Erin42

You're right, of course, there is always a way to get books, wherever you happen to be. But I've always been a fan of book clubs, nonetheless. We've nearly 100 likes on our facebook page, at least, so that's something!

As a solo liveaboard boater of only 6 months I'm sometimes a bit shy of going introducing myself to other boaters. Starting an informal book club and putting up a sign to welcome people to knock on my boat and ask for a book is just another way of being sociable and meeting people, but yes I'm sure other people will manage just fine without it!

Good morning! I wanted to share an idea for a book club I'm trying to get started. Boat Book Swap is a travelling book club, for people who don't stay in one place. (Not just CC'ers, but anyone who enjoys boating and travelling.) Rather than all of its members reading the same book, the Boat Book Swap involves books being recommended and shared by individuals. If you pass a fellow Book Swap boat, just introduce yourself and ask if they'd like to exchange a book. Read it in your own time and then pass it on when finished. And, let's face it, book clubs have always been an excuse to share tea, booze and cake. To become a member: 1) Put aside a few books that you have read, enjoyed, and don't mind never seeing again. 2) Print out or draw yourself a sign that says 'BOAT BOOK SWAP' and pop it in your boat windows, one for each side. Once you have finished a book, add your name, your boat name, and your current location to the inside cover. And then pass it on! Let's see how far our books can travel. Like lots of other people I occasionally leave books I've finished in public places, to be picked up by another reader, but the idea behind Book Swap is to recommend and exchange books personally with strangers. I've made a facebook page (www.facebook.com/BoatBookSwap) to try and get people involved. It's early days so let me know if you have any comments/suggestions! Cheers

Title probably based on the hugely successful Humans of New York

Thanks for all your help, as usual! I will have a much better look later, and report back with my findings :-)

It's no where near the poo tank, but it does smell of diesel. I have a fuel level indicator on my dashboard, which shows me the level when the engine is running, and yes those are wires in the tubes, a red one and a blue one. So could this just be a viewing hatch to the main diesel tank?

I was tidying up some shelves when I pulled away a panel and found this. That's an awful lot of bolts, with grease around the edges and with a rubber mat underneath (similar to my weed hatch). A bigger version of this pic: http://i.imgur.com/Mv4tlUs.jpg I have drawn a scientific diagram of it's placement within the boat: I posted a pic of it to the London Boaters facebook page, but the most common response I had was that it was a time machine of some sort, cue lots of "drive the boat over 88mph" jokes. While I am still hopeful it could be a time machine, I did wonder if anyone else had any ideas as to what it could be?

I remember my dad telling me about this years ago, maybe it's time to look into it

I get fairly regular projects but I keep my rate low to do charity work, so I'm earning barely enough to live on my boat but working on projects that actually interest me. It's a good life

I believe there is only the one boat that does pump out, Dom on Baron, and he is swamped with orders. He is unlikely to visit you if you only require pump out, and not coal etc.

All steel narrowboat, and yes it's at the bow. It's a stand alone tank fitted into the bow. There's actually a couple of inches of water left, yes! Strange that it doesn't show on the picture. Ahh, that's what I wanted to hear, that I don't have to bother with painting it just yet! Yes, sealing it back up again will mean giving the cover and screws a good scrub. But it was good to get a good look inside. I managed to get through a tank of water in a fortnight, when it has taken me 3-4 weeks previously, so I was worried something was blocking it. But I think it's just due to having a lot of people over for dinner, and thus a lot more washing up to do.

I ran out of water yesterday evening in the middle of a storm. When I woke up this morning the boat was listing and when I checked outside the river had risen about a foot: cue me sleepily loosening the ropes at 7am. That'll teach me. Anyway, because of the rain and the stronger than usual current on the Lee (and watching boats floating downstream horizontally as their soggy owners tried to control them) I decided against going to the water point as I had planned, and instead thought it would be a good opportunity to open up the water tank and check the state of the inside. I've had the boat 3 months or so, and it was built in 1986, so after speaking to boaters about cleaning bags of crud out of their tanks I was expecting the worst. But I was pleasantly surprised, after spending 3hrs getting it open, to find only a few spots of rust. To clarify, this holds my water for washing and drinking. My question is, what is this material likely to be? If it is steel shouldn't it be a bit more rusty? Does it need to be painted with anything, or can it just be given a scrub and be re-filled? I'm sorry if a similar query has been answered before! I had a look on the forum, and the pinned maintenance thread, but couldn't find any pictures of tanks that looked like mine. Thanks folks.

Mine does this, very occasionally, and my pump might be on its way to get waterpump heaven as it's started to just run by itself when there are no taps on (no leaks I can find, all bilges dry etc) but I thought that the pump running randomly on its own might be it pumping water to the calorifier?

I'm a freelance filmmaker and freelance edit assistant, and I'm not very good at describing what I do so I'm probably one of those people who mumble vaguely about being self employed when asked

When I moved onto my boat a couple of months ago there were spiders everywhere, and I thought I'd just have to get used to them. But after just a week or so living aboard they calmed down a bit, and now I only have very small ones, or they're outside. My friends found it hilarious that I have a big plastic pint glass that I have named 'Spider Jail', which is where I scoop any particularly big ones into and leave them until morning when I open up and tip them overboard. But they tend to swim straight back to the boat, so I've stopped bothering...

My girlfriend dropped her phone into the river yesterday afternoon while I was at the shops, and she asked the boat next to ours if they had a net. They said no, but one of the men then plunged his head and arms into the water while his mate held his ankles as he fished it out for her. When I got back ten minutes later she was still laughing about it. We thought the phone was gonner for sure, but we put it in a bowl of rice and the phone worked fine when turned on this morning!

I got a cheap deal on a three day hire last January, to try it out. It was stressful, rained the entire time, and I was sick for the next week having stood in the rain for three full days. However it didn't put me off in the slightest, and when one liveaboard boater came to our rescue after running aground and said "if you're enjoying yourself now, imagine how much you'll enjoy it when you're warm and dry in the summer", I was fairly sure this was the life for me.

I left my full time job and went freelance at the same time I moved on board the 40ft boat that captured MY heart, less than two months ago. To be honest, I'm not sure I would be enjoying boat life if I was still working my previous job (but then they were pretty abysmal hours, lots of late nights and overnights). It's been hard enough coping with various setbacks disrupting my freelance work. That said, I love it. If you're going to do it, don't do it for the money. If you want to live in anywhere near reasonable comfort, and take care of your boat, you'll be spending quite a bit of money on it. It's not comparable to paying rent on a property. It's more like having a big steel pet, that needs a lot of your time and attention and money. Send me a pm if you want to talk, I'm in Hackney at the moment

I remember this advertised last year, but I had a full time job and couldn't do it. If I were free from responsibilities for a few months, and didn't have a boat yet, this sounds pretty great.

My survey plus lift out was about £600 quid. I was present at both of the surveys I've had done and glad I was - I asked lots of ququestions.

I remember doing some research on this (I'm not superstitious, just curious) and remember reading somewhere that changing a boat's name angered Poseidon. Do we have an equivalent underwater god for the inland waterways?

As long as the gas doesn't! Thanks for posting those really happy pictures - you're obviously taking to your boat like a duck to water. I would not care to have an argument with that owl in front centre of your picture. Like a duck to water or, as my uncle told me, "like a pig in sh*t". Yep, fitting solar panels is top of my list. I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing, but I now know a couple of people who have fitted their own so I'm hoping I can muddle through. Still in the process of doing up the inside. I've been strangely busy, for a new freelancer, but can't complain, work is money! I should have next week to finish off the interior and start actually unpacking my boxes

If you want a simple outdoorsy life then it *might* be cheaper! I don't currenly have a TV, or washing machine, or anything really besides lights that would guzzle electricity. But on top of the general rule that you should double any costs you can think of, I would say you should probably double the time you think it might take you to do anything. Due to (several) unforseen circumstances it took me two days to do a trip to the pump-out station that should have taken me four hours. However, this is partly due to me being a shambles.

I thought I'd post an update - I've been living afloat for only a month, but it's going great. The people I've met have been helpful and friendly, and I'm slowly getting used to planning my life around charging batteries, getting water, and walking to the disposal point for rubbish. In a way it's more difficult than I thought it would be, yet at the same time is everything I was hoping for. Walking back along the dark towpath is something to get used to, with no lights around and dead quiet. But a cat will usually emerge from one of the boats and escort me part of the way home. Had to change the gas over last night, which was a learning experience. We'd nearly finished cooking a late dinner when the gas went, so I went out to the gas locker in my pyjamas and headtorch to change over the bottles. Couldn't get the regulator off for a few minutes, but after a lot of swearing and clanking with the spanner it came free. The gas locker is huge and holds 3 big calor bottles, all strapped together, so it took a bit more time (and noise) to get the empty one shuffled around and the full one in place. I watched a youtube video of someone changing over a gas bottle to work out how to do it, haha, but it was simple in the end. There's a bit of a smell in the gas locker, which I've read might be due to the previous bottle finishing, but to stay safe I'm only switching the gas on when I'm on the boat. The milk in the fridge will go off but, well, better safe than sorry. I'm taking a trip to the gas supplier down the river in a day or two, and will ask for a professional opinion then. Anyway, onto some photos! Yesterday was the Angel Canal Festival, which I thought would be a great opportunity to introduce my friends to the wonderful world of narrowboats. The boats, however, were overshadowed by the visiting owl and hawk rescue centre where you could pay £2.50 and hold an owl of your choice for an indefinite amount of time. Bargain. After buying a eclectic meal of Caribbean food, Portuguese tarts and a slush puppie, we all tried our hand at painting some traditional roses. It didn't go well. But the signwriter, a volunteer from the London Canal Museum, was still very complimentary. "Don't worry, even in nature roses don't all look uniformly pretty" she told us, consolingly. We walked back along the canal for an hour or so to my boat, where I had promised we would have mojitos and dinner. Along the way we saw boats selling freshly pressed apple juice and home made clothing, buskers, and plenty of coots. Also, oddly, a terrapin - sunning itself on a tyre on the other side of the canal. Is this common? I feel like I've seen every kind of boat in London, including a raft with a tent strapped onto it, but although I love my traditional boat I enjoy seeing boats like this when I'm out walking: I managed to fit 6 of us onto my very modest 40ft boat for sweet-potato curry and drinks. Sure, two of them had to sit outside, and I was on the floor, and no one had any kind of table, but it was great. I have plenty of work to do, mostly putting up shelves so I don't have to have all of my belongings in boxes, but already I can't imagine wanting to move back onto solid ground. Thanks, again, for everyone's help on this forum