Jennifer McM

Thank you very much everyone, lots of things to think about. There's good explanations put forward here - we're grateful Re the last guy to complain at us; he was moored just past a bridge on a 2 days mooring, we had stopped at the other side of the bridge to let a boat go through first, we were hardly moving as we had to manoeuvre through the bridge, so weren't revving at all. Still I guess some people feel they have to complain. That saying, I'd rather not upset anyone, life's too short. The problem about people not mooring up properly is very real.

Like you, it's our first winter, though we're usually on the boat most of the time. I'm finding that using as much coal as we can get in the grate (without forcing it) when filling up, works best for our stove, than the little and often technique. With the damper and the draft at the bottom 'just' open, the 'piled up' fire gently glows away. We get away with doing this at 7am, 5ish and 10ish. Though the amount of coal is less at the 5 and 10 fill ups. My suggestion comeswith a warning, it could be dangerous opening the door, just in case a hot nut of coal rolls out. We keep the shovel to hand. Normally though, the 'built up' coals have turned into little balls of ash. Opening the flue damper for quick warm-up soon has the coals glowing red. You're probably already doing this, but if not, it's perhaps worth a go. I don't think it's any more expensive.

Always pass moored boats at tick over. Our engine is Isuzu 35. In the first hour of cruising, in gear tick over is 800 - but as the day progresses the tick over speed rises to a 1000 in drive. We got told off twice today by moored boaters for not passing in tick over! Though we did have a lot of moored boaters that appeared happy with our passing. BTW there was no ice. The canal is very quiet, after 4 hours of cruising think we only saw 4 boats that were cruising. How terrible are we? Hate getting told off!

Thank you for your tip Geo, we did go 'straight on' at a 45deg corner! Thank you, can never have enough suggestions!

Yes, we were on idle, except where the ice was at the thickest and on a bend, boat needed extra revs to get us round. Interesting experience. Got onto to T & M at Fradley to discover it was full of leaves, but thawed. Resulting in losing propulsion, a bit of a scary time was in a lock without any reverse. We did stop to fish around in the weed hatch, but there wasn't anything big except leaves. Picked up a tip from an experiences boater, forward and reverse a couple of times, but wait a few seconds between each gear change for the gathered leaves to sink. Simple but very effective tip. Think I'd rather have the ice, than the fluffy leaves.

Don't know until tomorrow, it was late when we moored up as we're 'on a mission' to get to our destination. We did have a bit of a domestic, I wanted to reschedule our appointment, staying where we were until it thawed (as promised by the weather forecast) but 'He indoors' said it will be fine! If there's any damage I'll be able to say "told you so!"

Spent the night on the visitor's mooring at Hopwas on the Coventry, and woke to find the Coventry frozen. We set off at 10:00 a.m. going towards Fradley. It was horrendously noisy - bit like a group of tractor hedge trimmers in a field. The ice was various thickness from just about frozen, to being about 1 cm on open parts of the canal. We cruised for about 2 miles breaking up the ice, until we met another boat coming towards us.... great! It wasn't until we reached Streethay Wharf did the canal look almost thawed.

LOL>>>

On the Coventry at 11.30 this morning... still had thin ice! A beautiful day!

A few years ago I was shocked listening to an Olympic swimmer on the radio, he said that (from my memory) 98% of children that drown can swim. Children that can't swim will avoid water. It''s the kids that can swim will put themselves in danger by usually being over confident of their swimming abilities. I can't find evidence of this on the internet, but I did find "Good swimmers drown more often than non-swimmers" http://www.worldconferenceondrowningprevention2011.org/SiteMedia/w3svc1092/Uploads/Documents/WCDP2011_Swim&WS_Hindmarch_p222_Abstract.pdf I'm not advocating not to teach children to swim, but to advise teaching children to have more respect of water. Granted I understand this child couldn't swim.

You're right, forgot to mention that - our EE dongle was very unreliable. They do have their own wifi, but we didn't pay to use it, whether that's any better, I don't know.

We popped in for a weekend at the end of October. We needed provisions, Tesco delivery, coal, logs, diesel, elsan.... all the usual. We were really impressed, and their diesel was very reasonable we thought. While we were there we used their laundry facilities which was brilliant. They also have a field at the back especially for exercising dogs too. This winter, being our first one living aboard, our idea is to continually cruise where we can, and hop into marinas for one or thrice weekends in a month. Wigrams is definitely one we'll be returning too. The place appears to be run with military efficiency.... top marks!