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

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

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

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

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

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

Shouldn’t happiness be everyone’s life goal?

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

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

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

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

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

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

I’m off to a good start.

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

A smidgeon of ice to deter Orient’s progress

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

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

Wofhampcote church looking good after 1,000 years

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

Muddy towpath walking near Flecknoe

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My poor little Squirrel tries hard to keep me warm

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

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

Easy.

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

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

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

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

Orient’s early morning thermometer

13.4°C – saloon

10.6°C – main bedroom

2.4°C – boatman’s cabin

4.1°C – front deck

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

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

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

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

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

Do you know what? Tim was right.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Discovery Day Update

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My last post was written from the point of view of an unhappy lady boater. I imagined what this sourpuss – she’s based on a miserable liveaboard boater I met a few years ago – would have said if she lived on Orient. In this post, I’ll tell you what I think about my floating home. Neither opinion is necessarily right but, for me, a positive outlook makes life so much more enjoyable. I hope you agree.

The negative post about life on Orient is here. Comparing the two might be of use to you.

Cost-Effective Living Space

Ah, I love my cosy home. When I lived in a house, I used to waste so much space. The more room you have, the harder you have to work to keep that space in good order. Mainstream society tells you that the bigger, the better. A big house and a fancy car are badges of honour, proof that you are successful. That’s total bollocks. All it means is that you have to work harder and harder just to stay in one place.

I love my little house on the water, and I own it free and clear. I don’t have to work hard to earn bundles of money because I don’t need to pay high bills to maintain my lifestyle. I may not have a fraction of space I coveted in my luxurious house, but I have all that I need and, more importantly, I have peace of mind.

I still can’t understand why I thought I needed such a big house. I had more space in my lounge than I have now in all of my floating home. And that lounge was used for nothing more than a snatched break between onerous home and work obligations. Three hundred square feet for a three-piece suite and television. What was the point in that?

I know where I’m better off – on the water being buffeted at night by wind and soothed by rain dancing on the steel roof an arm’s length above my bed. I enjoy untroubled nights without the energy-sapping worry of my previous work-spend-work lifestyle.

Condensation Conquest

I have to admit that potential condensation problems worried me during my early years afloat. But there’s always a solution to any problem if you focus on a positive outcome. I learned about condensation’s Holy Trinity; heating, ventilation and insulation. I discovered that I could keep damp at bay if I ventilated and heated my home correctly and made sure that everything was adequately insulated.

So, rather than close down the back of my boat to conserve heat, and shut all of the windows there in a futile attempt to prevent heat loss, I focussed on heating the stern properly. As soon as I installed a central heating system and double glazed my windows, I said goodbye to condensation.

That was on my old boat, James. I haven’t really had any condensation problems with Orient. For a start, instead of acres of cold glass, I have a dozen small portholes. My Houdini hatch was my only real problem. It neatly framed my meal preparation workspace. Cooking there with three or four rings burning produced a heavy rain which diluted my sauces and high spirits.

The solution was to fix a Perspex panel the Houdini hatch frame. I now enjoy shower free cooking and a healthier cooking environment.

Bye, bye, condensation. There’s no place for you on Orient.

Free From Transport

Apart from the Hymer motorhome I used to explore Europe I haven’t owned a vehicle since 2013. I’ve been offered two free cars during that time. I’ve politely refused both of them because the vehicles may have been free, but maintaining, taxing and insuring them wasn’t. 

For my, car ownership is an opportunity to drive to places I don’t really want to visit to buy things I don’t really need. Car ownership shackled me to unnecessary debt. I almost lost my senses recently and considered saddling myself with three years of wasteful debt for a car with a dashboard that had more computing power than my iPhone. I reasoned that I worked hard enough to justify the expense. And then I realised that the monthly fees would cost more than my boat license and mooring fees.

I don’t need a car. If I’m on my marina mooring, I can have everything I need delivered to me. Overcoming the logistics of dragging a car around with me when I’m on the move is too much like hard work, as is the stress of wondering what’s happening to it parked in a remote canal-side lay-by while I’m cruising the cut.

There have been several occasions over the last half-decade when I’ve needed a car. So I’ve rented one from a company keen to demonstrate excellent customer service by collecting me from my boat. The car hire cost was a small fraction of the outlay for a car of my own.

I don’t miss driving. I have the dubious pleasure every blue moon of pretending that I’m part of mainstream society. I take one of our company vehicles on roads congested with bad-tempered drivers engulfed in clouds of toxic fumes. The best part of my driving experience is returning to my rural haven and thanking my lucky stars that I don’t own a car.

Heating Heaven

Ah, the joy of a solid fuel stove. There’s nothing better than watching my fire’s flickering flames on a stormy night with a glass of wine in my hand. I’m seduced by nature while I listen to the wind and rain. It’s better than television and far less expensive.

Some boaters complain about the physical strain involved in stove maintenance. Poppycock! That’s what I say. Sure, coal bags are heavy, but they provide welcome exercise. Boaters are generally a fitter and healthier bunch than those living in houses with all of their utilities on tap.

And, apart from the aesthetics, there’s a practical benefit to running a solid fuel stove. Moist cabin air is drawn into the fire and expelled from the boat. My cabin humidity is usually under 50%. Condensation doesn’t have a chance!

Some boaters complain that coal is a dirty fuel, but it doesn’t have to be. I have two heavy-duty plastic storage boxes on my front deck. I empty my coal bags into these boxes rather than drag then through my boat. And I clean my boat regularly to remove the dust some people moan about.

For me, there’s no competition between a soulless central heating system and an atmospheric coal-burning stove. The stove wins every time.

Happiness is a quiet drink by a glowing stove

High Maintenance Costs

I didn’t buy a boat because it offers low-cost accommodation. I decided on this way of life because I want to live close to nature. And I want to enjoy the lifestyle in comfort. I have a beautiful home, and I do all that I can to keep my boat in the very best condition. I live a comfortable life, and I don’t mind spending a few pounds to keep my floating home looking as good as it can. In that regard, I’m similar to many house proud land dwellers.

Is keeping a narrowboat expensive? Sure it is if you’re going to keep one as an extravagant toy. But if you want one as your primary home, then the cost is comparable to that of a small family house. I’m OK with that. The enormous advantage that I have as a narrowboat owner is that I can move my home to any location I choose on the network’s rivers and canals.

I’ve met many first-time narrowboat owners who look like rabbits caught in car headlights when they’re presented with yet another unexpected bill. You’re a very lucky boater if you don’t have to do any maintenance or remedial work or make alterations to your new floating home.

The boat’s battery bank often needs replacing. Tim Davis from Onboard Solar advises anyone who has purchased a second-hand boat to replace the battery bank regardless of its apparent condition. You don’t know how old the batteries are or whether the bank has been added to. The accepted wisdom is to replace ALL of your domestic bank’s batteries at the same time to prevent the oldest battery dragging the rest down when it fails.

Over the last two years, I’ve replaced my batteries, added a new charger and monitor, renewed my cratch cover, replaced my three old chimneys and engine exhaust with shiny and low maintenance stainless steel, added a 645W solar array, had an L shaped bench seating and table area constructed, replaced my front doors and back hatch and repainted my front and rear decks.

My maintenance and modification programme has cost me a small fortune, mainly because I have the DIY skills of a four-year-old girl. It’s a heavy cross I have to bear and a financial burden not suffered by those able to wield manly tools.

For me, living afloat has nothing to do with cheap housing. I live closer to nature and further away than most to the stresses and strains of modern-day life. My life is as comfortable as it is stress-free and I wouldn’t want it any other way.

Coal Callisthenics

Our unhappy lady boater in my last post complained about many aspects of living afloat, including the effort required to manage her utilities. I prefer to think of it as welcome exercise. Life on a narrowboat is far more physically taxing than it is in a house. You have to accept and embrace that aspect of the lifestyle. Suppose you fail to manage your modest water supply when you’re out on the cut. In that case, you might have to endure an evening without the wet stuff and then face several hours cruising before you can fill your tank. If your stove or central heating system runs out of fuel, you’re likely to get very cold before you can obtain some more. You need to be organised.

Checking coal, gas, kindling, firelighters, water and sewage levels is second nature these days. And hauling coal bags and gas cylinders weighing half a petite woman on and off my floating house keeps me fit. As does walking to the nearest supermarket when I’m out on the cut to collect my groceries.

Single-handed boating is fantastic exercise too. I stood at the helm for 1,000 hours in 2015 and negotiated 946 locks. I finished the year as fit as a fiddle and as well-conditioned as I would have been working on my demanding daily grounds maintenance tasks back at Calcutt Boats.

Living afloat and cruising regularly is a very satisfying way of keeping fit.

Perfect Privacy

I try to see the positive side of every challenge. Take Orient’s windows, for example.

I have small portholes which are much smaller than conventional boat windows. And I’m delighted with them. I can’t see out of them very well, but people can’t see in either. Portholes are ideal if you value your privacy and want to keep prying eyes away from your valuable trinkets. The other advantage is that a smaller glass surface means less condensation. I had picture windows in my last boat. I was forever mopping up rivers of condensation from the bottom of the window frames. I don’t have nearly so much of a problem with my little circular glass windows.

Having portholes which don’t open frustrates me sometimes. Still, one significant advantage is that I don’t need to suffer the gale which blew through the gaps in my last narrowboat’s top hoppers. I may not be able to ventilate my boat as much as I want, but the flip side of the coin is that I don’t have unwanted and heat sapping ventilation on windy winter days.

Cosy Bedrooms

I didn’t like Orient’s main bedroom when I first moved on board. The room has a cross bed. In case you’re not familiar with the term, a cross bed is at right angles to the length of the boat. Because a narrowboat is, well, narrow, the maximum cross bed length is six feet. To facilitate a passageway through the bedroom during the day, the bottom two feet of the bed base is hinged. As the original mattress was heavily sprung, I needed a team of bodybuilders to help bend the mattress before locking it upright. I was so exhausted by that little exercise each morning I was ready for bed again.

The solution was to invest in a bespoke two-piece mattress. Switching the bedroom to its daytime configuration now takes a few seconds of gentle exercise.

Orient’s cross bed stowed for the day

My boatman’s cabin has an even smaller cross bed. I can just about lie on my back if I wedge my feet and head into opposite corners. Despite the limited space, I love sleeping there during the warmer months.

I can have as much fresh air as I want in my stern bedroom. On a sultry summer’s night, I slide back my hatch, fold my rear doors open and drift off with a view of the stars or the overhanging branches of canal-side trees. It’s a magical experience for me, but some boaters worry about me.

I was moored at a popular spot on a scorching day earlier this year. The location was far from the nearest road, or any housing and the only people around were the boaters moored either side of me. A safe spot, I thought, to slip off to the land of nod and dream sweet dreams of gentle cruising and friendly canal-side banter over glasses of velvety reds. A lady on a boat behind me didn’t sleep quite so well.

She pounced on me as soon as I stepped off Orient. “Thank GOD you’re safe,” she shrieked, wringing her hands in concern. “Fred and I were worried that something had happened to you. Weren’t we Fred? Fred, Fred, are you listening? Tell this man we’re worried about him!” Fred carried on polishing his mushrooms, maintaining his distance and his dignity.

I asked her why she was worried. She pointed cautiously at my open rear hatch as though it was going to bite her. “You left the back of your boat open. Anyone could have walked in when you were asleep. Weren’t you worried about being attacked?” She hopped from one foot to the other like a cat on a hot tin roof and continued her hand ringing. I didn’t know who or what she thought was going to attack me; an inquisitive cygnet, a thieving magpie or maybe a frisky rabbit?

The highly-strung lady quizzed me at length about my sleeping habits and advised me to batten down my hatches every night. She wore me down a lot and frightened me a little. 

I saw stars and trees, she saw assailants and thieves. I can feel the beginning of a poem coming on!

Anyway, I survived to tell the tale and, despite her misgivings, I’ll continue with my dangerous sleeping habits in rural Warwickshire.

a cosy bed with a view of the stars

The Joy Of A Midships Engine Room

I have to admit that I wasn’t particularly fond of Orient’s exposed engine when I first viewed my new home. Like many, I worried about the wasted space, exhaust smoke in my cabin and the close proximity to many thrashing parts. What I didn’t understand at the time was the love a man can feel for an inanimate object.

And it is love. I adore my Lister JP2M. If you’ve been out with me for a day or seen one of these vintage gems in action, you’ll know what I’m talking about.

Even polishing the Lister’s many brass and copper components brings me joy. But that’s nothing compared to the pleasure I get from cruising the cut listening to the engine’s mesmerising beat. Orient turns the heads of many middle-aged men as I travel. That’s not necessarily what I want, but I’ll take any attention I can get at this stage of my life.

On a practical note, my Lister is exceptionally fuel-efficient. Rather than the 1.0 – 1.5 litres per hour used by most modern engines, my old girl uses 0.7 litres. Easy on the eye, easy on the ear and cheap to maintain. What more can I ask of the lady in my life?

Happiness is a man polishing his pistons

Lulled To Sleep By Natural Sounds

I’m not a city person. The urban clamour of people and traffic distresses me. On the rare occasion when I dip into mainstream society these days, I can’t wait to return to the peace and tranquillity of my floating home and the natural sounds which surround it.

As I snuggle under the duvet on my cosy bed, thin steel sheets are all that separate me from the water and wildlife around me. I am at my happiest when storms rage outside. I listen to waves lapping gently against my hull, wind howling and rain bouncing off my roof. I’m warm and dry inside my steel cave. The feeling is worth more to me than an imposing house, a flashy car or an overflowing bank account. It’s a simple pleasure, and it’s free.

The Advantages Of Careful Water Management

I don’t have hot water on my boat. I don’t want it. Here’s why.

Orient has a 750-litre potable water tank, which is about average for a largish narrowboat. Many boat owners with a similar-sized tank will refill it at least once a week. By not having hot water on board and carefully managing what I use I can make my supply last for two months.

Many narrowboats have three different ways of heating water; as a by-product of running the engine, via a central heating system or by using an immersion heater. I can either use an immersion heater or a Kabola diesel boiler to supply me with hot water. I can’t use my engine because it runs so slowly it doesn’t get hot.

Still, I have two hot water solutions but use neither. I don’t like wasting water by running cold water down my sink to get at the hot stuff. I don’t like paying marina electricity prices to use the immersion heater, and I don’t want to waste diesel using the Kabola boiler to supply a few litres of hot water a day.

I boil a couple of kettles of water for my once a day dishwashing session and I heat a single kettle for my shower. Rather than waste 60+ litres for a conventional hosing down, my Hozelock Porta Shower does an excellent job with just four litres. And I’ll tell you a secret which I don’t want you to share with anyone else. I don’t shower every day.

I use scented body wipes for my dirty days. I’m clean enough to keep the flies at bay, so I’m happy, happier still that my cruising and mooring isn’t dictated by water resupply problems.

There you go, my last negative post balanced by positivity today. And I remain eternally optimistic about my lifestyle. I can’t see myself ever living in a house again. I would have to get a proper job to earn money to maintain it. I like to think that my current life is similar to that of the proverbial Mexican fisherman.

The sun sets on paradise

Discovery Day Update

Our government isn’t making earning a living particularly easy at the moment, but they have allowed me to see a glimmer of light at the end of this dark and worrying tunnel.

Because my Discovery Day cruises include both training and education I am allowed to trade, despite Warwickshire being in tier 3. And, as people are allowed to stay away from home for the night for training and education, Wigrams B & B will remain open for my Discovery Day guests.

That’s good news if you already have a date booked with me in December. If you haven’t booked yet and want to experience a thoroughly enjoyable, educational and instructional day out on the cut, you’d better get your skates on. There’s just one date remaining in December before I begin my two-month winter cruise. 

Lots of aspiring narrowboat owners have sensibly planned in advance so there are only four dates left in March. Click here to learn more about my Discovery Day service and here if you want to see and book available dates.

Anni Morgan enjoying a day at the helm

The seasons are changing. We’ve swapped comfortable chairs under shady canal-side willows to even more comfortable seats in front of glowing coals. Aspiring narrowboat owners often ask me to name my favourite season. I wish they wouldn’t. I don’t have a clue.

I adore quiet winter canals with their stark landscapes and plentiful moorings. I enjoy the riot of colour from springtime hedgerows and the marinas’ slow awakening after their deep winter sleep. I love a summer waterway bursting with life, the sounds of happy chatter, the quacking of squabbling geese and the screech of steel on steel of narrowboats grinding along metal-clad banks. And I’m in awe of Mother Nature when she shows us her autumn coat. I would like a little less rain, but I guess I have to take the rough with the smooth.

I’ve moved a little further forward with my home’s refurbishment. In addition to stainless steel chimneys and fairleads, I now have stainless steel roof vents too. They’re quite expensive, but they’ll allow me to keep my roof looking its best with minimal effort. 

Orient’s roof is looking better

I’ve had the front roof section painted too. The back section looks pretty good in the photo as well, but that’s because it’s been battered by torrential rain for the last twenty-four hours. The next big decision for me to make is whether to add a solar array.

Form over function, pretty or practical. That’s the question. I’ll be out cruising for two months this winter. Do I spoil Orient’s sexy lines to make electricity generation a little easier, or keep the roof as it is and resign myself to prolonged engine running sessions on otherwise tranquil moorings?

Jason adds the last few drops of Craftmaster Raddle Grey

While I’m deciding what to do, I need to take my engine into consideration. If I moor close to other boaters, I’m likely to get complaints. My Lister JP2 is eighty-four years old and a little smokey. 

I’ve asked Braunston based Tony Redshaw Vintage Diesels to see what they can do. Paul Redshaw plans to visit me in November to change the injectors. If that doesn’t work, I’ll need to take Orient to his Braunston workshop for a decoke.

I’m enjoying a rare day off today. Today’s Discovery Day guest lives in Iraq. The country’s been locked down again, so he had to cancel. So I’ve sat in my cosy cabin throwing an occasional handful of coal briquettes on my fire and composed this post for you.

This is the second and concluding part about common narrowboat newbie mistakes. I’ve gained a little more material over the last fortnight as novice boaters have thrown themselves into the three locks on the Calcutt flight like lemmings over a cliff.

I hope that recounting their tales of woe will help you avoid making the same mistakes. But if you do, please let me know. I’m always looking for new stuff to write about.

Fending off with body parts, boat hooks or poles

Don’t use yourself as a human fender. It’s a painful and dangerous way to protect your paintwork. 

I see novice boaters doing this regularly during the hectic summer months. I’ve seen little old ladies with arms like sticks trying to push tonnes of steel away from slippery lock walls. I’ve watched indestructible teenagers thrusting feet from rain-slicked bows towards low bridge arches and novice boaters holding boat hooks like lances to fend off approaching boats.

Narrowboats are built like tanks, they have reinforced steel stems, protective rubbing strakes along either side and heavy-duty bow and stern fenders. And, if all else fails, there are teams of fitters and welders available at many boatyards with many years of boat repair experience between them. A damaged narrowboat is much easier to repair than a broken boater. Unfortunately, boaters break with alarming regularity. 

Prevention is better than cure. Invest in some kind of training before you set sail. And, if all else fails, don’t use your body as a flesh and bone buffer.

The Folly Of Adhering To A Rigid Timetable

The anxious diner in the section above caused unnecessary stress for herself and other boaters by trying to stick to a deadline. Timetables, deadlines and inland waterways cruising don’t work well together.

We’ve had many holiday hirers hell-bent on achieving goals. A few have asked me for advice. “We’ll leave here at 4 pm, reach there at 6 pm, moor for the night, set off at first light, reach this lock flight by 8 am and finish it in time for a late breakfast. Then we’ll…” I stop them there and suggest that, if they want a relaxing canal break, they set loose objectives and not treat their break like a military expedition.

Unexpected delays are part of the boating experience. You can be delayed by a fouled propeller, fallen trees, lock queues and damage, grounding on shallow canals and a host of other hindrances for which you can’t plan.

 Crew Communication

The helmsman peers into the far distance at the tiny figure of his wife standing on the boat’s bow. She offers him advice in a conversational tone which he is unable to hear above the engine’s roar beneath his feet. She repeats her instruction half a dozen times, but her bewildered husband can’t understand a word she says. The lady has a bright idea. She waves her arms like a broken windmill and shouts a little louder. The novice helmsman, still clueless, shakes his head, pushes his Morse control firmly forward and slams his hire boat into the protruding base of an old stone bridge. 

This is a less than perfect start to a week’s gentle cruising on England’s tranquil canals.

I’ve witnessed many accidents and potential tragedies caused by ineffective communication and poor teamwork. England’s muddy ditches are wolves in sheep’s clothing and danger lurks around every blind bend, narrow bridge hole and pretty lock. 

And inside narrowboats’ cosy cabin too.

One of the joys of inland waterways cruising is to stand in your galley watching the world float serenely by as you make a hot drink, snack or evening meal. Unfortunately, many novice hirers are blissfully unaware of the risk they face carrying scalding liquid and sharp knives inside a twenty-tonne steel tube being guided around hairpin bends by inexperienced helmsmen.

Do you know how often I see hire boats crash into other craft or concrete banks? At least once on every single Discovery Day cruise throughout a typical summer. And with the pandemic raging and more people holidaying in England, this year has been crazy busy on the waterways.

You must agree on an effective system of communication with your crew at all times. Back in the happy days when I shared my living space, I used a pair of Motorola two way radios. Despite their relatively high cost, the radios were worth every penny.

Hard knocks are inevitable for even the most seasoned crews. Cynthia spent much of her time inside during her final months, often in the galley preparing lunch or our evening meal. She kept a radio within reach at all times. I was able to give her enough warning of an impending bump. I am convinced that these warnings prevented many accidents.

Crew communication is equally essential when stopping and starting a cruise and, most importantly, when negotiating locks.

Waiting at Calcutt Top lock

In the last two weeks alone three people have fallen from their boats in the Calcutt flight, two of them in two different locks at the same time. Better communication would have saved two of them from an impromptu dip and one from a concussion and a hospital visit.

The first, a fortnight ago, fell into the lock ahead of me on one of my Discovery Day cruises. I heard a scream, made sure that my boat was safe as it dropped down Calcutt Middle lock and sprinted as fast as my wobbly old legs would carry me along the towpath to the bottom lock.

Boats jockey for position on the Calcutt flight

A half-submerged man hung on a slippery chain in the empty lock. A dog walker – I don’t think he had any boating experience – had already climbed down the lock ladder onto the man’s deserted cruiser stern and was about to thrust the Morse control forward to try to move the stern closer to the drowning man. 

Madness! 

You DO NOT want a thrashing propeller anywhere near anyone in the water. Anyway, I shut the engine down, threw a life ring close enough for the frightened man to reach and dragged the man and his ring to the boat.

I checked to make sure that the elderly boater had injured nothing more than his pride and then ran back to my boat and straight into an argument. The crews of two narrowboats which had come out of the Calcutt Top lock stood by my stern. One, a bad-tempered lady who reminded me of an elderly bulldog chewing wasps, scolded me for hogging the lock she wanted to use. I explained the situation. Do you know what she said? “Why didn’t you take your boat out of the lock before you ran off?” Jesus Christ, woman. I could only assume that she’d recently finished a light lunch of ground glass and hemlock.

Then, last weekend, we had the Calcutt synchronised lock diving team out in force. One guy, out for a test drive with the owner of a boat he hoped to buy, fell off the lock escape ladder into the water. As our wharf staff fished him out, they heard a scream from the top lock.

“Don’t sit or stand within the tiller arc,” narrowboat hirers are told before they begin their cruise. Cruiser stern hire boats often have gas lockers with arse sized lids either side of the tiller, seats are often too much of a temptation. A lady in the top lock on one of two hire boats descending the flight succumbed. The boat in the lock with them surged out of the empty lock. The wash pushed the boat backwards. The rudder was forced against the exposed cill and folded to one side. So did the tiller. The lady was forced back off her seat, over the rail, off the boat and onto the concrete cill.

The poor woman hit the concrete head first. Her husband jumped overboard to save his wife and left his elderly and stone deaf father in charge of the boat. Our wharf staff reached the lock just as the father was trying to reverse the hire boat towards the stranded couple. Shouting instructions at him didn’t work, so one of them climbed down into the lock, over the hire boat roof and onto its back deck. The father, oblivious to all of the attempted communication with him, nearly had a heart attack when thirteen stones of Calcutt employee and his steel capped boots bounced onto the back deck and took control of the boat.

All of these stories have happy endings. The non-swimming solo boater purchased a life vest, the test driver bought his boat and the hard-headed hirer survived her painful introduction to a lock cill. 

Not all narrowboat accidents end so well.

Locks offer the greatest navigational challenge and more chance of an accident than cruising placid canals. Clear communication and attention to detail are critical to a successful lock flight passage.

Ascend Locks Carefully

When your boat is in an ascending lock, fill the chamber carefully. If you open the lock paddles too quickly, the resulting surge will smash your boat into the lock walls. At best, you’ll rattle your craft enough to knock things over in the cabin. However, an unexpected current in a lock can prove fatal.

Through a combination of inexperience, poor communication and lost concentration, a novice lady hirer lost her life in a South Oxford lock a few years ago. The sudden surge of water from a quickly raised paddle initially pushed her boat towards the downstream gate. It then hurtled towards the upstream gate like an arrow from a bow. She panicked, reacted too slowly and as her craft bounced off the upstream gate she slammed the boat into reverse. The hire boat shot backwards at full speed into the downstream gate again. As the stern bounced off the gate, the lady was catapulted over the back of the boat into the water. The craft, still hard in reverse shot backwards again and pinned her under the boat and its thrashing propeller. 

This tale is as rare as it is tragic. But please learn from it. Do not let water into the lock quickly and don’t let others control your lock.

Young male holiday hirers like to compete. They make me nervous. If I ever see a pair of strapping young lads marching along the towpath towards me, I watch them like a hawk. If YOUR boat is in a lock, YOU control the water flow. It’s your lock to manage. Many boaters will offer to help at busy locks. Accept their assistance by all means, but only on your terms.

Safe lock negotiation is all about communication, with your crew, the crew of the boat in the lock with you, and the crews of other boats waiting nearby. You’re in control so watch everyone like a hawk. The etiquette is that boaters who want to help you should look to you for advice. If they’re experienced, they will know the importance of a carefully managed water flow. If they are inexperienced or in a hurry, their ‘help’ may not be in your best interest. Don’t be bullied into doing things their way.

A domineering lady boater built like a brick outhouse tried to intimidate my novice crew last weekend. Following my suggestion, one had half-raised an upstream paddle as we ascended Calcutt Top lock. “You don’t need to do that,” she assured him as she swung her windlass in circles impatiently. “Raise it all the way. You’ll be fine.”

I stopped him before he followed her instruction. She glared at me and complained that I was wasting her time. She was late for her dinner appointment at a nearby pub. I was going to make her late.

That wasn’t my concern. My boat is my home. It’s a beautiful home which doesn’t deserve to be abused in a lock so that an impatient boater can shave a couple of minutes off her journey. Anyway, the chamber was full by the time she stumbled off her soapbox. Cruising the inland waterways is not a race. Don’t let others force you into going faster than you want.

One End Up, One End Down

A common mistake made by novice boaters is to try to negotiate a lock with the paddles raised at both ends. The lock then becomes a fast-flowing link for canal water from one pound to another—much to the dismay of Calcutt’s band of excitable engineers in days gone by.

Calcutt Boats’ wharf, office and engineering workshops are close to the offside between Calcutt Top sand Middle lock. Our first indication of paddle positioning problems used to be screams of anguish from our engineering workshop. The water gushing through the top lock would spill over the banks of the small pound and race tsunami style down a steep slope towards our diesel dowsed engineers.

The pound floods just as much these days but since the company installed a raised concrete lip along our wharf edge, the towpath floods now instead of our workshops.

Paddles behind a boat should always be closed. Always. Check to make sure before you open the paddles in front of your craft. And always use the correct paddle and gate opening process.

There’s usually a leak or two in a lock gate, sometimes enough of a leak to seal a gate again after you think it’s ready to open. Always open a paddle and leave it open until you’ve opened the gate. Once a gate is open, you can drop the paddle. Remember; paddle, gate, paddle. Always in that order.

Man Overboard

Do not, under any circumstances, reverse a boat close to anyone in the water. Flesh and bone is no match for a rapidly spinning bronze propeller. Don’t throw a life ring at your wet crew mate either. If you hit them with the hard and heavy ring you’re likely to do more harm than good. Throw a ring or a rope near and not at them. If they’ve fallen into a canal rather than a lock, they can probably stand up. Ask them to try.

Carrying an escape ladder on board is a good idea. However, you need someone on board to deploy the ladder for you. Roof-mounted escape ladders are pointless for solo boaters. Narrowboats are notoriously difficult to climb onto from the water. Consider a rope ladder which can be deployed from the water or steps cut into your rudder if you cruise on your own.

Summary

England’s inland waterways network offers a fascinating choice for increasingly popular staycations or an idyllic ‘back garden’ for nature lovers who want and can commit to living afloat. However, thorough preparation is essential for both your safety and your happiness. Treat the waterways and the boats which use them with respect and you can join our happy band of waterways wanderers. Social distancing is easier to do than not, but there’s plenty of company for those who want it.

Despite being half way through my eleventh year afloat I still sometimes make silly mistakes. First time hirers and buyers are really up against it. If you’re considering booking a holiday narrowboat or buying one for recreational cruising or as a full time home make sure that you get some professional tuition first. Ask a seasoned boater to take you out, take an RYA hemslan course or, better still, join me for a Discovery Day cruise.

Discovery Day Update

The madness is almost over for another year. After the busiest couple of months I’ve experienced on the inland waterways over the last decade, more and more narrowboats have returned to their leisure moorings.

The seasons have changed. The summer’s relentless heat has been replaced by wind, rain and a dazzling display of autumn foliage. Every season has its own beauty. This time of the year is more about appreciating a cosy cabin than lazing under a hot sun. My Squirrel coals are glowing as I write this and plan my winter break.

My generous marina employers have agreed that their business will survive without me for a couple of months. With an extended stay with my parents in Australia increasingly unlikely this winter, I expect that I’ll be cruising the waterways. I’ll be away from Christmas until the beginning of March so, if you want a taste of life on a narrowboat during the cooler months, make sure that you book a date soon. You can find out more about my Discovery Day cruises here and prices and availability here.

Discovery Day Guest Nina Harries Takes A Break From International Gigging To Experience Life In The Slow Lane

I’m planning to buy my first liveaboard boat, but I was simply overwhelmed by how much there is to learn about, not to mention navigating the cut and locks by myself! I was already a big fan of Paul’s blog, as it’s so beginner-friendly and covers so many aspects of life afloat, that when i saw he was offering discovery days in person, I jumped at the chance!

“Paul sent me all the info I needed, with clear directions and instructions as to how to find him and his lovely boat! He even asked for a specific overview of what I wanted to discuss and where I had got to in my narrowboat plans so he could tailor the day to best fit my level of experience/ignorance!”

“I had an awesome day, we were lucky with the weather and I got to see some beautiful canal ways that I hadn’t explored yet. Paul was so helpful, clear and provided me with so much useful information about the interior and exterior workings of a boat, the factors to consider when living afloat, and also proper cruising and mooring etiquette, which is SO important. He was also really calm and encouraging with the more scary parts of steering, especially going under low bridges and pulling into tight moorings & narrow locks.

“I would 100% recommend a discovery day with Paul on the Orient, to anyone considering living afloat. He shares with you the genuine experience, with all the pros and cons, the problem solving, navigating and all-important canal way etiquette. Also if you’re looking to purchase a boat, he is a fountain of knowledge when it comes to SO many things, including potential hazards to look out for (both inside the boat and out), certain design aspects to be cautious of and why, and the important day to day life factors to consider such as pets, transport, cruising, engine maintenance, safety on board, awareness of your surroundings and potential hazards, licensing, heating and power systems. He’s a great guy, super helpful and funny, and will even translate that long, boring and confusing hull survey for you if you ask nicely.”

Nina Harries enjoying a Discovery Day cruise

Everyone tells me that I own a beautiful floating home. Orient is sixty-two feet and twenty-two tonnes of gorgeously crafted steel. If that isn’t enough, there’s a beguiling vintage Lister two-stroke engine to turn the head of every middle-aged man on the cut. Because of the deep draught, Orient sits pleasingly low in the water, and her four tall stainless steel chimneys give her a unique and rather sexy appearance.

As you can tell, I’m deeply in love with the old girl.

But a beautiful boat isn’t necessarily a practical boat. Mine isn’t. I struggle to keep up with narrowboats equipped with more powerful engines. I ground regularly on all but the deepest canals, and I have less living space than a similar length modern boat. The simple process of stopping a craft equipped with a vintage engine and antiquated controls requires so much concentration on Orient that my ears bleed. Despite being a pretty boat, my home is impractical in many ways.

If you’re considering buying a boat like Orient you need to know what’s in store for you. I hope that the following helps you make the right decision.

Draught

A narrowboat’s draught is the distance from the waterline to the deepest part of the boat. That’s the skeg, a horizontal steel bar which is welded between the boat’s base plate and the bottom of the rudder post. Most narrowboats draught is between eighteen and twenty-four inches. Orient sits three feet in the water.

Most narrowboats have about 6’ 4” of headroom. So a shallow draught boat will be higher out of the water than a narrowboat with a deep draught. There are pros and cons to different depths. A shallow draught boat can cruise many canals inaccessible to those sitting deep in the water. The disadvantage is that with more ‘sail’ above the water and less stability beneath it, shallow narrowboats are more challenging to control on windy days.

Controlling Orient in blustery conditions isn’t a problem. On the other hand, running aground is a constant worry. I get stuck regularly. The most recent grounding was last Tuesday.

I was pootling along at my average granny-with-Zimmer-frame walking pace when a boat raced up behind me. Any boat achieving 4 mph is racing in my book. Anyway, the guy at the helm looked like he was late for a meeting with a funeral director. He grimaced at me like a bulldog chewing a wasp and hopped impatiently from one sandaled foot to the other.

I cruised for another mile before I came to a long enough stretch for him to overtake. Etiquette demanded that I find somewhere safe for him to pass. Then I was obliged to move over to the right and reduce my speed to tickover so that he could overtake without pushing waves of muddy water over towpath dog walkers.

I was annoyed when the boat sailed by without the owner acknowledging me at all. I was even more frustrated when I immediately grounded immovably on an offside mudflat.

I reversed gently, then aggressively when being kind to my engine didn’t work. I didn’t move an inch, so I thrust my pole into the stony canal bed and heaved with all my might—still nothing. The only thing which accelerated over the next fifteen minutes was my heart rate. And then the cavalry arrived.

Many boat owners are scathing about the use of bow thrusters. The ‘girly-buttons’ as bow thrusters are sometimes known are just something else to go wrong and another set of batteries to maintain and replace. But they’re handy on windy days.

The lady at the helm of my rescuing boat used her bow thruster to good effect, nosing gently towards my stern so that her husband could take Orient’s stern rope. Their engine, aided by my pole and Orient’s twenty-one gee-gees, gently pulled Orient into the central channel’s deeper water. I was free to slide through the canal’s muddy bottom until I grounded again. Happy days!

Traditional Controls

The vast majority of narrowboats use something called a Morse control for both throttle control and gear selection. It’s a steel or plastic leaver about six inches long. If you want to move your boat forward, you push the Morse control forward. The further you push it, the faster you go. If you need to do what passes for an emergency stop on a narrowboat, you bring the lever back to the idle position – usually at 12 o’clock – pause briefly and then pull towards you.

Simple.

Then there are the ridiculously unwieldy traditional controls like I have on Orient. There are a brass wheel and a handled rod attached to the rear hatch frame. Spinning the wheel determines the engine speed and pushing or pulling the rod switches between forward and reverse gears.

Traditional narrowboat controls

Helming a boat with these controls requires three hands; one for the tiller, one for the speed wheel and a third for the gear selector. As most boaters only have two, unless they’re from Norfolk, the tiller has to be ignored during critical manoeuvres.

Stopping on England’s canals on a boat equipped with these controls and with a deep draught is an exercise in frustration. Emergency stops are out of the question, so I have to anticipate and prepare for problems around and through every blind bend and bridge hole.

Despite my best efforts, I sometimes have to try to stop suddenly. I turn my speed wheel half a dozen times to decrease the engine speed to idle and pull the gear selector rod backwards 37cm. Not 36cm or 38cm because the engine would still be in gear. The location is exact and unmarked. Then I pause again briefly before pulling the lever back another 2cm to engage reverse. The final step is to spin the speed wheel clockwise half a dozen times and pray that there’s enough water under Orient’s big bottom to allow the boat to stop. Many supertankers stop more quickly than Orient. My traditional controls are a right royal pain in the arse. Especially when I try to go backwards.

Engine Power

Most narrowboats the size of Orient are equipped with 40-45 hp engines. My boat’s beautiful Lister JP2M dwarfs most modern engines but, despite its impressive bulk the vintage two-stroke only has 21 hp at its disposal. Incidentally, a horse trying very hard can produce 15 hp, and a human can manage 5 hp. So Orient’s engine can produce as much power as a five-legged horse pulling out all the stops.

That’s more than enough power to push my home’s twenty-two tonnes along a series of narrow muddy ditches. But the engine is woefully inadequate for river currents or tidal flow.

I would like to cruise the tranquil waters of the Lancaster canal. I can’t get there on Orient. Boats have to use the Ribble link to get onto the Lancaster canal which necessitates sustaining 6 mph for an hour. I can’t manage that. Orient’s deep draught also prevents me from cruising the Lancaster canal.

Orient is built for plodding rather than racing. I often struggle to keep up with friends who claim they are cruising at a moderate speed. Many owners of modern boats tailgate me as I travel, unhappy with my sedate pace. I move over for them whenever I can to let them pass. I try to be pleasant, but helping other boaters sometimes bites me in the arse, like Tuesday’s grounding.

Rooftop Exhaust

A modern engined narrowboat has an exhaust low down on the hull behind or to one side of the rear deck. Exhaust fumes are whisked far, far away from the helmsman and his crew. They sail serenely through the landscape enveloped in the heady aroma of cowpats and rotting wildlife. Cruising is such a joy.

And then there are the poor buggers with midships engine rooms and rooftop exhaust stacks.

I am a smart fellow. When I emptied my bank account to buy three stainless steel chimneys and an engine exhaust, I debated long and hard about their length. And then I chose an exhaust which terminated at nose height.

The exhaust stack sits on the port side twelve feet in front of me. When I’m cruising into the wind, I travel through a world filled with post-apocalyptic smog. And no matter what direction I go, I always appear to be sailing into a headwind. I hear oncoming boaters greet me, but I’m never sure who or where they are.

You probably realise that I’m exaggerating a little. However, if you can’t stand an occasional exhaust fume cloud, don’t buy a narrowboat with a vintage engine and rooftop exhaust.

Stove Dust and Dirt And A Forest Of Steel

I favour the traditional narrowboat heat source, a solid fuel stove. I have two stoves actually. I have a Morso Squirrel multi-fuel stove at the front of the boat and a Premiere range in my boatman’s cabin. There are no moving parts to fail, so coal and wood-burning stoves offer boaters the reliability they need during the winter months. But solid fuel stoves aren’t perfect.

Coal briquettes are available everywhere on the inland waterways. Finding a regular fuel supply isn’t an issue but getting it back to your boat is hard work. Briquettes are usually sold in 25 kg (55lb) bags. That’s twenty-six bags of sugar, two corgis or half a small wife, which is a great deal of extra weight to throw about. That’s the coal, not the tiny wife.

I have used between sixty and eighty bags of coal each year since April 2010. That’s one and a half to two tonnes of the stuff. All of it had to be ferried from supplier to boat, lifted on board and transferred from leaking bags into a coal scuttle or water-tight storage box. Despite welcoming physical exercise, bending double under the low cratch board on my little front deck holding a heavy weight soon became a painful chore.

And then there’s the dust. A solid fuel stove produces acres of gritty film. Daily dusting is a necessity on a coal-burning boat. So if you see me wearing an apron and a pair of marigold rubber gloves, I’m cleaning. I don’t have any secret fetishes.

A boat equipped with a solid fuel stove needs a decent chimney to help the fuel burn correctly. I replaced my single chimney every eighteen months on my first narrowboat, James No 194. Constant use throughout the year rotted them until they fell apart.

I discovered a long term solution in 2014.

I invested in a bomb-proof chimney from the Stainless Steel Chimney Company and never looked back. The company’s products are works of art and expensive, but they are eternally durable. A quick scrub with soapy water and a kitchen scourer has them looking brand new in minutes.

A striking stainless steel chimney on Orient

The slight problem, and it’s a problem entirely of my own making, is that they substantially increase my air draught. And because I’m a poser through and through I want to keep my chimneys upright as I cruise. That’s no problem on a route I know, but I’m quite nervous going through bridge holes I don’t know. And through tunnels.

I have to be sensible in enclosed spaces. The two starboard chimneys are too close to tunnel walls to take any chances. I need to stop somewhere before tackling a tunnel to remove those two and store them on my front deck. And then put them back as soon as I leave a tunnel so that I can carry on posing. I am a victim of pride.

Poor Sleeping Arrangements Courtesy Of The Engine Room

Narrowboat ownership is all about compromise. A shorter boat costs less to maintain and moor and allows access to more of the inland waterways network. However, the shorter the cabin, the less living space you have at your disposal. Especially if you generously give your engine a room of its own. My Lister’s bedroom is seven feet long, so that’s seven fewer feet for me to use as living space. My sleeping spaces have suffered because of the lost area.

I can’t remember how many berths Orient’s broker advertised in the original listing. I’m pretty sure that he forgot to mention that the main bedroom cross bed was only suitable for pygmy children. And that those children would feel claustrophobic if they tried to sleep on the boatman’s cabin cross bed.

Orient’s tiny main bedroom sleeps just one bear

Both beds are unsuitable for a single adult and impossible for a couple. At 5’10” tall and with a wiry build, I’m much smaller than many narrowboat owners. Even so, I can’t lay straight on the bed in the main bedroom without risking breaking my toes under the gunnels. There’s slightly less room on the cross bed in my boatman’s cabin. But I sleep there because the cabin has better ventilation than the main bedroom.

I have eleven 11” sealed portholes. The only fresh air available in the bedroom is via one tiny mushroom vent. So, in addition to the problems I face sleeping on a small bed, I find the space extremely claustrophobic.

I leave my boatman’s cabin rear doors and hatch open at night, often in the winter but always on dry summer nights. I may have to sleep like an embryo, but at least I have a beautiful view of the stars.

Sleeping with wide-open doors is something that many boat owners are uncomfortable doing. My rear cabin thermometer peaked at 35°C on Friday. The temperature hadn’t dropped much by the time I climbed into my tiny bed. I left my engine room side doors, and my rear hatch and doors wide open all night.

‘My husband thinks you’re mad,’ a lady on the boat moored behind me confided. She said he insisted on keeping their boat locked up tight even on the warmest nights. He worried about nighttime attacks and being keelhauled by Warwickshire’s feral youth. I told her that I wasn’t at all concerned and pointed through my galley side hatch.’ The gadgets in there will keep any intruder at bay,’ I told her, puffing up my chest a little. She looked puzzled.’ So, you’re going to whisk an intruder to death?’ It was then that I realised I was pointing towards a drawer filled with baking equipment and not my rack of razor-sharp Global kitchen knives.

I’m not as brave as she thinks. Over the last ten years, I’ve moored out in the countryside for hundreds of nights. There’s rarely a soul on the towpath after dark. Sometimes a befuddled boater will stumble past, returning home after a hard night’s entertainment. He’s more interested in keeping out of the canal than breaking into my boat.

Piston Polishing Purgatory

I’m not an engineer or an enthusiast who likes engine tinkering. The appeal of an exposed engine in its own room with double doors on both sides is, for me, the opportunity to show off.

Posing is a problem if your pistons aren’t polished to perfection. If I’m cruising, I like to fling my engine room doors open and show the world what I’ve got. If I want to maximise the impact I have to make sure that every copper pipe and each brass housing, knob and switch is shining brightly.

There’s enough buffing to keep me entertained in the engine room for hours, but I need to spread my love throughout my home. I have brass rails above and below each of my eleven postholes, converted Great Western Railway wall lights, brass rails on cupboard tops and shelf edging and then an Aladin’s cave of shiny trinkets in my boatman’s cabin. There’s a copper kettle, a brass tiller and tiller pins, horse brasses, more rails and a brass bugle instead of an electric horn.

Polishing can become an obsession. I’m relieved to admit that the craze hasn’t overcome me yet. So please forgive a little dull brass if you see me on the cut. You’ll recognise me quickly enough. I’m the one cruising in a cloud of smoke, moving slower than drying paint, bent double from endless nights sleeping curled like an unborn baby. And smiling idiotically at everyone I pass. Because, despite my peculiar boat’s many failings, I am thrilled to call Orient my home.

Discovery Day Update

Even the dark cloud of our current pandemic has had a silver lining for some. It has for me. The recent worldwide turmoil has forced many people to consider whether their current lifestyle is right for them. And with the recent surge in remote working, more and more homeowners are considering living and possibly working afloat.

I’ve experienced a surge in Discovery Day interest and a full calendar for August. If you’re thinking about living a more tranquil lifestyle and want to know what it entails, you can find out more about my Discovery Day service here. I think that my training and experience day cruises offer excellent value for money. But don’t take my word for it. Bret Alexander joined me for a day last month. Here’s what he had to say…

My alarm roused me from a deep and dreamless sleep. I rolled over and reached towards the bedroom’s tiny bedside drawer chest for my iPhone and the alarm’s snooze button. “That’s odd,” I thought, “my alarm rarely sounds like that.” Then I realised that the morning light streaming through the bedroom’s two portholes was missing and the piercing alarm was coming from somewhere at the front of the boat.

I turned on the bedroom light and checked my phone. Three o’clock. Far too early for my alarm. The two wall-mounted railway lights illuminated a thick smog hugging the bathroom and galley ceiling and obscuring the front of the cabin and the source of the smoke. It wasn’t the most reassuring sight to wake to in the wee dark hours.

Like most boaters, I leave my multi fuel stove burning overnight. In fact, like most boaters, I leave my stove burning twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week throughout the winter and far into England’s chilly spring. living semi-submerged in icy water has its drawbacks.

I’ve been living afloat for most of the last nine years. I’ve never had a problem leaving a stove alight at night. Until now.

I fill the lit stove with coal briquettes before I go to bed and then reduce the airflow to slow the burn to ensure that I wake to a warm and cosy boat, a boat usually free of choking smog.

It was the smoke alarm which woke me. The carbon monoxide alarm did not. That didn’t surprise me really as the dismantled device lay on the kitchen worktop waiting for me to fit a new battery.

The bitter smoke thickened as I watched, swirling ever closer to the floor and two blissfully unaware sleeping dogs. I couldn’t breathe. I struggled to think. A pounding headache probably had something to do with my confusion.

I dropped to the floor, crawled back to my bedroom, threw on some clothes and then did what I could to ventilate the boat. I opened both sides of the front deck cratch cover, opened the cabin front’s double wooden doors, flung open the galley side hatch and used a boat hook to jam the Houdini hatch as wide as possible.

The acrid smoke eventually cleared, the process slowed by a steady stream of smog still billowing from the Squirrel’s top vent.

I didn’t want to risk sleeping again until the stove was safe. That meant either extinguishing the Squirrel’s burning coals or removing the source of the smoke from the boat. Taking the smoldering fuel off the boat would create less mess and less smoke. Opening the stove’s front door to get at the coal rapidly filled the cabin with a bitter smog again. I couldn’t either see or breathe unless I lay on the floor. I used a coal shovel to transfer dozens of glowing briquettes from the stove’s firebox to the ash pan and threw them on the sloping mud bank next to the boat. I was alive, and the boat was in one piece. I was thankful for those two small mercies.

An hour after being rudely awakened by the smoke alarm, the boat was cold and smoke free. I could breathe without coughing and think past the throbbing behind my eyes. Carbon  monoxide kills. I could live with a headache, and I was alive thanks to the smoke alarm.

I slept with the doors and windows open for the rest of the night. Better cold than dead. I fell out of bed at dawn the following day, worrying about a boat with no heating and the length of time I would take to resolve the problem.

How hard could it be? The boat was filling with smoke rather than channelling it though the flue and out of the cabin. The stove had been drawing badly for a few days. An obstruction was obviously the culprit, one which could only be in either the flue or the stove. Surely, even my preschool DIY skills would be enough for the task at hand.

Orient’s dismantled stove before the blockage clearance

Both potential blockages were easy to check. I climbed onto the cabin roof armed with a powerful head torch and a long boat hook. I removed the chimney and shined the torch down the flue. It didn’t look blocked. I lowered the blunt end of the boathook down the flue’s full length. I couldn’t feel a blockage. The problem must have been in the stove.

There’s a baffle plate above the firebox in a Morso Squirrel stove. It curves from the back plate over the top of the firebox. Smoke rises over the baffle plate and into the flue.  An accumulation of soot on top of the baffle plate sometimes causes blockages. I swept the baffle plate clear using my head torch and a poker. I found a little soot, but not enough to block the flue completely.

Hoping that a little poking and prodding with my improvised tools had cleared the blockage, I threw a firelighter into the firebox, added a handful of kindling and a match and stood back. Then I panicked when the stove filled the boat with more smoke than the previous night. After a repeat smoke and flue clearing performance I left Orient to look for inspiration. I found it in the bow locker of a neighbouring boat.

Boat Safety Scheme examiner, Russ Fincham, offered to look at the Squirrel for me. He found the cause of the problem immediately. He shone a torch into the narrow gap between the baffle plate and the flue. “There’s your culprit,” he told me as he handed me the torch and pointed to the baffle plate. “Can you see above the baffle plate? Look towards the centre of the stove where the flue comes in. See that fitting that looks like a black dome? That’s an air restrictor. It’s used in stoves fitted in house fireplaces with a good draw. The fires burn too hot if installers don’t fit the restrictor. Narrowboat stove flues don’t produce enough of a draw to warrant using this extras bit. Fitters should ALWAYS remove the restrictor before fitting a stove on a narrowboat.” 

“It’s a simple fix. Take out the fire brick at the back. That will allow the baffle plate to swing down so you can remove the restrictor. I think it’s a 10mm spanner you need. Do you want me to show you how to use a spanner?” Russ has worked with me at Calcutt Boats for many years. He knows me well.

He was right. Removing the restrictor was a simple if filthy process. The stove’s been in the boat for just three months. You can see from the photo below how blocked it was. 

The Squirrels air restrictor performed better than intended

The stove’s now back together and working better than ever. The incident has prompted me to throw the old carbon monoxide alarm out and replace it with a new model which complies with the latest BSS requirements. I’ll also try to remember to check the batteries regularly.

Apart from nearly killing myself, life afloat during the month since my last blog post has been uneventful. That’s why I like this lifestyle, far from the stresses and strains of modern day life. Far away from most stressful situations, anyway. I’ve had a couple noteworthy exceptions over the last four weeks.

The first was on the marina slipway on a midweek day a few weeks ago. 

Calcutt Boats is a busy marina. We have boats which need pulling out of the water for surveys or for blacking every day. And sometimes we have boats brought here by road transport from other parts of the network or from builders yards. On this occasion the builders ballasted a recently refurbished boat in a most peculiar fashion.

I work on the grounds most of the time, often far away from other marina activities and, because I work with noisy machinery, I can’t hear any background chatter. I didn’t know that this boat had already been into the marina once, pushed into the marina on the slipway’s wheeled steel cradle. It floated free for a minute or two and was then quickly dragged out again. All I heard was a call for anyone nearby who could steer a slipway boat. I heard snatches about the owner not wanting to steer the boat himself but i didn’t dwell on it.

The owners of brand new narrowboats, often costing over £100,000, sometimes have little boating experience. I’ve met one or two who had never set foot on a narrowboat until they stepped on the back deck of a boat they had used most of their life savings to buy. I thought this was another of those cases.

Anyway, the owner climbed the steel slipway steps onto the back deck with me. He appeared nervous and didn’t say much. Putting a boat back in the water is an easy job for the helmsman. All he has to do is to establish what type of cooling the boat engine has. If it’s an internal cooling system, he starts the engine before the boat hits the water. He waits until the hull sinks below the surface if it’s a raw water system. That’s pretty much it. The slipway tractor pushes the boat laden cradle down the slipway until the boat floats free. The helmsman reverses, as does the tractor driver, and the boat is back where it belongs and ready to cruise. It’s a simple process as long as the boat is in a fit condition to use. 

This one wasn’t.

All I had to do was bring the boat onto a mooring alongside the slipway. Easy. A burst of forward throttle to counteract the reverse motion from the slipway tractor, a sharp turn to port to steer us in the right direction and a laugh and a joke with the guy standing next to me. It’s an easy and stress free job unless the boat looks and feels like it will turn over.

Even on the windless day, a moderate turn tipped the boat until the gunnel touched the water and the cabin side formed a forty-five degree angle with the marina surface. Another guy stood on the bow. He probably weighed eight stone soaking wet, so his sudden switch from one side of the boat to the other shouldn’t have caused it to swing quickly in an arc until the opposite gunnel also touched the water. His movement shouldn’t have caused the sudden swing, but it did. I could see why the owner looked so nervous.

The cruise to the slipway mooring point took less than a minute but took years off my life. I was confident that, if two or more people had moved from one side of the boat to the other like the guy in front, we would have turned turtle. We would have been trapped in three feet of water under a fifteen tonne boat. 

The popular theory among marina staff was that the boat cabin had been over plated, a process which added a considerable amount of weight. The additional weight would have increased the boat draught and brought the through-hull outlets too close to the waterline. To remedy this, they had removed some under floor ballast. The result was a pretty but dangerously top heavy boat, one which is exceptionally unstable. Calcutt Boats’ owner, Roger Preen, felt duty bound to warn the owner not to use the boat until they had it professionally surveyed and made safe. They didn’t. The owner and his crew subsequently took the boat for a short cruise up through the Calcutt flight to Napton junction and back again. We saw the boat, bobbing and swaying like a rubber duck in a bath, as they braved a cruise on a calm day. Heaven help them if they go out again when there’s a strong wind blowing.

I’ve now used my day’s allocation of writing energy and enthusiasm, so I’ll save my second anecdote for next week. It’s a good ‘un so I know you’ll like it. Here are a few photo’s to whet your waterways appetite in the meantime.

spring hailstones as big as marbles

Misty dawn on an overnight mooring at Napton Junction

Pretty clouds over our dump barge mooring

Sunset over Calcutt Boats Locks marina

A little artistic magic for Orient

You may have noticed that my last post was four weeks ago. That’s the problem with living an idyllic life here at the marina. A wise man once said if you have nothing to say, say nothing. Much as I’ve enjoyed the last month, I’ve had little of interest to relay to you.

To be frank, I’m considering hanging up my blogging hat. I get disheartened when I send out a blog post notification email and receive very few replies or comments. Maybe I’ve passed my sell by date. Maybe the written word in considered too old-fashioned now that there are so many boaters making vlogs, video logs. Maybe I should just concentrate on the commercial side of the site and give up on the fun stuff.

I registered this site in 2010 when I first moved afloat. It’s always been semi commercial. Access to the vast amount of information on the site is free, but I also offer paid products and services. My most popular product has always been my Narrowbudget Gold package. It includes a bespoke online budget calculator and several digital guides for anyone thinking about living afloat.

I created the package five years ago. Potential buyers have often asked me if the data is recent. It concerned me that, as the years passed, the initial data could become less and less relevant. I’ve now changed that.

I’ve lived afloat now for long enough to provide different data sets spanning a reasonable period. In January this year I decided to publish one post each month just to detail the costs of living afloat. Each post covers a detailed breakdown of boating costs for the previous month, the same month three years earlier and another for the same month six years earlier. Aspiring boaters now have access to detailed narrowboat living costs that are always less than a month old, and they can compare the costs over half a decade. You can read the first of this post series here. You need to log into your Narrowbudget Gold account to read the complete article.

If you want a practical boating experience, you can join me on a Narrowboat Discovery Day. Nearly three hundred guests have joined me on my boat so far for a pleasant twelve mile, six lock cruise between Braunston and Calcutt Boats marinas. The days have been hugely successful. I think I’ve enjoyed them as the people who have cruised with me. 

My first boat, James No 194, was, by the time I finished refurbishing it, a superb live aboard narrowboat. James was fully equipped to live in off grid full time. Orient is as good if not better. There are a few bells and whistles to add before I’m happy, but I know what I need and how much those additions of modifications will cost. 

The day is as much about knowledge sharing as it is practical boating. Guests leave me with a much clearer understanding of the practicalities involved in living afloat. The day’s emphasis is on fun but, I’ve often told by my guests, the knowledge they’ve gained is worth every penny of the modest investment they’ve made in the day. Here’s what my last guest said…

Anyway, I’ve waffled on too long. If you want to discover the actual cost of living afloat, you can find out more about my Narrowbudget Gold package here. If you want a hand’s on chance to experience the reality of living afloat, my Discovery Day page is here. And if my blog posts interest you or are useful to you, reply to the introductory email to let me know. Either that, or email me through the site’s contact form. I want to carry on blogging. I enjoy writing. Some site visitors even say I’m quite good at it. However, there’s no point in me investing my time and money in a website that no one is really interested in.

Until next week… Maybe!

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

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

February 2013

Boat: James No 194

Engine Hours This Month: None

Blog Posts This Month

2013 02 20 Newsletter

Important changes to the site login process

Login Problems Resolved

A Case Study Of Liveaboard Narrowboat Lucky Duck

Detailed narrowboat running costs for January 2013

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Groceries: We eat well but not extravagantly. £366.40

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Orient’s Zanussi washing machine isn’t performing quite as well as we would like. Its primary function at the moment seems to be to transfer the contents of our seven hundred litre water tank into the cabin bilge without washing any clothes.

Removing the excess bilge water has proven a little challenging.

My previous narrowboat, James, was sensibly designed. Bilgewater could flow the full cabin length back to the engine room and then be sucked out of the boat with an electric bilge pump.

Easy.

Orient’s underfloor area appears to be split into several self-contained sections. All of them are inaccessible. Builder Steve Hudson fitted out the engine room and boatman’s cabin. Everything else was done by the first owner. He was a craftsman. The beautifully designed fitted furniture is as substantial as it is aesthetically appealing. He did a great job, but not one which makes remedial work at all easy.

Before he constructed the boat’s many cupboards, shelves and heavy-duty doors, he hauled two tonnes of hardwood flooring into the Orient’s cabin. He secured the long planks with enough over engineered brass screws to open his own hardware shop. Orient’s cabin floor is a thing of beauty, unmarred by unsightly but often necessary inspection hatches. There’s no chance of lifting any of the hardwood planks without dismantling the carefully crafted furniture above it.

Removing leaked water is a problem I haven’t yet been able to overcome, as is removing the appliance which is responsible for the unwanted liquid.

The Zanussi washing machine installation was done early in the boat’s fitout programme. I suspect it was lifted onto a sturdy pine shelf on the cabin’s port side and then surrounded with batons, doors and shelves until it was buried at the bottom of an expansive airing cupboard. The equally substantial Kabola boiler cupboard was built opposite the washing machine. A weighty pine door to the galley opens between the two.
The washing machine cupboard door and the galley door will need to come off before there’s any chance of sliding the washing machine out. And then the appliance will need hauling, sliding and lifting around, between and over a host of cupboards, drawer chests and partitions towards the cabin’s forward doors. Getting the machine out of the boat is going to be a monumental pain in the arse.

In the meantime, life goes on.

Cupboards filled with dirty clothes until a long trek to the marina washing and drying machines became a necessary evil. The pleasant one thousand yard return trip (I’ve just measured it on Google Maps) from Orient to the facilities block morphed into a tedious trudge after the fifth load. Ah, the joys of living afloat!

Banging into the boiler cupboard door as I wrestled with the uncooperative washing machine reminded me that the long-awaited replacement Kabola boiler pot still hasn’t arrived. It was ordered directly from the German supplier at the beginning of January. They estimated three weeks before it would reach our Tattenhall base. We postponed our cruise south to Calcutt, hoping that we could get it fitted before we left. We began our journey potless and without hot water. The third revised delivery date has now passed, so we have to rely on a stable shoreline connection for water heating.

A constant shore supply is a hit and miss affair. One hundred yards of a blue plastic coated cable is buried at the bottom of a shallow ditch between our rusty dump barge mooring and the nearest electricity metre. Somewhere, I don’t yet know where, there is a weakness or a partial break in the cable. Running mains appliances, heating water and charging our domestic battery bank is an exercise requiring patience and a stout pair of walking boots. A saloon table top lamp is our usual indicator. Like a Pavlovian dog, if the cabin suddenly dims, I climb out of the boat reset the trip switch. I’m frustrated but exceptionally fit.

All of these issues are nothing more than minor and temporary inconveniences. They are not third world problems. We have a comfortable and warm floating home, moored at one of the best locations at, for my money, one of the prettiest marinas in the country.

Returning to work here has been a joy. I was employed by Calcutt Boats on and off from September 2009 until October 2016. I enjoyed the work and appreciated the beauty of the hundred plus acres of rural Warwickshire I maintained. However, two years driving 30,000 miles through the varied landscapes of eleven European countries reinforced my love for England’s often spectacular countryside. Especially after spending much of last year in Holland.

There’s more varied scenery in this remote corner of rural Warwickshire than there is in most of the Netherlands (My apologies to Dutch friends Gilia and Edwin who will read this). We stayed in Holland because of the vast network of rivers, canals and lakes. The Dutch are masters of waterway management. They have to be. Much of the country’s reclaimed land is below sea level. Waterways fill many of the low lying areas which, in this exceptionally flat corner of Europe, is most of the country.

The waterways are meticulously maintained. Everything works. On the rare occasion that a bridge or lock fails, technicians are on site in the blink of an eye to fix the fault. The Dutch waterways network operates like a well-oiled machine, a reliable machine with minimal character.

Very few boaters live afloat on Holland’s four thousand miles of connected waterways. If you want to live on Dutch waterways, you usually buy one of the country’s thousands of houseboats, floating homes so elaborate that they often have brick walls and slate or thatched roofs. It’s living on the water, but it’s not boating. There are exceptions of course. The Dutch build beautiful boats. They’re often not insulated, but if you find one that is you have a spacious, comfortable and pretty home. Like Edwin and Gilia’s boat below.

A superbly equipped Dutch live aboard boat

The Dutch are enthusiastic and proud fair weather boaters. A poorly maintained craft on the Dutch network is a rare sight. Boating in Holland is all about aesthetics. Open day boats costing six figures are common, as are forty-foot motor cruisers costing a million or more. Despite these boats’ extraordinary cost, very few of them are suitable for four season cruising or for living on board full time.

Consequently, the Dutch network is lifeless for half of the year. September is a hectic time for boatyards when many crafts are removed from their moorings. They’re lifted from the water, moved to hard standing, sometimes in huge heated hangers, and left until the spring.

Many minor canals shut down for the winter. Not because of essential repairs or freezing weather, but because the bridge and lock keepers aren’t at their posts. There’s no point. There are no boaters to provide a service for.

Major waterways routes remain open from dawn till dusk for commercial traffic. On the waterways near our Aalsmeer base, we could count the daily commercial boats on the fingers of one hand. The work of a Dutch winter bridge keeper must be a tedious affair.

Even though winter cruising is not overly popular on English and Welsh canals, the UK inland waterways network has a very different feel from its continental cousin during the colder months of the year.

Thanks to my work, and our mooring overlooking the bottom lock of the Grand Union canal’s Calcutt flight, I can watch daily events on the waterways as they unfold. I saw more boats moving through the flight on one lazy Sunday morning in February than I did in a week on the Dutch canals before we left the Netherlands last December.

I could hear the sounds from my boatman’s cabin office; the rush of water from raised paddles, the roar of an engine to combat the surge from paddles raised too quickly and shouted banter between lock and helm crew. They’re such comforting sounds.

There are still signs of life on England’s canal and river network on the coldest winter days. Thousands of moored boats line the cut, many occupied by liveaboard boaters. Cruising past a row of moored boats usually creates a burst of canalside activity. Heads appear through hatches, out of engine bays, above towering bags of coal. Some boat owners offer a cheery wave, a friendly greeting or, if the cruising boater passes too fast, a shaken fist and a little heartfelt advice. English canals are alive, even in the depth of winter.

Not that we’ve had much of a winter this year.

Toys for boys. I’m very happy at work.

I was able to work in a tee shirt for much of last week as I burned hawthorn stripped from the fence line between Calcutt Boats and neighbouring Napton reservoir. A Colditz style fence complete with stainless steel gates was recently installed to exclude otters from the carp-filled lake. Now the foreign fish eating mink have the reservoir to themselves. Aren’t they lucky?

Calcutt Boats duck house in a pond without water

I hosted my first Discovery Day of the season yesterday. My guest, Paul, booked his day back in December. He told me he wanted to experience a day on a liveaboard narrowboat at the coldest time of the year. He didn’t want to be seduced by a warm day cruising under an azure sky. Although he didn’t show any outward signs, he must have been bitterly disappointed.

The day dawned with a light mist and a seasonal nip in the air. After checking the day’s weather report, Paul arrived carrying nothing more substantial than a light jacket. Standing still on the back of a narrowboat for hours on end twitching an arm occasionally to guide the craft around gentle turns can be a cold affair. I considered offering him a coat, but I didn’t need to worry. A warm sun burned the mist off by mid-morning. Paul stood comfortably at the helm for the afternoon session in a tee shirt and shorts. In February. In England. The weather has gone mad.

Well stocked with coal for a winter we haven’t had

I’m back on our dump barge mooring today, sitting in Orient’s back cabin with the doors wide open. The marina has been an unusual hive of activity for this time of the year. Calcutt Bottom lock behind me has been busy for most of the day as local boaters seized the chance to do a little fair weather boating. They need to make the most of this early season opportunity. If the current warm weather and clear skies continue, the network will struggle to remain fully operational. We need rain and plenty of it if we want to avoid summer lock closures and restrictions. Brits begging for rain in England? It’s not a common request.

The forecast for the week ahead is for lots more sun. Narrowboat owners and daffodils will be out in force. I’ll be working beside the Grand Union canal watching happy boaters chug along wishing that I was one of them.

Discovery Day Update

I welcomed Orient’s first Discovery Day guest on Saturday. Aspiring liveaboard boater, Paul, joined me for a twelve mile, six lock cruise on the combined Oxford and Grand Union canals. The waterway weaves a fascinating route through some of Warwickshire’s finest scenery. 

We began the day at 8am with a hot drink in front of the glowing coals of Orient’s multi fuel stove. We enjoyed an hour discussing essential bits of onboard kit, rules and etiquette on the network’s watery roads, the true cost of living a life afloat, and any other questions about this wonderful lifestyle Paul wants to throw at me.

Fully refreshed and raring to go, we fired up Orient’s vintage engine. Saturday’s weather was unbelievable; a cloudless blue sky and a sun warm enough to encourage Paul to strip off to tee shirt and shorts for the afternoon cruise back to Calcutt.  Even though I’ve cruised the Discovery Day route hundreds of times I never tire of it. Buzzards circling overheard during the day, owls swooping low over the canal at dusk, the occasional trembling muntjac kneeling to drink in the offside shallows and, in March, mad hares cavorting in waterside meadows. The route is as fascinating as it is beautiful. The day with Paul passed in a blur. I tied up at the end of the day eager to greet my next guest and the many more to follow through the changing seasons.

If you want a break from all this Brexit nonsense and escape the stresses and strains of modern day life for a while, come and join me for an idyllic day on the cut. I promise you a truly relaxing day out filled with answers to all your narrowboat questions. You’ll learn how to handle a narrowboat with confidence too. Click on the link above to book your day.

Paul Glover enjoying and unseasonably warm February Discovery Day