BilgePump

You're in a great position there. An existing family boat with them there to teach you the ropes is the ideal entry without making bad/expensive mistakes. With some experience under your belt you'll have a far better idea of what you like and what you would desire in your own boat, plus an awareness of all the maintenance, pitfalls and costs to be aware of. Hire boaters have an hour or two of training before being sent off in a shiny new boat. I don't think you'll have any problems getting to grips with handling a narrowboat with a bit of guidance from your grandpa. Have fun!

I'd recommend starting at Daisy Nook and wandering around the canal features there and Crime Lake, then have a wander towards Droylsden. Lots of the canal bed is still there with reeds etc and the route is pleasant and easy enough to follow up to there. It's then a bit of urban confusion to keep close to it, get to the marina and up to Fairfield junction.

Been over that bridge on the bike many times but never tried to follow the old branch canal. Interesting watch. Have followed the old Hollinwood branch canal route but never ventured up the Stockport branch. Looks well worth a pootle. Cheers.

I remember a guy who would attach a load of 56lb weights, roped to the substantial grabrails on one side, to lift the other side of the boat a few inches higher out of the water so he could touch up the waterline blacking each year. Seemed to work for him.

Have a big '42' on my wall cut out of plywood, due to being a fan of the books. Some people get it instantly, others need an explanation and encouragement to read them, listen or watch.

Sod that! The mooring is nearly double the licence cost and paid up to date with them. Don't want or need to be recalcitrant and get in the mire.

It's always been in the T&Cs Just got the email from them Seems that the penalty is still £30 Bo!!ock$ NOTIFICATION OF UNPAID DIRECT DEBIT - REFER TO PAYER Customer Account: xxxxxxxxxx We have been unable to collect your Direct Debit Instalment on 24 May 2024, as our request was returned by your bank marked “refer to payer”. In accordance with the Direct Debit scheme we will attempt to collect the returned amount of £57.69 on the 16 June 2024 and would ask that you have sufficient funds available to meet this request. All future instalments will be collected as per your original Direct Debit schedule. If our request is returned, your Direct Debit instruction will be cancelled, and the full balance outstanding will become due immediately. Your account will then be passed to our Credit Control team. In accordance with our Terms and Conditions we have also applied an unpaid Direct Debit fee of £30 to your account. This will be collected with the above amount on the above date. If you have any queries regarding your account, please call Credit Control on 0113 524 0655.

Put the money in when realised my mistake earlier on today, but with Friday having been a regular working day I think that they would have tried and failed then. Will phone them if don't get text or email in next hour or two. The account in question doesn't have any (un)authorised overdraft facility and doesn't charge fees for things like bounced DDs (unusual but it's a very basic current account). Looking back through the email when it happened years ago, it was definitely CaRT who added the £30 and they took the DD plus surcharge a fortnight later. I seem to remember that on the same day the car insurance DD failed and they charged me £15 extra. Happened once with car tax back when but there was no surcharge from DVLA.

In my situation, it was still genuinely my home when in the UK. I kept the smallest bedroom and let out the two bigger ones. Agree with the 'if it walks like a duck' principle may be applied and imagine that you couldn't just let out two bedrooms in a two bed house whilst claiming it to be home.

I just thought that if someone else had recent experience it would save on trying to get through to them at opening time after a bank holiday weekend. If nobody knows then I'll give them a ring later on.

Okay, so transferred money to my account for my monthly boat licence direct debit which should have been taken out on Friday gone. Only thing is, I've just realised that in a manic hurry I put it onto my credit card instead, so the DD will have failed. Haven't had an email from CaRT yet so wondering if anyone would know what the current process is before calling them. It happened about five years ago on a mooring DD which they took two weeks later with a £30 surcharge. Does anyone know if it's still the same or what they do now?

I thought that it was possible to have a max of two lodgers in your home without needing to go down the HMO route, so it still might be suitable for someone looking to spend the bulk of time as a liveaboard but keeping the advantages of a property. I did that when spending a lot of time working and renting a flat abroad. Meant that bills got covered and didn't need the family member owner of the house to keep coming round to check the property was okay.

The friend of a friend route is how my mates found their tenants. Works well, and like you say, round here now a sign in a window of a decent place would have people biting your hand off. Not a good area but close to the city.

Set-up fees, advertising, commission, approved contractors, and being a direct hurdle between good communications between tenants and landlords. Family member did it with a decent property for a few years back in the mid 2000s but just found spurious bills were being generated that ate up a lot of the rent and many seemed to be instigated by the agents themselves. You can imagine the scenario, good tenant asks for simple thing A to be fixed in the course of running maintenance, agent sends rep round who points out 10x other trivial things and adds them to the list, gets in 'approved' contractor charging top dollario. I can imagine that ten years ago it was entirely possible for the poster to have a similarly negative overall experience. This is a huge dilemma for many people in a variety of situations completely unrelated to boats. Nobody really wants the overheads and security issues of leaving a house unattended for long periods of time. However, for many with just the single property the risks of renting can seem prohibitive. The possibility of bad tenants, bad agents, big bills etc can be scary if it is someone's major asset. It seems that one way where it does work is for a couple of friends who have sound tenants in a place each and rent to the tenants directly, but also have a good 4 man local property maintenance team that they can contact who have decent trades connections. Neither minds paying them a good rate for a good job; it must be galling though to have a middleman with a list of not so hot expensive chums spinning jobs out with a questionable final result and then taking a cut plus some on top. For someone wondering whether or not to sell up or rent out, there is the possibility of a third way. It won't bring in as much but it gives you more rights than renting out fully and will cover many of the CT/utility bills. It is entirely possible to have a professional lodger who lives in your household. Income from this is not taxed unless it exceeds £7.5k per year. Retain full residential access, full control, security, income for bills and keep the equity. Would require owners to be able to deal with this scenario and finding a top quality lodger but it can be done surely.

Takes me back to being a kid when Ladyline marinas were around and you could get a new 30' Dawncraft for under £2.5k (according to an ad in a Ladyline cruising guide from c 1973 that happens to be within reach of PC)

Great video. Cheers for posting it. All credit to whoever filmed, kept and digitised this for posterity. The number of Springers still around, if they've been well maintained, is testament to a quality that they weren't known for at the time. They were the budget boat of the 70s and 80s but have proven their excellent value for money. Lots of things to love about that video from the building yard, lack of hardhats when loading onto lorry, great big bootprint on the bulkhead to the guy signwriting. Well worth a second watch later today methinks.

This video just cropped up on YouTube. Bit big for the canals, but it's getting into the vintage sector.

I had a boat under a foreign EU flag. Only a 16' open boat with 25hp + 5hp outboards. That was the max without an ICC or local helmsman ticket. Still, on top of insurance it needed a licence for the boat itself, a licence that me plus boat was allowed semi commercial fishing, and a licence for myself to fish. All of them expired on different dates with different durations. Lots of time in port police and tax office each year.

I'm not mechanically minded as you know, but I always think of lit like permanently trying to do 15mph in 5th gear at 600rpm in a diesel car. Intuitively it says it's not going to be good for an engine that likes to be run at decent revs. It would be a lovely boat for one of the marinas or moorings up here giving access to the Irish sea and the north west rivers and many other locations similarly around the UK but it just isn't the right type of boat for heading inland to any extent.

Yep, no walking speed with that engine in it. A boat that can't really go slowly and bridge holes that it may just or may explicitly not fit under, what could possibly go wrong? Comfortable cruising speed for it is probably over 10 knots and possibly maxing out at 20+. But the fuel bill, oh the fuel bill for that big diesel, and repair costs if it goes wrong, I would dread to hazard.

I won't link to the advert for this boat as the OP has chosen not to but suffice it to say that it's a well bonny chunky coastal cruiser and a lot of boat for the money which is similar to that required for a good quality secondhand narrowboat.. A Bruce Roberts Euro 1200, I assume that it's built in steel, coming in around the 18 tons mark. The engine powering it is 300hp. Boats like this are great on the coast, estuaries, big rivers with no bridges that a sailboat couldn't pass under. They are seriously too big to navigate most parts of the network of canals or upper reaches of rivers, and even accessing the navigations it can go would probably require coming in from the sea.

£1550 per year doesn't seem out of the ordinary. I seem to remember the golf club near HIgh Lane having a sign a few years ago that their fees were just under a grand, and we're in the north. *insert deity* knows how much membership is at an exclusive course. Our boat club membership on the river is only double digit pounds per year, allowing use of slipway and basic facilities. Moorings are similarly affordable in the low hundreds. Sailing can still be the hobby of the less well off.