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from the description of these lights: “Ideal for use as a tunnel light on canal boats as the 30 degree beam provides a penetrating light into the tunnel.”. Exactly what you DON’T want is a “penetrating light into the tunnel” into the face of oncoming steerers. The manufacturer / seller has obviously never been in a 2-way tunnel!

Hi Mark A sad but brave decision, in my opinion…one of the worst things you can do to a boat is just to leave it. That was a large part of our decision to sell Resolute, she was just sitting in the yard at Glascote doing very little. Yours is a beautiful boat and deserves to be loved and cherished once more. Another head turner. Hope you get a good price but also a new owner who will do her proud. With such a boat, that matters! Dave

As you are quicky discovering, it's not just the demands of maintaining and living on the boat that determine how realistic CCing is for those onboard commuting to work everyday, that's just one aspect of it. The other demands are those of the waterways authority and also the vagaries of the weather. Rivers flood especially in winter and if you're stuck on a river on an unsafe mooring you could be in big trouble. It's not really practical. Also why is it that 9 times out of 10, whenever these type of questions come up from people new to the waterways, they ask about the most difficult way to start a new life living on a boat? Not only do you want to move from a house or a flat onto a boat, which isn't easy for everyone, you also want to CC all year round including on rivers all while working full time and commuting into Cambridge and London! Sorry but that's just bl@@dy ridiculous. I've been living on boats for 23 years and I wouldn't fancy that. It's just too hard, especially for people new to boats and the waterways. Make it a bit easier on yourselves and get a long term mooring - one which turns a blind eye to liveaboards. Then you can go out cruising and when it gets too hard you can come back to the mooring. If I'm wrong and you find winter is easier than I'm suggesting then simply give up the mooring.

You mean you haven’t a bow thruster to get off the bank 🤦‍♀️ 😂😂😂

I don’t know what we’re supposed to do, but I think exiting the lock swiftly for a waiting boat seems the best solution. I think I may soon have to reset the default button in my head. It’s possible I'm getting too impatient. Turn the dial back down from 11…to…3 or even 2. I’m always slow after coming out for someone like yourself. But I do wonder why your not chasing at the bit and hovering 😃 I guess you know a boat coming out will often pull you away from the bank/landing/offside and set you up for the lock if you’re ready to deal with that. Sometimes I go a little fast to encourage it but I think it might get lost on folk and they just think something rude about me. Perhaps tick over is the way then.

Obviously if there is more than one boat waiting, the second one will be tied up or being held. Then it is appropriate to go slowly. But if there is just one boat, why would they possibly want to hold their boat stationary when the exiting boat passes? When I am waiting I always hope they come out quickly, because that will help to pull my boat away from the bank. My boat will move back and forth a bit but so what - it’s a boat! No need to fight it. Clearly you have different ideas but please don’t think your way is the only right way. It isn’t, and it is also the slowest way and the way that requires other people to meet your demands. Edit: thinking more about it, I look to see if the waiting boat is still tied up by centreline. If it is I will pass slowly to avoid alarming tilting of the boat, but wonder why the dozy boater is still tied up and why they don’t learn to boat properly. If they are not still tied up, I will go faster because I know it will help them even if they are too stupid to realise it.

That's what I prefer an exiting boat to do, I am on the stern ready for them to draw me out and I can motor in as soon as the gap is big enough.

It seems these days you are suppose to do it at tickover . I had one do that the other day, and then reversed back in to pick her husband up

Found a bit of info that might be of interest to you https://www.richmond.gov.uk/media/13246/conarea28_a3_rgb.pdf

an opportunity missed 😂 next year Curhound’ll hear me coming when I’ve got me chimes wired up!

"Cruising" and "fast"? 😂🤣😂🤣

Did he try selling you an ice cream 😂

I got told to slow down coming out of a lock, by a boater waiting to go in, not a moored boat

Should you opt for brokerage, Sarah Edgson at Glascote has a good reputation where trad style boats are concerned.

Well I would say that there is nothing wrong with doing your own gas provided you are competent to do so. No need to get it signed off by anyone. But that comes under the GSIUR (gas safety installation and usage regulations). I don’t think there is an equivalent for electricity. For bricks and mortar houses there is the building regulations part P, but that is not applicable to boats. If the building regs were applicable to boats, they’d be full of bricks. Oh, wait a minute…

One of the saddest sights for me was a new owner (on the K&A) who had purchased a quite nice trad boat (though not nearly as smart as this one) and was piling rubbish on the roof and painting untidy red oxide patches all over it, I assume so that he could be "part of the community". Boats like this are like historic buildings, you should see yourself as the custodian rather than the owner.

I think that if a 'huge' volume of water came down, I'd rather be hovering with the engine running, than moored on a bollard with the boat tilting due to the forces involved (one assumes that if going past at speed is going to cause a boat to tilt and rock, so would a 'huge' volume of water). By the same token I don't empty locks 'gently' when I'm coming down in case someone on the lock mooring below hasn't moored properly. I will give them the opportunity to moor their boat (or hold onto the centre line if that is their choice) and then I will let the lock go, not let it dribble out so as not to rock their boat.

I did, I think you may have nudged me off the line of boats a couple of times, 👍 you’d have been proud of me doing a smooth ‘U’ turn and then a forward and out in Cov basin the other week. Like my beer, never touched the sides.

Just burn candles and a poorly trimmed oil lamp

Even by my 21st century continuous-cruiser list of requirements this boat ticks a lot of boxes. It even comes with a 6ft airing cupboard with (in estate agent speak) potential to rig an indoor clothes line. These were on my optional list. I am following a vLog called Narrowboat Pirate and note midship engined traditional boats demand a more engaging interaction from the helm. An emergency stop on a blind bend will set the pulse racing. I would probably learn to enjoy tending to the mechanicals, it would remind me of my youth then I sat on the front tire of my Triumph Spitfire tuning the twin SU carbs by ear. Does a Gardner 2LW take 4* or 2*.

I thought the traditional, older boats were pine T&G , but really good boats were fitted out by craftsmen, as they are today. I'm a bit in between having covered origiginal marine ply cabin sides with with hard wearing paint and detailed the seams with varnished oak trim. The white paint on the deckhead and upper cabin sides make it look bright and airy, summer and winter, it took longer than a weekend.

I had someone in a right rant on the moorings before Blisworth tunnel, he got so irate especially as I didn't turn round and acknowledge him. Started with you are going too fast mate and finished with him calling me the c word and plenty of f'ing in between.

Not for me, I do unto others what I'd like them to do unto me... 😉

You should have a flat washer in there too, protects the fuse blade.

I'll give you a tenner for it, no survey, cash paid ... 😉🤣

Mark's boat is newer and a much nicer boat then Iona which is a 1999 Orion boat at £84,000 which Stowe Hill have up for sale

Yep I would agree if you can wait long enough for the right buyer. Passed it this year on the caldon looking a tad sad with all the slim from the trees. But you could still the quality of the build. If it was shorter I would be very interested in it. Lovely boat. 👍

As a suggestion, I think all boaters should check the brightness and dazzle of their own tunnel lamps. They can do this with following simple procedure: 1) Cruise half a mile into Braunston or Blisworth tunnel 2) Moor up to something or other 3) Leaving the tunnel lamp ON, dive into the canal and swim up a few hundred yards up ahead 4) Turn around and swim back to the boat. If during the return journey they are dazzled by their own tunnel lamp, then it is too bright and/or badly adjusted. Hope that helps. (And watch out for vaporised swimming cows. These too would suggest your light is a bit bright.)

It's a cracker, will be snapped up by a proper boater who is not bothered about useless bits of paper.

Oil lamp? We used to dream of having an oil lamp. Only posh boaters on shiny boats had oil lamps. When I were a lass, the canal company would allow us one geriatric glow worm to see'us way through 'tunnels and we were glad to have it too. The new LED lamps have the advantage of being so bright they will blast the Harecastle boggart to ectoplasm fragments. They'll vaporise a swimming cow, or other hazard to navigation in the Foulridge Tunnel at a distance of 100 yards. They can be too powerful though. At some point the extra light from the red glowing incandescent brick work of the tunnel lining is counteracted by the rising steam from the boiling water.

Quite agree since I started to redo the inside using cream satin paint with dark oak trim, the inside of the boat is much lighter now conpared how it was built with varnished wood panels which darked over time.

Just my own perspective, but the more boats I viewed when shopping around (in the flesh and in photos) the more I came to the conclusion that the 'open plan' thing, far from creating a feeling of space, just emphasises a narrowboat's narrowness. A space of say 10' or 12' by 6' looks just about in proportion as a room; a space of 16' or 18' by 6' just looks like a corridor to me. Hence we quite consciously went for a boat where the living space is broken up into dinette, then galley, then saloon (albeit without floor-to-ceiling walls between them; it is somewhat open feeling, just not corridor-y, I hope!) On the 'white paint' thing, I have a pet theory that the more traditional wood panelling look is a carry-over from the 70s when the first purpose-built leisure narrowboats were being designed; a time when I guess it would have looked terribly modern and on-trend, and flat painted walls (rather than papered/textured walls) weren't really a thing. Personally I much prefer the painted look to the 'wood, wood and more wood' look, although our own boat's interior is only painted above the level of the gunwales.

Are you sure narrowboating is for you? I have adjoining saloon and dinette on mine - it's a fairly common thing - in my mind it already makes an open plan living area, along with the kitchen which is the far side of the dinette. Though I can understand your thinking here - more often than not I eat sitting on the sofa by the stove (as I used to eat sitting on the sofa when I lived in a house) - but I like having an area with a table for other reasons (and for me having all the storage space under a raised dinette is invaluable).