Neil T

‘Down south’ in Uxbridge dry dock for a week in a friendly boatyard is £300.

Audit your consumption. Crucial. I use very little power and with 750 watts of flexible panels sikaflexed to the cabin roof I can walk over all of them, and get enough solar in the winter. All the less enthusiastic comments here fall away if you can get into your batteries more than you use in winter. Size of yr battery bank also a big factor in tiding you over a couple of horrible days. In the end it’s what you can spend. 400w of panel and 300AH lead acid batteries will get you by in summer possibly. 600AH deep cycle 2V cells (making up to 12V ) and 800w of panels / MPPT controller etc might mean you’re light fantastic all winter. (It’s always fascinating to learn what folk think is ‘normal’ power consumption.) It’s such a personal habit thing. I only run my fridge in summer. In Winter the keel plate cold box is more than sufficient. If I had to run the fridge in the dog days of winter I’d probably say none of the above is possible....

Fine thank you. Three speed extractor fan needs turning up to the middle setting rather than the lower one but so what? I did cassette for 5 years and now 18 months compost. Way to go.

I'm late to this party but I have recently put X3 250w photonic universe flexible polycrystalline panels stuck with sikaflex onto my dark blue roof. Don't know enough about the ins and outs but they are straightforwardly bloody fantastic running all my domestic systems with 12V fridge, computer charging, wifi, lots of lights etc. They're all biased to one side of a curved roof. Roof is too hot too walk on this last few weeks but still plenty of output. I'll paint the rest of my roof cream when I'm all finished (some more panels to do) to cool things down a bit, but I suspect that the differences between poly and mono are just not great on a moving narrowboat with all sorts of different angles etc. These panels are kind of stippled and textured and non slip walkable on in trainers. I'd simply say put on as many as you can afford and go. Frankly you'll spend a lot more on mono panels, feel good about that extra 10% of power.... and then lose it all by leaving a cushion on one, or mooring in the shade of a treebranch. Two small layman's points I have realised in the last few months. With solar going all the time the bigger the battery bank the better (without going insane..) If you've got lots of capacity then solar will always catch up eventually. Nothing tastes as good as a G & T with loads of solar powered ice....

Just a quick thanks to all you guys - I'm following up everything, and will for sure let you know what I come up with, although with the kids' summer holidays approaching it'll be the worst time of year for solar before I get there I suspect.. thanks again. Neil

Great, many thanks. In Uxbridge tomorrow so may act immediately.

In brief - I have 750w of solar panels and want to add another 500w for which I have the roof space. A Morning Star MPPT controller controls the charge into 500AH of 2V AGM cells providing 12V to the boat. Most of the time in summer my batteries are full and the controller is stopping further charge, even with the fridge and small freezer (Vitrifugo) on, loo fan going, lights, laptop etc. I wish to pour all of the excess into my hot water tank which the controller is capable of doing. At present the hot water comes from the heat exchanger of the BETA 43, or a 240V element. If I switch on the inverter (Mastervolt) and simply flick the 240V heater element switch I draw 267A from the batteries.......... theoretically I could do that for 20 minutes and then turn off and let the solar recharge the considerable deficit in the batteries but I'm worried that eventually I'll damage them - especially if my mind wanders in that 20 minutes and I forget to turn off the heater........ Does anybody know of a good (great even) boat electrician who could help me or install the relevant equipment , including replacing the element in the tank with a 12V one? London area most convenient for me although I would travel for the right electrician. Or should I get more batteries and just invert into the 240V element? Help. Thanks - all advice respectfully listened to. BTW just in case I get 'why on earth do you want all that power' questions I am progressing in small steps towards 1.5 KW of solar and as electric a boat as I can have.

MMnnn - before we descend into too much vitriol, without even the excuse of beer, I am the owner mentioned earlier who bought Jenny Rose off that nice mrsmelly. I went though this lock backwards on my maiden voyage from the Aire and Calder to Tamworth via the Trent / Nottingham etc. in what is still my 70ft Hudson. I know from practical personal experience therefore that it's doable even when you've only owned your first narrowboat for a couple of days. End of. But it is tight, and the gates will push hard against your stern, fenders need to be up. Probably not doable for shiny boaters more proud of their paintwork than their locking skills.

Compost. There are always slightly urgent questions from blocked and broken pump-out / tank / cassette filling types on every forum everywhere. Ever wondered why? Get a head that will last forever.

Don't think your're paranoid. I've had 3 run ins with CART in five years of both CCing and having a home mooring. Each case resulted in an apology from personnel at the highest level of complaint , the National Boating Co-ordinator etc. Each case began with the usual very heavy enforcement style letter. Each case ended with a fulsome apology, the most recent being ' I can only apologise for our mistake. We are looking at further improvements in our processes to avoid this happening again.' The reason given for the mistake was that data 'wasn’t properly completed in an internal work flow and so was not updated correctly on the main computer system.' Do I feel persecuted? Of course not. Do I think that I am dealing with an incompetent computer system operated by a strange group of disconnected people half of whom don't know what the other half is doing? That the data checkers of individuals on the towpath don't interface properly with the main computer? Absolutely. Once you are in the complaint process you enter a virtual world where automatic 'Thank you for you enquiry which is being dealt with' emails cross over with other people saying no, and yes, and maybe. Staff forward your email to someone else, and they then consider the forwarding to mean that the enquiry is 'dealt with.' Many of the staff are decent people in a partly dysfunctional organisation not that different to many other organisations. BUT what many of them still fail to understand, or don't care about, is that enforcement letters of the kind that they send out , when read on your boat which is your home, can feel extremely threatening. And cause endless distress. And accountability is a real issue. My own experience is that if you have the time and ability to make many phone-calls, a fast internet connection, can quickly photocopy and email documents, keep stringent records, particularly always keep CART emails however old they are, and be extremely polite fair and decent in the face of system incompetence then you stand a fighting chance. Unless of course you haven't been 'properly completed in an internal workflow.' In which case having not been 'updated correctly' you are not who you know yourself to be but someone from the past , and if you act in your responses to the 'We want you to know that your email has arrived safely' emails as if you are the person you know you are, then you will be told in no uncertain terms that in fact what happened in the past was not what actually happened to you but what it says on that internal workflow. Woe betide you if you have no proof to the contrary because you are already in it up to your neck and the water is rising.......................

Well spotted - that comes from the sale of the Beta along with a lot of batteries. It's the last bit of the jigsaw puzzle. However, here's a question...........given the annual mileage of a lot of London cc'ers (and this is the compliant ones) could you power a ton of batteries just with solar and do your 50 miles a year or whatever it is? ie how many electric miles would X2 weeks of solar give you............?

Definitely wouldn't blame the boatbuilders. I'm constantly surprised at the similarity of people's tastes, and also the way the house mentality of keeping a boat bland, so that it is easy to sell again, prevails. It's the customers driving the fitouts. Add a bit of austerity and reduction in boatbuilder numbers and same same same. My narrowboat becomes increasingly unsellable in this context. First because it's not a widebeam, and second.... Took the oven and eye level grill out when I realised the gas consumption. (Iron disc on the gas ring for toast. Solid fuel stove with an oven on top.) Chucked the 240V fridge, and the washing up machine. Built in a keel coldbox. + very small Vitrifrigo 12V fridge with separate compressor on the keel plate. Removed real but fake pidgeon box on roof to create the final bit of necessary space for 2 huge solar panels. Working on chucking the beta 43 for electric motor. Composting toilet. Bunk taken out and converted to cot for one year old. Painted ceilings off-white. Four large (Muji plastic) drawers cut into and recessed under outer half of double bed. (FanTAStic drawers these, I recommend.) In other words a boat designed to live in a marina with a mains cable constantly stuck up its fundament has not spent one night in a marina since I bought her and is now emphatically off-grid. Who on earth would want to buy that? (If I was selling which I aint.)

Be all of the above as it may it's quite clear by now that you can do a fair few miles, have a home mooring, and still fall foul of ever changing (hence 'mysterious') rules. And those rules are applied differently in different parts of the country by people not always fully conversant with them, or happy to rule their own roost in their own way. The airing of personal politics doesn't change that. Nor does vilifying people as tossers. The Cut's a fractious place these days. Oh hang on - no it isn't. The virtual cut is a fractious place.

I put in a single (3' wide ) crossbed with a fixed 4'6" along the back bulkhead of a middle cabin running from cabin side to corridor. There is then a 3/4" plywood infill across the corridor with a mattress infill to fit. So the bed is fixed and allowing walkthrough until the child is 4'6" tall and then the infill goes in for a full length adult sized berth. From then on you either step over it, crawl under it or walk around the outside to get access to shower/toilet and double aft cabin beyond. Saves a lot of room when not in use, and for the first four years or more.

Stirling Engine fan. Morso squirrel at the front with Stirling on top gets warm air about fifty foot, so through lounge, galley and the sleeping cabin beyond. Only at top whack though. Lovely sound to go to sleep to.

Point taken, yes. However although I used the dread phrase 'do it yourself' I didn't actually mean DIY which I mostly take to mean shelves in houses. I meant boatbuilding which is much more romantic, and which to me is anything done on a boat. Arthur Ransome (as you may well know) said that ''Houses are but badly built boats so firmly aground that you cannot think of moving them. They are definitely inferior things, belonging to the vegetable, not the animal world, rooted and stationary. … The desire to build a house is the tired wish of a man content thenceforward with a single anchorage. The desire to build a boat is the desire of youth, unwilling yet to accept the idea of a final resting place.” I suppose that's part of what begins to happen to me when I turn that piece of oak over in my hands. But I grant your right to still hate it!

All good advice but a few more things.... 1. It is incredibly self-empowering to do it yourself. This means that not only will you technically improve as you progress, but your increasing confidence will enable you to tackle bigger and bigger jobs. Ones that you never dreamt you could do at the beginning. 2. Because of point 1. once you have started you may never stop..... 3. If the start of your modification is taking something out (cupboard, fridge, bed, whatever) once you have done that just live with the space for a while. Things will occur to you...............most cost-effective of all...you might just like the space best of all. So , to take my examples you might... get rid of some 'stuff' so you don't need another cupboard, build a cold box using the bilge, buy a top design of camp-bed for guests so you don't need a new built-in one anymore. Good luck!

Had a lovely week Roydon to Bishops Stortford and back over Christmas. All doable if chimney removed for three of the bridges, beginning with Roydon. But you count your clearance in inches. Some good new lock gates done to schedule. Only one warning which may seem like nitpicking........... .....small concrete bollards on towpath side of Twyford Lock are LETHAL if , like me, you often pull your (70ft /20 ton) boat into the lock with the engine off and stop her stately progress onto the bottom lock gates by snubbing with the mooring warp. I do it mainly for the peace and quiet. Unlike the trad iron bollards on the off side, which allow you to slide the boat to a stop at your own pace, these concrete ones snatch immediately. Do it with the centreline in the roof fairlead and you're into DIY capsize territory. Who in god's name put those in.......?

Old gent sitting on a bench by a road into a village and another man walks by. 'I'm thinking of moving to this area' he says, ' I wonder, what the people are like round here ? Friendly?' 'Well' says the gent on the bench, 'what are the folks like in the place you live now?' 'Oh they're a lovely bunch, couldn't find a nicer village, we've always looked out for each other.' 'Well' says the gent, 'I think you'll find the people around here are just the same.' With a smile and a nod our traveller walks on, tipping his hat to the stranger. Life is often strange and stone me if the next day when our local is sitting on his bench again another bloke looking to move to the area passes by... ' I wonder, what are the people round here like?' he says. ' Friendly?' . 'Well' says the gent on the bench, 'what are the folks like in the place you live now?' 'Bunch of conniving interfering intrusive bastards always poking their noses into other people's business says our hero (of a thousand blog posts....) Fed up with the lot of them. 'Oh dear' says our friend with a sympathetic expression on his face, 'I suspect you'll find the people round here pretty much the same.' 'Though so mate. Typical eh. Well thanks for the warning. What a world.' And off he goes on his unhappy way.

Numbers, numbers, numbers, numbers...................what do people estimate are the numbers!! I wasn't fully aware of the fact that there are people with a home mooring who are sitting somewhere else and It'd be really useful to know the numbers for both 'Dunkers' and CM'ers separately, and then a total.

Really great question to start with. There is so much discussion on this forum about those 'getting away with it' CMers that I really (really) want to know how many CART thinks there really are, how many we think there really are out of 32000 odd boaters. I think (correct me everybody) that there are about 4,900 registered continuous cruisers in the UK....what percentage of that are 'taking the piss?' Are we talking about 400 boats over the whole country? A thousand? And if it's anything under a thousand why in god's name isn't there just one enforcement officer in Britain visiting every one in turn and chucking them off the system? It'd only take him or her about three years, cost less in labour than one failed court case and then we could all get on with talking about engines. My suspicion is that the numbers are not nearly as great as some people would like to think. I certainly think that it is in the interests of many people to create an environment in which there is this huge problem. It's a bit like governments always having to make sure we've got a war on, there's always got to be some existential threat because then all sorts of rules and controls can be put in place. And it allows lots of macho folk to say they're in Enforcement. And as I take my bow before being shot at dawn let me end by saying that having CC'd for years without infringing any rules I currently pay forty quid a week for a mooring.

Apologies accepted Dean. As for widebeams....................

Mmmmnnnn - here comes the prejudice again. London is full of continuous cruisers yes, for all of the reasons above. And probably an above average component of piss-takers because there's an above average component of a lot of things in London, easily concentrated in a very small area which is ideal for confirming prejudices. People move smaller distances than in some other places but that's still to different boroughs and most are still above the minimum distances currently (however controversially) being set by CART. I welcome those distances because I'm way above them annually and have been cruising all the London canals + Lee and Stort + Grand Union north and west for four years with no problems. But London is too complicated to let you get away with that off the cuff. I pay my way, take a winter mooring for 5 months , sometimes have a marina mooring for three months when I'm away over the summer, or sent abroad for my work....that means I'm sometimes on a mooring for 8 months and cruising for 4 months. Does that mean I have a home mooring? Am I a continuous cruiser? Last year I spent 3K in the KIng's Cross dry dock, gave CART another couple of thousand for a licence and winter mooring, another 1K to a marina........someone give me another charity and passtime you can contribute £6K a year to and only ever get villified, not only by the authority concerned but also by supposedly fellow boaters! Let's deal with the pisstakers and celebrate the variety of the rest of us.

Should have added rivers to open tidal water...........

Know how to tie a bowline, round turn and two half hitches and rolling hitch, at the very least. Add a clove hitch if you have some more time, but if you do nothing else master the bowline knot. It can stand in for almost anything. Know how to tie off to a cleat. Find out what a spring is. Double the length of two of your mooring lines to facilitate said springs. Learn how to splice three strand rope. And understand that if you were on open tidal water, ie anywhere at all other than a canal, anyone who can't tie their boat up properly has always been viewed as an incompetent landlubber. Where and when did this widely accepted level of incompetence appear and come from?