March, 2019 | Living On A Narrowboat

Broken Boilers and Costly Cratch Covers

We are now without a washing machine. After sliding, lifting and squeezing the cumbersome appliance through the boat’s narrow passageways, we examined the useless pile of junk thoroughly. I hoped for a simple solution, a cheap to fix split hose or loose connection. Life is rarely that easy.

The cause of a soapy cascade from the cupboard mounted machine into the cabin bilge was a split drum. Replacing the broken part would involve reducing the Zanussi to its component parts by someone who knew what he was doing. That certainly wasn’t going to be me. Qualified plumbers aren’t best known for low-cost servicing, so I suspected that there would be a hefty call out charge, much grimacing and teeth sucking and a promise to try to fix the machine at an hourly rate close to my weekly wage. We’ve taken the path of least resistance and consigned our washing machine to the site scrap metal bin.
Removing the washing machine has provided more storage space in the bathroom, a little extra exercise for me, and it’s made our calf muscles ache.

The Zanussi weighed close to 50kg, about the same as a couple of bags of coal, or Cynthia in her winter coats and boots. Losing the weight from a cupboard two feet above the floor on the port side has caused a noticeable list to starboard. To rebalance the boat, I will either have to find £400 for a new machine or ask Cynthia to spend most of her onboard time sitting in the empty pine cupboard.

The Cynthia option would need to be a short term solution. She’s flying back to America in two weeks, not, she assures me, because I’ve asked her to act as temporary ballast.

Orient now has a slight list to starboard

Our bureaucratic nightmare continues. After three tedious years, we still haven’t secured Cynthia permission to stay with me long term. During our recent two year tour of Europe, we spent much of our time in Holland. Sadly for us, the Dutch are enthusiastic rule followers. The authorities wouldn’t consider an application for Cynthia to stay long term unless we could provide them with an official Dutch address. We couldn’t provide one because of our lifestyle. We lived a nomadic life during the summer months as we explored the Netherlands’ vast network of canals, rivers and lakes in our Linssen yacht. During the rest of the year, we were just as mobile in our Hymer motorhome.

We secured an official address after eighteen months and seven different applications. Two guys from the local town hall visited our mooring in North Holland at the marina where I worked temporarily. They questioned us at length about the nature of the mooring. Did we live on the boat at that particular mooring permanently? Who owned the mooring? How long had we lived there? Where, exactly, on the hundred-metre long pier did our mooring begin and end?

The guys took photographs, measurements and several years off my life before returning to their Aalsmeer office to decide our fate. After several months, countless follow-up phone calls and a few more grey hairs Aalsmeer town hall issued us with an official houseboat address. Then, and only then, could Cynthia submit an application to stay that had the remotest chance of success. By that time our love affair with all things Dutch was over.

We had seen enough tulips and windmills to last us several lifetimes. The country felt too small, claustrophobic and overrun by kamikaze cyclists. The vast and perfectly maintained waterways network lost its appeal as well. I missed England’s muddy ditches, the long thin boats which bumped, scraped and scratched their way through the system and, most of all, the colourful characters who steered them.

Cynthia returned to England with me on Monday 17th December. She had to endure the usual Gestapo interrogation at border control. Once my wife satisfied the officials that she wasn’t a threat to national security or, more importantly, government resources, she was allowed to enter for six months. Cynthia is entitled to stay until mid-June but, in this Brexit obsessed climate, she doesn’t want to wait that long.

So, two weeks today, she will leave springtime England. Her mission is to secure a spousal visa to allow her a worry free return. Her success isn’t assured by any means. She will have to complete enough forms to gladden the hearts of every red tape loving government worker in her way, and then part with a substantial chunk of hard earned cash.

The process can take months rather than weeks. Success is not assured, even with the help of ruinously expensive visa agents. She can fast track the application and reduce the wait to something almost bearable, providing she parts with enough money to buy a decent used car. In the meantime, life will go on in my wonderful watery world. Heartwarming tasks like finding out why on Earth we still don’t have any hot water on board.

Living with cold water isn’t the end of the world. Heating a kettle for dish washing is no big deal, nor is organising a tank full of the hot stuff for showering. With Orient’s onboard generator still out of commission, I can fire up our ever trusty Honda suitcase generator to power the calorifier’s immersion heater. Or, if I really want to spend some money, I can power the immersion heater via my shoreline from the marina’s electricity supply.

Neither of these inconveniences is a real problem, nor is the cold towel rail in an even colder bathroom. What I want, what I really, really want, is to be able to step out of a steaming shower and wrap myself in a soft and fluffy hot towel. A towel warmed by a working towel rail.

A working towel rail and radiators to the bedroom and engine room requires a working Kabola boiler. We don’t yet have one of those.

The problem, we thought, was a hopelessly solidified burner pot. A new pot arrived two weeks ago. Swapping old for new was so simple even I could do it. The Kabola worked so well that, within a couple of hours, we had a constant stream of scalding water flowing from our taps and Cynthia reduced to a small and sweaty puddle in the main bedroom. My success was short-lived. The comforting orange glow visible through the Kabola’s front panel glass disappeared by the end of the day. I haven’t been able to relight it since then. It’s back to the drawing board now and endless praying for a simple solution.

Orients old Kabola pot

Orient’s new Kabola pot

High on our long list of Orient remedial work is a new cratch cover. The current cover is driving me mad. The port side has six broken press studs failing to secure the bottom horizontal edge to the hull. The starboard side has none at all. In anything more than a light breeze, which is most of the time at Calcutt Boats, the cratch cover blows inside the well deck, forming a funnel for any rain. Recently, there’s been more rain pooled on our front deck than in the water tank beneath it.

Fitting new studs should provide temporary well deck waterproofing, but the cover is past its best. It’s coated with algae the same spring green as the new buds on the willow overhanging our dump barge mooring, and it’s frayed and tattered around the edges. It’s so old and unsightly it could be my twin.

AJ Canopies in Braunston have an excellent reputation. Consequently, they aren’t cheap. They have such a positive flow of new business that they weed out time wasters over the phone. Sadly, on this occasion, I was one of them. The base price is determined by the distance from the cratch board to the cabin top. Then there’s £75 to add for each zip. Our current cover has six of them, four hundred and fifty extra pounds to bring our telephone quote to £1,500. We can’t afford it at the moment, nor can we find the money for the joinery work we also need completing.

We were shocked by the price. We have a compact saloon, ten feet from the well deck steps to the galley bulkhead. We want a pine bookcase removing, and an L shaped bench seat building, plus a removable table to use for dining during the day and as a bed base at night. Like the rest of the boat, we wanted it built in pine. Nothing fancy so, we wrongly thought, not terribly expensive.

The guy who visited us was charismatic, affable and clearly a craftsman. And a Ferrari owner as well judging by his price. Two thousand eight hundred pounds, without upholstery, is far more than we can afford. We’ll have to make do with a pair of folding canvas chairs and no overnight guests for the foreseeable future.

The table we want to replace in Orient’s saloon

We welcomed a daytime guest on board yesterday for a fun-filled day on the cut. Chris Ansome incorporated a Discovery into his hectic three-week schedule before he flies back to the States next week. Chris is exploring the possibility of returning to the UK after spending much of his working life in the good old US of A. He wanted to experience a typical day’s cruising in winter weather. Zeus was happy to oblige. Zeus is the god of weather in case you’re wondering who this mysterious guy is.
We began our cruise on a calm day under a cloudless sky. The sky filled with clouds, the air with wind and rain. We were buffeted, wetted and would have been chilled to the bone if not for the blazing Premiere range beneath our feet. We had a high old time, culminating with an exciting passage up and down the Calcutt flight. Orient handled the difficult weather magnificently, as did novice helmsman, Chris.

I gather from his frequent comments throughout the day that he enjoyed himself. “Isn’t this fantastic!” he exclaimed more than once. “Thank you for this glimpse into your wonderful life,” he told me several times. The comment which really revealed his feeling though was, “This is the most exciting day I’ve had in many, many years!” Coming from a long term sound engineer with Jethro Tull, that’s really saying something.

Chris enjoyed a memorable day and gained some valuable information about the liveaboard lifestyle into the bargain. As have all of the hundreds of guests who have joined me on board James No 194 and now Orient.

I don’t like to blow my own trumpet, but I’m going to. There’s no one else to do it for me. Learning how to steer twenty tonnes of unwieldy steel can be a stressful experience. Some of my guests have been on other helmsmanship courses. They complained that their instructors treated novice boaters like parade ground rookies. That’s not my style at all.

I want YOU to have a good time. Living the lifestyle is fun. So should learning about it. If you are at all interested in buying a narrowboat to live or cruise on England’s inland waterways, do yourself a favour and join me on a fun and information filled day aboard one of the cosiest and comfortable narrowboats you’ll ever see. You can find all about my Discovery Day service here, or book a date directly here.

I’ll write to you again in a couple of weeks. Maybe I’ll welcome you on board Orient one day soon too. Tea or coffee?

Narrowboat Expenses For February 2019

This is one of an ongoing series of posts detailing my narrowboat expenses. Each post breaks down my monthly costs for the previous month, the same month three years earlier and a third set of figures for three years before that. As a Narrowbudget Gold user, you will always have access to the narrowboat running expenditure no more than a month old and you’ll be able to compare it with data which spans six years. You’ll be able to use this information to estimate the likely cost of buying and maintaining your own floating home.

Calculating accurate costs for the boat you intend to purchase is difficult. There are so many variables that the best you can hope for is a good idea of the expenses involved and the nature of the variables you need to consider. Even on the two similar length boats I have owned over the last decade, the running costs have varied signifficantly. With that in mind, I have explained the difference in the two boats’ systems, style and design in the series’ first post here.

February 2013

Boat: James No 194

Engine Hours This Month: None

Blog Posts This Month

2013 02 20 Newsletter

Important changes to the site login process

A Case Study Of Liveaboard Narrowboat Lucky Duck

Detailed narrowboat running costs for January 2013

I’ve copied this text from the January 2013 blog post detailing my running costs.

“This year (2013) is going to be an expensive year for Sally and I. We have a huge amount of work to do to get James up to scratch. I’ve had some of the more major work done already. In November 2011 I replaced the old perished leaking and rotten wooden top with a new steel cabin. Actually, I didn’t replace one with the other. I had the new steel added on top of the existing cabin, and added another layer of insulation between the two. Removing the existing wooden cabin would have meant destroying much of the woodwork inside the cabin. James is beautifully fitted inside. Removing the woodwork would have been a tragic, almost criminal waste.

The new steel work, transportation and remedial work cost roughly £10,000. The transport alone was £1,100 for a delivery to and collection from a boatbuilder just eight miles away. The boatbuilder didn’t have any lifting gear on site so the road haulage company had to provide a crane too.

In April 2012 I took James out of the water to black the hull. Two days of dirty, back-breaking labour saved me the £500 that I would have been charged if I had asked Calcutt Boats to do the work for me. After James was put back in the water, I took her into one of our paint tents, took three weeks off work and painted the rest of the boat. It was a frustrating but ultimately rewarding project which resulted in a half decent finish and which saved me a fortune. As a ball park figure, you can bank on £100 a foot to have your boat painted by the professionals. James, at 62?, would therefore have cost me over £6,000 for a “proper” job. As it was, the cost of the materials plus the hire of the paint tent was under £1,000.

So I started 2013 with steelwork to the top and to the bottom of the boat with a decent layer of paint. The hull needs doing every three years so I next need to do it mid 2015. The cabin should last five or six years at least if it’s looked after properly, which brings me to January 2013 and my expenses for the month. Here they are…

Electricity: Each mooring has a 230v electrical supply which is charged at 20p per unit and topped up cards available from our reception. I generally buy 3 x £10 electricity cards at a time. I bought cards twice this month. My electricity purchases should be significantly reduced in March when I have the solar panels fitted. Time will tell. – £60

Gas: I should have known better. I ran out of gas in January. I have two 13kg propane cylinders in the front gas locker. When one runs out I usually buy a replacement on the same day. I forgot in December so when the smell of gas alerted me to the fact that the cylinder in use was on its way out on a bitterly cold January morning, I scrambled out of the boat to the gas locker to (I thought) quickly switch from the empty to the full cylinder. Both were empty so there was no morning cup of coffee, and no toast. I wasn’t happy. Consequently, I bought two cylinders later than day. – £45.90

Coal: I get a better deal if I buy ten bags at a time. Ten 25kg bags of Pureheat last me about a month – £108

Mooring: My mooring costs £2,300 a year – £191.66

Maintenance & Repairs: There were no maintenance and repair expenses as such in January, but I did make a purchase to help me when I’m out cruising. I bought a folding bike. Folding bikes are very handy for getting to and from the local shops, or returning to a parked car so that it can be brought to the boat’s current mooring. You can pay £500 or more for a new folding bike. The one I bought was being sold by the owners of a narrowboat we have on brokerage. It’s very comfortable, but basic Apollo folding bike from Halfords. The list price is £149 but this one has had Derailleur gears added. The cost to me? – £65

Heating the boat increases my monthly outgoings during the winter. In January I spent £108 for coal and about £30 more than I would during the summer on electricity. The increased electricity cost is due to two 500w Dimplex Coldwatcher greenhouse heaters that I use to provide additional heat towards the rear of the boat where the stove’s heat can’t reach.

The total directly boat related regular expenses this month were £213.90 for heating and electricity and £191.66 for my mooring, a total of £427.80. Then of course there was the bike purchase bringing the total to £492.80.

Of course, the boat expenditure is only a part of the cost of life on the boat. Here’s what we spent on our day to day expenses in January

Internet: I use the excellent mobile broadband dongle from Three. For the last two and a half years, since my bankruptcy, I have been using the Pay As You Go option because my credit rating wasn’t pretty. The PAYG service costs £25 for 7GB per month. I’m connected 24/7 as I’m aditing the site early morning, on breaks from work through the day, and in the evening. Sally has an iPad. She’s online quite a bit too. Consequently, we often ran over the monthly allowance. Over the last 12 months I’ve been trying my luck by attempting to order a dongle on a 24 month contract. In January I was successful. My mobile broadband now costs me £15.99 a month for 15GB rather than last year’s average of £29.69 a month. – £15.99

Telephone (Mobile): Sally and I both have mobiles on contract and Sally has an iPad, also on contract – £115

Laundry: Calcutt Boats as two washing machines and a dryer for moorers’ use. We only use the washing machines. Sally hangs the damp washing inside the boat. It’s dry within 24 hours. The washing machines take tokens which we buy at reception. Each token costs £1 and keeps the washing machines going for 45 minutes. – £20

Groceries: We eat well but not extravagantly. £366.40

Eating out: We enjoy a coffee in a cafe and the occasional meal out. In January we had a meal in local pub, a fiery chicken feast in Nandos in the Bullring, Birmingham and a coffee in a canalside cafe – £81.60.

Entertainment: I love to read. I love my Kindle. It’s so easy to finish a book, use my laptop to browse through the Kindle books on Amazon, click a button and open my new book within a minute or two. I don’t read as much as I would like because of the time I spend adding content to this site. However, I still get through three or four books a month. We also buy second hand DVDs from Blockbuster about once a month. The local store sells four for £10 – £32.50

Car: The insurance on my Seat Althea was due in January (£298). I don’t use my car very much so just £31.10 for fuel – £329.35

Clothing: I try to spend as little as possible on clothing but in January I needed a new pair of wellies and a fleece hat – £58.49

My total none-boat-related living costs for January were £1,019.33 bringing my overall total for January to £1,512.13. I fear that the totals for the coming few months are going to be far more than that with the improvements we have planned but what a lovely boat James will be when she’s finished!”

Now we’ll move on to the running costs for the same boat three years later.

If you can see this message you aren’t logged in and/or you haven’t purchased Narrowbudget Gold. You can log in by using the form at the top of the right hand column or by clicking on the Narrowbudget Gold/Course Login link on the menu bar. You can find out more about my low cost information packed Narrowbudget Gold package here.