John&Cam

By the same logic, if someone's shelled out for a shiny boat and moors it next to someone's dilapidated semi detatched house, do they have a right to complain? I'd hate to get to a point where the canals were for shiny boats and no one else ...

This is good news indeed. Will things change once the CaRT gets into its stride, do you think?

Thanks for the welcome, folks. Just for the record, I drive a lorry for a living and Cam is an ecologist, so I at least am reasonably flexible as to where I can work. Cam is not quite as convinced as I am about the merits of the boat lifestyle though, so I was thinking that a residential mooring would at least give her some sense of stability and community and break her in gently ... we can go on to continuous cruising and getting all our electricity from two truck batteries and all the rest of it when she's used to the idea! Although I have no doubt boat electrics have moved on a bit since I lived on "Andante" ... at least, I hope so! It's good news that there are moorings available, and that one can still live below the radar a bit. The impression one gets as an outsider is that unofficial residential boaters are ruthlessly stamped upon whenever they're discovered. I'm glad this isn't the case. Looking forward to browsing the rest of the site and eventually being able to post as a boat owner. We're looking for something between 60 and 70 feet long, preferably with an engine room and boatman's cabin. (My 52 footer had an engine room and it was invaluable for all the things that don't "go" in your living space: tools and so on.) And we've got a house to sell first, and we'll probably have to wait for our elderly cat to shuffle off this mortal coil, but once all that's out of the way, canals here we come!

I was thinking more about stuff like my bench grinder and my compressor. Hand tools are practically sacred and I can see I might need them!

I must admit, this is where I'll struggle when it comes to moving to a boat. I can't resist guitars and currently have <counts on fingers> six electrics, two amplifiers, an acoustic and an electric mandolin. I know some will have to go, but I can't think which ... As for other stuff, I'm in the process of Kindlerising all my books. My music is mostly digital these days, stored on an Ipod and a Brennan, and my vinyl will be Ebayed as soon as I get around to it. Like others on here, I'll be going through my automotive tools and ebaying about half of them. Other stuff will be charity shopped: we took bags and bags of stuff and gave it away last year and it's surprising how cathartic giving stuff away is! Furniture will be sold or charity shopped. We'll keep a bicycle each, from our collection of, er, six. One of the reasons I want to move onto a boat is to simplify things a bit ... as Jerome K Jerome said, the trick is not to think what you could do with, but to think what you can't do without.

Hi folks. I just thought I'd drop in and introduce myself. I'm John and I lived on a boat back in the late '90s, a 52 foot narrowboat at Penkridge on the Staffie. I loved every minute of it (even the six months when it was up on railway sleepers awaiting welding!) but for one reason and another I sold it in around 2001 and have since bought a house. Now I want another boat, and what's more, I want to live on it. However, perusing the waterways press and the forums, it seems it's no longer quite so straightforward as it used to be. I was able to live on my leisure mooring and no one cared much as long as I kept a low profile, but it seems that option is increasingly disappearing. My ideal would be to continually cruise, but I imagine either I or my other half would need to work at least part time, so that's probably out. I'm happy to shell out for a proper residential mooring and do the thing properly, but from what I read there are precisely three residential moorings in the whole of Britain, and all of them are occupied. What are the options these days for wannabe liveaboards like my girlfriend and me who want to do the thing reasonably legally? We'd be looking to live somewhere around the Midlands, anywhere from North Shropshire to Gloucester and all points in between.