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I agree that the ideal Faraday cage that you are assigned in physics problems will not have any flaws. During the course of our everyday activities, ordinary Faraday cages such as microwaves are technically imperfect. You can see through the front panel on your microwave, can't you? And it's not because it's made out of magical see-through Faraday metal - it's glass. The actual cage that keeps the radiation inside the box is that metal meshy panel behind the glass, and it's full of literal, actual holes! You can see your food without being fried yourself because the radiation is kept inside the cage. Would definitely unplug computers/phones/tvs though - standard protocol in a house in my native lands and probably sensible on a boat. The idea being that the power surge - the EMP - goes through the mains, attracted by the electrically conductive nature of the wiring, and into the device itself, a situation in which delicate electronics aren't prepared to cope. If you aren't imitating the effect by hanging out of your boat's open hatch with a copper wire in your hand I think you'll be all right.

The key word here is "ideal," especially when we're dealing with physicists, who live in the mysterious world of Perfectly Balanced Forces that doesn't really intersect with our actual lived reality. An "ideal" undergraduate physics problem involves a penguin sliding on a sheet of frictionless ice, but most people accept that outside of textbooks ice has quite a lot of friction. Figure One: A demonstration of the impracticality of living in Physicists World. Cars are imperfect Faraday cages too, what with those inconvenient windows and extra bits and all, and they're considered "the safest place to be" in areas that get far more lightning than England! Of course, having said this, I must now resign myself to the inevitable lightning strike that will definitely hit our boat now that I've taunted the thunder gods...

We're seriously considering getting a GPS tracker for the cat, but here are some concerns that we're considering (and you might like to consider too): 1. Does your cat wear a collar? Does it regularly get hung up on things? Can it carry weight around its neck? with our cat, the escape artistry extends to collars, and the GPS trackers are still heavy and bulky - enough so that I wouldn't want one around my neck. So we would put her in a harness with the tracking module strapped to the belly or the back. Also note: a breakaway collar or harness, as most of them are, will probably get pulled off if the cat gets into a sticky situation - you'll find it since the GPS will be attached, but you'll be back at Square No Cat. 2. Is it a visibly purebred or desirable cat? Strapping a £100+ device to a cat that has a perceived market value might not be a good idea. 3. How will you receive the tracking information? The device that @bigste linked above is a perfectly good one - but it works by sending a text of the pet's coordinates to your cell phone. You will need a topped-up SIM card on your pet GPS, a turned-on working phone with consistent service, and presumably another GPS to input the coordinates into once you get them - otherwise you'll just be like "Ah well, Fluffy's not lost, she's at Latitude: -11.33320, Longitude: 162.74560 and has possibly just boarded a train." Other devices require a smartphone, such as an iPhone, that can handle apps - and their output is a map with a pin on it, assuming that you will be navigating along clearly marked streets to find an animal that is a block away, not crashing around an unmarked farmer's field in the dark. tl;dr yes they are magic, but your cat is still a cat and you are still you.

Would the power audit help then? Sorry. We think about 120 - 130 amp hours/ day on average. Boat 1 has a freezer, boat 2 has halogen lights that we'd have to replace. So we rounded up a lot. Will not be running kettles, toasters, televisions, hair dryers, microwaves, freezers, radios, entertainments, stairlifts or other other strange and mysterious objects that retiree-types apparently need to function... I am also suspicious of gas generators due to a rural childhood - we'd be snowed in and powerless for a few weeks every winter, and folks in our town were particularly fond of killing themselves with them. If we went with that boat I would be pretty suspicious of running it and would want a diesel one. But presumably they had it for a reason (not wanting to run their Lister engine to charge batteries? suicidal tendencies brought on by English winter monotony? we may never know.) Of course, it can all be changed, but since the "ideal power system" seems to be a sort of Holy Grail, I'm happy to hear your comments... That's something I love about England... diesel generators!! And jaffa cakes. Have you got one that you particularly like? (diesel generator, not jaffa cake. although cake is welcome too)

Hello everyone, I was hoping to start a discussion about power systems on a narrowboat. I've read both of Paul Smith's books about living aboard and the very informative Tim Davis articles about narrowboat electrics. What I don't know is what people down-on-the-ground actually *think* about different power strategies. At the moment we are trying to choose between two boats that we like and think are practical. We have lined up a remote semi-permanent mooring with no mains power (basically a friend-of-the-family is giving us a mooring at the bottom of his field) but for us, about 40% of the appeal of a boat is cruising, so we would like to do that as well. However, just "running the engine in the morning" doesn't really appeal to us (why not just move the boat? and also the farmer doesn't want too much of that) and isn't it true that you shouldn't do that with an older engine? So may I ask which boat the knowledgeable liveaboards living here would pick? (they are comparable in every other way.) I feel like Boat 1 is pretty appealing, but it doesn't have a generator. We've got some cash for buying new batteries - we just assume we'll need them - but man, those build-in generators sound freaking expensive! Boat 1 A Beta 43hp engine 240v landline (not very interested in this, but could be useful) Mastervolt 1200v inverter with a Sterling battery charger 3.5kva travel pack 300w solar panel with a control panel 1 starter and 3 leisure batteries Sterling battery management system Boat 2 ~60 year old Lister JP3 engine rebuilt 2002 (not sure if you should even run this just to power the batteries - isn't it bad with the older engines, or is that an old husband's tale?) 240v landline Waeco 2kw inverter, Sterling charger built-in Honda 2.2kw silent generator (PETROL) 1 starter and 2 leisure batteries Would y'all mind telling me which setup you prefer, or what you have on your boat?

Er, hello! I'm an American from the part of the country that doesn't have canals, and my DH is an Englishman. We are looking at buying boat to liveaboard. Renting flats is depressing us (and losing us lots of money) and we can't really do bricks-n-mortar due to needing to move to different universities every 9 months or so. DH is completely mad for the idea, having grown up on a canal, so the curious weights & balances of marriage mean that I have to be the sensible one! So I am introducing myself to you guys in the hopes of learning about sensible things. We are trying to make EXTREMELY GOOD choices. Just broke the news to MiL, who was initially appalled, but then decided it was a good idea. She is a wonderful lady, but would formerly "move along" CC-ers who had overstayed their welcome - she has now been converted to our cause. Now we just have to convince SiL, who works for C&RT, of our good intentions... So even if we don't end up getting this boat, that's one village where CCers won't be chased up as much, and one C&RT staffer with more sympathy? Possibly? Maybe? We have a budget of around £45K and are currently trying to figure out things like electricity/power use, where to live, whether to moor or cruise and what that means for power, etc etc. And trying to find a boat. oh. Yes. We have to find a boat, don't we....

Thank you so much, everyone - you guys are amazing! Especially the Boilerman, who nailed it: That was exactly it. Sargeant Owner implied it was DH's physical weakness/inexperience, but when he handled the boat and the tilelr continued to slam over to the side, it was suddenly... the fault of the river?! We were suspicious, but aware of our own complete ignorance... You guys, though! You guys are great! Thank you.

Well, at the risk of annoying the poor owner who might read this one day... yes! He stretched it. In for a penny, in for a pound: this is it http://www.abnb.co.uk/boat_pages/2341web/2341abnb.php?BoatID=2341 edited to clarify: it was stretched 6 ft by Dave Thomas DH is pretty good at the steering bit - the other boat we looked at today went like a dream, and that owner just wandered off for a cup of tea and left us to toddle around and park it. The thing is that we're so new and insecure that if a Sargeant Owner is like "EVEN MY TEENAGE DAUGHTERS CAN HANDLE MY LES ALLEN BOAT" then we're going to half-believe him.... but we are also a bit cynical so we half-don't! Thanks for the info, kind of confirming initial reactions...

True facts I'm sure - it's a Les Allen?

Hello all, I have a question about a narrowboat handling on a river. My DH and I were sizing up an attractive narrowboat today. It was really nearly perfect for our purposes. The problem with it is that it handled like a badly trained children's pony. I know practically nothing about canal boats, being an American from New England who thinks that rivers should be "wider than a mile" and full of foamy white stuff and bears. DH was born on the K&A but has only handled a few narrowboats. So. This boat seemed really nice, but before we got too interested in it, we asked if we could take it on the river. This was around the Henley-on-Thames area - on the non-tidal Thames - kind of by Slough. The owner drove the boat out and allowed DH to briefly handle it. I thought that handling an unfamiliar boat on an unfamiliar river with a judgemental owner looking on was above my skillset, so I hid below. The problem was that DH, a slightly-built young professor-type, struggled to control the tiller while the boat was underway. The owner, a large, muscular, obviously fit military/athletic type, struggled to control the tiller. It would not stay straight - he was pinning it under control with his body and shoving it with strength. Rather than guiding it with a light hand on the tiller arm, they were shoving it under their armpits and wrestling with it. It seemed like the tiller arm chose a direction to go in, and they had to fight it to get it to go straight. DH asked something like "Is this how she normally steers" and the owner kind of replied "why, is it hard for you, small academic man?" before telling us that his teenaged daughters handled it perfectly well. This made it pretty hard for DH to continue the conversation. (The owner seemed like a really nice guy, though. Just not too patient.) This was a 60 foot boat, but DH has done some pretty good steering with 60ft boats on canals/the K&A before, so we thought that perhaps the river/wind/currents were mucking the boat around? It was definitely a bigger river than he has ever taken a narrowboat on, so we genuinely don't know what a proper river should "feel" like on the tiller of these boats. Obviously further training is in order, but was it the river or the boat? Perhaps it really is a badly trained children's pony with terrible steering? A problem with rudder/tiller that Sargeant Owner is trying to hide from us by provoking DH to be manly and defensive? If we were interested in this boat, we would like to try to handle it somewhere else, like on a canal, and see if it still handles like a stubborn goat. Is this a good idea, and is there a good way to propose this? Yes, we are newbies and these are silly questions, but now DH is too annoyed by the "teenage daughters" comment to think clearly about it - and we really liked the blooming boat! Help?!?!