So much for my plans to cruise far and wide on the inland waterways winter wonderland. I moved further on the first day of the month last year than I have all month in 2021. Still, I shouldn’t complain.

I returned to Calcutt Boats for a couple of days to buy coal and gas and do my laundry. Then I was off again on my windy winter wanderings. I cruised sideways up the cut to the bottom of the Napton flight of seven locks, delighted with my progress.

The South Oxford Canal is notoriously shallow, especially during the summer months. I’ve been down to Oxford and out onto the Thames several times in my old boat, James. I remembered grounding on several occasions, so now with a hull six inches deeper, I was a little nervous.

I changed my mind after negotiating the first four locks. I hoped that Orient would ground a little if only to stop the gale from blowing me into the offside reeds. I decided that I’d had enough and looked for a decent spot to moor in the next short pound. I developed a cunning plan.

The wind was blowing so hard off the towpath that I knew the second I stepped off my rear deck Orient would be off cruising on her own. I left my boat in the lock, found a decent place to moor and wrapped a mooring chain around the Armco barrier. ‘Clever me,’ I thought. Now I could jump onto the towpath as soon as my stern was close enough and tie off my centre line to stop Orient racing into the offside shrubbery.

Not so smart, actually. As soon as I jumped onto the muddy path, Orient was off like a racing greyhound. By the time I managed to get a rope loop through the mooring ring, Orient’s bow had joined the rats in their offside burrows.

Trying to moor on a windy day

I switched to Plan B. I removed my stern line, skated along my narrow gunnel with muddy wellies, slipped onto my rain-slicked bow and tied my stern and bow lines together. I hoped that I would be able to throw the long line to the towpath and then pull my bow over to the bank and a waiting mooring ring. If only I had someone to help me.

I thought my prayer had been answered. A father with his teenage son strolled by and stopped to chat. ‘Bit windy,’ he offered as I hurled my rope towards him and the distant bank. ‘Blimey,’ he exclaimed as he turned to his son. ‘That must be tough work on his own!’ The pair wandered off then, so they didn’t see me break down in tears.

Fortunately, I didn’t need them. Mooring took me half an hour, but I got there in the end, and all the hard work was worthwhile. I had a clear view of the valley beneath me and very few passing boats or walkers to spoil my tranquillity.

I enjoyed the spot so much that I stayed for eight days.

The silver lining to our current lockdown is, for me, the chance to enjoy life at a much slower pace than I’ve ever done before. I planned to cruise extensively during my two-month break, north along the Oxford Canal, and Coventry onto the Trent & Mersey, then east to Mercia marina. I planned to stop there to metaphorically and literally recharge my batteries. Then I hoped to cruise to the Trent & Mersey’s northern terminus with a brief diversion onto the Weaver. I haven’t unleashed Orient’s full twenty-one horses on a waterway yet, so this would be an opportunity to reach a previously unattainable 4 mph.

I’m pleased that the lockdown has forced me to adopt a slower life pace. I think the restrictions have saved me from getting into trouble. My route to Mercia marina has been blocked three times this month by floodwater. My River Weaver plans would have been scuppered by bank bursting and the Anderton Lift breakdown. I also thought I might pop in to see the good folk I met at Tattenhall marina when I bought Orient. The breach at Beeston Iron Lock would have caused me no end of problems, possibly marooning me in Cheshire past my planned return to work in March. Thank you, Boris.

So, rather than standing on my little back deck from dawn till dusk cruising hundreds of miles I’ve averaged half a mile a day in January. But by moving less, I’ve discovered more about my local countryside than I’ve done in the last decade.

I’ve downloaded the excellent Ordnance Survey app and invested in an annual subscription. The Landranger map overlay shows me footpaths I can use to explore the countryside wherever I stop. I’ve hiked through hidden woods, explored the sites of abandoned medieval villages, examined crumbling ruins and slipped and slid through muddy fields. Unlimited exercise, endless wonder, all for the price of a couple of bags of coal.

Not all of the exercise I’ve been doing has been fun.

I moored for a week in a deserted pound above the fourth lock in Napton’s seven lock flight. I could have squeezed into a tight space on a muddy towpath on the visitor moorings beneath the flight. Still, I didn’t want to moor bow to stern in a long line with other liveaboard boaters. But the space and tranquillity I found halfway up the flight came at a price.

Walking a mile for grocery shopping at Napton village post office wasn’t a problem. Walking half a mile to the Elsan point with a full cassette was hard work. So much so that, after sliding down a snow-covered towpath with my third 401b cassette of the week, I decided to change my toilet.

I had a composting toilet, an Airhead Compact, for the last eighteen months I owned my first narrowboat, James No 194. I loved the flexibility it gave me. I could stay for weeks away from CRT facilities without needing to worry about toilet tank capacity.

A cassette toilet holds all of its putrefying waste in a single container which has to be transported to and emptied in an Elsan point. A twenty-litre cassette lasts two days for a couple, four for a solo boater like me. As I discovered in Napton, transporting a heavy cassette from a remote mooring to a distant Elsan point is a tear-inducing exercise.

Composting toilets change all that. The loo usually has two different compartments; one for solids, the other for liquids. The Environment Agency allows compost toilet owners to empty their urine containers outside providing they do so at least ten metres from the nearest watercourse, so that’s what I used to do. That left just the solids to deal with. Providing I bagged and binned my toilet tissue, the solids container would only need emptying once a month.

The solids don’t compost in a month so could choose one of two options. I could carry a couple of spare solids containers on the boat and leave my rotting remains in them for a couple of months until the compost was fit for feeding my vegetables. Alternatively, I could tip the stuff into a biodegradable bag and consign it to a landfill.

There are endless comments on forums and Facebook groups about the harm compost toilet owners do to the environment by consigning part-composted human waste to landfills. Compared with an estimated three BILLION nappies and thirteen BILLION dog poo bags buried in landfills each year, monthly composting loo deposits in biodegradable bags made by a small number of narrowboat owners are going to make very little difference. And, unlike dump-through and cassette toilet holding tanks, there are no harmful chemicals involved.

Snow place like home

I decided to move on after a final cassette carrying chore on my eighth day. After four days of heavy snow, sub-zero overnight lows and thick ice, the weather took a turn for the better. There was no sign of canal ice on my final Napton toilet trek. The snow had disappeared too, apart from the deflated remains of a once-proud snowman. I walked a little way along the cut beneath the flight as a final check. Mallards and swans swam happily through muddy water. I was free to cruise again… for two locks.

A sensible person would maybe think about checking the canal’s condition in the direction they hoped to go rather than where they’d been. I clearly don’t fit into that category.

I set the first lock as I whistled happily to myself, comfortable wearing a thin fleece after weeks wrapped in a duck down jacket. I left Orient in the first lock and sauntered jauntily along the slippery towpath to prepare the next lock and saw, to my dismay, a solid ice sheet stretching to a far bend.

I know from painful experience how quickly even the thinnest icy crust can strip away protective hull paint. With nowhere to moor in the short pound beneath me, I brought Orient into the final lock, grabbed my wooden boat pole and gave the ice an exploratory prod.

Running water at the lock’s entrance morphed into a quarter-inch, half an inch and then a full hull-stripping inch. I resigned myself to a night on the lock landing and smashed a path with my boat pole for Orient to follow. And broke my wooden in half. Ah, well. Time to buy another.

I was just finishing my path pounding when I heard a labouring two-cylinder engine approaching. I could also hear ice squeaking, cracking and tinkling. The gleaming steel of a bitumen-free bow appeared around the distant bend forcing a path through the frozen waterway.

The ice was so thick in parts that the ice breaker frequently ground to a halt. The helmsman reversed, stamped on his narrowboat accelerator and repeatedly crashed into the ice blocking his route. His wife walked towards me, wincing each time her home screeched to a halt, while toddler at her feet clapped his hands with joy.

They’d been flighting ice since dawn, determined to reach Braunston and an essential repair to their broken central heating system. This was their third day with nothing but their galley hob to keep them warm. All three wrapped like mummies shivered violently.

Love them or hate them, a solid fuel stove is your narrowboat get-out-of-jail-free card. These stoves rarely let you down. Flues can rot and block, but with regular maintenance, they’re not going to let you down when you need them most. I like multi-fuel stoves so much, I have two!

I helped the shivering trio through the lock, moved Orient through the recently broken ice away from the lock landing and moored for the night. I covered a third of a mile on my ninety-minute cruise. I could have continued, following the trail of recently broken ice, but I’ve discovered through bitter experience that cruising through fractured ice can still strip the waterline back to bare steel.

The temperature rose throughout the day and night, returning the canal to its usual muddy brown. As the thermometer rose, so did the canal’s water level and the wind.

Plenty of water on the South Oxford

Water cascaded over the lock gates, which pleased me immensely. I was so happy I almost stopped worrying about the South Oxford’s shallow depth and the likelihood of Orient’s fat bottom getting stuck in the mud.

A crafty way to avoid a waterways license?

I cruised slowly from Marston Doles along a peaceful waterway, silent apart from a brief chainsaw buzz and boat-mounted wood chipper rattle. CRT’s waterways maintenance is subject to constant social media criticism. Maybe those internet trolls should get out on the cut more and see the continuous hard work being done cutting back overgrown vegetation and maintaining and repairing locks. All I see is meticulous attention to detail and consideration for passing boaters. Thank you, guys!

Not wanting to break the sloth-like cruising regime I’ve developed over the last month, I found a remote, tranquil and beautiful spot near Priors Hardwick to moor two and a half hours into my cruising day. Besides moving two hundred metres towards all-day solar panel sunlight, I’ve been stationary for the last three days, and I plan to remain here for the week to come.

Hoping for rain on an increasingly dry South Oxford Canal

If you fancy some real peace and quiet and a complete escape from people and modern-day pressure, I can’t recommend this spot on the South Oxford at this time of the year highly enough. Neither people nor boats have passed me in the last four days. I haven’t seen a car, train, plane or even a tractor since I’ve been here. My only companions are the wind in the willows and two buzzards soaring high above me. My mooring is perfect, apart from my list.

I cruised here on a canal filled to the brim by recent heavy rain. The rain stopped, and the water dropped to what I suspect is its average winter level. My starboard side is sitting in silt, tipping my port side into the canal centre’s deeper water.

My list disappeared briefly yesterday after eight hours of heavy sleet and snow. I’m sloping again now, so much that my bedroom door swings shut if I don’t wedge it open and I can only cook eggs on one side of my frying pan. I’m so used to walking on a slope now that I’m like a mountain goat, only not quite so attractive.

I hope the water level doesn’t drop any further. There’s no more rain forecast for the next week, but I need to move before next weekend. I will have run out of food, coal and toilet tank capacity by then.

Please join me in a prayer for heavy rain.

Discovery Day Update

Winter and, hopefully, our government’s lockdown restrictions are drawing to a close. Spring and the start of a new cruising season are on their way. With more and more people thinking about better weather and the opportunity to travel extensively in the UK again my Discovery Day calendar is filling quickly. Apart from one recent mid-March cancellation I’m now fully booked until mid-May. 

I currently restrict my Discovery Day cruises to weekends because of my work commitments at Calcutt Boats. If you want to secure a late spring date, please consider booking now. You can read more about my Discovery Day cruises here and see and book available dates here. 

I looked forward to my two-month break for so long. I worked long hours last year, often working seven days a week. I felt exhausted by the end of December, dizzy with fatigue, devoid of either energy or enthusiasm. The thought of recuperating while cruising gently along winter canals made my heart skip a beat.

My cruise started as planned, slowly and gently. I moored on a deserted towpath with a vast plain on one side and rolling hills on the other. This, I thought, is the perfect spot to relax and write for a few days before beginning my cruise to the Trent & Mersey’s northern terminus.

I was as happy as a pig in shit far away from people and the noise they make. The serene landscape calmed me, as did the squabbling mallards’ soft quacks and the gentle sigh of winter wind caressing waterside willows. I watched buzzards circling lazily overhead and sparrow hawks hovering over mice-filled fields. Life was good as I rested before a long cruise.

And then I discovered that our government wanted me to rest some more.

Lockdown 3.0 didn’t really surprise me. Christmas gatherings caused an expected infection spike and the inevitable restrictions which followed. I considered carrying on regardless. After all, I reasoned, I had a Roving Trader license and earned an income from waterway writing. And I would still be self-isolating more effectively than most of the population. I lived alone on my boat, far from other people.

What’s more, the only shops I used were grocery stores, and those visits were rare. I asked Sainsbury to deliver food to me as I travelled. What risk did I pose?

‘You don’t understand,’ complained rabid boaters on Facebook groups and forum threads. ‘You touch gates every time you pass through a lock. Think of the potential for infection!’ Yes, I thought about the risk. Back at Calcutt, I watched a handful of narrowboats pass through the lock flight each day, a tiny number compared with the dozens of walkers, joggers and cyclists using the lock gates as a footpath. The risk from me or to me was minimal, especially as I wore gloves when locking.

But after justifying my continued travel, I decided to stay where I was. One fly in my cruising ointment was my need for clean clothes. I don’t have a washing machine on Orient these days. The cubicle it once occupied is now filled with dried and canned food. The broken machine with its cracked drum left me two years ago. Since then, I’ve used our site facilities or washing machines at other marinas if I’ve been out cruising.

I phoned a few marinas on my route. Mooring owners usually only allow their own boat owners to use their facilities, including those on short term moorings. Although the businesses remained open for essential services for passing boaters – coal, diesel, gas and sewage disposal – the people I spoke to told me that they didn’t want overnight visitors.

Common sense prevailed, as did the need for trousers which wouldn’t remain standing when I removed them. I would join the little band of brave boaters rooted to an idyllic mooring, waiting patiently for CRT’s cruising green light.

So I walked, wrote, waited, withered and wailed. I discovered to my dismay that the sedentary life of a retired boater doesn’t work for me. I cleaned and polished until my arms ached, waded through difficult miles of towpath mud until my boots begged forgiveness and wrote for hours on end.

I realised that I was on a downward spiral after investing an hour in organising my galley bin cupboard. I walked up and down my narrow passageway examining the bin from different angles while I muttered like a meths-soaked tramp. I considered the best positions for the cupboard’s bin bags, Method kitchen cleaner and a long-handled bottle brush. Then, to add variety to my surreal day, I opened my galley side hatch and howled at a pair of passing pigeons.

There were a few highlights in an otherwise uneventful fortnight. I cruised two miles into Braunston to escape a forecast four-day freeze. I needed to collect a Sainsbury grocery delivery, too heavy to carry miles along a muddy towpath. I moored a stone’s throw from The Boathouse pub and wait for the canal to morph into a winter wonderland. While the canal’s rural stretches disappeared beneath an icy crust, Braunston’s busy boaters kept the village canal clear.

Braunston’s village butcher helped me retain a degree of sanity. The business’s delicious fare fattens many local boaters. I bought smoked bacon for breakfast, steak pies for lunch and beef for an evening roast. One time I asked the lady owner if she sold herbs. “No, my love,’ she smiled, ‘but I can tell you where you can pick some for free!’ She directed me to Braunston’s community herb garden, a small cultivated plot next to their village hall. I picked a handful of rosemary and thyme and a pinch of sage, all fresh and free.

Braunston’s community herb garden

My phone rang late on my fourth afternoon in Braunston, a call from my Sainsbury delivery. I added a note to my order to let the driver know that I was on a boat near the pub and asked him to call me when he arrived. He sounded confused. ‘Where are you?’ he asked. I told him that I was on my boat nearby. ‘Sorry mate, I can’t get my van down to the canal,’ he apologised. ‘Don’t worry,’ I reassured him, ‘I’ll come to you.’ He sounded incredulous. ‘How are you going to get your boat up here?’ The conversation had become more difficult than I expected.

The driver looked a little sheepish when I arrived with a rucksack rather than a boat. ‘I haven’t delivered to a boat before,’ he confessed. I could tell.

I left the relative noise of a sleepy village and returned to my peaceful mooring, and I wrote and walked some more. Tasks expand to fill the available time. With few jobs on my to-do list, I dealt with each carefully, slowly and obsessively. I rearranged more cupboards, charged device batteries I didn’t need to use and sat for hours watching my solar display.

I wrote a little about my new solar array in my last post. The weather since then has been bleak. Thanks to constant rain, sleet and endless low cloud, my three panels have struggled to produce much at all. Mooring in Braunston didn’t help.

Braunston is popular with cruising boaters during the summer months and with local liveaboard narrowboat owners throughout the winter. Boats often stay on the same moorings for many weeks in regular times. Still, some narrowboats have become permanent fixtures during the pandemic.

I took the only free mooring available, a shaded spot next to Braunston marina entrance. My location frustrated me on two cloudless days. The trees above me bathed in unaccustomed light while my shaded solar panels sulked in the shadows below.

No sun for my solar panels

Tim Davis, the guy from Onboard Solar who fitted my array, wrote a solar power post for me in 2013. He kindly shared the knowledge he’d accumulated, first as a boat builder and then fitting solar arrays to narrowboats throughout our inland waterways network. He’s now written another comprehensive post, 2,000 array fittings later, detailing the latest developments in solar technology, the solar arrays offered by Onboard Solar and why Tim thinks that they’re the best you can buy and, in part one which you can read here, how you should prepare for off-grid living.

At the risk of repeating myself, managing your electrical supply is arguably THE most challenging aspect of an off-grid lifestyle. Many boaters don’t embrace or understand the constant need to monitor and conserve their battery bank charge.

I have spoken to dozens of off-grid boaters and seen many hundreds more who use the ‘finger in the air’ power monitoring technique. Without the benefit of a battery monitor, they simply run their engines for a while each day for battery charging. They don’t know the battery bank’s state of charge when they start or stop their engines, so these boat owners don’t have a clue how deep they’re discharging their batteries each day.

I spoke to one novice boater who told me he had a simple and effective battery charging system. He ran his engine to top up his bank when the lights began to dim in his cabin. That’s battery charging suicide. Here’s a chart which demonstrates why.

AGM Discharge Chart

Allowing your batteries to drain to the point where your 12v lights dim is a 100% discharge. As you can see on the chart, you could only do this 350 times (roughly) before your battery bank failed. I try to limit my AGM battery bank discharge to 70%, which means that my bank should stand 1,600 cycles. Given that my battery bank cost £900, I want them to last as long as possible.

Getting your electrical head in the right place is another essential part of the equation. Any mains electrical appliance which produces heat is your battery bank’s worst nightmare. If you’re going to live off-grid, throw away your electric kettles, toasters, irons, heaters, hairdryers, and straighteners. Toast your water and boil your bread with gas. Throw everything else out. You don’t need them.

I still don’t have the perfect off-grid electrical setup, but it’s better now than it was at the beginning of the week.

My MacBook and its internet connectivity needed some refining. I have a 240V power lead for my MacBook and a 240V router linked to a rooftop signal booster. I need to use my elderly Sterling 3KW inverter to run them. The inverter is too big, too old and uses an unacceptable amount of power. Thanks to a midweek purchase from Amazon’s online store, I can now leave my inverter switched off for most of the day.

My new Morphie car charger will power my MacBook from a 12V socket near my saloon table. My internet connectivity solution isn’t quite so elegant. I place my iPhone next to the cratch board on my covered front deck and then share the phone’s hotspot with my MacBook. The iPhone’s signal isn’t as powerful as my rooftop booster, but it’s good enough for email and web browsing.

Apart from swapping five rarely-used fluorescent strips with LED bulbs, there’s not much more I can do to improve my off-grid efficiency. I’ll carry on running my engine to supplement my solar array’s meagre input until the weather improves and the sun shows its welcome face. And I’ll wonder whether I’ll be a gibbering idiot before Boris allows me to cruise again.

Discovery Day Update

I’m expecting a busy year. Thanks to the global pandemic, international travel restrictions and the surge in working from home, narrowboats are selling like hotcakes. Consequently, I’m taking more bookings than ever this month. I’m fully booked throughout March and most of April. If you are one of the many aspiring narrowboat owners who have emailed expressing an interest in my experience days, I urge you to secure a date while you can.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, please let me explain. I offer combined helmsman training and experiencing cruises on all-day cruises through Warwickshire’s rolling hills. I show my guests a narrowboat fully equipped for comfortable off-grid living. The cruises are both fun and educational. You’ll learn all you need to know about life afloat in a relaxed and beautiful classroom. You can find out more about my Discovery Day service here and see and book available dates here. 

I’m not a big fan of Christmas. I see people buying masses of presents they can’t afford to give to extended family members they often don’t like. I’m being cynical of course, and these comments aren’t directed at my distant family.

I always remember Christmas during my early married life as a stressful affair. My lawyer wife and I worked our fingers to the bone before the festive break to make sure that we had a few relaxing days free. And then when we should have been able to relax, we sat for hours on congested motorways making sure that we visited all the members of our far-flung family. We were often exhausted after our ‘relaxing’ Christmas break.

I much prefer the tranquillity I feel at Christmas these days.

I don’t have any work pressure now. I am a lowly groundsman tasked with the intellectually and emotionally undemanding job of keeping forty landscaped marina acres looking pretty. My job is almost as low in stress as it is in pay. But over the years I’ve realised that it’s the quality rather than the quantity of life which counts. I live in a gorgeous floating home moored on a pretty marina in tranquil rural Warwickshire. 

I don’t have a fancy car – I don’t have a car at all – or enjoy (endure) expensive foreign holidays. I don’t need either. All that I want and need is here at the marina. And to make my life even more comfortable, those kindly people at my local Sainsbury store bring me fresh food every week. And the good folk at Amazon provide me with everything else.

My groundsman job pays just enough to cover my boating bills, so I have another income source; this website. I sell a few guides bundled into my Narrowbudget Gold package, and I host frequent experience and helmsman training days. I don’t earn much, but I make enough to live a comfortable, balanced, healthy and serene lifestyle. I’m happy. 

Shouldn’t happiness be everyone’s life goal?

Christmas, as is usual these days, was a low key and inexpensive event. A handful of boaters who live and work at the marina gathered at a canalside mooring on Christmas Day morning for mulled wine and port-injected mince pies. As is often the way with such gatherings, we supplemented the wine with other alcoholic treats; damson vodka, blackberry vodka and sloe gin. Two outdoor hours on an English winter’s day was enough for us. I then joined three workmates for a turkey dinner and a couple of games of dominoes. Oh, how we live life to the full in our little boating community.

We planned an afternoon New Year’s Eve barbecue too. Thanks to Boris and his tier four restrictions we decided to cancel the last gathering of the year. The silver lining to that dark cloud was that I could begin my winter cruise.

I’ve been limited to a fortnight away from work in recent years. I love winters on our waterways, chugging through a crisp landscape with the range beneath my feet enveloping me in welcome heat. Much as I enjoy the experience, I planned to leave my boat behind this year.

My parents and my brother live in Australia. As my last visit was in 2012, I thought, and they agreed, that another trip was long overdue. The Australian government had other ideas. Earlier last year, entry into Australia was permitted provided that travellers quarantined for fourteen days at a location chosen by the authorities. The quarantine accommodation fee was $3,000. I didn’t fancy paying that kind of money for imprisonment in a hotel room for half a month. Not that that’s a consideration now. Australia has closed its borders.

Because I planned an extended trip down under, I arranged to have two months off work. Once I discovered I couldn’t travel overseas, I didn’t want to look a gift horse in the mouth. I decided to enjoy a sixty-day break on the waterways network instead.

I had grand cruising plans. They’ve changed now, again thanks to tier four. I don’t know where I can reasonably expect to travel, so I will try to relax instead. 

I’m off to a good start.

I managed four miles on New Year’s Eve before a beguiling mooring on a deserted stretch of canal gently brought me to a stop. I’m still there now.

A smidgeon of ice to deter Orient’s progress

I thought I knew this part of the canal network well. After all, I’ve cruised the route between Napton and Braunston junctions hundreds of times on my experience days. I now realise that I don’t know the area well at all.

I’ve discovered footpaths near the canal I didn’t know existed. There’s an unlisted road through the abandoned medieval village of Wolfhampcote, and rough paths along the beds of two railways closed down in the 1960s. What a treat. 

Wofhampcote church looking good after 1,000 years

So I’ve walked, and I’ve written, and I’ve worried – a little – about further restrictions. But, mostly, I’ve relaxed into the lifestyle of an occasional continuous cruiser. That meant switching to continuous cruiser conservation mode from day one.

Muddy towpath walking near Flecknoe

Life in a marina is easy. Even if you run out of electricity, heating fuel, gas, water or diesel, a top-up is always close at hand. Resupply is not quite so simple at this time of the year when a sudden cold snap can lock you into a remote mooring in a heartbeat.

Knowing your average consumption of each utility is essential. I have a cassette toilet and three cassettes. Each cassette lasts me four days, so I’m OK for nearly two weeks. A 13kg propane cylinder lasts me two months. I have two onboard so no problem there. My 750-litre water tank will last me two months if I’m careful. That’s not an issue. I have enough fresh food on board to last ten days, plus another fortnight if I dine on rice, pasta and corned beef. I won’t starve, nor will I freeze. A 25kg bag of coal briquettes will last three days if I’m careful, wrap up and don’t mind suffering a cold back end.

I’m beginning to think that I’m a bit of a wimp. I hear or read about so many liveaboard narrowboat owners discussing their efficient heating systems at this time of the year. “It’s so hot on my boat that I have to open my front doors to let some of the heat out,” is a common theme. “My cabin gets so hot I have to strip down to my underpants,” boasted a rotund septuagenarian. Perish the thought.

I watched a video produced by a popular vlogger last night. He recorded his morning routine, demonstrating the comfort of onboard life. He stirred the dying embers of a cooling stove halfheartedly before zooming in on his mercury thermometer. It read twenty-five degrees. I’m not surprised given how close it was to the stove. Still, he seemed very comfortable with his cabin temperature. But was he showing an accurate picture of life on a narrowboat during the cooler months? I don’t know.

In the spirit of providing an honest and accurate account of winter life afloat, let me share some facts and figures with you. I’ll try not to bore you to tears with them.

Everyone’s different. One boater’s comfort is another’s misery. Despite working outdoors nearly every day all year round, I don’t particularly appreciate feeling cold. That’s not a problem when I’m working physically hard. I generate enough heat to keep me toasty warm all day. But when I’m sitting motionless tapping away at my MacBook keyboard for hours on end, 23°C is a comfortable temperature for me. And at this time of the year, I find that quite challenging to achieve.

Orient is a tricky boat to heat, as was my first narrowboat, James. Both are relatively old boats. James was built in 1977 and Orient eighteen years later in 1995. Typical of boats their age, they both have polystyrene insulation. Polystyrene isn’t as good an insulator as modern spray foam. It can crumble and leave cold spots. It also provides a fascinating adventure playground for mice as I discovered to my dismay last year.

My poor little Squirrel tries hard to keep me warm

Multiple internal bulkheads also added to my heating difficulty on both boats. Orient is particularly challenging. I have doorways between the galley and the bathroom, the bathroom and the bedroom, the bedroom and the engine room, and the engine room and the boatman’s cabin. The heat from my Morso Squirrel at the front of the boat can’t reach further than halfway down my little home.

If I want a decent temperature throughout the boat, I need stoves burning at both ends. My Squirrel isn’t a problem. I empty the ash pan in the morning and fill the stove with coal briquettes. Before I climb into bed at night, I fill it again and reduce the airflow. 

Easy.

The Premiere range in the rear cabin is another story. It’s a pig to keep going without constant attention. The firebox is the problem. It’s so small that I have to add briquettes throughout the day. Keeping the stove burning all night is beyond me.

Unless I’m cruising and have the range at my feet all day, constantly fiddling with it is a bit of a pain. So, on multi-day moorings, closing off the boat section beyond my bedroom and relying on one stove is the more practical option. That’s what I’m doing at the moment—one bag every three days to heat half a boat.

The weather has been a little chilly recently with sub-zero lows and barely-above-zero highs. The thermometer dropped to -2°C last night. At 11.30 am the temperature’s still below freezing. But there’s no wind, which makes a big difference.

Because I’m more than a little anal, I have four thermometers on Orient; one in the saloon, another in my bedroom, a third at the rear in the boatman’s cabin and another on my front deck protected by a cratch cover. Here are the readings from 9 am today.

Orient’s early morning thermometer

13.4°C – saloon

10.6°C – main bedroom

2.4°C – boatman’s cabin

4.1°C – front deck

I don’t find this saloon temperature comfortable at all. I dash out of bed an hour before I want to get up to add coal to the stove and open it up. By the time climb out of bed the second time, the stove’s glowing but hasn’t made much difference to the cabin temperature. Boiling a kettle for my morning coffee and then leaving the ring burning has more of an impact.

So, there you go. Heating narrowboats is not always an easy affair. I’m sure that with some modern, open plan and well-insulated boats, you can wave a swan vesta about and have the cabin toasty for days. Orient is not one of them.

I may be lacking in the heating department, but I’m up there with the best of them where power generation is concerned.

In anticipation of my current two-month stint off-grid, I had a 645w solar array fitted by Tim Davis of Onboard Solar last November. Despite fully understanding solar power benefits for off-grid liveaboard boaters, I’ve delayed the installation until now.

It’s a case of form over function. I think, and many agree, that Orient is a beautiful boat. I didn’t want to add a trio of boxy panels and ruin her good looks. Tim Davis has fitted solar systems to 2,000+ narrowboats, including many craft similar to mine. He assured me that I would soon forget about the aesthetics when an endless supply of free electricity mollycoddled my battery banks. 

Do you know what? Tim was right.

The three panels lay low on their brackets parallel with Orient’s roof most of the time. I’ve tilted them towards the sun on my static mooring over the last four days. Even though Orient looked better without them, I don’t think they completely ruin my boat’s fine lines.

Solar power is a game-changer for liveaboard narrowboat owners.

Tim fitted a 300w solar array on James for me in 2013. Although I was marina based for much of the time, I spent all of 2015 out on the cut. Three hundred watts provided me with all the power I wanted during the spring, summer and autumn months and helped a little during our dark and dismal winters. Solar technology has improved since then.

I am delighted with my new array’s winter performance. The three Victron panels have generated at least three amps even on cloudy days. Today, that one winter day when the sun shines, I am in awe. My input peaked at twenty glorious amps. Twenty. In the middle of an English winter. That’s amazing.

That’s one reason why I haven’t moved very far on this cruise: that, and the new restrictions. I’ve managed four miles in as many days. My intention was always to adopt a more relaxed approach to cruising on this trip. I clocked up nearly 2,000 miles and negotiated 950 locks in 2015 and missed many tranquil moorings and idyllic villages along the way. I finished the year with badges of honour, an armful of ten-hour cruising days and total exhaustion. 

I vowed to treat myself better on this trip. Still, I was ever mindful of my need to generate electricity. And if my solar array needed supplementing with input from my engine’s alternator, I didn’t want to waste my precious diesel tethered to a static mooring.

I don’t know how the next few weeks will pan out. The weather is always an unknown quantity. A week locked into a remote mooring by ice won’t cause me a problem. Still, I’ll be keeping a close eye on weather forecasts and government restriction bulletins, all from the comfort of my peaceful floating home.

Discovery Day Update

Event manager Martin Webster joined me last Monday for my final Discovery Day cruise of the year. Despite our chilly day out, the experience confirmed Martin’s passion for the inland waterways and his desire to live afloat. He wrote this rather eloquent review for me.

“Icy winds and frosty locks had threatened otherwise, but it was the smell that made my day: the antique coal-burning stove in the boatman’s cabin that transported me (at no more than 4mph) back to my Grandma’s old kitchen range and the safe warmth of childhood. I grabbed on to that feeling as I grabbed on to the cleats atop the cabin roof with my spare hand and drank in the reassuring calmness of someone who had made all the mistakes before me and was determined that I wouldn’t repeat them.

Paul’s walk-through of the boat, from weird weed-killing shower to useless bed-design and the shiny-proud copper-piped glory of a classic Lister engine showed just how much he loves and respects his custodianship of a unique vessel.

So when his voice raises just a decibel or two, and he says ‘I think you should be making the turn about NOW’ you do it and revel in the inch-perfect lines that he has prompted.

When he tells you that it’s called a rubbing strake and he wants you to rub his beloved along the side of the lock, you do it, knowing that his investment in your success is so much greater than yours.

When he illustrates, every time he is preserving your future safety, with a self-deprecating tale of his disasters or the salutary lessons of others, you listen, because you recognise the value of hard-won experience.

I started the day a complete novice but by some miracle felt very confident that I had learnt the right amount of humility as I went slowly into the night, past the rows of slow-smoking boat chimneys lined up in anticipation of adventures to come. I’m glad I made the cut.

If you are seriously considering living afloat, I urge you to join me for a Discovery Day cruise in 2021. Now, more than ever before, our beautiful waterways offer a welcome respite from the mayhem of modern-day life. You can find out more about my Discovery Day service here.