Tafarn

Hi Guys, Great to hear from you. We are spending the winter at Overwater near Audlem. Spare time is not in our future. Maybe after Xmas...... we'll talk. Thanks for the ideas, I think we will moor at the Black Country Museum one night then press on to Gas Street Basin. Looking forward to it. Have a great weekend with Cheese Boat 1 Cheers, Helen and David Will do,thanks.

Well looks like the best would be Aldersley Junction to the Black Country Museum on the first day. Then into the NIA, Brindley Place area the next day, early enough to pick up some good mooring. Should be interesting.

Good tip,thanks.

My wife and I are in the planning stages of our cruising season for 2011. We run Cheese Boat 2. You might have seen us or our best friends on Cheese Boat 1 out on the canals this past year. Cheese Boat 1 has been operating for several years bring delicious Welsh cheese to the side of the canal. We took delivery our 60 sailaway from Tim Tyler/Jonathan Wilson in June of 2009 and spent 9 months fitting her out. We started our first year of selling at the end of March 2010. Our itinerary took us from Banbury in the south to Anderton Boat Lift in the north. We finished our cruising season off on The Llangollen in September taking in the festivals at Maesbury Marsh, Ellesmere and Whitchurch. Everyone tells us we have to see Birmingham. So we have decided to add a trip into the city centre as a part of our 2011 schedule. We are planning to come from Norbury Junction after the 2nd of May and head down for selling the following weekend. Our big concern is security. As we will be coming off the Staffs and Worcs at Aldersley Junction, is it best to power through all the locks and make it to Gas Street Basin area all in one day? Or is there a safe place to moor between Woverhampton and Birmingham city centre?

Not this time. Hopefully soon I have always wanted to cruise the Thames. Did The Severn once between Worcester and Stourport, that was interesting(lots of floating gin palaces).

Whoa! Thanks for this I see now the limitations of the winding hole(checking the fine print in the Nicholsons guide). Thanks for all the other information.

We are heading down the Oxford Canal with our newly completed 60 footer in April. Has any one had any experience with mooring in Oxford? Where is good place with easy access to town? Also are there any problems with the local fauna (the hooded variety)?

Thanks all! Now I will have to spend sometime processing this information. I will need a dual LNB for a Kerstan (do they make a quad?....wait no that's crazy). How do you find out what channels are available with which satellite? And would a SkyPlus box tune those channels in?

That is what I thought,thanks.

I would like to have SkyPlus this time on our new boat. But I have a feeling that you need a landline to use this box. Does anyone know? The big plan is to have SkyPlus and Freeview that should cover almost everything worth(?) watching. If we can't have SkyPlus then a DVD Recorder with a hard drive for Freeview and a standard Sky Digibox.

This has us very concerned. We hope by visiting the boatbuilder we might get a sense of the business's longevity and chance of survival. Can you buy insurance against a builder going bust?

We gave our requirements to five different builders and got a range of almost 10,000 pounds top to bottom. Now I know some builders like Colecraft for example put out a very fine hull and I guess thats what you pay for in the end. The first sailaway we got in 2005 was 22,500 now for the same spec we are looking at 30,000 thats a 33% increase. Funny enough the hull prices,in case of Colecraft hasn't change in a bit. Its the windows,engine,vents and wooden doors that have shot up in last few months. I would have thoughts the same but the prices don't seem to reflect that. At least not yet! We are over for Christmas and plan to meet with some builders,we'll see what they to say. Thanks for all your responses. Cheers,

We have fitted a sailaway already, so this will be the our second. I admit it is a challange, but it is one way to get everything you want/need where you want it. We do home renos in Canada,so this kind of the stuff we do on a daily bases. I understand what you are saying but at the same time it is interesting how much boats have gone up since the demise of boat builders like Liverpool Boats. I think it is more what the market will bear.

My wife and I are in the hunt for a new sailaway. Sent out alot of emails and had about a 30% response rate. We have nailed it done to about five builders. One company has lowered their prices by about 5%. One as increased theirs by about 10% and the rest have stayed the same. This is from the spring of this year. It is hard to get a sense of where the price of boats is going. Should they be on the way down, economic downturn and what. Or going up with people getting out of the housing market. Does anyone have any ideas? Are we bargining from a position strength or weakness?

Thanks Troll, Nobody seems to have heard of them but they claimed to have been around for 30 years. I am interested in a Tim Tyler sailaway and have been in contact with them. Their prices are a little higher but not outrageously so.