Windfola

Well, I've accepted an offer on my house! In theory, if all goes well, I could be on a boat by mid October. Of course, if I can't find the right one in time I can always rent for a bit first. Does anyone have recommendations for good independent surveyors in the south of England? I'm going to see a couple of boats near Bristol and another near Gloucester in the next couple of weeks. On the other hand, most of the brokers near me are in the Daventry/Northants area. Do people who sell a house and buy a liveaboard use their solicitor to complete the transaction in one go, or is it better to do it as a separate deal? I also feel rather tempted by an Aquiline boat - there are a few on Apolloduck and several demonstrators at Blisworth and Mercia. Anyone got any experiences to share regarding these? Their interior joinery is lovely quality, but I am less certain about the hull quality/technical bits and bobs. Any advice will be most welcome...

I do hope it comes right in the end. Can you sue the Harps for the balance due back from your £80,000? All this has totally put me off commissioning a new build. I think I'll go back to looking at nearly new, or at least ready completed boats.

I struggled to find a hire company that would take single handers, so i found a friend who is willing to come along and be my crew!

Would you consider living on a houseboat instead?

Dunno really. They are after all not very house-trainable. And in the summer they really just want to keep moving and eating. I suppose he could possibly live on the front deck, but it would be very small...

The Apolloduck link no longer works. So if you want to generate interest on here, you are going to have to provide an alternative link.

One of my biggest worries about learning to be a competent boater is that I am rubbish at understanding hand signals (apart from the more uncomplimentary ones, where little is left to the imagination). Call it manual dyslexia. I am also slightly deaf. So indistinct yelling and waving are not going to help me understand ditch etiquette at all. Is there any hope for me?

You're rather assuming that, having scraped together whatever money was needed to buy the boat, the owner can remotely afford the thousands of pounds needed for repainting, blacking and so on.

Be interesting...

The CMHT I worked in had just a couple of men. And at management level, well: clinical lead (consultant psychiatrist) = female. General manager (had control of budget) = female. Senior nurse = female. Chief executive of NHS Mental Health Trust = Female. Head of AMHP service (the Mental health act bit) = Female. Head of HR = Female. Nuff said really.

What does the Thames cost for a year?

'To be honest, there is a boat on our (private) moorings which is far worse than any of those, and it is owned by a Vicar! Not sure that makes any difeerence, but I thought I would add the information for interest!' To my knowledge, there is nothing special about vicars that makes them any tidier or more houseproud than the general population.

I'm with you Doug. It is a very outdated concept to attribute psychological traits (in groups or singly) only to one gender or the other.

As I thought then

So how would one, for example, navigate from the south to the north or vice versa? Is it only possible by hugging the coast at some stage? (all the questions of seaworthiness and so on)

OK, someone had to ask. What's a rocker cover?

What the others said. Definitely not something to be left to chance as the place is heaving with tourists at all times. Just had a quick look on the website. linky The Recreation Ground car park (across the river from the RSC) has unlimited parking but it is £20 for 24 hours. You can buy a 3 month season ticket for £135 in advance, which would cover a week but only save you a fiver. But at least you wouldn't have to feed the metre. On street parking is a bit hit and miss, not least because some of the roads are fairly narrow! And a lot of Stratford houses don't have off street parking. Why not ring one of the pubs and see if you can negotiate some kind of deal?

Blue jobs and pink jobs - have you been eating too much food colouring? What ARE you on about?

Well, frankly, I haven't been inside a hairdresser's since about 1998. I rarely wear make-up, my nails are invariably short and I have no idea when I last wore a skirt. I hate reading about fashion and would rather service a pump out loo than have a manicure. So according to this thread I am not a proper female. I think I was last time I looked. There are blokes out there more worried about their appearance than I am. Bugger this thread.

You like bird poo on your laundry then...

I dropped my mobile down the toilet the other day (fortunately I had already flushed ) and resuscitated it with the dried rice method. So it is definitely worth trying.

You will always get a better response if you make your posts easier to follow by using correct grammar and punctuation. I for one found it hard to follow your opening post. A little effort up front can pay dividends.

The one percent figure comes from the occurrence of the most severe and enduring mental illnesses, specifically schizophrenia and severe mood disorders with psychosis. It has been arrived at by research over many decades. There is a strong genetic component to these illnesses. It is the medical categorisation for mental illness, which obviously is defined by doctors. If you subscribe to a non-medical model of mental ill-health, then you may disagree. I belong in neither camp exclusively. While I would not want to detract from anyone's experience of the other, far more common illnesses and disorders, I have never seen any patients more terrified than those with acute episodes of schizophrenia, because the experiences it causes are extremely unpleasant. I don't think anyone who hasn't suffered from these symptoms, or been very close to someone with them can really comprehend quite how terrifying they are. And it is life-long and very damaging to 'normal' life chances. The prognoses for other mental health problems are usually much more positive, whether it be a matter of weeks or months or several years with sporadic recurrences. Sorry folks, I'll get off my soap box now. it's just that I can't help but jump in when I see a chance to challenge discrimination, whether it be intentional or not.

Bless you, Richard! I agree about the Spectrum entirely. The only thing I would say is that psychotic illnesses are very different from other disorders, in as much as they do affect people's thinking in ways that are beyond their control, and that these thinking patterns are usually contrary to the person's normal thinking and beliefs when they are well. The distinction is biologically driven, though it is exacerbated by life stresses. I wouldn't know about BelgiumBrit's sanity.

I am happy to confirm that I have a bi-polar disorder. But that is irrelevant to this discussion. There are indeed many people out there with mental disorders, be they personality disorders, substance abuse issues or profound psychological difficulties. These are not biological mental illnesses, as any psychiatrist will tell you, and the people who 'suffer' from them largely have control over their actions and therefore can and must take responsibility for them, like anyone else. I don't believe I have over-generalised on this thread any more than anyone else. However, you are clearly bruised at having your views challenged, which is your problem, not mine, BelgiumBrit. It seems to surprise you that someone who has a mental illness is capable of holding a higher degree and working full time as a professional clinician. Does that make you feel more threatened, than the idea that I am The Great Heywood Nut? I would put it to you that it probably does. I respect your own experience of people who come into contact with the police. But it is, I'd have thought, perfectly obvious that you see only a tiny minority of the people that CMHTs work with every day. Your training is in law enforcement, not in psychiatry, so forgive me if I don't see that as qualifying you to make a judgement based on factual evidence, outside what you have directly had experience of. Psychological disorders affect about 1 in 4 people at some time in their lives. Only about one in every hundred of the population suffers from a severe mental illness, including schizophrenia, bi-polar disorder and other psychotic illnesses. Of these very few are likely ever to behave in a violent or threatening manner. Far more people with mental illnesses hurt themselves than other people. In 15 years of working with a wide variety of people in the mental health system I have come into contact with a very few who broke the law, and of those, just a couple did so as a result of their illnesses. That's a couple out of probably several thousand that I and my immediate colleagues came into contact with. Not many really. People with mental health problems are like you and me. They are not monsters or criminals any more than any other group. As I said before, my patients have included professors, teachers, parents of well adjusted and brought up children, students, doctors and yes, police officers too. That is the only point that I am trying to make here. I just want to redress the balance a little and reduce prejudice. Is that so bad?