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This guy is probably appropriate:

I am fully aware about lifeboats but have any of you actually thought about the practicalities of launching lifeboats in that sort of weather? Because the engines were out of action, coupled with her being anchored, which tends to keep her head to wind, the ship was not able to make a lee to give shelter to its lifeboats, which would have been potentially subject to damage during the operation, and with great respect to a large proportion of the crew, who I am sure are doing their best, their basic seamanship will be rudimentary , and I would suggest that they would find it a very difficult operation to carry out safely with the numbers of people involved (and please remember that in cruise ship terms this is a smaller vessel). Please bear in mind that inevitable a large number of the passengers are past the first flush of youth - some quite elderly - which is the norm on this type of ship, and in those sea conditions, launching ships lifeboats would be very slow and too hazardous to consider. That is, I suspect, one of the reasons why the decision was made to use the helicopter option. In that regard it is fortunate that the vessel is withing the range of such helicopter services. I am only glad that at last they seem to have got underway and are proceeding, slowly, to Molde. Let's just hope they get there safely and as soon as possible. Howard

I'm a bloke over 6ft and over 16 stone, but I was trained by ex-working boatmen: "You've got a friggin' engine and some bloody rope! Use 'em!" There isn't a bloke on the planet that can stop a 40 ton laden L&L shortboat by pulling on a rope that isn't strapped round a bollard or fed through a ring, and you can't always rely on them as the coping stones get ripped out! My technique is to slow the boat right down using it's own power, and then give it just that little bit longer so it is actually stopped. I despair at seeing 4 ft 6 stone women being screamed at by their 6ft 20 stone husbands that they are not pulling hard enough. Don't apologise for being female - just use the brains us blokes were not given(!) and don't try and make excuses for lack of upper body strength. It's much easier if you learn some of the more advanced rope & engine techniques ... for example tie the centre line to a bollard with some slack and then just power forward until the boat touches the side all the way along it's length. ETA: Not a dig @BlueStringPudding, just a general thing about women not handling boats like most men (who usually do it wrong anyway!)

I'd just like to echo this suggestion. For a bit of context, we first started thinking we might want to live aboard a boat around eight years ago, when our kids were 11-15ish. I don't think we ever entertained the idea of living aboard as a family; I think it would have been very frustrating being cooped up in such a small space with all the day-to-day boaty hassles of water, electricity, toilets, gas, fuel etc to deal with, plus the logistics and expense of mooring and maintenance, but with limited opportunities to actually enjoy an outdoorsy, cruising life. But what we did do was buy a cheap 24ft 'practice' narrowboat that was just about big enough for family holidays - 'touring caravan' size inside I guess. We had some great times as a family, scratched a boating itch and determined that living aboard was something we really wanted to try when the time was right. Fast forward to now and we have been living aboard a 55ft narrowboat as a couple for the past seven months, ever since our youngest went to uni. We're living the life we actually want to live rather than a heavily compromised version of it, restricted by ties to schools etc. I 100% appreciate what you're saying about never knowing how long you've got - I nearly dropped dead of a brain haemorrhage two years ago while waiting for our liveaboard plans to come to fruition - but I do wonder if there's a middle way that will let you enjoy the good bits of boating during school holidays for now while also enjoying the practical aspects of living in bricks and mortar near schools etc. Even if that means remortgaging or buying a smaller place in order to afford the boat.

Having acquired several more bags of pennies. We shall resume service. Neeeeeeearly there... Phew! So, now the scary part. The resin. How much resin does it take to cover a 22" x 19" board with a coating of resin about 3mm deep? I've no idea. I mixed up a full 700ml of resin with 350ml of hardener and hoped for the best that I had enough... Agh! Drips! PANIC! PANIC!!!!1!!! Okay, I think I've plugged the leaks. There were a couple more, but I bunged them up with paper towel and anything else I could find. Now I had to spend the next hour babysitting this thing to hit it with a burst from the butane (kitchen) torch to burst any bubbles that appear. Don't be fooled into thinking that you've burst them all and can relax. Hell no. Those little suckers are hiding everywhere. Just waiting for you to turn your back, pop up to the surface and spoil everything. Seriously, I sat next to this thing eating my lunch to stay on bubble watch. Once the resin goes really sticky then you can be safe that it's too thick for bubbles to now rise up. Next day it's ready for the tape to come off: Oooooohhh! Shiny! I bought a roll of 1mm transparent plastic. It's stuff for protecting table tops. Cut it to size, put it on, then cut some PVC wood effect trim to finish it off: Now I have to hope that my table rod on the boat, and the single folding leg, can cope with the weight of this thing as it now has the weight of the wood, hundreds of pennies, and almost 1L of resin on it. So... the question now is: to the nearest £1... how many pennies did it take to cover the table?

At £4,000 a go just go and look at the northern lights!! At that price I'd have been quite content to go and see the Southend lights, ''half hour on the bus from Tilbury'', or even Blackpool's lights. The bus ride from Tilbury to Southend-On-Sea is quite a splendid trip, which includes stops at the wonderful Basildon, the delights of Pitsea, Pints of Fosters at the Tar Pots in Benfleet, Taking in the sea air and mud and gorging on cockles at Leigh-On -Sea, Chalkwell with its almost tropical sandy beaches and mud, Westcliff with its towering cliffs with flats and hotels mounted atop, and then Sunny Southend, gateway to the east, with its golden sands and mud, balmy sea air, fish'n'chips, Strolls along the pier, fun fairs with'' Knock the lady out of bed''. and ''What the butler saw machines'', toffe apples and Candy Floss and of course more Lager, and last but not least not forgetting those spectacular and most splendid illuminations, ''The Lights'' when it gets dark. All for a paltry few quid. And you won't get shipwrecked.

If it had happened about 75 years ago Bismarck could have been sent to the rescue, it was hiding in a Fiord near there. Those ships are all windage, nasty in my opinion, like SUV's of the seas, bunging up all the ports and hogging parking places. They rely on engines and side thrusters to keep em safe.

Cruise ships can provide a mixture of lifeboats or, in this case dual purpose tenders (dual purpose vessels also used to take passengers ashore in anchoring situations. )They provide a maximum of of 75% of total capacity of passengers and crew, 37.5% on each side. The remaining 25 % is made up with life rafts. Embarkation would be done on the boat deck, prior to lowering. If you look on Youtube you may find film of this very operation taking place for real on Costa Concordia when she was in trouble a few years ago. I would suggest that the boats weren't used because the sea state was nearer to a 10 metre swell which would have made it very difficult to launch them without causing serious damage or accident/injury. However, I wasn't there so this is just surmise. The ship was in very close proximity to a lee shore in gale plus winds and heavy swells - you may recall that local lifeboats turned back because of the weather. The ships boats would have had great difficulty in getting the passengers ashore, and My opinion is that the Master made exactly the right decision by using helicopters. Howard

We are 58ft 6ins, without bow and stern fenders. ( we got the odd 6 inches gratis!) A few years ago we did the Leeds Liverpool, Calder and Hebble and Rochdale clockwise. Going Katie corner going up was interesting in the shorter Calder and hebble locks, but we did not have to lift the fenders. But we did get moist coming down some of the leaky locks on the L&L, particularly on the five rise.

I saw your duck the other day....training for the new spiderduck film he was:-

Many boaters who wish to stay 2 or 3 days on a mooring fit solar panels, so that for 8 months of the year the sun will help charge your batteries.

I see they have removed the figurehead... ?

I have never suggested that there is no alternative to heli evacuation. I am also aware of the wind strength as I am also aware that the vessel was very close to running aground on a lee shore. If you are familiar wi IMO recommendations you will also know that they suggest a maximum evacuation time of 30 minutes from the time that eveyone is at muster stations with lifejackets donned. That minimum is relaxed depending on the size of vessel My "extensive" explanation was intended to assist those who are not familiar with some of the realities of such incidents, no more and no less, which are my opinions. You may wish to express your own view and thank you for your advice, but I don't need lectures from you about saving lives at sea. Howard

Just remember that "Exit means exit"...,,

That must be engaging ?

Lol. Funny you should mention that. I have blue and purple hair with tattoos and hubby plays the guitar. Would that help? ?? regarding the price, the collingwood abode looks to be a good size and starts at £120kish which is covered by the equity in our house. But with what everyone is saying, maybe it’s not the best idea just yet.

Do a complete rewire, save up for eight years to buy em, change yer alternators, have a big fire extinguisher handy.....................proper fit and forget kit

Manchesters Canals are all a pile a S**t*, probably the worse of any city, and Manchester should be ashamed of itself. There are a few volunteers doing a good job trying to clean things up, a few places where good things are happening, New Islington is mostly good, but in many ways things are still going downhill. A few years ago Castlefield was a good place to stop, with some nice bits of history, some venues and nightlife, and a feeling that it come become a little Gas Street replica. Now most visitor moorings have gone in favour of drab long term moorings, visitors are confined to the car park side where kids deal drugs and smash bottles (if you can get there at all because its got very silted). Except for the Wharf the pubs/bars have gone, some of it is boarded up and I assume due to turn into yet more housing. Manchester is not a destination, its a place to get through on the way to somewhere better. ..............Dave

Seems very likely but I have guessed wrong before. many times

There is enough nonsense delivered over the meaning of “bona fide for navigation” to make any sane person despair – and some of it comes from over-worked County Court judges, relying heavily on submissions made by clever barristers, in specialised fields with which the judges are unfamiliar. The oft-cited Davies judgment, seeking as it did to pin down the genuineness or not of navigation in terms of intent, was not only inherently absurd, but was contrary to established precedent case-law. It was inherently absurd, not least because it would not solve the authority’s problems with boats hogging certain spots to the detriment of other boaters. The idea that a pattern of movement would be acceptable or not depending upon the intent of the boater is ridiculous – what practical difference would it make to anybody whether the boater was simply following guidance as to application of the 1995 Act requirement, or whether they were using the same pattern regardless of the requirement? The judgment would make ANY pattern of movement unlawful if followed only because it was law. And since when has obedience to law (reluctant or otherwise) been grounds for a conviction that a crime has been committed on the basis that the law was only complied with in order to comply? As to binding precedent (which neither Davies nor Meyers qualifies as), in order to apply a meaningful definition to the word “navigation” in the context of the BW legislation, the CC judge ought to have looked for cases in the context of recreational boating. In that context the definitions found in the Cairngorm case, and in the Appeal Court case Evans v Godber [QB 1974] are the most applicable. Of particular relevance - given the County Court finding in Davies – is the conclusion in the Evans v Godber case as to what “navigation” of pleasure boats embraces where rights of navigation exist. The leading judge very properly observed certain essential differences between land-based public highways and the right of navigation on water: “By contrast, the right of navigation in tidal waters is a right to move at will throughout the area where the water is tidal. No doubt most people when they set out on a voyage intend to get somewhere, as did the defendant on this occasion, but those entering Pagham harbour are under no obligation to follow a particular route or have a motive or reason to come in; their right as an exercise of the common law right to navigate is a right to go in tidal waters as and when they please.” Such boats are, in other words, “bona-fide navigating”, despite following no particular route, nor having any particular motive or reason for the pattern of their navigation. The same principle has to apply to waters where the right to navigate is by permission via a boat licence, with the added proviso re: navigating CaRT waterways that the 14-day guidance (however interpreted) must be factored in. The relevant case law thus contradicts the Davies finding as to the supposedly essential factor of intent. Anybody wishing to discover the essential criteria envisaged by BW when framing the relevant clause in the ’95 Act, need only read the specific representations made by their QC while promoting the clause during Select Committee deliberations on the 1990 Bill. For perhaps understandable reasons, BW and now CaRT have always objected to the relevant material being considered in any of the court deliberations on the subject. Suffice to say that it sought, generally speaking, to apply 'common sense' criteria to avoid inconsiderate leaving of boats near and alongside essential services, to the detriment of other boaters whose use of those would be obstructed. Sadly, 'common sense' and consideration for others can be as absent in boaters as in the navigation authority's departmental officers.

I'm still waiting to here what harm is being done by people who follow the guidance and no more. It feels like a divide and rule situation. If a boater is clearly failing to meet the requirements, then fair enough, have a go at them; but to snipe away online about boaters who DO follow the rules but not to the specific approval of self-appointed moral artibers, well that's pretty poor in my opinion. As boaters, 99% of the time we all want the same things. We'd be far more likely to get those things if we combine out voices, than spend our time critisizing each other.

Including Birmingham and the Black Country, the population is about a quarter of London. There are also more canals than in London. But even more important is that cheap housing is far easier to find in the Birmingham area than it is in London. The stark truth is that continuous cruising is arguably the cheapest housing option in London, but that's far from being true in Birmingham. The cost of renting or buying property in London is so high that many people simply have no option other than to look at things like boats. In Birmingham the cheapest way for a young person to live is to rent a room in a shared house, or be a lodger. That's not true in London. So there's pretty much no prospect of Birmingham becoming like London. If you have no interest in boating, you're unlikely to become a cc'er in Birmingham but you might well do in London.