Dave_P

It's genuinely gripping stuff. Beats Big Brother any day! I never knew watching a webcam could be so exciting. What will happen next? Will a beaver arrive and start gnawing through the ropes? Will the owners return to their boats riding on dolphins? I think there will be a collective cheer on this forum if it all ends well. How can we let the boat owners know that they've become minor celebrities?

Last time I was buying diesel at Wheaton Aston, I had a nosey at the splits being declared by previous customers (they keep it all on a list) and they varied between 100% red to 40% red / 60% white. This is going to make a big difference to the price. 100% red will cost around 78p per litre somewhere cheap. You could be paying £1.30 a litre on a 40/60 split. To be on the right side of the law, you need to be able to justify what you've bought. If you have a permanent mooring and NEVER move your boat, you should be ok on 100% split. If you continuously cruise, you'll need a very convincing reason for doing the same if HMRC comes knocking. Perhaps you have a pedalo system installed in your boat and propel yourself that way? The question is, what is the likelihood of HMRC checking up on you? On past evidence - practically zero. I'm sure that makes it tempting for some to declare 100% red to save a few bob. For myself, I always declare a split, even if it's small. Then I feel a bit better about not risking being prosecuted for tax evasion. Good point. I'd always assumed that the 60/40 splitters simply didn't understand how the system worked and were scared that they could be prosecuted for selling anything else. Unlikely as that sounds. To be honest, I'd rather HMRC didn't look at anything to do with the canals, marinas or otherwise. I can only see it leading to unforeseen and unwanted issues. As it is, I simply don't buy from anyone who enforces a split on me.

Good question. I've never been in that situation but I'd want to be on the boat with a decent length pole to push the boat away from the bank as the level drops. Could be a long, hard shift though. Is there an easier way?

Water level still rising - just. My link

I don't have or want photobucket or flickr. so i'll just not bother in future.

That's my worry. At least least if they're on the boats, they can control things as the water levels drop and avoid grounding on the railings or something similar. Having said that, I bet they're just glad they're safe for now. I tried uploading to the gallery here and linking to that but I couldn't get the actual picture to display in the thread. Thanks for the help though, your pictures were much better than my measly effort anyway.

Carlt - How do I attach images directly into a thread like that?

http://www.canalworld.net/forums/index.php?app=gallery&module=images&section=viewimage&img=5576

Looks like a rescue may be in progress!

I was walking past there on Saturday morning. I seem to remember both boats being moored there at the time (but not breasted up). The at that time the river level was an inch or so from the top of the bank and I was a little concerned for the boats. There is a floating pontoon about 100 yards downstream from the boats. If I had seen any signs of life on these boats I would have suggested walking them down to the pontoon and mooring there for safety since the forecast was for levels to rise further. The pontoon is for the trip boats (which obviously weren't running) and I suspect that the boat owners were reluctant to moor there because they usually wouldn't be allowed. Of course, it's possible that the owners weren't with their boats on saturday. Maybe I should have done more.

If it's interest only then that's different, I must have missied where he said that. Of course, interest rates rise as well as fall.

Sulking?

That's what I was going to say. Something tells me that these figures are highly suspect. Even for an interest only morgage I struggle to believe that figure. And on the general point, comparing boat v house is pretty futile because living costs for either are as high as you want them to be or as low as you can put up with. If I really had to choose, I would say that, if your circumstances allow it, at the bottom end of the scale, you can live more comfortably on a very low income on a boat.

There are marinas which also have canalside moorings along the cut near the marina entrance. I'm pretty sure some of these have leccy. So you would be able to have everything you want. As far as residential/post etc goes, tell the site owner that you're there for less than 50% of the time and they should be fine for you to be officially non-residential. In my experience, the more laid back owners are quite happy for moorers to have post delivered to their office, chandlery etc even if they're officially non-residential, so the address the bank, dvla etc have for you would be your mooring address. The fact is that there are tons of people living unofficially in marinas and staying under-the-radar. When I asked BW for an official response to how much of the time I could be staying on my BW leisure mooring they were quite evasive and tried to suggest that I should ask my local planning dept (yeah right!) When I pressed them they gave a response that they would prefer moorers to be on their moorings for no more than "4 or 5 nights a week". Seems to me that you fall well within that. Also bear in mind that not all marinas are big 200+ boat affairs. I moor in a basin on the Huddersfield Broad canal so we're stacked in like a marina, except there's only about 15 boats. We still have all the usual marina facilities though.

I have some data on this from research which I undertook. It wasn't paid for by anyone. It was for my thesis. PM if you'd like to have a copy.

A lovely boat, but definitely a girls' boat!

Absolutely. The boat must be out of the water.

Don't count on your microwave working on MSW. I have a cheap genny (1000w)which runs my microwave fine but when i use the 2000w inverter (MSW) the microwave comes on and the food revolves but it doesn't get hot. An electrical genius explained why to me, but it went over my head.

Me and the missus have a tradition of badly singing Gershwin's 'Summertime' at the top of our voices (complete with terrible harmonies) whilst in the middle of long tunnels. Usually ends with one or both of us collapsing into laughter at some point and struggling to keep a straight line.

But I AM superior! (along with everyone else on this forum)

Divide and conquer - the oldest strategy in the book....