Plonk

That's good to know! I fell in earlier this year, at an empty lock on the K&A. Standing on the roof of the boat and leaning against the coping stone edge whilst tryimg to lasoo a bollard. The boat drifted out and I was almost horizontal before I realised. Doh! Fortunatly the water only came up to my neck. The water was suprisingly warm (until i got out)!

I may go the greenhouse heater way with our boat as the calorifier is a vertical one built in behind cupboards etc. I can't see any easy way of getting to it without dismantling my Kitchen! We would also like to still use our boat some weekends so a full draindown (if i could do it) would make this difficult. This is our first year of owning the boat and our first winter so I may be missing somthing obvious. I hope being a long way south on the K&A we won't get too many freezing days on the trot! I am tempted by this socket, but it is quite pricy and i'm not 100% sure it would work in the boat. We can use our phones onboard in the marina so it should work. Knowing my luck it would probably be a waste of money. We live about an hour away, but the marina say they would keep an eye on things and make sure the shore line dosen't trip out.

Hi My own (mis)adventures have been so far been a mix of stupidity and bad luck(I hope). Not too many problems so far in steering our 60ft, except first time out getting pinned to the side of the marina by the wind, whilst trying to return to base and the occasional . Second time our I slipped and badly bruised my leg. Third time out....(amongst other things) we managed to get a 13" tyre wrapped arround our (i think)15" ish prop. Canal and River Rescue eventually saved us on that occasion. I have NEVER seen anyone so determined as our (second) engineer was to remove that tyre. He was down the weed hatch for a couple of hours with a hacksaw blade on a handle. The first engineer they sent tried for an hour to cut it off, then thought the boat would have to be slipped out . I tried and still had the bruises a week later. Please tell me that this won't happen on a regular basis!

Thanks for the replies, my feeling was that they should be fixed. I like the idea of glueing a holder in, after all lots of bits of cars are glued together and traveling a lot faster than 4mph!

Hi all. Hope this question has not been answered elsewhere. Not sure where to search. Just bought a 1999 NB with 2 leisure batteries. I am going to add 2 more. The original 2 are fairly new. There are no clamps to hold down any of the batteries and no sign there ever were, they just sit loose in the engine bay on a shelf (uxter plate?) with a 1/2" front lip. Obviously the boat has passed some bss exams before. Next one due November 2015 Should I be worried? will it pass again like this? they cant slide off. Nowt but friction and weight stopping them sliding around sideways, although i guess that in a NB this is highly unlikely. The previous owner tells me they just sit there. Advice please. Pat K

Hi Ade Yep thats the one! Pat

Hi to all We are Pat and Stella. We have just bought narrowboat Tickly Two on the K & A. Hopefully away for our first solo outing this weekend, feeling a bit nervous. Lots of jobs to do onboard, but we hope (thinki) we have bought a good boat. Must say the last owner was a lovely chap by the name of Barry (not forgetting his other half, Rose). Not sure if we will be keeping the name though!