Lady Muck

I want one that's completely removeable, I only need it for the winter, so I can avoid getting a facefull of ash everytime I empty the ashpan out. There are strong prevailing winds on our stretch. It would also be useful to store wellies in the winter.

I certainly don't see it as a place just for liveaboards. If we have a boaty related problem, it is always the first place I visit and to me has the best advice, because it's from people who have had to solve these problems themselves. I find it far more informative than the canal mags or books. Even if we can never agree on such things as galvanic isolators, I prefer to see the argument, rather than the one sided view one would read elsewhere!

It's not just money, it's maintenance. Most of us here live quite cheaply, but we are all very handy (one of us is a welder and strips out and refits old boats for a living, another one is a central heating engineer and is handy at fixing anything, gennies, fridges, you name it). If you want to do it cheaper, you have to learn the skills and put the graft in otherwise it could be like living in a damp and slowly sinking shed. For many of us here it is a cheap way of life, but I'm talking about people who have the skills to build their own boats! We saved a lot of money on heating in the winter, but that was a lot of time spent chopping wood. FWIW we LOVE it, lots of people thought we'd hate it, but we have a newer boat (I think it might have been a pricier and different experience in an older boat) and a mooring. I think it helps that we are boat bonkers too, especially my partner, he comes from a family that have had a lifetimes involvement with the canals and was driving boats soon as he could see over the roof. Hire a boat and see what you think. I have friends who come with us EVERY time we cruise because they love it so much and relatives who will jump on for ten minutes if they must, and that's it.

Yes definately, at least, get it out of the water, even a five year old boat can have dark secrets that are only revealed with a crane-out and survey (as we found out).

Well I never really iron, but I was really glad of the ironing board last week. It was a nice day, so I sat on the tug deck to do some work. A swan came and I fed it, the dog took offence to this and charged at the swan, knocking into the river a magazine I was using for work, a magazine with 140 pages, costing £20 and now out of print. I had to get in the river and fish it out and we spent the afternoon peeling the damp pages apart and ironing it dry.

I'm forever scribbling in our Nicholsons guide, we're more likely to mark good mooring spots in there than in our log book. If theres a particularly good butchers or bakers that we find, I'll mark in where that is too. Plus cross out all the closed down pubs we have near us.

My partner inherited his first nb from his grandfather, who encouraged him to keep a proper logbook. It was quite an experimental boat, it was electric and was forever breaking down, therefore a logbook was essential, for it was forever being fixed by different people. It was also a cruise diary and some of the entries are hilarious. We still have the old logbooks and they are a good read for a larff and a reminisce. Anyway, we keep a logbook now, we put in engine running times, any maintenance, when we refuel, any costs we spend, any repairs and also any points of interest when we cruise, so we can revisit. Also we are having a nightmare with consistently low water levels in this pound, we think due to really leaky lock gates, so I make a note of that too, we got water yesterday, had difficulty getting off the mooring to do so and now we are aground again. I'm hoping I can use this diary to be taken a bit more seriously when I complain (again). So, do you keep a logbook? Is it functional or more of a diary?

I wouldn't say it's dangerous, no, just really really fiddly because our gas locker is an odd shape so you can only remove the bottles from one end, therefore if the one on one side is empty, you have to get all the bottles out to change it! A consideration if you are having a boat built, though!

Lakeland do a good ''Bonzai'' ironing board. I do so little ironing that this and a travel iron is all I need. lakeland if you see this link theres both a table top ironing board and an ironing cloth, which takes up even less space.

A gas bottle in less than a week if it was on most of the time, which is why I never use my Alde. It's an hour cruise to the nearest place to buy gas, or wait for the coalboat to come (every six weeks), plus our gas locker is an absolute b*gger to the get bottles in and out of. I'd say gas central heating is too expensive and too much of a faff for a liveaboard.

You need a commercial license, I think it's quite expensive. I wouldn't be surprised, if you are going to let the renter move the boat, there might be other requirements?

My partner always says that London boats have a front and a back instead of a bow and a stern, you drive them and if you want to moor you should just ask, 'which bit of bankside do you want me to crash it into?'

You can take it yourself, you can have it craned out onto a truck and taken anywhere you want (v. expensive), or you or the broker can arrange for someone else to deliver it (by canal). A friend of our delivers boats in this way for Whilton Marina - the pay isn't much , it's an enthusiasts job, really, done by people who are very experienced and love boating - your boat will be safe if delivered in this way. As for the blokey you saw - our boat was like this when we got it, engine hadn't been serviced for three years. A proper engine service, regular oil and filter changes fuel conditioner additive will all take care of that! Apart from the service we learnt to do the rest ourselves. Have you boated before? It's all very relaxing. A friend of ours thinks it should be prescribed for depression and stress on the NHS instead of drugs. No side effects and it is far more effective. If you are concerned about locks, take lots of 'crew'. That's what we do! Far easier! The best advice I can give is take your time.

Camden is fine too, Have stayed there for a week, no bother at all. They lock gates either end of the mooring under the bridges at about ten pm every night, so it's actually really very quiet. We found this out when we visited my partners brother who lives opposite the visitor moorings. I wish we'd known about it as we left our BW key on the boat and had to scale down a massive tree to get back to the boat! There is a Morrisons supermarket really close by. Walk down the towpath towards Camden, but go up the steps at the Pirate Castle. Turn left at the top and keep walking through a modern council estate and down an alley, you will see Morrisons. We also stayed overnight in Paddington Basin, which is very quiet, probably because it's teeming with security guards.

I'm from Leeds, actually.

We are moored in Tottenham and therefore all of our cruising involves going through some of the dodgiest parts of London. Trouble? None here, all of the trouble we've had has been in Camden. It's very quiet. The hire boaters we meet are often warned not to moor in Tottenham, but it's actually very quiet, because the local 'yoot' don't do marsh land. Theres a few mildly drunk fishermen and err, thats it. We get the odd lairy kids when we travel further afield, but I agree most of 'em are a bit bored, if you have a bit of a banter with 'em, then you genrally find they are ok. I'll reserve the rest of my judgements on this matter til we go up to the Midlands, I've heard the kids there are poorer and have less to do than London kids and therefore might be a bit more naughty.

We had a fabulous time cruising the Stort and the Lee, I only wish we'd taken the barbecue with us!

Hi Mert, Sure you can run a p.c. on a nb (we have two and two monitors but we are 57 foot). A mooring and a shoreline is must for us. I'm in a similar position to you, just found out I have to go to Spain to work tommorow, I don't think I'd feel happy leaving the boat just tied up somewhere. Laptops are better on boats they take up less space and you can run them off 12v adaptors (from Maplins) but theres no reason you can't use a desktop p.c., but you should be really careful of condensation in the winter, we have left a lot of space around the cases to ensure it has no chance to form.

Ours fell in every week for about three months when we first got him, most of the time when we were moored up! He's a bit daft so when we do locks we either have him on the lead on the towpath, on the lead on the boat (we made an attachment to tie the lead to, we've a semi trad so when he's tied to this he is well within the confines of the boat and cannot jump around). I also got a harness for him to wear, so we can pull him out easily.

This is what my partner said, I expect we would need quite a meaty battery charger if we got more batteries. I know it's worth getting a good one and they aren't cheap! (Since when was anything to do with boating cheap? )

Why do I think they're inadequate? Perhaps I have a case of battery envy? All the shiny boats I see in the mags have more than I do! I do think they might be shot to pieces and we might need new ones though. We may still consider a battery charger but I've a shopping list as long as my arm for this summer cruising season. Battery charger is way down the list behind all the other maintenance we need to do first!

I found this shoreline fridges would this work? We have considered a battery charger, but we need to use our hook up to run the desktop pcs, we don't really want the faff of plugging and unplugging things. We also think our leisure battery set up is a bit inadequate - we have three and are looking at replacing them and increasing the number to 5 or 6. Last time we had an engine service, the engineer thought the batteries were ok, but I've no idea how long the previous owner had them for - the boat is six years old.

We just got shore power (yahoo!) 'great' we think, we can use the fridge. We never used it before, all the power in our batteries went on running our computers. The boat manual (written by the old owner) said the fridge was dual voltage and would automatically sense when 240v is being used. Well, he told a little porky pie didn't he? We pulled the fridge out, looked at the wiring on the back and it is 12v only. Is there anything we can do to make it dual voltage? We were thinking about fitting a 12v plug and a female socket (the fridge is on a seperate circuit to everything else and theres an isolation switch). We then wondered if we could use a mains rectifier and plug the fridge in at the wall on the 240v circuit when we are on mains hook-up. Is this possible? If yes, what spec would we need? We have a mains recifier for the fridge in the camper van, but it's not powerful enough, does such a thing exist? If this isn't possible, does anyone want to buy a 12v fridge? We don't want to have to run the engine every day just to keep a fridge going.

Our trips over the winter have been quite boring, usually consisting of trip to water point then down to the next set of locks, to fill the boat up with wine! We are going up to Hertford and back over Easter, which will take us all of four days. Summer we plan to go to Lechlade on the Thames or North up the Grand Union, hopefully for the whole of July and August, inviting different friends to stay with us for a week at a time. I can't wait. We have been working like crazy to save the money to afford to take this time off. Whatever we do it has to be better than last summer - we managed two trips to the Uxbridge Boat Centre and one to Stansted Abbots!