viking

jmj I live in the area of the eastern k+a and walk it at least once a week. I have seen hire boaters from Reading Marine coping with the locks on that section many times without problem (effort perhaps but not problem) and these are not necessarily experienced boaters. On my last walk along there I asked my wife to open any gates that were 'set' and she was quite able to do it on her own (she is only 5'2"). I think the problems are overstated - just watch out for stoppages. I believe there are some around Newbury this winter.

Nice link Bernie, as a complete newcomer to NB maintenance it is just the kind of thing I will need. Nothing too complicated but all good stuff. I will print it out and use it as a starting point at least. Hopefully it may save me a bit of money in the long run.

Very simple to answer that one. When I do get my own boat next year I propose to spend as little time in marinas as I possibly can. I may possibly moor the boat in a marina, but if it is there then I will be at home (where I have broadband) so, internet in marinas or even online moorings is of absolutely no interest to me. I am only interested in internet on the move where wifi has absolutely nothing to offer.

Well ok it's an old chestnut but we all use boats and we all use the Internet so someone had to bring it up again didn't they? I've been looking at this just recently: http://reviews.zdnet.co.uk/hardware/networ...39163417,00.htm I went into an Orange shop today and had a look at it. It does look reasonably good on 3g and it will automatically switch to gprs when 3g signals aren't available. 3g is fairly limited at the moment but by the time I need it (no boat until the middle of next year) there should be wider coverage, and gprs is supposedly available to most areas. It is obviously the same as mobile phones in that reception will vary with the surrounding environment but is there anything better? Price is a factor definitely but this should reduce with time and at the moment a 65Mb/month contract will cost £20+vat. How much is a Mb? Well, how long is a piece of string? They tell you that 1Mb=approx 20-25 web pages but it depends on the content so it is impossible to accurately define. If you assume the lower figure then 65Mb should give you about 1300 pages/month or conservatively 40/day. Not a lot but better than nothing??? If you know of a better solution, post away.

My next hire will be on Clifton Cruisers. Never used them before so fingers crossed!

Not till next year. Don't worry I'll let you know.

It said " a user profile with that email address already esists" or words to that effect. However when I tried to log on it just said I had to re-register. So I did so with the other email address and here I am.

Jon, I have just managed to get onto the forum again but it wasn't easy I had to re-register with a different email address, otherwise it wouldn't accept the re-registration. Now, luckily I have more than one address, but if I had only the one then I would not be posting this now. I am sure some members will be in this situation, so you may need to look into the reasons why this occurred.