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A little list I made earlier on when I had some time on my hands and was feeling ponderful, about all of the little things that I have discovered and learnt since moving on board! 1. All of your clothes will smell faintly of ‘real fire’ or coal, regardless of how recently you washed them. Initially this is an inconvenience but eventually you come to rather like it. 2. If you own any white, cream, or pastel coloured clothes, they will soon take on odd black smudges, regardless of how careful you are about keeping them away from the stove, hod, or anything else coal related. This remains as an inconvenience and does not fade. 3. When visiting another boater, it is uncouth to ask to their toilet, unless you are at least a fifteen minute walk from another toilet facility (for women) or a wooded area/ bush (for men.) 4. If you have boater visitors over for more than four hours at a time, you will find yourself spending the latter half of their visit thinking that surely they must need to pee soon/ is your bathroom so nasty that they are too scared to want to use it/ how much more tea can you ply them with as a kind of pseudo-scientific experiment, just to see what they’ll do in an emergency. 5. Visits from other boaters will seldom exceed four hours without them either departing/ needing to go back to their boat for a minute/ having to ‘pop back to the car for something,’ see point four. 6. ‘Townies’ fill gaps in conversation by talking about the weather. ‘Boaties’ fill gaps in conversation by talking about water levels. 7. Pump out or cassette? Oh hells no. Don’t even go there. 8. It’s okay to insult a man’s wife, children, career choice, hair, or dress sense. But engines must always be coo’d over and spoken of in hushed approving tones, regardless of their size, condition, or maker. Shhhh! She’ll HEAR YOU! 9. If you are expected to go to work in anything approaching smart casual, you have likely got a pair of boots ‘for the journey’ that are generally covered in orange clay- like towpath mud, and also a pair of ‘smart shoes’ that are clean, patent leather, and walk less than ten steps a day. Plus a bag to keep each pair in, separately. 10. You become obsessed with what you can convince your stove to burn... Large, unwieldy or inflammable objects of rubbish will all be graded highly, according to your success in convincing the stove to eat them. 11. Ecofans. Having an opinion is mandatory. Having ever tried one is not. 12. If you have a posh new shiny boat, you are probably king of the marina. Conversely, that may also make you ‘king shit’ and/ or a N00b/ ‘more money than sense joker’ out on the cut. 13. ‘Online’ no longer just means that you have internet access, and committing the faux- pas of confusing the two meanings in conversation is verboten. 14. Portholes or windows? See point seven. 15. It seems perfectly normal to you to have both the stove/ heating going full pelt, and all of the windows open. 16. If you can’t manage to have a thorough shower, including shaving your legs, washing and conditioning your hair, and brushing your teeth in under four minutes/ four litres of water, you have failed as a boater and should probably consider moving back onto land. 17. Whenever you go to work in an office, visit a friend in a house, or have cause to use a hotel, you need an extra bag to haul along all of the things you want to charge up from their mains while you’re there. 18. Irons, microwaves, hairdryers and hoovers are all for posh people. 19. You used to own ten big thick jumpers for use in winter. Now you own two big thick jumpers, and a bottle of Febreeze. 20. And... You can make ten cubic feet of stuff fit into four cubic feet of space. 21. You keep a mop on your roof because everybody else does, but you’re not quite sure why... 22. When everyone else on the train home standing up is swaying about and clinging to railings, you are in the middle of it all freestanding, swaying with the flow and not falling down (until you do!) 23. Your mailing address is the same as your parents, for the first time since you were 16 years old. 24. Rosie and Jim are Bad People. 25. You probably started life on your boat with a novelty neckerchief, captain’s hat, pirate bandana, or “I’m on a boat, Mother F***er!” t shirt. By your third week therein, you have experimented with how that burns on the stove (see point 10) and roll your eyes and snort derisively at the fresh faced wannabe’s who have taken your place in committing aforementioned fashion faux-pas. 26. You have a beard. This is neither negotiable, nor gender- specific. 27. You can answer the question “is it cold on a boat in winter?” sensibly, only a finite number of times, before deciding to mess with people and saying “yes, it’s terrible, I have nearly died of hypothermia twice this year already, and I don’t know how I’m still alive...” 28. You thought you’d save money in winter by using the open bow as a fridge/ freezer for your food... Until you realised just how much alcohol you could actually store there if you stacked it all up right. 29. Upon hearing ‘man overboard!’ you reach for the camera first, and the life ring second. 30. When other people fall in, you are never there to see it/ photograph it. But you know damn well that when YOU fall in, there’ll be a group of Japanese tourists there, immortalising it on film and upping it to YouTube within the hour. 31. You can cook and serve a full Sunday roast for four, with less than two square feet of counter space to work on. 32. You stop thinking to yourself, “there’s some funny people on the cut” around the same time you realise that you are just like them, actually. 33. The 8pm engine/ generator off collective: You’re either with them, or against them. 34. You know that you have to disown any of your former friends who are apt to order “a pint of lager, please” in the pub, and you’re okay with that, actually. 35. Your hands and nails are NEVER clean, no matter how much you wash them. 36. You WILL have some kind of nasty toilet emptying related incident within your first few weeks away from mains plumbing. No one can teach you how to avoid your own personal initiation into boat toilet hell, you’re just going to have to grit your teeth and wait for it to happen. 37. When you started out with the boat, you had a little list of about five things that you needed to do/ buy/ sort out. However, due to a phenomenon I like to think of as ‘boat mathematics’ you learn that for every one item you cross off of said list, another two appear. Three months down the line, your list has about 30 essential and time sensitive things you need on it, and your earnings for the next two to four years are already committed to it. Oh well, spaghetti hoops for dinner again... Anyone have any they'd like to add?

I would start off by breathing all over it for a few hours then wrap it up in a duvet. Follow this up with a bowl of warm water placed inside and over 24 hours keep warming the water until it's at boiling point, only after a couple of days of this treatment can you progress to candles. Delicate little things they are...

You have absolutely no need, because you already have the right attitude. Just be yourself, talk to folk and you'll be fine Richard

How long is that piece of string? It very much depends on what level of sailaway you have, there are several levels it could be built to, very basic, and primed, through all stages to fully painted, lined, and services to tails. It also depends how focused you are and how well prepared you are in understanding what you need to do. It will also depend how complicated a layout you want, and to what quality you want it finished. Are you aware of the RCD? I agree it would make economic and sanity sense to try and find a bit of land to put it on near home. It doesn't need to be near the waterways for a good while yet. Several months at best....depending on.....plus you will more likely know places locally to source much of your materials.

Since you started this thread a couple of years ago it's clearly not a flash-in-the-pan idea for you. Good luck with it. Not sure where you are but you're welcome to visit me if you're anywhere near the Warwickshire Avon.

What a very heartening post, Have a greeno. Where is the mooring? It sounds like quite good value. Not Bill Fen by any chance?

OK so aside from talking about banks cash and fraud..... The only flat that we were happy with has been denied to us on account of my not having a job yet.....pricks. We have a mooring and we're putting the deposit down tomorrow. That's that sorted. It comes with utilities, parking space, postbox, storage, security gate to marina and costs £660 per quarter. We are still looking at boats but we are confident we will be moved in by the end of October. I have listened to all of your warnings, but the fact is, cosmic synergy, or whatever is telling us, this is the path of adventure we take. We're doing it guys, I'm actually going to liveaboard. I only dreamed of this moment when I started the thread.

If you have a broken lump do you get all discombobulated or do you have a special procedure for this event ?

Ah! The problems of the after effects of retinal surgery and developing cataracts - I misread that word initially!

Would it be fair to say that most problems with these devices are when they are outside (cruiser and perhaps semi-trad stern) as opposed to inside (trad stern)? Ours (Beta) is 1800 and still going strong (FLW) but it is in a fairly benign environment (trad stern, inside the hatch).

Will be running a 240v ring main through vidar, as i have the ceilings down at the minute i figure best to run the cables and set sockets, just leaving the connection to fuse at a later date. Question is, is it ok to run through the ceiling, will run in a separate trucking away from the 12v that already runs down the center. And, as i understand it, you go, fuse board to plug A to plug B to plug C to plug D to fuse board, as i am only fitting sockets on one side and only halfway down the cabin, i have to run a cable all the way back from the furthest plug (D) back to the fuse board? Thanks

John, your position seems to be that they need to try and see the problem from your point of view. That is an entirely reasonable position to take. However, there are two points that I would put to you; 1) Seeing the problem from your point of view doesn't equate to agreeing to your solution. Even if he tries to see it from your point of view, he needs to find a solution that is going to be acceptable to his boss, and he needs solid information for that. Without solid information, he is going back to his boss and saying "John says he is staying put, he has decided that it is OK to do so, and its none of your business why" 2) You also need to see it from his point of view. Whilst you may be a genuine case, he will also be dealing with dozens of other people who are not genuine cases who are just trying to game the system. Tony Dunkley obviously sees himself as some kind of superhero, standing up for the rights of oppressed boaters with a campaign of making a nuisance of himself and encouraging others to do the same. He isn't helping them. He and others with his attitude are exactly what is hardening attitudes and giving us EOs who are less willing to accept boaters at face value.

Been doing some reading and now my brain hurts. I think I now know what I’ve been looking at. Normal battery behaviour. The readings I took in an earlier post are now starting to make sense. I’m not getting amps escaping, they’re just moving elsewhere. The readings were taken using whole numbers but I’m sure that if taken using fractions aswell, it would all add up nicely. Main cable in: 23 amps. Batteries. +ve -ve 1-2 18 5 2-3 12 10 3-4 6 16 Main cable out: 23 amps. Alternator goes to battery 1. Earth to installation from battery 4. Overall there are 23 amps going IN the battery bank and 23 amps going OUT of the battery bank. Each battery is receiving 23 amps made up of +ve and -ve electrons. The further away the battery is from the current input, the less +ve amps it receives but must still add up to 23 amps. So the more -ve amps are seen. Likewise, the nearer the -ve amps get to the -ve OUT lead of the bank, they increase but all the while adding up to 23 amps. I think it’s something to do with “Q”. That’s “Q” as in Coulomb’s Law….NOT StarTrek. I think I’ll get a life and go out more. Thanks all, for any help/input. Rob…. ETA...Thanks Gypsey Kings, posted before I read your post.....nice drawing by the way. Rob....

Hi everyone. Just a quick post regarding the T&M breach. If you are stuck North of the Preston Brook Tunnel, cannot get back South and need to leave your boat somewhere safe, you are more than welcome to leave it at our base at Claymoore. We are building up a little collection of private boats as I type so you may want to ring ahead first (01928 717273). However we will do what we can to fit you in as we have quite a long stretch we can moor along and are allowed to moor several out. If you are on a hire boat with another company and are supposed to be heading back along the affected route, your hire company may ask you to stop at us as we will be turning round several of their boats that are stuck. Of course there is no charge to moor during this incident, I would just ask that your stop with us is due to a genuine need as you can't get South. I hope this helps. Paul