section on the site. You can too. Here’s how.

11th March 2013

James’ upgrade – Adding solar panels and replacing carpets with oak effect laminate flooring

3rd March 2013

Stove fuel test – What works best; coal, wood, briquettes or something else entirely – Here’s my own take on a Waterways World test

Essential stove maintenance – Here’s what you need to do to make sure that your stove always performs well.

Internet connectivity – I use the internet four or more hours every day. This is the setup I have on my boat to make sure that I’m always connected.

Detailed running costs for my own boat for January 2013

20th February 2013

The real cost of going cheap. An in depth look at the cost of my 36 year old boat, and how much I spent (and still need to spend) before it will be a comfortable full time cruising boat.

8th January 2013

Case Study – Mike’s circumstances are similar to my own. He moved onto his boat after a failed marriage. He’s upgraded from a 27? GRP cruiser to a 50? narrowboat

24th December

Narrowboat electrics part 2 – The concluding article from Tim Davis

18th December 2012

Understanding narrowboat electrics – Another excellent article from Tim Davis

Satellite television for narrowboats – Information from a system installer

2nd December 2012

Low cost narrowboat ownership – A low cost solution to the problem of funding your first narrowboat

Solar power – All you need to know about installing solar panels on your boat. Written by the inland waterways most popular solar system installer

Case Study – Mr. Solar Panel Tim Davis writes about life on board his own narrowboat

21st November 2012

First tests and reviews of the budgeting application

The best aerial for a narrowboat television

6th November 2012

The first release of the new spreadsheet based narrowboat budgeting application

28th October 2012

An unscheduled dip in the marina prompted me to write about safety on the waterways

Living on a narrowboat – Through the eyes of a young lady who would clearly prefer to be somewhere else

17th October 2012

I started to develop the narrowboat budgeting software. This newsletter detailed the concept and the progress to date

14th October 2012

Practical flooring for narrowboat dogs

Case study – Mike and Mags use a double redundancy payment to pay for their new floating home

30th September 2012

The best tip for a wannabe narrowboat owner – Advice from existing boat owners

18th September 2012

VAT on narrowboat sales

20th July 2012

Dealing with pests on a narrowboat – spiders and swans

Posh boats – My personal favourite: S.M. Hudson

7th July 2012

Repeat prescriptions, diesel heating systems and solar panels

10th June 2012

Survey – Do you want a forum on the site? (You already know the answer to that!)

27th May 2012

How to clean your stove glass – One of the real pleasures of a living fire is watching the flames on a cold winter’s eve. Here’s what you need to do to ensure you can actually see the fire.

Smoking on board – An alternative to smelly smoke

13th May 2012

DIY narrowboat painting – I’ve broken down the complete cost of painting your own boat and

Dealing with wind on the river – A guest article from liveaboard narrowboat owner Alan Cazaly

29th April 2012

DIY narrowboat painting – I spent three weeks in April painting my boat. Here’s the first of my progress reports

15th April 2012

Life on the river Cam – A guest article on the pleasures of river life by wide beam liveaboard Luther Phillips

Case Study – Freelance writer Anne and her South African farmer partner John reveal all

Case Study – Toni cruises constantly with ex husband Allan. They cruise together but they live apart… on separate boats

1st April 2012

18th March 2012

The downside of living on a narrowboat – This was a very controversial post. Liveaboard Pauline Roberts wrote about the less pleasant aspects of life afloat… and attracted a storm of comments

Case study: The Woodsman – Pauline Roberts again giving an insight into the life that you may think she doesn’t like.

4th March 2012

Reviewed: The Liveaboard Guide by Tony Jones. A great guide to living afloat

eBay Narrowboat scam (and a little bit of flack for me from another forum)

Case Study: Author Toby Jones on his own liveaboard narrowboat

A review of Debdale Wharf marina

22nd January 2012

Two more case studies. One of them waxed lyrical about life on the waterways and enjoyed every minute of her life afloat. Now (April 2013) she’s selling up to follow another dream in Spain.

8th January 2012

The first four narrowboat case studies published

I’ll start with myself; Paul Smith, living on my own, moored in a marina and working full time. Narrowboat James case study

Meet Peggy. She has a husband and two small children, works full time and cruises the network during the summer months. Narrowboat Violet Mae case study

Fancy spending your retirement cruising the waterways of England and Wales? Meet Barry and Sue Horne. They’re living the dream! Narrowboat Adagio Case Study

Here are another working couple. Lina and Warren cruise the cut with their two cats.Narrowboat Olive Rose case study.

2nd February 2011

Article – Living on a narrowboat in winter

1th January 2011 – 1st Newsletter

Dealing with the coldest winter on record
Digital reading – A detailed review of the Kindle, the perfect solution for book loving boat owners

Archive

2014 11 30 Newsletter – A Virtual Tour Of A Narrowboat Equipped For Continuous Cruising

Cruising in London

A Walk Through Of My Own Live Aboard Narrowboat

Discovery Day And Narrowboat Helmsmanship Training

I Need Some Help!

Newsletter Index

Comprehensive Site Article Listing

Popular Forum Posts

Useful Links

2014 11 23 Newsletter – Cruising In London

Engine Fuel Consumption

Capital Cruising – Finding Your Way Around London By Boat

I Need Some Help!

Newsletter Index

Comprehensive Site Article Listing

Popular Forum Posts

Useful Links

2014 11 16 Newsletter – Narrowboat Fuel Consumption

Narrowboat Engine Fuel Consumption

Single Handed Locking

Discovery Day Update

I Need Some Help!

Newsletter Index

Comprehensive Site Article Listing

Popular Forum Posts

Useful Links

2014 11 09 Newsletter – How To Spot Bogus Narrowboat Adverts

Discover The Joy Of Autumn Cruising

Beware Bogus Narrowboat Adverts… Again

I Need Some Help!

Newsletter Index

Comprehensive Site Article Listing

Popular Forum Posts

Useful Links

2014 11 02 Newsletter – Narrowboat CO2 Emissions

New EXCLUSIVE Solo Discovery Days

The New Tradesman Directory

Greenhouse Gas Emissions – Are You Helping Save The Planet By Living Afloat?

I Need Some Help!

Newsletter Index

Comprehensive Site Article Listing

Popular Forum Posts

Useful Links