BilgePump

And the fact that some of the old school BMW etc drivers who only knew full throttle on ICE cars are now flooring electric vehicles with their insane acceleration.

I didn't but it doesn't surprise me at all. Old pits all round there so wouldn't have thought that they could be sure of the location of every old shaft, gallery, tunnel etc.

When i sorted a new NB policy about 7 years ago, they did fully comp for the boat provided that dad or mum (owners), children (me&sis) or other 'qualified' friends were at the tiller..

It's a decent palce to moor, year round. Come on, you have spent a lot more time boating in the area than me but it's not Siberia

Marketing blurb for CWDF Come to ask your canal questions Stay to see the criticism of your post Linger to witness the bunfight and name calling between other members Retreat when it looks as though life on a boat only leads to Davy Jones' locker

Playing devil's advocate here. For those people who like boats, bunking down on one every night isn't a bad thing. Carting toilet bases and gas bottles around is part of the gig. Counting amps in and out keeps the lights on. Some places would be horrific, some a doddle to have a mooring. OP mentioned a specific area/canal. If I didn't have a bricks and mortar home in the future (not my house) then without a doubt I would get a better boat and busk life around the stretch up there. Would still need to rent some land based storage though. And for those on here who don't know where Victoria Pit is (as mentioned by OP), it's Higher Poynton, opposite Bailey's Trading Post/Mrs B's (next to Braidbar) between bridges 14-15 on the Macc. Not a bad neighbourhood or cheap accommodation; just the opposite - it's rural and on the edge of the really posh bits of Cheshire.

But did they? Who on this thread has a mooring in the area the OP is talking about? Who can advise with confidence? I know a few people who could but they are not craptalkking on this thread.

How the fork did this thread get so nasty? OP asked about specific mooring area and logistics. Not easy to do but not impossible, but we've got people from many miles away arguing about nonsense.

I have a CaRT mooring and they sent me a reminder three months before BSS was due to expire. Forgot and only remembered a day before. When phoned BSS chap he was able to do it a week later but told me that there probably wouldn't be problems until licence renewal in any case. CaRT never sent me a message about being a week out and once it was done system updated automatically with new BSS pass.

Just after posting about New Mills marina I've seen this recent thread here about ABC's extended stay category

I don't think that there are proper residential berths at Victoria pit are there? The first place I thought of in the area was New Mills marina who I'm sure used to do residential some years ago but it now seems under ABC that the only other option is 'Extended stay' (but it's still non-residential) for those using the marina more than regular leisure users, at a 20% surcharge over their standard £51 per foot per year (=£61.20), or £3672 for a 60 foot boat. There are some people living on the Upper Macc and Peak Forest with moorings. None of the CaRT moorings show as residential but I know of a couple of boaters who use a CaRT or farm leisure mooring, live on them unobtrusively and regularly go for cruises to the water/waste point or off on holidays. I'm sure that there are people on marinas in the area doing the same. The whole point though is that it's completely unofficial, can't use as post, doc's or bank address etc. and total lack of security of tenure.

NB Ellis always looked very nice and the chap posting here seemed a decent chap and with a classy above board offering. Not cheap at £1250pp/pw but that is probably cut down to the wire with overheads and need to pay themselves a wage. Only 2 guests so not cramming people in. Not loads of others though I don't think. There was one round here in the NW in the mid 2010s called Wandering Duck but that ceased pre-covid iirc, and again they had a good boat and nice people so not as though these kind of things are mega money makers for the operators.. Could there be another possibility if can't find anything else suitable. Just a regular hire boat with a boat mover approved by the hire company with you to assist on days where you want to move? Would take a lot of sorting and wouldn't be cheap but could be better than trying to find something that maybe doesn't exist in the area you're looking at cruising. In all honesty though, handling a narrowboat is easy enough on the canals the OP is suggesting so can't really understand the reluctance towards self drive holiday hire. If it may be that will be solo then yes, that is a factor and most co's will not hire but either get a friend along or possibly see if the hire company can provide an approved crewmember.

On a 60' cruiser stern my dad fitted out - from the rear deck you would step down past a permanent double bed to port and small wardrobe, past the bathroom (shower, full sink and porta potti), past a U shaped galley to port (shower and cooker back to back on the same bulkhead), past an L shaped dinette that could convert into a double bed, then through an area with a small scale 3 piece suite (double sofa and two wing chairs) facing a woodburner and then into an open area where another folding table would normally be set up to work at but could have more chairs unfolded or a couple of camp beds put down if other guests. Out through bow doors into a cratch area with gas bottles in the bow locker. Good things about it were that it had a cruiser stern for sociable fair weather cruising and was a pretty flexible space internally that could accommodate up to 6 people overnight but was very comfortable for a single person or couple on a longer basis. Galley and bathroom were compact but with the things you needed. Dinette was large and central and a good place to sleep in the winter if on your own as it was closer to the woodburning stove. The forward open plan area was way big enough to have converted into a second bedroom with another bulkhead, although the layout as was made it easy to run through the boat in a hurry if necessary, no dog legs through areas. Bad things about it included the cruiser stern making engine access a pain compared to a traditional engine room, you were stepping from a wet deck straight into the bedroom. Also, the forward space was underutilised, virtually the same could have been got into 55' boat. Would I layout a boat like that now myself? No, my requirements aren't those that my dad had when he had two teenage kids, but I'd take a lot of the little components to make a boat that suited me and my use of the canals nowadays.

<pedantic> Massive circular saws and bandsaw based saw mills seem to work better than a chainsaw based Alaskan saw mill for cutting lengthways into boards but yes, for just cutting across the grain into smaller logs, a chainsaw's the tool you need </pedantic>

It sounds as if the advice has been to get hold of a water transfer pump ( ebay: petrol flood water pump). Ones with 3" roll flat hoses can shift maybe a max of one thousand litres or a ton of water per minute. However, the questions remain as to why is it so full of water? is the boat floating or sitting on the bottom? are any of the vents, outlets under water meaning that any water coming out immediately goes back in? A picture if possible or a few more details would really help to get any advice that forum membes may be able to offer.

I'm only nine stone and could pull along our 60' NB using a double rope (one at stern to pull, one forward of midships to keep direction) quite effectively on empty stretches with no moored boats. Don't pull too fast though or stopping the thing becomes rather difficult. You can do about a mile an hour like this, but you probably woldn't want to do it for more than an hour. eta: DM beat me to the same points. Faster fingers!

That is one beautiful boat. Could never own one like it though; don't have the money or time to dedicate to the necessary maintenance on a historic wooden boat. There's a lot of hull, topsides, mast and spars to sand, paint or varnish. You would have to put in a ton of elbow grease on a continuous basis. Take one eye off a wooden boat and the rot sets in, small jobs that have been ignored become serious jobs to remedy. Like vintage traction engines, it's the kind of boat I love to see but someone with far deeper pockets, time and knowledge needs to be custodian of.

It wouldn't be the project itself, or even the lack of engine that would be my biggest worries but 6 or 7 hundred pounds per month costs where it is currently. By the time we're at the end of January the storage costs are more than to buy the hull. Not trying to dismiss the OP's ideas but have made the same mistake myself in the past with a project sailboat (but much cheaper storage costs £150/mo) and ended up selling on without ever finishing.

I guess that a lot of this problem is that the campervans we see in the UK have grown from the little VW bus with a toilet tent to RVs that are more akin in size to rockstar tour buses.

I can see the headline now "Coal baron gets 15 years in the big house for cross border contraband smuggling operation"

They even come with a concrete block in the bottom for the correct amount of ballast

I never bothered to try and modify my little 5hp for wheel and throttle control so steer it on the tiller arm. Oh, now that is fun when even the smallest excited movement one way or another can twist the throttle grip and pile on the revs, usually when you are doing like he did, trying to move out of the way for something big and steel boat like or solid and bank like! eta: One of the things to remember about these type of boats, small Shetland, Norman, Microplus etc is that they are a planing hull. 90hp would be right for my boat for inshore coastal, waterski etc. They handle really well on the plane. At really low speeds, when they're just displacing the water, the handling gets vague regardless of engine type or any wind or water movement.

Blimey, didn't take him too long. Microplus 600s are great little boats, like the 510 he went out on but with a tiny back cabin. I could empathise with a lot of his enjoyment that you can get from a little yoghurt pot. Family had only been without the NB for about 8 months before I got a 19' GRP to get back on the cut.

Our urban town is 5,380/km2. Just out of interest the population density on the Icon of the Seas cruise ship is over 400,000/km2 (using 365m length x 68m beam x max 9950 crew and passengers)

As a confession, when I originally mentioned the Ribble link in a throwaway comment, I was thinking in my head of the Douglas, Ribble and Savick Brook (the link itself) all together. Just an instinctive feeling that going against a strong tide requires significantly more engine and prop speed to maintain SOG vs. at slack water. Only been there in a small GRP boat but thought that that the NB engine would be working pretty hard for a fair stretch and wouldn't want it to overheat with a strong tide running.