Leaderboard

It is now 4 months since I bought and have lived aboard my boat and I still can't believe it. Every morning when I step outside, I have to stop and spend/waste a couple of minutes just looking around. You may say I'm a cheat because I'm moored in a marina (work makes this a nessessity) and that it's (only) a Liverpool boat. It may be true, but I love it: what a lifestyle. I will never go back to bricks and mortar unless they drag me there in a straight jacket. What a lucky boy I am. Cheers, T.

I couldn't agree more, we're about 20 days shy of our first year anniversary of moving on-board and I still pinch myself to make sure it isn't just a dream. I love our new life, and wouldn't change it for anything. I'm actually betwixt and between regarding the fire, I love it for the warmth it provides and the atmosphere it creates, but I could do without the coal / ash dust that goes with it I especially like the peace & quite, and the friendliness of the folks we meet at the locks and along the tow path - we really are blessed to be able to partake of this wonderful life. I like that we quite often read by the light of our oil lamps, or cook on the wood stove; that every day, regardless of where we are the view outside our windows include some form of water fowl or squirrels, deer or hedge hogs & when we tire of the view we simply cast off and move on another few miles. There are times when I feel somehow we managed to get a bigger slice of the pie than we were entitled too, almost over privileged and should be sharing this great life with others somehow. ETA - as a far as what others opinions are about your boat..who cares as long as your happy with it, that's all that matters. Doesn't matter which category they want to put you in (coming from someone in a WB, I've learned to pretty much ignore it)

...though mainly in the privet sector.

Not necessarily. I had an A1 survey report on REGINALD three years ago, don't forget. The guy spent AGES tapping the hull with his white stick so I knew it was gonna be good survey. MtB

Are you saying you have a portable air cooled genny installed inside your boat and you're going to rely on a £14.99 CO detector to keep you alive in the event of a similar incident? I do hope not. MtB P.S. CO detectors are subversive things. People have a habit of relying on them totally for protection from dangerous installations, rather than making the installations safe in the first place.

Natural gas is almost 100% pure methane. As such, it's not toxic, and if there's enough oxygen in the mix, you'd not notice the difference between that mix and normal air when breathing it, apart from the smell of the stenchant. Coal gas, as supplied in the days when there was a gasworks in every town, contained a lot of carbon monoxide, which would kill you very quickly indeed. A favoured way of committing suicide then was to put your head in the oven, and turn it on without lighting it. Carbon monoxide will burn, and has a pleasantly blue coloured flame which I quite often see above the coal in my stove.

Hi not sure what gearbox but has surface rust in it so would want TLC I shall try to post pics later of what I got I recently asked previous owner about engine they said it was rebuilt run up for several hours then just left in garage for approx 7 year so I assume the spare parts were acquired during rebuild I plugged battery starter pack on it and turns over fine but not sure how to bleed it to run it

Tillergirl of this parish has a great idea to keep the dogs in the cratch and still have the flaps rolled up. She has a length of garden trellis. Trapped vertically, with the long side horizontal, it extends to create an expanding fence that keeps her two medium sized dogs in but still allow them to look out

Can you provide the exact model name and number of your charger? We might then find the manual and establish how to make it charge at 14.8V and equalise at 15.6V or so.

Exactly what I was about to say. You know all those articles you hear about in The Sun saying plumbers make £100k a year? Well they are RUBBISH. We make much more than that. MtB

I fear the difficulty is that Amp counter type meters rely on you telling them what is the actual capacity of the battery. But as this changes with time, and is all but unmeasurable, then accuracy, suffers badly the further away from new the batteries are. Smart Gauge tells you how much capacity your batteries have remaining to be used. But not the starting point for that calculation. When my batteries started to fail, the Smart Gauge, went down quickly, but with charging went up quickly. I reckon that if Smart gauge goes Down quick...Up quick = Batteries naff. Down quick...Up slow = Heavy drain Down slow....Up quick = Light drain Down slow....Up slow = Poor charging Bod

Personally I've never understood the logic of using batteries to keep large amounts of food frozen on a boat. I realise we all do things differently, but as a liveaboard it seems unnecessary to me. The trick on boats is to reduce demand from the batteries, then you're not constantly chasing it (and replacing batteries).

Hi John I do love your posts A leisure mooring is what it always has been. Its simple. Nowts changed for many years, a bit like cruising and moving around the system rather than extracting the urine Tim

If you download BatteryMegastore app you can get 10% off. I just bought 4xT105 for £360 delivered.

One last thing, The Wash is the last place a novice boater with an unfamiliar boat, should be. pilot or not. You have had your boat all of 4 days correct? I hope you pass this info on to the pilot you intend on contracting. You grossly underestimate how rough it can be in a well founded sea going boat Not many do it in narrow boats for very good reason. Those that do usually have many years experience behind them before they think about 'doing the Wash' As an aside, you may not find anybody to hold your hand from Denver to Lynn, its not a straight forward run and you may well find it difficult before you even get anywhere near to the Wash. There are many tricky shoals to avoid, if you stick to the inside of bends you are likely to run aground. If you cock it up big time you won't have the boat handling skills, power or a craft capable to get you out of a tight spot. You need spades of good luck and providence more than sea going equipment.

Was this the hedge growing between the towpath and canal.

I am sorry but you were, and are, coming across as inexperienced and worse still, arrogant. The help you were offered early in the post was given in good part by people who have done this before. It's for you, as the one asking the question, to listen and sift through the information without getting arsy because that helps no-one, especially you. The equipment you need to go to sea - it's trivial compared to the experience and knowledge you need, and once you have that knowledge you won't need to ask about the equipment. Equipment is only as good as the person using it and you don't give the impression you would even know how to deploy an anchor, use a VHF competently or legally, use a lifejacket safely. What is your experience of MOB procedures? You are coming across as the kind of arrogant know-it-all that we see weekly in the newspapers being rescued by the RNLI because they thought they knew a whole lot more than they do.

I'd agree. I think we both work in the same profession. You'd have to be a right pain in the backside for a council to want to take enforcement action, although a complaint would have to be investigated, my experience generally is that these investigations are geared towards not finding a problem (with the exception of whoever the local authority is at Abingdon Marina, who needed a polite letter to tell them that they were being a it silly). I have actually had locals be against formalising liveaboard status on the grounds that when these moorings are unofficial people behave themselves... The problem with that is I don't - I live in lodgings. Middle Class think coming to the fore again

Col, Been under the stairs, That's an experience I could have done without! Anyway found it together with more lifejackets than were on the Titanic. It's a.Crewsaver and although it hasn't got any recommended weight range stamped on it Bess was about the size of a small sheepdog. As i said earlier it's in good condition and it's only got one small storage mark on it. If you PM me with an address I'll pop it in the post. Frank

We have a Baltic bouyancy aid for our Lab. She swims like a fish, but there are places where having a handle to recover her is invaluable - plus, you never know how long it might take to find somewhere to get her out on rivers.