Bacchus

You will need to book (...an appointment with your bank manager) There are stacks of places and the vary from terrific but very Bohemian pubs to upmarket/celebrity chef eateries - what kind of celebration? Budget? Size of mooring? ETA and how many days cruise up from Staines?

Viking make good little narrow-beam inland cruisers too - if you're looking for alternatives. I used to have a 20' version which would certainly have been ok for week-ending with 2 adults/2 children, I know that we had four adults on there once, just for a night, and certainly had a good few days with three. Same arrangement (limited options...) of a v-berth with infill and a dinette opposite the galley which drops down to form a honeymoon-double

True, but you can't nip below for your phone or even take a cheeky peek over the stern to check that everything looks as expected without stopping steadying the boat. I had a Princess 25 - lovely little boat actually, but required constant correction - the Fjord and the De Groot have much better straight line stability. The OP says "predominantly river cruising"; ALL boats are a compromise of sorts, but sports cruisers are simply not designed for that type of use. I see a lot of them on the Thames, cutting up the river horribly at slow speeds and bitching around in locks with great big handfuls of bow-thruster, and crew on the slopy bow in imminent danger of a bath even though it's not that time of year (c: If the OP does go down the sports cruiser route, one of those kind of rudder things that bolts on to the outdrive (can't remember what they're called) makes a big difference to directional stability

The fancy Linssens and Stevens can be expensive, but there are plenty of good boats available in the 30-something grand range. Prices are a bit high at the moment, as mentioned above, but it seems to be the "flashier" boats (and, in particular, canal boats) which are selling hard and fast. "Good old solid" boats are sitting on the pontoon for longer

I would be happy to recommend something like the De Groot 36 (in my Avatar) Big petrol engines are a nightmare on boats IMHO, especially inland boats - the one thing petrol engines hate, is damp; the one thing you can guarantee on a river boat, is damp Dutch steel cruiser. Has a lovely presence for slow speed manoeuvring, wide side decks for locking etc., cuts the water very cleanly, has good accommodation, is tough, easy to handle with single engine and a thruster, and is very happy in tidal waters or at sea. Sports cruisers like the one above are completely wrong on the inland waterways for all the above reasons, and generally won't go in a straight line at river speeds.

Most engineers will tell you that "if it looks right, it probably is right", and I think it is fair to say that these 60'x12' things which have been popularised as cheap housing (with a huge VAT saving on the price of a "boat") look very, very wrong on both canals and rivers, but then to me the very long narrow boats look wrong too (with the exception of the working type boats like a fuel bunkering boat that passes me regularly). 70' x 6'11" isn't a boat, it's a plank. And on places like the Thames, one or two boats of that sort of length (fat or narrow) can take up an entire town mooring, which is a bit of a nuisance. I have seen some Irish boats advertised which were "semi" wide which looked well balanced - something like 48' x 9' - the proportions were more or less pleasing to the eye. I suppose they're not popular because they have neither the space of a 12' beam nor the freedom of < 7'

"Where's Wally?" "(on the back of the ****ing boat!!)"

I have a Webasto water heater which I might be persuaded to sell (along with an expansion tank, pump, and 7 day timer) - it is a couple of years old but pretty much unused (I have only fired it up on a bench to make sure it all worked) so I would want strong money for it. I think the output is 4.4kw, it certainly heated a bucket of water up very quickly... ETA I bought it for the camper conversion but have decided to plumb that into the engine - reverse of your issue as I will always be touring in the van

Bits of Kingston/Teddington can be a bit congested, but it is light enough until at least 10-1030 so you should be fine if you turn up late-ish As @Thames Bhaji says, there is plentiful mooring in Kingston, if you don't find anywhere you like near the lock, press on past the road bridge and I can pretty much guarantee that you will find somewhere on the right hand side. You might be woken by joggers, but you can have a cup of tea and watch them sweat.

Just going to spend a penny quid...

You should be able to replace the cigarette lighter socket with a round-pin plug connected to 12V. That's exactly what I did on my mobicool coolbox

On this day... bless 'em. Coots are very good parents until their offspring are adolescent, then if the offspring stick around the parents will peck them to death. I think we yumans could be more coot (c:

Interesting. I have had the same email, and it has reminded me that I had another login to this forum, historically It might be a bannable offence to have multiple logins - I hope not, genuine mistake - but it was a bit weird to get the 'reset your password' email for a decade old ID. Is there a big hack thing happening?

You just need to give it a bit of welly...

Fill the aperture with celotex and board over on the inside, and put fake shutters on the outside? Should look all right both inside and out (ok, shutters on a narrow boat might be a bit odd, but I see them going past with fake wheelbarrows and gaily-painted watering cans...), would remain weatherproof, and would be reversible if you (or a future owner) change your mind.