Filthy, stinking cold. I was a snot fountain, a drool reservoir, an old geezer with a red hooter and a hacking cough. On a cruising rest day moored at Union Wharf, Market Harborough, I had nothing to do but transfer bodily fluid to endless tissues and feel sorry for myself.

Oh, woe is me.

I didn’t have the energy to do anything constructive. I woke with a fever and a leaking nose and went downhill from there. The problem with boating on your own is that if you can’t do something, it doesn’t get done. There’s no “I” in team, no helping hand, no one to bail you out. You’re on your own through thick and thin. Most of the time I like it that way.

Thanking God that I didn’t have to cruise, I pulled a rucksack from a dusty cupboard and stumbled a mile to Market Harborough’s Sainsbury store. I needed enough fresh food to last me a week and to treat myself at my one-person New Year’s Eve party. Chilli with dark chocolate washed down with a good bottle of red. Simple food but tasty and cheap.

After two days rest, feeling slightly better but still leaving a slug-like snot trail wherever I walked, I started my return cruise. I stopped at Union Wharf’s service point to empty two cassettes and get rid of my rubbish, then cruised back through reeds and floating logs back to Foxton, dragging silt all the way.

The only real problem was an impossibly shallow reed bed restricting the navigation next to the swing bridge at the bottom of the Foxton flight. CRT has removed the visible reeds but left an underwater bed of impenetrable stumps. I tried to give them a wide berth but still grounded slightly. I noticed that the boat behind me, helmed by a guy with apparent local knowledge, pulled over to the CRT workboats opposite the reed beds and dragged his boat along them. Surely it’s time for a little dredging. Come on, CRT!

I negotiated both swing bridges without incident. A feisty mob of eight retired lady ramblers kept approaching cars at bay with brandished hiking poles and opened the swing road bridge for me. Then a dog-walking boater with his own key saw me through the footbridge. “Keep away from the reed bed,” he ordered as I crept past. “The canal’s really shallow there,” shouted an elderly lady, out for a walk with her Zimmer frame. “Ha, ha. Look at that boat leaning over,” screamed a shrill and spotty-faced teen. CRT, don’t make the reed bed an entertaining diversion for Foxton residents. Get rid of it, please!

Preparing for a Foxton flight ascent on a cold winter’s day

The Foxton flight was as easy going up as it was coming down. A little too easy actually. I managed to do the first three on my own, enjoying chatting with bystanders, relishing the company and having a laugh, when a lock keeper insisted that I stay at the helm. “You wouldn’t believe the paperwork we have to fill in if you have an accident!” That’s the third time I’ve heard a lock keeper say that on this trip. I think that they’ve been ordered to keep solo boaters on their boats.

I moored within walking distance of the flight summit’s bacon bap supply. I sat for an hour hiding from an icy wind behind the cafe wall, boat watching, drinking coffee and eating pig.

I moved an hour away from people and distractions the following morning. New Year’s Eve and a time for me to sit quietly and think about an eventful 2019.

The year began well enough. Cynthia and I had owned Orient for a week. With our possessions on board and a boat we thought was fully operational, we started a cold winter cruise south from Chester to Napton Junction and Calcutt Boats.

We didn’t get far.

Orient’s battery bank died at Market Drayton, so we limped sixteen hours back to Tattenhall marina to have a new set fitted. We began our second attempt twenty-two days later, and what an adventure we had. We raced to beat Birmingham stoppages on increasingly icy canals. Five weeks after blacking our new boat, I stripped the waterline back to bare metal. And I frequently grounded, often for half an hour, straining with a wooden pole to push our flat bottomed girl off raised mudflats.

I reached Calcutt Boats after eighty-eight hours at the helm. After twenty-six months of driving and cruising across Europe, I returned my spiritual home, ready for a gruelling work slog. Two years of hedonism cost us a fortune. We purchased a motorhome and two Dutch boats. We’d sold one of them, and part exchanged the motorhome for Orient. Cynthia and I still owned one of the Dutch craft, Dik Trom. Its maintenance costs and mooring fees were bleeding us dry. Returning to work, even in such a beautiful setting, was a necessary evil.

The months passed, Cynthia’s health declined, and her feeling of isolation grew. She flew back to the USA in April to visit friends and relatives. And to search for a cure for her worsening condition. She died there two weeks later, alone in a friend’s house, far away from the company she craved.

Life for me continued. Despite loneliness, devastation and a hopeless sense of loss tinged with more than a little guilt, I couldn’t have been in a better place to grieve. The boating community looks after its own. I had company if I needed it, tranquillity if I didn’t. Months passed as I came to terms with my loss.

Money has little regard for personal feelings. I still needed to earn enough to service the three loans I needed to buy Orient. And I had a surplus boat to maintain in Holland in addition to Orient’s essential maintenance, repairs and modifications.

Reducing my overseas boat maintenance obligations was a costly but straightforward affair. Cynthia’s estate executor insisted on a considerable lump sum for Cynthia’s share in both boats. He hinted that a no-win, no-fee probate lawyer waited in the wings ready to obliterate the estate with an endless stream of legal demands and bills.

The simplest solution for me, both financially and emotionally, was to give Dik Trom to Cynthia’s estate and walk away from endless debate and heartache. 

Resolving Cynthia’s estate issues and disposing of Dik Trom lifted an unbearable weight from my shoulders. Life settled down into a familiar and welcome stress-free routine. I worked at the marina during the week, wrote blog posts before and after work, and hosted Discovery Day cruises most weekends. Although the work was physically taxing, the distraction helped me through the following months without too much quiet time navel-gazing.

A seven-day working week income allowed me to meet my financial obligations and transform Orient from a cold and neglected boat into a warm and welcoming home. My winter cruise was a fitting reward for reaching the end of a challenging year. By late December, I was £500 short of debt freedom and reconciled to life as a solo boater. Despite being wifeless, dogless and occasionally legless, I could see a welcoming light at the end of the proverbial tunnel.

2019 was all about simple survival and overcoming adversity. This year’s looking much more promising. A friend recently reminded me that 2020 is auspicious. “20/20 vision allows you to see clearly,” he told me. I don’t know about that, but I intend to plan clearly. I don’t make New Year resolutions. However,  I’m a big fan of setting balanced goals and working relentlessly towards them.

My number one priority for 2020 is to save enough money for an essential foreign holiday.

My parents and my brother live in Australia in one of the few areas not burning at the moment. I haven’t seen them for nine years. Nine years is nine years too long. Getting to and from Australia is painful. Endless hours sitting in a cramped seat watching awful television. It’s too far away to travel to for a short period. I plan to go for at least a month and then take a break in Bali on the way back. A boating mate, Ian, who spends his winters in Indonesia, has invited me to do some volcano hiking. It’ll be a far cry from the gentle life I live on England’s muddy ditches and a welcome break from ankle-deep towpath mud.

Another friend, Alan, has suggested that I should join him for a week cruising in Ireland on the mighty River Shannon. It’s boating on a grander scale than on the English waterways; lakes with islands studded with ancient relics – besides Guinness-soaked village elders – lively pubs and friendly faces. All reached from the comfort of a “yoghurt pot”, a plastic motor cruiser, or a wide-beam canal boat. Another boating experience to enjoy.

Much as I’m excited by the thought of foreign travel and cruising new waterways, paying for the trip will mean another gruelling work year. But life is for living. I don’t know how many active years I have left in me, so I intend to make the most of every one of them.

In the meantime, I have continued to adapt to life on my own again. It hasn’t been much of a stretch. I’m generally an anti-social git, so life as a solo boater suits me well enough. I have enough friends to keep me entertained when I need company, and wind, water and tranquillity when I don’t.

I have just two expensive items remaining on Orient’s original to-do list; replacing my worn cratch cover and fitting a solar array. I don’t need solar power until I begin cruising continuously, and I can’t do that and afford to visit my parents. I’ll put the solar array on the back burner for now and concentrate on the cratch cover.

My black canvas front deck cover is on its knees. There are half a dozen ever-widening splits in its two plastic windows. Added to the rips and frays along the bottom edge, and an unappealing green sheen which I can’t remove, my cratch cover is a bit of a mess. And I get water seeping through each of the six zips in heavy rain. It has to go.

A fellow boater recommended a reasonably priced cratch cover supplier last year. I phoned him to offer him the work, he agreed to take it on and promised to visit me to take measurements. That was five months ago. I have to assume that he’s not interested.

I contacted our local top-end cratch cover supplier, AJ Canopies. They quoted me £1,500 over the phone. When I regained consciousness, I asked Kinver Canopies to quote. Their price is much more reasonable. For £1,000 I get a heavyweight canvas cover with six zips. I don’t want windows this time. Canopy windows offer wannabe thieves a sneak peek at all the goodies I store on my front deck. I want to save these low life predators the discomfort of coming onto my boat and having an anchor chain wrapped around their scrawny necks.

Anyway, that was New Year’s Eve planning out of the way. I ate my chilli, drank my wine, finished with a sneaky Remmy Martin and hit the sack at 10 pm. The last night of my first full year aboard Orient.

I woke to a new year, a momentous year, ninety days away from the start of my seventh decade on planet Earth. How did I get this old? My mind’s as agile as it was forty years ago. My body isn’t. It regularly complains, bitching if I take a long walk, grinding to a halt if I swing a chainsaw about all day. I’m shorter, fatter and hairier than I’ve ever been. If I carry on in the same vein, I’ll be a knee-high fur ball by the time I’m seventy.

I stopped for another day on my quiet mooring near Husbands Bosworth, enjoyed a couple of short circular walks, obsessively polished my brass and smiled a great deal. I lead a simple life.

An quiet New Year’s Even mooring – Perfect for planning the year ahead

I covered thirteen miles in 5.7 hours on my first cruising day of 2020. My underwhelming 2.3 mph average is usual for me. Orient is often forging through canal bed silt. The more I open her up, the lower the stern sinks, and the slower I go. Easing off the throttle gets me to my destination faster and saves eroding passing canal banks. And gives the impatient boaters behind me something to bitch about.

I’m always a little nervous when I stray from the channel centre, usually when I have to make room for oncoming boats. The highlight of the day’s gentle cruise was an unexpected slide on a slippery slope. I moved over to avoid a rare hire boat, helmed by a man convinced he was piloting a jet fighter. He pushed a tidal wave before him, creating wash which forced canal-side waterfowl to run for cover.

I didn’t respond to his cheery wave as he flashed by. Orient’s starboard side reached for the sky. I heard the thud and clink of falling bottles inside, but the wind was blowing too hard to stop and investigate. I hoped that I wouldn’t finish my day drinking whiskey through broken glass on my hardwood floor.

I enjoy winter cruising more often than not. I didn’t enjoy this particular experience. Not because of the hire boat incident. I was cold, despite having the range burning beneath my feet. A frigid and gusty wind didn’t help, nor did standing motionless on the back of the boat all day. Without the welcome distraction of a lock flight or two, winter cruising can become a chilly and monotonous affair.

I looked forward to reaching my goal; an overnight stop at Yelvertoft to get some margarine from the village post office and a tasty treat from delicatessen Squisito. Alas, Yelvertoft was closed for business. The post office had shut for good, Squisito for Christmas and the Knightley Arms because they felt like it. The pub has been closed more often than open on previous visits. I don’t know how they manage to stay afloat.

I woke late the next morning with a headache, thankful that two weeks of celebrating Christmas on my own had come to an end. I like a drink but have to control my indulgence. My drinks cabinet will remain locked now, opened only for high-days and holiday. There are too many hard-drinking single middle-aged men on the cut. I don’t want to join their self-destructive ranks.

The highlight of my day was an easy Watford flight descent. I had company for forty minutes. A particularly friendly lock keeper helped me down the flight to keep me ahead of three following boats. No matter how quickly I work, I can’t negotiate locks as fast as an experienced couple. It’s rarely a problem, but in a navigation bottleneck like the Watford flight, even in the quieter winter months, CRT staff have to keep the traffic moving.

This guy was an ex narrowboat owner. He sold his boat because he was spending up to four weeks at a time away from his wife. She didn’t like it and told him that he was getting too old for solo boating. He capitulated and sold his boat. But he’s regretting that now. He has to spend all of his time with his wife. Four weeks of solo boating has become an unattainable dream.

I hope that I don’t ever bow down to peer pressure to sell Orient. I don’t know what I would do without a boat in my life. I don’t think that situation is likely. I need to earn a living for the rest of my life. What better way to do that than by hosting my Discovery Day service?

A sunken narrowboat near Braunston tunnel’s eastern portal

Nearing the start of my sixth and final tunnel passage, I passed the boat above. The sad end to someone’s floating home. Death by fire and water. I can only hope that the owner wasn’t on board at the time. Sights like this make me feel physically sick, and eternally grateful for Orient, my health and my lifestyle.

Yin and Yang, bad and good, The Boathouse and the Admiral Nelson. My meal at The Boathouse on my outward cruise was dismal. And then I enjoyed a fabulous meal at the Admiral Nelson on my return trip; whitebait starter and ham, egg and chips for the main course. The Wiltshire ham was as plentiful as it was tasty. Lovely, as was the bottle of merlot I had with the meal. I enjoyed listening to snippets of parental advice coming from the table next to me too.

A dreadlocked lady boater counselled her teenage daughter. “No, darlin’”, she confided in a low voice, “you want to roll your spliff like this.” And then a little later, “Not too often mind. You don’t want to end up with paranoia like your Dad.” Boat life at its best.

Braunston’s Admiral Nelson at night

I set off on my final morning without breakfast at 8 am. I planned to drop down two locks from my mooring opposite the pub and stop briefly near the Gongoozler’s Rest cafe boat. I hoped to eat there before heading back to base. The business was closed on my outward journey. I suspected a Christmas break. Sadly, it was still shut, maybe for good. There was a hand-drawn for sale sign taped to a window of the owner’s boat moored next to the cafe. What a shame. I loved their full English breakfasts, toasted cheese and onion sandwiches and potato scallops. Bad for both my pocket and waistline but good for my soul.

I reached the top of the Calcutt flight two hours later, pausing for an hour at the water point to rid Orient of a two-week mud accumulation. I had a Discovery Day booked for the following day, and the old girl needed to look her best.

Mud removed, Orient is ready for a Discovery Day cruise

I always enjoy my Discovery Day cruises. Despite having covered the route more than three hundred times now, each outing is a joy. I have ever-changing company, different people with a similar desire. A quest for a simple existence free of the stresses and strains of modern-day life. They’re enchanted by rural Warwickshire’s rolling hills and green fields. They’re mesmerised by the slow beat of my vintage engine and, at this time of the year, pleasantly surprised by a warm and cosy cabin. Less is more. Boat life is a good life.

Calcutt Boat’s Meadows marina on a cloudy day

Day one of my Christmas cruise, a day which felt like prison release. This year has been long and hard, filled with endless work and tragedy. Cynthia’s been gone now for eight months, two-thirds of a year which I’ve filled with seven-day working weeks. Everyone copes in different ways. My method, right or wrong, has been to work hard, sleep, rinse and repeat. I think I’ve reached the year-end without too much mental damage, so maybe mine is an acceptable coping mechanism.

 I woke late on my first morning and smiled as I remembered that I had nothing to do for the following fifteen days. All I had on my to-do list was cruising and writing a few blog posts. Just two items and I still struggled with one of them.

But my number one goal was to cruise, relax and recharge my depleted body battery. That part of my plan has gone very well. And, after daily rain for far too long, regular dry cruising days have been welcome.

I could get used to this. My boating task list was long. I had brass and copper to shine, cupboards to sort through, paintwork to clean… pottering at its best. I loved it.

What a wonderful cruise from Calcutt. An hour and a half of tranquillity. Nothing but birdsong and the mesmerising thump of my JP2 engine. I watched robins, magpies, a sparrow hawk and the canal’s usual complement of coots, mallards and swans. The perfect end to my first festive day of freedom.

I sometimes wonder if I’m normal. I lost Cynthia just eight months ago and then had to say goodbye to two adorable dogs four weeks later. I switched from a boisterous family of four to a reclusive life alone. And there I was looking forward to an enjoyable fortnight on my own, stopping each night out of sight and sound of people and mainstream life. Even though I’m lonely now and then, I enjoy my freedom too much to want to change my life. I know I’m in the minority, but I’m happy more often than I’m sad, and that can’t be a bad thing.

I moored by bridge 100 at Flecknoe for my first night, gently getting pissed on sloe gin. The gin was quite fast, actually. After half a glass, I struggled to see well enough to type my daily journal entry. A relatively new moorer on Calcutt Boats’ Meadows marina gave me the potent brew. Shaun is a welcome addition to our legion of kindly boaters.

I managed to motivate myself enough the following day to cruise for forty-five minutes to Braunston. Life in the slow lane. What a pleasure. I looked forward to a midday meal in the Gongoozler’s Rest cafe boat, tackling a full English breakfast as I watched the world go by. I settled for a cold sausage roll on a canalised bench. The cafe owner had better things to do than cater for the Christmas wishes of a solo boater.

I treated myself to an evening Christmas meal in the boathouse. Another disappointment. Half a dozen limp whitebait to start and then the meal highlight, a steak and ale pie which tasted like an old boot. However, the bottle of merlot which accompanied the meal was excellent. I slid through liquid slurry on a pitch-black towpath back to my floating home. Wearing wellies and mud-stained trousers, I wasn’t the best-dressed diner in the pub, but I was well equipped for winter moorings on soggy towpaths.

The sun rises over winter Braunston

The following morning began with a glorious sunrise. I had been on the go for three hours by dawn, preparing for a full day at the helm.

Life is so much more comfortable in a house. Roll out of bed to a house already warmed by an automated central heating system, climb into a car, turn a key and then roar away. No effort or thought involved. Life on autopilot.

Day to day life afloat requires much more work, especially on Orient. 

My morning regime begins with the saloon’s Morso Squirrel stove. If the overnight temperature dips to zero, my thermometer usually registers sixteen degrees in the saloon area and thirteen in the bathroom and in the boatman’s cabin where I sleep. The first job of the day is to generate a bit of heat.

I empty the ash pan, riddle the grate, add more coal from the stove-side scuttle, refill the scuttle from a plastic storage box on the covered front deck and then clean the stove glass with a damp kitchen towel dipped in cold ash.

That’s the front of the boat sorted. Then I have to do battle with my fiddly Premiere range. 

The boatman’s cabin stove has a firebox no bigger than a margarine tub and a tiny ash pan. The Squirrel stays alight for months at a time. The back cabin range goes out every night. Not that I want it burning during the hours of darkness. Sleeping next to a glowing stove is an uncomfortable affair.

I empty the range firebox and ash pan and add a Zip firelighter. Then I top that with some kindling and a handful of coal briquettes, throw the back doors wide open to dispel the initial smoke and light her up. Then I tackle my vintage engine.

My Lister JP2M is a thing of beauty. Eighty-four years old, as strong as an ox, as fit a fiddle. I recently asked a vintage engine expert how many more years use I could expect from the old girl. “The world will run out of fossil fuel before she dies,” he assured me. That’s what you call a reliable engine.

My JP2 is a little more time consuming to maintain than a modern engine, but the maintenance regime is a pleasant chore. I use a hand pump to draw fuel from my main tank into the engine room day tank. Then I add a little engine grease, check three different oil levels, stroke the old girl lovingly and tell her how much I appreciate the effort she puts in. I may be single now, but I know that a little appreciation goes a long way with the remaining lady in my life.

With both stoves ticking over nicely, the engine mollycoddled and a substantial breakfast inside me, dawn broke, and I was ready to rock and roll.

I wasn’t particularly looking forward to the cruise. I’ll share a secret with you. Despite living afloat for ten years, cruising thousands of miles and handling hundreds of different narrowboats, tunnel passages have always filled me with apprehension. 

I like to feel in control. I am supremely confident that I can avoid possible incidents and accidents if I can see. Put me in a tunnel and remove a clear view of everything ahead of me, and I am scared witless. I am out of control, at the mercy of the confining tunnel walls and any novice boater zig-zagging towards me. I don’t like the feeling at all.

My route for the day included two tunnels, Braunston and Crick, 2,049 yards and 1,528 yards respectively. Two miles, an hour, heading towards a distant light speck, saturated by icy water pouring through a leaking tunnel roof. 

But the first of those unpleasant passages was a couple of hours away. A glorious sunrise lifted my spirit, as did a lady boat owner, dog walking through the Braunston flight. She stopped, chatted and then strolled ahead opening gates for me. Small kindnesses like that make solo boating so much more pleasant. As does having the right equipment for tunnel passages.

Braunston top lock is a stone’s throw away from Braunston tunnel’s western portal. I paused briefly to prepare Orient for the possibility of meeting oncoming boats. Orient has three tall chimneys and an equally long exhaust stack. I have to think carefully about their safety wherever I travel. In tunnels, with the possibility of my starboard side being forced next to low arches, this means removing my Squirrel and Kabola chimneys.

I turned on my tunnel light too, although it provides as little illumination as a flickering candle. But on this boat, I also have two things which have transformed my tunnel cruising; a powerful 12V hand-held lamp at the stern and my two-cylinder engine.

My good luck streak continued when I reached Watford’s seven lock flight. I left Orient tied beneath the locks and walked to the top to meet two volunteer lock keepers. “Bad timing,” warned one. “We’re about to start our lunch break, and we won’t finish until half-past three. And then we close for the day.” He relented when he saw my look of confusion. “Just kidding. Are you on your own? No problem. You stay on your boat, and we’ll see you up. You wouldn’t believe the amount of paperwork we have to do if you fall off and hurt yourself. You’ll do us a favour if you allow us to do all the work.” Who am I to argue? Lockkeepers deserve medals, and an ice cream or two in the summer.

I finished the day at Cracks Hill near Crick, where I proposed to Cynthia in September 2015. Four years have passed, and so much has happened. I owned James then and until I met Cynthia, expected to spend the rest of my days on England’s waterways. Three boats, a motorhome and a European adventure later I’m back on the canal network. I’m alone again but enriched by the many experiences I shared with my American wife.

On Christmas Day morning, I waded through ankle-deep towpath mud to a wooden bridge spanning the canal. A treacherous trudge through livestock churned muddy fields lead me to Cracks Hill summit. I sat for an hour under the old oak where Cynthia and I discussed our future plans, then returned to Orient alone to prepare for a chilly Christmas Day cruise.

A muddy mooring at Cracks Hill

Winter cruising is usually a quiet affair. Christmas Day was particularly so. I passed just one moving boat all day, helmed by a middle-aged man who appeared to have spent his Christmas morning sucking lemons. I smiled, he glared, I offered a cheery “Happy Christmas!’, he turned away. Maybe his piles were playing up. I left him to his own devices.

The Cracks Hill oak tree where I proposed

As the light faded from a predominantly dull day, I pulled onto a mooring marked on my Nicholson’s guide. The curse of the deep draughted boat struck again. Orient’s stern slid over shallow mud closer to the bank and then, as soon as I stepped onto the towpath, slipped away towards the canal centre. I moved a few feet, tried again, grounded, sweated for ten minutes pushing myself off the shallows and then gave up two feet from the bank on my third attempt. And there I stayed for two days.

There’s not much point cooking fancy Christmas Day meals for one. My festive fayre consisted of the reheated leftovers from the previous day’s Thai beef stir fry, a can of Stella and a glass of brandy. Fine dining at its best.

At the time of the year usually associated with family gatherings, conspicuous consumption and credit card debt, I saw no one and spent nothing. Alone? Yes. Lonely? No, not particularly. 

Loneliness is a state of mind. I have good friends to turn to if I need some company or a helping hand. But I value the sense of peace and tranquillity I enjoy when I’m boating on my own. Solo boating doesn’t suit everyone, but don’t knock it until you’ve tried it.

I didn’t see a soul for thirty-six hours. No boaters, runners, dog walkers or ramblers, just the gentle buzz of my stovetop fan, the tick of the brass clock on my galley wall and the occasional distant pop of a festive farmer blasting wildlife to bits. Merry Christmas little bunnies. 

I looked forward to Boxing Day, a period I planned to fill with unashamed self-indulgence.

I began by languishing in bed until 10 am. And then felt guilty for wasting so much of the day. Then I pottered. I sorted through the storage space beneath the back deck, emptied cupboards I haven’t been in since Cynthia’s passing, put my laundry away and cleaned and lit both stoves. Then I polished. The engine has never looked so good. I rubbed and buffed until my arms ached and the copper shone so brightly it gave me a headache.

Brass and copper polishing on Boxing Day. I need to get out more.

Then I realised that the headache was from coal fumes from the Premiere range. I flung open my back doors to let in some air and polished the boatman’s cabin brass. I was bored senseless by 4 pm. I’m no good at this relaxing lark. I did my pre-cruise checks for the following day, watched a film on Amazon Prime and slipped into bed early, ready for a few hours cruising to reach the network’s famous Foxton flight of ten staircase locks.

I hoped to find some company there too. By day five of my fourteen-day cruise, I hadn’t exchanged more than a word or two with anyone since leaving Calcutt. I needed more than a predictable conversation with my bathroom cabinet mirror.

I was on fire the following morning, rising at 5 am and ready to rock and roll by 8 am. Three and a half hours cruising on a bone-chillingly cold day. Dank, misty and thoroughly unappealing. So cold, in fact, that I nearly had to resort to wearing gloves.

I pulled onto a mooring above the Foxton flight. Foxton is the perfect place for vain boat owners to show off. I’m one of them, so I made sure that everything outside looked clean and tidy before I left the boat. And I noted my battery monitor reading too.

I had been monitoring my battery bank charge carefully every day. My bank of five 130ah AGM batteries failed towards the end of last year, just ten months after fitting them. Calcutt Boats supplied them, and they replaced the batteries without quibble. I was pretty sure that my charging regime wasn’t at fault. However, a little extra diligence wasn’t going to hurt.

Managing off-grid electricity is the most challenging aspect of living afloat as far as I’m concerned. The popular misconception is that running your boat’s engine for an hour or two a day is all you need to do. That, according to the experts, is not an efficient battery charging regime.

I have five 130ah batteries so you could be forgiven for thinking that I have 650ah at my disposal. According to Calcutt Boats highly skilled resident marina electrician, Dave Reynolds, the average liveaboard boater uses roughly 60ah a day. So, do I have a ten-day supply of electricity if I begin with a full battery bank? 

Not a chance.

For a start, depleting the battery bank past 50% shortens their life. My battery datasheet tells me that if I regularly run my battery bank down to zero, they’re likely to fail after just 250 cycles. If I run them down regularly to 20% capacity, my expected battery life increases to 500 cycles. The less I extract from the battery bank, the longer they’ll last. A happy balance for me is 50% discharge which should give me 1,000 cycles.

So, if I can safely take my battery bank down to 50%, do I have half of 650ah at my disposal?

No, sadly, I don’t.

I don’t fully understand this, but I have been assured that, despite being labelled 135ah batteries, their capacity is actually 105ah, so I have a total of 525 amp hours, 262.5 of which I can use.

Not so bad, you might think. If I’m an average boater using 60ah a day, I still have four days supply before I need to recharge my battery bank. Wrong again.

I would have a four day supply if I started with 100% capacity. However, if I’m using my engine alternator for charging, I can’t get anywhere close to fully charged. That’s regardless of the length of time I have the engine running.

At seventy amps, my alternator is man enough. The problem is with the batteries. The more depleted the battery bank, the easier they are to charge. I can recharge my batteries to roughly 80% capacity quite quickly. The remaining 20% takes much longer, far longer than I can justify running the engine. The only way to condition batteries properly is to hook them up to a mains supply. I believe that a decent solar array will help maintain my batteries reasonably well, but I need to do more research there.

I’ll be on a mains hookup when I return to Calcutt, so my off-grid charging regime isn’t an issue for the two weeks I’m cruising. I’ll be travelling full time within the next year or two. Before then, I need to fit some solar.

I popped into the cafe at the flight summit for a coffee and a bacon sandwich at lunchtime. And then, late afternoon, walked to the bottom of the flight to Bridge 61 for one of their excellent beef stews served in a giant Yorkshire pudding. Delicious.

I love the Foxton flight. With its pleasant walks, an imposing flight of ten staircase locks, the remains of the inclined plane boat lift, a cafe and two pubs, it’s a popular tourist destination. There can be hundreds of Gongoozlers on a sunny summer’s day. On the day I dropped down the flight a couple of dozen watched the boats go by. With the on-duty lock keepers doing much of the work, especially for solo boaters, a boat owner’s main job is answering questions.

“How fast does your boat go?” My average speed of two miles an hour doesn’t impress anyone.

“Does your boat has a toilet?” I told one guy that I keep my poo in a box. I thought he was going to vomit.

“Do you get a good television reception?” When I told the enquirer that I don’t own a television, the young mother gave me such a pitying look that I almost felt deprived. Modern-day life without access to dozens of channels of unadulterated crap? Unthinkable.

Did I mention that I love the Foxton flight?

The descent down through the Foxton flight was a dream. More lock keepers deserving medals. They insisted that I stay at the helm as they worked me through all ten locks. All I had to do was stand proudly on my back deck fielding questions and prepare myself for a painful cruise along the Market Harborough arm.

The problems began when I reached the bottom of the flight, starting with two swing bridges. I managed the first without help. “Grandad, look at that old man climbing on his boat like a monkey!” Don’t you just love children?

The second, a swing road bridge, would have delayed impatient motorists too long. I persuaded a couple on the towpath to do the hard work for me.

The real challenge was a shallow canal filled with reeds and leaves. A cruise which should have taken two hours from the bottom of the Foxton flight to Market Harborough took three. I knew I was in for an exciting time as I entered the arm when an approaching boat moved a few feet off the main channel to let me pass. “F*****g canal,” he muttered as his cabin tipped at an alarming angle and he ground to a halt.

“It’s good to see a boat owner taking his time on our canals,” commented one dog walker. I daren’t go any faster for fear of grounding immovably in the reedy shallows.

I grounded twice and listed as I slid over shallow mud flats several times. I crept into Market Harborough at dusk, carefully navigating around half-submerged logs and sunken branches, glad to reach the end of a tedious journey. And happy to get into a warm cabin.

The nasty cold knocking everyone for six back at the marina finally caught up with me. Luckily I had a couple of days to rest and recuperate at Market Harborough before the return cruise. Time to do nothing but eat, drink and obsessively watch my battery monitor.

Narrowboat pram covers protect your rear deck and provide additional living and storage space, but are they a practical addition when cruising?

I have a love-hate relationship with pram covers.

I love to hate them.

In case you’re not familiar with the term, a pram cover is canvass over a steel or aluminium frame. It’s often used to protect the rear deck of a cruiser or semi-traditional stern narrowboat. I don’t think that cruisers stern boats are as practical as traditional stern craft for living aboard, but that’s a highly subjective point of view. In the interest of balance, here’s a forum post written by a liveaboard boater who adores pram covers.

Anyway, from a boat handling point of view, I think pram covers stink. That’s another subjective point of view but bear with me. I think I can justify my dislike.

I have to handle different narrowboats every day. Boats are dragged onto Calcutt Boats slipway most days, swapped with a freshly blacked boat. The painted boat has to one returned to its mooring, carefully of course, because it’s hull is sporting a flawless coating of bitumen.

Marinas are notoriously tricky for boat handling. Flat bottomed narrowboats with acres of cabin sides don’t make the task easy. Even in the slightest breeze, they skate over the water like a toy plastic duck. Add a pram cover, and you compound your problems.

The pram cover increases wind resistance. What’s more, because you’re protected from the elements, you can’t feel the wind on your face. Knowing where the wind is coming from is essential. You always want to do any delicate manoeuvring into the wind and not against it. With a pram cover protecting you from the great outdoors, you don’t have a clue what’s happening outside. In fact, quite often, you can’t see where you’re going either.

Moving a marina narrowboat fitted with a pram cover spoils my day. I know it’s not a third-world problem, but I live in paradise. Insignificant issues are all I have.

Many aspiring narrowboat owners are seduced by the thought of weather-protected cruising. “Oh, how much fun,” they think, “cruising at a warm and dry helm on a rainy day!” No standing out in the elements enduring, or enjoying, fickle nature. It’s narrowboat ownership without getting cold and wet. And it’s narrowboat cruising often filled with stress. Consider this fictitious but realistic example.

The day begins well enough. You start your engine and reverse off your mooring. Then you head for the marina entrance with a smile on your face. You’re cocooned from the elements and feel smug as you pass a poor bloke at the helm of a trad stern boat, his legs bowed under the weight of his waterlogged jacket. You’re delighted you don’t have to get THAT close to nature.

You stand under a rainproof canvas cover fitted with plastic windows. With cold rain on the outside and warm bodies and a piping hot engine inside, you have the perfect recipe for condensation. Your enjoyable cruise now becomes a constant battle to keep your view ahead mist free. You give up eventually, roll down your opaque window and let the rain in.

“Things aren’t too bad,” you reason, “I’m still protected from the nasty wet stuff falling from above.” That’s fine until you reach your first low bridge.

Your pram hood shudders and compresses as it catches the bridge arch. Under a hail of dislodged mortar, you leave the bridge behind with only your pride damaged. You were lucky this time, but what about the next bridge, and the one after that? A carefree cruise in the rain has become a wet day of worry.

You’re moving slowly, debating whether to try lowering your hood to avoid potential damage when you hear the angry tooting of a narrowboat horn behind you. You peer through the haze of condensation covering your rear window and see the bow of a boat an arm’s length from your stern. You hear an angry shout from the back of the following boat and see a figure frantically waving for you to move over.

Now that you’re out of the way, the inconvenienced boat surges past. The helmsman shouts as he passes. “What’s the matter with you?” he demands angrily. “I’ve been trying to pass you for a mile. Can’t you see out of that thing?” He waves dismissively at your stern cover and speeds ahead shaking his head. You begin to think that two thousand pounds for a rear deck cover perhaps wasn’t the best use of your hard-earned cash.

Your confidence in your new all-weather cruising companion sinks even further at your journey’s midpoint. You’ve reached the junction where you plan to turn your boat before heading back to base. You’ve done enough cruising to realise the importance of working with the wind. It’s a breezy day, and you know that you need to turn into the wind. You’ll lose control of your boat if you turn against it. Before you had your pram cover fitted, you could feel any air movement on your face. Now you can’t. The cover blocks the wind and any chance of knowing which way to go. There are no visible trees to give you an indication so, knowing that you and a fifty, fifty chance of getting it right, you turn to the left… and get blown straight into a reed bank.

With the aid of your pole and a mooring rope thrown to a passing dog walker, you manage to get your boat around and then head sadly back to your mooring. That’s where your last pram cover problem awaits you.

Before you had your pram cover fitted, you had a time tested routine for coming onto your marina mooring. The prevailing wind pushed your starboard side away from the often slippery wooden finger pier. To prevent crashing into the boat moored on your port side, you were used to steering your boat inches away from the wooden walkway. You grabbed your centre line and stepped carefully off your rear deck. Then you could hold your craft out of harm’s way while your crew secured your mooring lines. Life isn’t quite so easy now that you have a pram cover in the way.

You realise to your dismay that your centre lines are now beyond reach. Your pram cover now occupies the space where the centre lines would usually terminate. Now the only way to reach your centre line is to sidle along your gunnel like a tightrope walker over a wet and muddy safety net. The manoeuvre is made more difficult by the vertical pram cover side. There are no handholds, and the cover pushes you back over the water. Rather than step off with your centre line, you are forced to jump off the boat without it and then hope that you can dash along the pier to grab the rope off your boat roof. It’s not a bad plan, but you fail.

A narrowboat pram cover – Note that the centre line is inaccessible from the stern

A traditional stern narrowboat (my boat, Orient) with accessible centre lines

Your boat bumps gently against the pier, and you step off. Before you can reach your line, a gust blows your boat out of reach and into your neighbour’s boat, the aptly named Too Shiny For Cruising. As usual, your neighbour is leaning over his gunwale, touching up waterline scratches with an artist’s paintbrush. Twenty tonnes of steel crashing sideways into his pride and joy does not please him. Today has not been a good day.

Even though my view is subjective, many narrowboat owners feel the same. Some of the narrowboats sold at Calcutt Boats are fitted with pram covers. Their new owners often cruise the canals close to Calcutt Boats for months after moving on board. Most set off on their maiden voyages with the pram covers intact. Some are taken off after a few short weeks. I was recently given the job of moving one such boat.

A lady phoned Calcutt Boats with some tragic news. Her estranged husband purchased a narrowboat on brokerage there earlier in the year. The police called to tell her that the man had died. He’d apparently fallen off his boat and drowned. She wanted Calcutt Boats to move both his craft and car and store them at the marina.

I was asked to bring the boat back from its canalside mooring four miles away on the combined Grand Union and Oxford canal close to Braunston Junction. I wasn’t particularly looking forward to the day. Much as I enjoy taking a boat for a cruise, and getting paid for it, the untimely demise of another inland waterways boater dampened my enthusiasm. As did the memory of the times I had moved this boat earlier in the year.

Fortunately, I didn’t have the pram cover problems to deal with. The owner clearly didn’t think much of rear deck covers either. The canvas panels lay in a sodden pile on the boat roof, and the aluminium frame was folded as flat as it would go. It wasn’t flat enough to be out of harm’s way, but folded and flexible was better than fixed and in my way. My two-hour cruise back to Calcutt in light rain was far more pleasant than it would have been if I had been encased in canvas.

One final noteworthy point about my journey; if you want to enjoy quiet cruising, don’t try it on a boat fitted with a Barrus Shanks engine. At tickover, the engine sounds like an enthusiastically rattled bucket of bolts, only not quite as pleasant.

Even on a dull day, the scenery was magnificent. Sheep flecked the shoulder of a nearby hill like woolly dandruff. A buzzard circled lazily overhead, and adolescent swans effortlessly kept as I negotiated the canal’s many blind bends. I’m sure that the natural waterway sounds would have calmed me if I could have heard them over the rattling engine. I was forced to cruise at slightly less than the speed of light to avoid the annoying tickover rattle. Nature lovers, choose your engines carefully… And think long and hard about fitting a pram cover.

Continued from A Creative Solution to Narrowboat Finance Part 1

Before we left Walter, he had agreed to reduce the asking price by €10,000 and defer the payment of the last €5,000 until we sold Julisa. We now owned a bigger and better boat. A boat, we thought, which we could use for winter living. A classic Dutch craft which would serve all our cruising and living requirements. Cynthia and I were delighted.

For a while.

Buying Dik Trom was a mistake. A big mistake, and it was all mine. I purchased the boat with my heart rather than with my mind. By then, I had six years of narrowboat ownership under my belt. And I had the accumulated knowledge shared with me by narrowboat fitters, marine electricians, painters and engineers at the Warwickshire marina where I lived and worked. I should have known better.

Dik Trom, by Dutch standards, was effectively insulated. Compared to English narrowboats, she was barely protected from cold weather at all.  

And she had acres of heat sapping glass plus an intermittently working heating system marginally more effective than a burning candle. As the autumn days shortened and the thermometer plummeted, so did our spirits and the temperature in our floating home. 

By December we were confined to our tiny galley and dining area. The blown air heater had stopped working by then, so we used a one-kilowatt electric heater to try to keep us warm. A bedsheet draped over the companionway steps prevented our precious hear from climbing four steps to the cockpit and its expanse of single glazed windows. We were almost warm enough in our small space, but damp and miserable.

The boat’s poor insulation allowed condensation to form on every surface. Climbing out of a warm bed to squeeze into damp clothing took tremendous willpower. At least I could look forward to a day in a heated workplace. I wasn’t quite so keen on the eight hours laying on my back painting the hulls of speedboats costing as much as English country houses, but I had more to look forward to than Cynthia.

My working days were warm but tedious. Cynthia also had tedium to look forward to while I was away. Still, she didn’t have moral boosting heat or a change of environment. She sat for hours on the boat alone, with nothing to do but contemplate her failing health.

The novelty of touring Europe without a care in the world was far behind us. We could afford to live in northern Europe in the summer and flee to the south of France to escape the winter cold. But only if I worked all summer doing an unhealthy and tedious job to supplement Cynthia’s pension. While I merely disliked the change in our circumstances, the damp, bone penetrating cold and the isolation had a dangerous effect on Cynthia’s health.

She couldn’t find the daily company she needed to help take her mind off her struggle with the simplest physical tasks. Solitude accelerated both her mental and physical decline. Cynthia’s weight loss alarmed me, as did her extreme reaction to the mildest of ailments. 

We needed to make an immediate change in our lifestyle for the sake of Cynthia’s health and our happiness, and we needed to do it quickly.

I couldn’t see a way out of our situation. One of the reasons we left England was Cynthia’s difficulty in staying long term with me in my country. As an American citizen, she was entitled to stay for a maximum of six months. Our marriage didn’t make any difference to her entitlement. But as we discovered to our dismay, getting permission for an extended stay in mainland Europe was just as tricky. By then, we had been wading through Dutch red tape for eighteen months. Our experience with a succession of reluctant government officials was a soul-destroying affair.

The novelty of extended foreign travel had well and truly worn off. Especially for me. I pined for England’s muddy ditches and the gaily painted narrowboats which cruised them. I would have returned to that lifestyle in a heartbeat, but I suspected at the time that Cynthia didn’t feel the same way. I didn’t want to fuel my desire to return to the UK by openly discussing the possibility. So I did what Englishmen do. I stiffened my upper lip, squared my shoulders and immersed myself in a life of unfulfilling tedium.

I underestimated Cynthia. She was a force of nature. If she sunk her teeth into an idea, she wouldn’t let go until it became a reality. And, I was delighted to discover, she was quite keen on exploring the concept of a return to England.

“I’ve been thinking,” she told me when I climbed into the cabin after another tedious day laying under millionaire’s playthings. “You are at your happiest messing about on the English waterways. Your face lights up when you talk about narrowboats. You miss your old life in England, don’t you?” That was a risky question for me to answer. I had enthusiastically agreed to Cynthia’s European travel plans and embraced the logistical challenges we faced both on the road and on the water. I enjoyed driving through exotic landscapes and meeting new and fascinating people. However, I missed England and the country’s magnificent waterways network.

But much as the thought of a return to England’s canals excited me, I couldn’t imagine how we would achieve it.

We had a collection of empty bank accounts between us. Our only equity was in a fifteen-year-old German motorhome and a 1984 Dutch motor cruiser. We could quickly move off the boat and live full time in the motorhome. That would allow us to instruct a broker to sell our Dutch summer home. However, selling a boat in the Netherlands can be a long-winded affair. Waiting a year or two is for an offer is common and we didn’t want to wait that long. Now that Cynthia had broached the subject, I knew that any delay would drive me mad. And push Cynthia further down the slippery slope of ill health and depression.

Even if we found a boat buyer willing to pay our asking price we still wouldn’t have enough money. We would need to sell the Hymer too, but we couldn’t do that until we had a narrowboat to live on and we couldn’t buy a boat until we sold the motorhome. The situation was hopelessly frustrating, especially after Cynthia’s next statement.

“I’ve found a Steve Hudson boat I know you’ll love.” Cynthia handed me her iPad and showed me the listing on Apolloduck. “The boat is called Orient. It’s the same length as your old boat, James, and it’s filled with beautiful fitted pine furniture.” Cynthia knew that one of my pet hates was a boat devoid of storage space. I’ve lost count of the number of adverts I’ve seen claiming a “spacious and attractively priced narrowboat ideal for full-time living.” In reality, the boat’s low price could only be achieved by the builder avoiding time-consuming and expensive internal joinery. A narrowboat offers very little living space at the best of times. Without plenty of storage space, a boat soon becomes cluttered. For someone like me, who insists on perfectly aligned cup handles and storage jar lids, too little storage space is distressing.

“Look at that,” she said, pointing at a photo. “Orient has a cabin at the back with its own stove. You could use it as your office.” Cynthia knew which buttons to press. Neither our Dutch boat nor our motorhome allowed either of us much privacy. Separate spaces at either end of the craft would give both us some much needed alone time. I began to fall in love with Orient.

Cynthia scrolled through the images. Orient looked gorgeous. I liked everything about her, apart from the monstrous green engine dominating its own room in the middle of the boat. I am neither a competent nor enthusiastic mechanic at the best of times. As far as I was concerned, engines were for hiding behind or under soundproof boards. I felt that engines on display wasted valuable living space and added unnecessary noise and pollution to the cabin. I suspected that keeping this old Lister in good condition would require a level of skill beyond me. Taking on a vintage engine would require some serious thought.

Then there was the price. Sixty-two thousand pounds. It might as well have been a million. We couldn’t raise the asking price even if we managed to sell both our motorhome and our Linssen yacht. We would need to take out yet another loan to buy Orient. And that was without the cost of a survey or any remedial work.

A boat buyer who doesn’t need to invest a few thousand pounds in essential replacements or repairs is a lucky man. The battery bank replacement often initiates the first of many visits to a rapidly disappearing bank balance. I had to change the batteries on my previous three boats as soon as I moved onto them. That would prove to be the case with Orient too. I l discovered to my dismay that there were thirteen on board. However, that particular treat was several months in the future. 

I needed to concentrate on buying the boat first. I wanted to budget five thousand pounds for essential repairs and upgrades. We needed to raise nearly seventy thousand pounds to make sure we covered all eventualities. Seventy thousand pounds more than our combined savings.

The situation looked hopeless. I told Cynthia that there was no point getting excited about a boat we simply couldn’t afford. There was no point in either of us investing time or money in such an unrealistic dream.

“If you had the money, would you buy it?” Cynthia asked. I looked at the photographs again. The engine in its own room didn’t appeal to me, and I wasn’t happy about the limited space in the boat’s saloon area but, apart from that, I loved it. Yes, I would buy it in a heartbeat if we had the cash. Cynthia sensed an opportunity.

“You’ve always wanted a Steve Hudson boat, so why don’t we focus on ways of making this work rather than dismissing the idea out of hand? Why don’t you look at this as an opportunity rather than a problem?” Why indeed. Why did I always dig deeply into any possibility in my life to find reasons not to pursue it? For Cynthia’s sake, I tried to be more positive.

Although we were living in Holland, I realised that viewing Orient wouldn’t be too difficult. I had taken our Hymer back to our Nottingham motorhome dealer two weeks earlier to have some essential repairs done under warranty. I planned to collect the motorhome the following week. As Orient’s mooring at Tattenhall marina was only an hour’s drive away, viewing the boat wouldn’t be a problem. I picked up my iPhone and dialled the listing contact number. I arranged to meet broker Steve Harrel to look at the boat and possibly take her for a test drive. 

And then I spent the rest of the week fretting about money.

The boat exceeded my wildest expectations. It was love at first sight. You know when you’ve found the right boat. It speaks to you. This beautiful craft whispered to me seductively as soon as I stepped on board. Even the engine room had a certain charm. If I could learn to maintain the aged Lister, I thought I could accept the loss of living space. Yes, this boat would do.

I took Orient for a chug around the marina. The two-cylinder Lister JP2 started first time from cold. The engine’s slow and steady thump sounded like the beat of a healthy and happy heart. It was a sound which would entrance many canalside visitors in the years to come.

I knew that the boat was perfect for us. I emailed dozens of photos to Cynthia. She loved what she saw and trusted my judgement. I was sure that we would settle into our new home quickly. Orient was my dream boat and hopefully my last if we could overcome one little problem. 

Money.

We contacted both of our banks. Cynthia was quickly approved for a £20,000 loan, but HSBC’s automated system laughed at me. With little income over the previous two years, I didn’t stand a chance. I knew that I would need to try less orthodox routes.

I borrowed £12,500 from two private lenders. Both of them bent over backwards to help me. We now had fifty per cent of the asking price. It wasn’t enough, but the money gave me the confidence to go to the broker with an offer.

I told Steve Harral that we wanted Orient. What’s more, we were prepared to pay the asking price, providing that everything on the boat was in working order and providing that we could have time to pay.

We didn’t expect our Dutch boat to sell quickly. Dutch boaters are a fussy bunch. They want everything in perfect working order, a craft painted, varnished and maintained to the highest standards. Dik Trom was an old girl, still in need of more tender loving care than I had time to give her. We bought her for €53,000 and then invested another €8,000 in essential repairs and upgrades. Hoping for a quick sale to a bargain hunter, we instructed our broker to advertise her at €49,000. Then we focussed on selling our six-wheeled home.

We purchased the Hymer for £30,000 in March 2016 and then drove the beast 30,000 through Europe. We knew that we would be lucky to get £25,000 for the motorhome if we wanted to sell quickly. We decided to advertise at that price initially to see if there was any interest. 

And then we had a lucky break.

During any boat buying process, one of the first questions I ask is why the owner wants to sell. What motivates him? Does he need the money or is finding the right home for his pride and joy more important? A little knowledge can help enormously.

We discovered that the owner and his wife wanted to spend less time boating and more quality time with their new grandchild. Between babysitting visits, they wanted to travel more and visit parts of England they hadn’t seen before. And they wanted to do it in a motorhome.

Our Hymer was left-hand drive. Because of that, and because England was the least motorhome friendly country of the eleven we toured, we knew that this wouldn’t be a suitable vehicle for them to use to explore England. But it would be perfect if they took it on a ferry or train over to France.

France was our favourite country for motorhome touring by a country mile. Most French villages and towns have free or low-cost motorhome parking, often with an open water supply and sometimes with free electricity too. The people are friendly, the scenery stunning and there’s more history than you can shake a stick at. We talked passionately to the broker about our experiences in France. We hoped that he would pass on some of our enthusiasm to Orient’s owners. 

He did.

The owners agreed to take our Hymer in part-exchange, and they accepted the £25,000 valuation without seeing the vehicle. The owner’s wife, Sue, explained. “We trust your judgement. You seem like honest folk, so I’m sure that the Hymer is in perfect condition. It wasn’t, and I made sure that she knew it. I reminded her that we had spent the previous two years living in it while we toured. However, we agreed to have the motorhome professionally cleaned before we handed it over. That was the plan anyway. Circumstances dictated otherwise.

Even with the Hymer part-exchange and three loans, we still didn’t have enough money. The only option was to further test the owners’ generous nature. We explained our predicament in detail and told them that we were a good bet. We had equity in an old but much-respected Linssen motor cruiser which we were confident would sell soon. We were honest people, we told him, boat lovers who took pride in their floating homes. We promised to lavish Orient with all the tender loving care that she deserved.

The Gods smiled upon us. Owners Stuart and Sue agreed to the sale on our terms; part cash, part motorhome exchange and the balance, £6,500, deferred until Orient sold. I couldn’t believe our good fortune. Cynthia just smiled contentedly and reminded me of the power of positive thinking.

We still had a great deal of work to do. Selling Dik Trom was the biggest challenge. Neither broker Steve or Sue and Stuart knew the difficulty we faced selling an older boat in Holland. Our Linssen was a needle buried under a bewildering haystack of craft for sale. Waiting a year or two for a vessel to sell was typical. We once saw a vintage sailing boat which had been for sale for a decade. All we could do was hope that our discounted selling price would attract serious interest.

In the meantime, we needed to move back to England. The first step was to make sure that Orient was all that she claimed to be. With years of experience in and around narrowboats, I was confident that a surveyor would find very little to worry us. I’ve been wrong many times in my life. This was one such occasion.

My mate, Russ, agreed to look at Orient for me. Russ was a Calcutt Boats fitter and a Boat Safety Scheme examiner. I trusted his judgement completely, and I was looking forward to him confirming that Orient was a gem among narrowboats. He wasn’t as complimentary as I hoped.

The gas locker configuration was downright dangerous and the multi-fuel stove unusable. Russ identified dozens of smaller faults too. All of them were either safety concerns or had the potential for costly remedial work in the years to come. He estimated that resolving all of the issues would cost £2,500.

We were lucky again. The owners agreed to take care of the problems before we moved on board. Even though Orient had two years remaining on its four year BSS certificate, I planned to have another done before we concluded the sale. Stuart and Sue agreed with that too, but circumstances conspired against us. Cynthia’s continued failing health was more of a concern. I would have saved another thousand pounds if I kept to my original plan. Still, my wife’s wellbeing was a higher priority, so the new BSS examination wasn’t done before we moved on board.

Christmas 2018 was an exhausting affair. We had just forty-eight hours to move our possessions. And then remove all traces from the motorhome of two years with fur shedding dogs. 

I failed miserably with the cleaning, despite a marathon scrubbing and polishing session on Christmas Day. Sue and Stuart arrived on Boxing Day to find me on the verge of a nervous breakdown. All we could do was promise to have the vehicle professionally valeted inside and out and move gratefully into our new home.

Yet another of Cynthia’s dreams had become a reality. It proved to be the last of her successes in a long and adventurous life.

This year has been a roller coaster for me. I am back on the English canals where I feel I belong. Sadly, I am here without my wife. I’m still coming to terms with her loss in April. Cynthia’s can-do attitude persuaded me to negotiate the purchase of a first-class narrowboat with no money in the bank. Sadly, she isn’t here to enjoy the result of her drive and determination. It’s one of my life’s saddest ironies.

This year has been financially tough. I further discounted our Dutch boat after Cynthia died. Cynthia’s brother Jeff, her estate executor, pressed for an early sale to repay her bank loan. I paid the final balance to Sue and Stuart after the boat sold in July. Cynthia’s estate had the rest. That just left me to settle the debts to my two private lenders. By the year-end, both of those will be gone too, and I’ll be able to reduce my seven-day working week.

I plan to celebrate with a ten-day cruise to Market Harborough. I’ll find a remote and tranquil spot to spend Christmas Day on the Grand Union Leicester Line’s peaceful summit pound and reflect on the joyful highs and tragic lows of an eventful year. I’ll raise a glass to Cynthia’s memory and to my future on the English waterways. Thank you, Cynthia, for the vision, optimism and determination which encouraged me to negotiate the purchase of my beautiful home with an empty bank account.

Discovery Day Update

Steve and Sue joined me yesterday for my first salesmanship training day of the month. The morning weather was awful. A lively breeze forced us to crab out way past Napton reservoir and blinded us with smoke from my roof-mounted exhaust stack. It wasn’t the most promising start to a day which Steve hoped would convert Sue to an ardent inland waterways enthusiast.

Sue suffers from acute motion sickness. She worried that a cruise on the gentle swell of England’s ordinarily placid canals would cause her more pain than pleasure. And the thought of tackling the rushing waters of a Grand Union canal lock terrified her.

Heavy rain throughout the morning failed to dampen their enthusiasm. Sue’s lock wheeling job didn’t begin until the end of the day. She enjoyed much of the cruise sheltering from the rain and basking in the heat radiating from my boatman’s cabin range.

Talk changed as the day progressed from whether they should buy a boat to what equipment they should buy when they did. As we tackled our sixth and final lock, Sue confided that locks aren’t nearly as intimidating as she expected. And she admitted that the exercise the liveaboard lifestyle entails would do them both a power of good. 

Sue and Steve chatted excitedly about visiting local narrowboat brokers as they left. Both were confident that neither motion sickness nor lock fear would play a part in their floating lives. It was a happy conclusion to a successful day.

If you are considering living afloat on England’s inland waterways, or if you are thinking about purchasing a narrowboat for recreational cruising, I urge you to join me for a day. You’ll learn how to handle a narrowboat safely, and you’ll gain valuable insight into life on the English waterways network.

You can read more about my Discovery Day service here and see and book available dates here.

October and the tail end of the hire boat season are almost upon us. Colder and wetter days keep many aspiring boat owners indoors. They remember balmy summer days strolling beneath weeping willows watching brightly painted narrowboats chug slowly along a thin ribbon of sparkling water. They remember the joy of spotting pairs of majestic swans leading flotillas of ungainly signets. And the lucky few who hired boats for summer holidays smile at the memory of the good-natured boat yard banter at the beginning of their idyllic breaks afloat.

They browse wistfully through the narrowboat sales listings on popular boating sites like Apolloduck and think about the life they could have. If only.

…If only I didn’t have to work…

…If only I didn’t have to… (insert excuse here)…

And arguably the most challenging barrier to overcome for many aspiring narrowboat owners.

…If only I had enough money in the bank.

A cash shortage may be all that’s standing between you and your boating dreams, your hope for a less stressful and more tranquil way of life. Especially where buying your boat is concerned.

Rather than sabotaging a potentially happy future, search for the solutions rather than the problems. I talk from personal experience, although I needed constant coaching from one of life’s greatest optimists when I purchased my last two boats.

Let me give you some examples of creative narrowboat purchasing from my own experience.

I moved onto my first narrowboat on 2nd April 2010, my fiftieth birthday. I wasn’t interested in boating back then. The neglected boat, James No 194, was in a terrible state. The tired old girl had paint hanging in ribbons from the plywood cabin, and the engine room and aft cabin were inches underwater. I didn’t care. I was licking my wounds after saying goodbye to the business I had worked so hard to grow for fifteen years. My business failure was followed a few short months later by the demise of my twenty-year marriage.

The old boat was all I could afford. I paid a peppercorn rent to the owner, Roger Preen, my boss at the marina, and promised to do all I could to help prevent the boat’s further decline.

I instantly fell in love with the boating lifestyle in general and James in particular. Although I could never quite get my head around calling a boat a man’s name and then referring to it as “she”.

After renting James for eighteen months, I wanted to return my home to its former glory. Despite peeling paint and gunnels hidden under a thick layer of crunchy rust and a roof which leaked like a sieve, she was beautiful inside. James had a cabin fitted with gorgeous fitted pine furniture and, at the stern, a classic Mercedes engine waited to push the boat gently along England’s connected canals and rivers.

But I wasn’t prepared to invest any money into my home unless I owned it. Even though James hadn’t moved from her mooring in over a decade. Roger’s wife, Rosemary, often used the old girl to entertain her fellow artists. She was emotionally attached to the boat, so she was reluctant to part with James.

I managed to eventually persuade her that the boat would be better off with me. I told her that James needed to be pampered, painted and polished regularly rather than used for occasional summertime parties.

When Rosemary reluctantly agreed to sell, I dropped my bombshell.

I worked at the marina at the time, helping maintain the company’s beautiful and expansive grounds. The work was as enjoyable as the pay was awful. I supplemented my income with products I sold on my fledgeling boating website. I had no savings and very little disposable income. I couldn’t afford to buy a takeaway meal, let alone a boat.

I couldn’t afford the boat, but I had nothing to lose by asking.

My brief conversation about the purchase went something like this;

“Thank you for agreeing to sell James to me. I know that you’ll love what I plan to do with her. There’s just one little problem. I don’t have any money. Will you allow me time to pay for your lovely boat?”

The answer from my boss both surprised and delighted me. “Here’s the deal,” he offered immediately. “You can pay me what you want when you want. I don’t mind how little or how much you pay me each month. Take as long as you want, but you can’t stop working for me until you’ve paid for the boat.”

How’s that for a win-win deal? I worked hard to keep the marina looking good. As far as I was concerned, and I still feel the same way, Calcutt Boats has two of the prettiest marinas on the network. Working there was a pleasure. My boss recognised that and was happy to lock me into working a few years at the marina. I was delighted with the outcome. I think he was too.

Three years passed before I could pay my final instalment. By that time, I had also invested a substantial sum into the boat’s refurbishment. I couldn’t have switched to a floating lifestyle without Roger’s generous assistance. I repaid his kindness by resigning as soon as I made the final payment so that I could cruise the network full time. I’m not proud of myself.

I purchased James No 194 using an informal hire purchase agreement

You might wonder how this helps you. Surely, you’ll argue, people and situations like this are unique?

Arrangements like this, or their potential, are far more common than you might expect.

Here’s another example.

My wife, Cynthia, and I sold our respective homes in 2016, my boat and her house in Arlington, Vermont and crossed the English Channel for a life of leisure on the continent. We toured far and wide in our Hymer motorhome, from the north coast of Denmark in the north down to Spain’s southernmost tip.

But much as we enjoyed our travels we both missed boating.

The Netherlands’ vast network of connected canals, rivers and lakes enchanted us. We toured extensively through the Dutch landscape of low fields, working windmills and nodding tulips. The more time we spent parked close to waterways filled with bobbing boats, the more we wanted to join them.

We had enough money between us to purchase a classic Dutch motor cruiser. Then we spent much of our remaining savings on improvements and essential repairs. Julisa was a quality boat but, with its wooden top and canvas roof, she wasn’t suitable for anything other than summer cruising. After a few short weeks back on the water we talked about buying a bigger boat, a craft better suited to three or four season cruising and maybe, just maybe, a boat suitable for living on permanently.

Dutch motor cruiser, Julisa. The only boat I’ve purchased outright.

We found what we thought was the perfect boat moored at a small boat club on the outskirts of Antwerp. We loved everything but the name. Dik Trom was the Dutch answer to England’s Billy Bunter; a fat boy, sorry, calorically challenged young man, renowned for his greed. Dik Trom was also famous for riding a donkey backwards. Given that I had a backwards approach to DIY, I felt an immediate connection with the boat.

Our new floating home, a 1984 Linssen motor cruiser, suited its name perfectly. She was short and fat and ate as much as possible. I was used to my Mercedes engine, pushing my narrowboat slowly along a series of muddy ditches. The thirty-eight horsepower engine consumed a modest litre an hour. Dik Trom, with nearly three times as many horses under the bonnet, used three and a half litres an hour to surge through Holland’s deep and extensive waterways. She was an expensive girl to please.

Dik Trom’s owner, Walter, was a kindly and retired pilot who lost the mobility needed to climb aboard his boat. Dik Trom had already been for sale for two years, priced far too ambitiously at €63,000 (£55,000). The boat’s asking price was too much for us. Most of our money was tied up in our German motorhome and our Dutch motor cruiser. But we wanted Dik Trom, so we needed to find a creative solution, one which would allow the boat without me having a nervous breakdown.

I don’t feel comfortable with an empty bank account. I worry and fret If I don’t have a financial safety net. Ever since the UK’s Revenue and Customs department forced me and my failing business into bankruptcy in 2008, money shortage has terrified me.

Cynthia, on the other hand, was always the eternal optimist. “What’s the worst that can happen?” she would often ask. She was trying to reassure me but asking me something like that is looking for trouble. I have a vivid imagination, especially where doom and gloom is concerned. I pictured unforeseen medical emergencies; Cynthia losing her pension, dwindling interest in my website and anything I offered for sale. I imagined a country which didn’t want to employ me under any circumstances. I worried about doggy disasters requiring expensive surgery, homelessness and poverty, and the pair of us wandering the streets of Europe without a penny between us.

I was so far out of my comfort zone that I had trouble breathing.

But Cynthia was as persuasive as I am easy to persuade. “You have skills,” she reassured me. “You’ll have no problem earning money if you set your mind to it.” Yeah, right. I owned and managed small businesses for most of my life. I was fifty-seven with no employment history and no skills likely to persuade a potential employer to hire me. I wasn’t keen on exploring that route.

“You’re a talented photographer,” she assured me. “You can easily earn money by selling your work online.” I didn’t consider myself talented, nor did I think that selling anything online was easy especially photographs. There were hundreds, maybe thousands of websites offering millions of pictures uploaded by both amateur and professional photographers. Few of them attracted buyers. Professional photographers using the latest and most expensive digital cameras invested an extraordinary amount of time and effort for little financial return. My photos were reasonably well composed, but my handheld iPhone camera pictures didn’t have the pin-sharp clarity necessary to encourage potential buyers to part with their hard-earned cash.

I quickly dismissed the idea too, so Cynthia tried a different line of attack.

“You are a gifted writer,” she told me. “You can earn money from your scribbling.” Was she serious? Writing blog posts for narrowboat enthusiasts hardly put me in the same league as J.K. Rowling. I earned a little from the site’s guides and packages. But the longer I stayed in Europe far away from England’s muddy ditches, the less I made. My income potential would probably be higher in a French burger bar.

My most realistic opportunity to earn some cash was to apply for a position at one of Holland’s many boatyards, boat clubs or marinas. Despite having the practical skills of a three-year-old, at least I could work hard. I reasoned that, with tens of thousands of boats using The Netherlands’ vast waterways network, boatyard employers must need someone to do their grunt work.

Then I would have the language barrier to overcome — something else to worry me. But my endless money concerns were slowly being eclipsed by a desire to return to life on the water.

Henry Ford said, “Whether you think you can or you think you can’t… you’re right!”

Cynthia eventually persuaded me to think positively and imagine that I could find paid employment. She encouraged me to step far outside my comfort zone, walk a boat buying tightrope without a financial safety net and empty my bank account. “Everything will be all right in the end,” she assured me.

I managed to find employment at the prestigious marina where we had collected Julisa. The company needed someone to apply antifouling systems to an endless procession of expensive yachts. It wasn’t employment which gladdened by heart, but it would help with the bills if we were to buy another boat.

Even with a bridging loan from Cynthia’s bank, we were still €15,000 short, so we asked the broker to arrange a meeting with owner Walter.

Walter was a kind and compassionate man. He had lived on or near the water for most of his working life. Walter was passionate about boats and boating and loved his Linssen yacht. We met Walter for coffee in his canalside clubhouse. He talked about his frustration now that he lacked the mobility or energy to maintain his beautiful boat properly. “A boat should be cherished and treated with respect,” he sighed. “I can’t do that any more. She needs to go to someone who will look after her.”

Dik Trom’s owner agreed to reduce the asking price by €10,000 and give us time to pay the €5,000 balance

That was our opportunity. I showed Walter photographs of James throughout her five-year restoration project and photos of the work we had done on Julisa. I convinced Walter that Dik Trom would be in good hands. I talked enthusiastically about the jobs I would tackle immediately. I planned to renew the antifouling, paint the hull and superstructure, varnish any exposed woodwork and tackle a long list of minor repairs. Much as he was encouraged by my enthusiasm, Cynthia enchanted him with her warmth and compassion. Before we left Walter, he had agreed to…

Read A Creative Solution to Narrowboat Finance Part 2…

Discovery Day Update

I’m grateful for Jackie’s kind words. Her feedback is similar to hundreds of testimonials that I’ve received over the past half decade. I haven’t shared the  comments with you to show off (although it’s nice that I can), but to emphasise that, if you want to increase your chances of enjoying your time afloat and purchasing a problem free boat, you will be in very good hands. You can find out more about my Discovery Day service here. I hope that you can join me on an idyllic and instructive day out on the cut.

What a glorious bank holiday weekend! One of the few in recent years with decent weather and hot enough to encourage every man and his dog out onto the cut. So hot in fact that most of the marina based boaters who ventured out onto the cut moored rather than cruised and left the waterways around here virtually free.

The extreme heat also encouraged many boaters to remove far too much clothing or wear garments better suited to a secluded beach.

I worked on Calcutt Boats’ wharf on bank holiday Saturday. The short-staffed wharf crew needed help to prepare nine hire boats for the afternoon’s guests. I usually work on my own, so I welcome the opportunity to share a little workplace banter. 

After a busy morning moving and preparing boats, we sat at a shaded table on the lawn close to our reception for lunch. A group of visiting boaters walked down from the lock. A stocky and impressively muscled lady in a pale blue mini dress strolled by, guiding an elderly man. The unsteady gent clung to a bulging bicep as the lady guided him towards Calcutt’s chandlery. Noticing that the shop was closed, she turned a stubbled chin towards us and in her best Barry White bass asked, “Oi lads, do you sell rolling tobacco?”

She was joined by an even more outrageous friend wearing a tiny floral bikini. The two scraps of lycra did little to conceal her beer belly, hairy forearms or a pair of testicles better suited to a Hereford bull. Users of England’s inland waterways are generally an accepting bunch. We laughed quietly and then focussed on the task of preparing a fleet of floating homes for our holiday hirers. 

There’s rarely a dull day on the inland waterways.

I had two real and overly hot ladies out with me on Sunday. Jackie and her friend, Alma. Jackie booked her date a month ago. She emailed me to discuss details and raise her concern about the weather. Jackie was worried about the summer heat. “Don’t worry,” I assured her, “You’re going to spend a day on the canals in England in August. Bring gloves and a warm coat!”

Jackie brought clothing for every eventuality, apart from a scorching Mediterranean sun blazing from a cloudless sky. The thermometer peaked at thirty-four degrees. Standing on Orient’s back deck with the sun bouncing off the canal’s mirrored surface was exhausting. Alma watched the world go by from the comfort of a shaded chair on Orient’s front deck for much of the afternoon, leaving heat hating Jackie at the helm. We drank enough water to float a battleship on our return journey and tried to avoid touching bare metal.

As usual on a bank holiday weekend, Calcutt’s three lock flight was pandemonium. Novice Black Prince and Napton Narrowboat crews struggled to understand safe or even effective lock passage on the way down. Kate Boats’ hirers suffered similarly on their ascent.

A Kate Boats crew brought the navigation to a halt at the top of the flight. The canal widens at an unofficial winding hole, next to the water point and opposite the top lock landing. It’s possible, just, to turn a seventy-foot boat there with care. The inexperienced helmsman decided to turn his sixty-five-foot craft there, even though the navigation width was reduced by a boat on the lock landing waiting to go down. He managed to wedge his boat across the canal with his rear fender bent double against the waiting narrowboat.

Half a dozen boaters formed an impromptu tug of war team and hauled the hire boat out of harm’s way. There was no harm done, and everyone had another chaos on the cut tale to recount.

I said goodbye to my guests and dropped down the flight again to my mooring. I’d had enough after nine and a half hours cruising in tropical conditions. I moored Orient and then dived headfirst into an ice-cold bath of Stella Artois. I felt much better when I surfaced.

I’m slowly working my way through Orient’s to-do list. The most pressing and most expensive is to alter my saloon seating. The current arrangement is exceptionally uncomfortable. I donated the boat’s two leather captain’s chairs to Tattenhall marina’s workshop tearoom as soon as I moved on board. They were comfortable but used far too much valuable space, so I was left with a set of folding furniture; two chairs and a pine table. The pine table wobbles precariously on its single wooden leg. The two canvas seated chairs are so uncomfortable that I can’t use them for more than an hour without losing all feeling in my backside.

Orient’s saloon before we moved on board

The solution is to install an L shaped upholstered bench seat and a table with desmo legs which converts into a bed. The upholstered seating will be multi-purpose. It will double as storage units for larger boat items such as folding chairs for the towpath, an anchor plus its chain and rope and a vacuum cleaner. They’re all things which don’t have a tidy home at the moment.

Temporary seating to numb the most padded bum

Wharf House Narrowboats will do the work which is planned for early October. They’re also going to fit a new pair of front doors to replace the flimsy pair currently in use. Wharf House will further reduce my struggling bank balance by replacing both rotting rear hatch runners and building me a new hatch.

One important consideration when living full time afloat is managing the logistics of staying on board if any work needs doing. Orient will need to remain at their workshop in Braunston for two weeks. I can’t afford to take any time off so I will need to commute. This is one of the few occasions when car ownership would be handy. I’ll have to borrow a car, rent one or take time off work. I don’t know what’s going to happen yet. I don’t really fancy a six-mile commute along a towpath at either end of a physically demanding day, but maybe that’s the way I’ll have to go. Much as I could do with the time off work, I need the income to pay for Orient’s new woodwork. I have a month to come up with a solution. I had another little job to organise while I’m waiting.

I brought Orient south from Tattenhall marina in February, five weeks after applying three coats of Keelblack to my hull. For three days of the journey, from Wolverhampton to Warwick, I forged a path through virgin ice. Half an inch of frozen water is more than enough to strip protective paint from a boat’s hull. The three inches of ice I crashed through on my journey through Birmingham scoured my waterline like an industrial grinder. I reached Calcutt marina with a waterline devoid of any protection. I tied Orient to my rusty dump barge mooring, gave myself a mental pat on the back for reaching Calcutt safely and promptly forgot about my hull.

I’m repainting it before the weather turns. The company allows staff to use the slipway at a reduced rate on the rare days when it’s not being used for scheduled work. There was a vacant slot this weekend. 

I will spend the next couple of nights with my hull high and dry. I’m on the slipway now, watching the dawn light strengthen on a chilly morning.

Managing a solid fuel stove at this time of the year is a pain in the backside. Cold mornings – it’s 7 a.m. and one degree Celcius as I write this – are often followed by warm days. I light the stove to combat the early morning chill. The cabin heat continues to build until, by lunchtime, the inside of the boat often feels like a sauna. Roll on the winter’s cold days and nights so that I can have the stove on full time and not have to worry about heatstroke.

Orient was dragged out of the marina on Friday. I had an opportunity to see how the underwater sections of my Keelblack coated hull have fared during the last nine months. Sadly, not very well at all.

I expected bare steel and signs of rust on the waterline after its icy scouring. I wasn’t prepared for the dozens of golfball-sized brown marks under the waterline. This kind of damage’ wouldn’t have happened with bitumen.’ I’m all in favour of saving the planet by using green products, but not if I have to risk weakening an essential part of my floating home.

I’ve switched back to bitumen.

My hull now looks brand new again. I’ll add a few marks during next weekend’s Discovery Day cruises, but my waterline will be safe from rust for another year or two.

Unlike my cabin roof.

That’s a job for this afternoon. I want to catch the couple of dozen pea sized rust marks starting to show through the grey roof paint. I’ll treat the spots with Hammerite Kurust this afternoon and then hope that the half tin of grey paint left on board matches the rest of the roof. It won’t match of course, so a full roof repaint is on the cards before the year ends.

This rust needed stopping in its tracks

The saloon chimney collar after a little tlc

You can see now why narrowboat maintenance has so much in common with the Forth bridge.

In my last blog post, I promised to write an A -Z of everything to do with narrowboats. That, as you can imagine, is quite a tall order. I’ve begun the task with the letter A and Aerials. 

If you’re a regular blog reader, you’ll know about my technical and practical ineptitude. And you’ll also have come to the conclusion that I’m occasionally (exceptionally) opinionated. 

To make this new A -Z section as useful as possible, I would like your help if you are a narrowboat owner. If you have anything constructive to say about aerials, the first item on my listing, or if you want to correct anything that I’ve written, please get in touch. You can either leave a comment below or send me a message.

Right. On with the listing.

Aerials

I try wherever possible to be objective, but forgive me if I stray far from the path for a moment.

I don’t see the point of having a tv set on board. I don’t see the need for a tv set. Period.

I haven’t succumbed to sessions in front of the evil eye since I moved onto my first narrowboat in April 2010. I thought I needed one and invested hours in researching the best method of ensuring that my digital flat screen received a mind-numbing variety of free channels. I had my traditional tunnel and bridge snagging aerial replaced with a small, neat and effective white plastic dome. 

The Digidome SLx comes with a kit to fix it to vertical walls. The steel elbow needed modifying to allow the aerial to be installed on a boat roof. Once fitted and connected, I had sixty channels of tedious television to suck free time out of my evenings. After a few months, on the verge of a vegetative state, I turned off my TV set for the last time.

There’s a flat-screen TV on board Orient. I turned it on once on a pre-purchase visit, watched blocks of colour from a barely received signal flash on the screen a few times and turned it off again. That was the set’s only use.

I have a decent laptop, a 13” MacBook Pro, and an Amazon Prime account. I can watch films and episodes from an endless selection of popular television series if I want a televisual treat. 

And then there’s YouTube. Did you know that if you watched end to end video clips twenty-four hours a day, viewing the video platform’s catalogue would take 60,000 years? I limit myself to an occasional session watching comedy panel show clips MORE HERE

I realise that I am in the minority. I am missing the gene that makes people want or need to be part of mainstream society. I suspect that you will want a working tv on board, so you will need an aerial.

Getting a decent signal on board can often be a challenge. Decent reception requires line of sight to the transmitter, something which you will struggle with on many low lying canals. And then on urban moorings, tall buildings will block your line of sight too.

I have seen many attempted solutions on my travels. One is to bolt a household television aerial to the top of a vertical scaffolding pole fixed to the forward cabin bulkhead. This method is not particularly aesthetically pleasing and is labour intensive. The pole is usually too hight to pass through tunnels or bridge holes, so it needs to be removed and replaced for travelling.

I currently have a roof-mounted version of this type of aerial. It’s mounted on a fixed height pole. The base is accessible in my Kabola boiler cupboard. The problem with this design is water ingress through the roof fitting. A Digidome type aerial removes this problem. The dome shelters the cable access hole. And because the dome is low profile, there’s no chance of catching it in a tight tunnel or bridge hole arch.

Here’s a post I wrote about aerials seven years ago…

https://livingonanarrowboat.co.uk/narrowboat-tv-aerial-the-perfect-choice-for-your-boat/

And here’s some more information on the excellent FitOutPontoon website…

https://www.thefitoutpontoon.co.uk/av-communication/aerials/ 

Discovery Day Update

I’m grateful for Jackie’s kind words. Her feedback is similar to hundreds of testimonials that I’ve received over the past half decade. I haven’t shared the  comments with you to show off (although it’s nice that I can), but to emphasise that, if you want to increase your chances of enjoying your time afloat and purchasing a problem free boat, you will be in very good hands. You can find out more about my Discovery Day service here. I hope that you can join me on an idyllic and instructive day out on the cut.

Another happy Discovery Day cruise guest

Our lovely English weather is back to normal. Wet, windy and chilly days with occasional sunny spells. And nights cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey.

Like many other boaters at the marina, I have been toying with the idea of lighting my stove. I’ve resisted the temptation so far. The evenings on Orient are usually warm enough thanks to the sun’s heat during the day. However, the mornings are a little chilly.

My solution is to boil a kettle in the morning and leave the gas ring burning for ten minutes. Thanks to Orient’s effective spray foam insulation, my cabin heats up very quickly. The difference is remarkable compared to the heat retention on my old boat. James had polystyrene insulation. It’s a reasonable insulator but sometimes crumbles, leaving cold spots which quickly suck out the cabin heat.

My front deck view on warm evenings after a hard day at the marina

I purchased ten bags of coal briquettes in early April. I have six bags left thanks to effective insulation, global warming and the tendency to get hot and bothered when fellow boaters do silly things.

I started to write last week about odd behaviour that I have witnessed on the Calcutt flight of three locks. I had another exciting experience mid-week when I took a boat from the marina up through Calcutt bottom and middle locks to our wharf.

Usually, the first boat into a double lock goes in on the towpath side. The towpath side is the most practical side to use to work through a flight of locks. Boaters stick to their chosen position as they progress through a lock flight.

That’s the etiquette anyway.

As I negotiated our marina entrance, I noticed a narrowboat already in the lock on the towpath side. There was a free space next to it, but the offside gate was closed. A boater stood with his hands on his hips, staring at me as I tied up to the lock landing.

“Aren’t you coming in?” he asked, quite aggressively, I thought.

“Yes,” I replied, “but as I can’t get my boat over the gate, I need to tie up so that I can open it.” Cynthia always advised me to avoid sarcasm if possible.  It certainly didn’t appear to help matters with my new lock buddy.

He shook his head and shouted. “You don’t need to do that. Just push the gate open with your boat.”

There were several problems with his suggestion. Firstly, I didn’t have a bow fender on the customer’s boat that I was moving. Driving ten tons of steel into a couple of tons of oak wouldn’t do the boat or any of its internal fittings any favours. What’s more, the craft was quite small and light. If I tried to do what he suggested, there was a good chance that my little boat would bounce off the massive oak gate and bounce into his stern. As he didn’t look the friendliest man in the world, I didn’t think he would have appreciated that.

Just as importantly, as far as I was concerned, was the damage that I could do to the expensive lock gates. A pair can cost as much as £20,000. If a pair of gates are used carefully, they will last between 20 and 25 years. If narrowboats regularly ram them to save the owners a couple of minutes tying the boat up and opening them properly, the gates won’t last nearly as long.

So I tied my boat up to the lock landing, walked past the unhappy boater, negotiated the upstream gate, ran down the chamber’s opposite side, opened the offside gate and returned to my boat. The man was still standing with his hands on his hips and a scowl on his face. I suspected that our three lock ascent wasn’t going to be filled with lively conversation.

Mr Unhappy gave me the kind of look that a seasoned boater usually reserves for complete novices, and walked to the upstream gate ready to raise his paddle. I brought my boat into the lock next to his, climbed the escape ladder holding my centreline, and tied it to a convenient bollard. By now, he had his windless on the paddle gear ready to let water into the empty lock. He looked at me impatiently, waiting for me to reach the paddle opposite him.

The etiquette in an ascending lock is for both upstream paddles to be raised very slowly initially. Quickly raising the paddles lets a torrent of water into the lock. The turbulence flow can rattle the boats together alarmingly. The water races to the downstream end of the lock and then surges back towards the upstream gates driving the boats forward like arrows from a bow. Any unsecured craft can ram the lock sill with great force and cause considerable damage to the boats, their fittings and their contents.

If I’m going through a lock flight with an experienced and responsible boater, I don’t bother tying up. I didn’t know this guy, and I didn’t particularly like his attitude, so securely tying Orient’s centreline was a worthwhile precaution.

I reached my paddle after closing the downstream gate behind my boat. “Aren’t you ready yet?”  my miserable lock partner asked, huffing in exasperation.

“I’m ready,” I replied, “but maybe you had better close the gate behind your boat before you let any water in.”

The unhappy man threw his windlass on the ground and stormed off to close his downstream gate, trying to hide his embarrassment at making such an obvious mistake.

Communication is the key to a successful and harmonious lock flight passage with an unknown boat crew. My miserable lock partner seemed interested in neither conversation nor harmony. He surged out of the lock without a backward glance, narrowly missed the bow of an oncoming boat and clipped my front fender with his stern as he cut across me to switch sides in the next lock. At least he remembered to close his downstream gate this time. But not his upstream gate as he left the second lock.

I thought I would leave his misery behind as I reversed onto our wharf. Sadly he followed me to buy purchase diesel and seize another opportunity to spread light and joy. “That’s not very good, is it?” he asked no one in particular as he waved a dismissive hand and three of the company’s thirteen strong hire fleet moored on the wharf. “If you can’t rent out all of your boats at this time of the year you might as well give up!” He left before any of the wharf staff could wrap an anchor chain around his neck and toss him into the murky water beneath his rusty boat.

Happy Calcutt wharf staff with equally happy customers. Not all of them are quite so jolly.

The following day, I saw another mistake on the flight. This time, it wasn’t an error in technique, but a fundamental boat buying mistake.

Three or four months ago a widebeam boat was brought to Calcutt Boats by road transport and lowered into the marina.

The boat wasn’t really suitable for life on England’s inland waterways. It had been purchased for a song by a somewhat confused individual who planned to use it as a floating home as he cruised the canal network.

The boat had many faults. Widebeams are difficult enough to cruise in at the best of times. Most of the craft on the Midlands’ canals, even the wide canals, are narrowboats. They take similar lines along the waterway and through the canals’ many bridge holes. They plough a relatively deep and debris free channel along the waterway as they pass. Widebeam boats straddle this channel and often ground. They are also too wide to pass through bridge holes easily. Widebeam helmsmen negotiate bridge holes exceptionally carefully. Consequently, they pass through them at a snail’s pace, often resulting in a queue of inpatient narrowboat owners in their wake.

The new owner of this Dutch styled widebeam had several additional problems to contend with.

The most significant, perhaps, was the wheelhouse height. Most of the staff at Calcutt Boats, boaters who knew the local waterways very well indeed, were convinced that the new owner would be unable to negotiate all, or indeed any, of the local bridge holes.

What’s more, the engine didn’t work, the boat had no insulation, and there was no heating on board. In fact, the boat was nothing more than an empty shell once the new owner finished working on it.

He wasn’t aware of any of the problems he faced. His judgement was clouded by a complete lack of knowledge about boating on England’s inland waterways, a misplaced sense of optimism, and vast quantities of strong lager.

When the marina management discovered that the boat’s engine wasn’t working, they allowed the new owner to stay moored next to the slipway for a few days until he could resolve the problem. Unfortunately, he didn’t have any money to pay for someone to examine the engine, nor did he have either tools or knowledge to sort out the problem himself.

A routine developed over the following week. The enthusiastic owner would spend a couple of hours in the morning ripping the existing internal fittings apart and leaving them in untidy piles on the adjacent pontoon. A drink induced stupor would overtake him by mid-morning, and then he would spend the rest of the day sitting inside his empty shell surrounded by equally empty cans.

He hadn’t made any noticeable progress after his first week. In fact, the situation appeared to be worsening. He had removed most of the boats internal fittings, so the craft sat higher in the water, further reducing any chance of him negotiating the local bridges.

He didn’t have the inclination, or the ability, to pay for a mooring, so he was asked to leave. Over the following week, the poor guy poled his boat out of the marina, and then pulled it’s along the towpath for a couple of miles like an unsteady two-legged pit pony. He eventually found a convenient mooring. He had neither mooring pins nor a lump hammer on board so he could only stop where canalside objects offered anchor points for his bow and stern lines.  He stayed in the same place for several months, surrounded by cans of strong lager and a haze of fragrant smoke.

He tried to sell his white elephant during frequent visits to local pubs. No one was interested, especially as he was asking £10,000 for a boat which couldn’t move under its own steam.  Even if it could,  it wasn’t able to travel further than a couple of miles along the canals because of low bridges.

Anyway, he turned up at the marina entrance last week. He planned to tie up next to the slipway, but he didn’t get that far.

Calcutt Boats’ slipway is often booked by owners of craft which aren’t moored at the marina. This was one such reservation. A potential buyer reserved a day for a wide beam to be lifted out of the water so that it could be surveyed. We didn’t know then that this was the same boat.

The light finally dawned when the widebeam owner, two hours later than anticipated, walked into our reception reeking of booze and marijuana.

He told us that he had a problem with his engine which, he claimed, had been working for most of his journey. The frustrated surveyor had been waiting for an hour for the boat to arrive. He offered to try to pinpoint the problem.

The surveyor returned half an hour later, shaking his head in dismay.

“There is no point in even lifting the boat out of the water,” he explained. It’s in an awful state. I’m going to recommend to my client that he doesn’t waste his money on a survey.”

The surveyor phoned the potential buyer and then drove away. He left the dejected widebeam owner tied to the Calcutt flight bottom lock landing. His immediate problem was to appease the CRT employee who told him to move his boat. The unsteady guy pulled his floating skip up through the three flight lock and then tied his boat to the lock landing bollards.

He left after three days. He won’t, can’t, go far. No doubt I’ll meet him on my next Discovery Day cruise.

My week ended with a treat. Calcutt Boats hosted a Mikron Theatre performance, Redcoats, on Friday night.

The actors arrived mid-afternoon in their 1937 workboat, Tyseley. Actors love a bit of attention, so they didn’t mind the crowd which gathered to watch them attempt to fight their way through the marina entrance against a strengthening gale. They weren’t so keen on the driving rain which worsened as the day progressed.

The forecast for the evening was dire, but in the proper theatrical fashion they declared, “The show must go on!” And it did, aided by a couple of marquees and an afternoon of hard work from Calcutt Boats and Mikron employees.

Given the weather forecast and reality, the evening was a huge success. Many guests brought their own chairs. The rest used mismatched seating from around the marina. All were able to sit in relative comfort and enjoy the show.

I had the pleasure of manning the ice cream and cold drinks stand. Needless to say, I wasn’t rushed off my feet. With nothing else to do, the nearby supply of wine and Pimms was too much of a temptation. The concession stand was too far away to hear a word the actors said over the wind and driving rain, so we relaxed and drank and marvelled at the surreal scene in front of us.

On a mid summer’s evening, one hundred and twelve theatre lovers sat huddled in coats and hats in a wind-whipped tent trying and failing to hear the dialogue from a quartet of determined actors in front of them. One elderly lady complained of cold hands. She enjoyed most of the evening wearing a pair of marigold rubber gloves we found in the office kitchen. Rain drummed on the tent roof, canvas snapped taught, and guy ropes strained against sudden gusts. Daylight failed, the weather worsened, and the show went on.

I don’t know whether I have low expectations these days. Maybe I was anaesthetised by countless glasses of red, or made merry by my partner in wine, Jason, but I haven’t had so much fun for a long time. I’m really looking forward to next year’s performance.

After a bottle (or two) of wine I was very pleased with this shot of the Redcoats audience

This week I was going to begin my A-Z series of everything to do with narrowboats. There was too much happening on the waterways to distract me. I’m hoping for a less interesting week ahead. Maybe then I can concentrate on writing about everything beginning with the letter A.

I’ll raise a glass to the next week then, and the sincere hope that your lifestyle brings you as much pleasure as mine does to me.

A clear sky after heavy rain