Lady Muck

Hi Bluestring - when looking on Apollo Duck, take some of the prices with a pinch of salt. Our boat was originally advertised there for about £25k more than what we eventually paid for it. Sometimes private sellers of nb can be a bit optimistic about what they think their boat is worth. Thats not to say that brokers don't. We looked for a year, I still read the canal mags and 18 months after I first started looking for a boat, some of the boats we viewed and dismissed as being overpriced are still for sale at the same price. I wonder if it's the vendor or the broker that won't budge? We did find that some brokers would accept as much as £15k less than the asking price, when pushed, though. Just be patient and keep looking. We bought every canal mag, subscribed to Towpath Talk and spent an hour a night on the interthinggy. It took us about 6 months of trawling, but we ended up with a fantastic boat, with a keen price and an excellent mooring. So it can be done!

I voted homefire as my favourite, but we probably buy a bit more Taybrite becasue it's cheaper.

Ooh dear, you've opened a right can of worms there! Anymore boaters try to do that in Central London, there'll be no space left. The visitor moorings are few and far between and are jam packed!

Scan in recipe cuttings and keep them on cd If you can't face burning your cd collection onto a hard drive, ditch the crystal cd cases and use plastic cd wallets instead, they take up far less space.

Houses do sometimes seem absolutely huge to me, like the Albert Hall. But I know boat dwelling is not for everyone. I just wish people would stop asking me, 'aren't you cold?' I spent last week in Bermuda (staying at a clients house), working (I'm a freelance designer), I could have fitted our nb into the bedroom I slept in approximately twice and I was really freezing compared to the nb coz they had the aircon on full blast! Yes, most people I know think its a bonkers existence, but I don't care, I love it.

Just quickly wanted to mention that hardly any of the BW moorings in London are residential. Little Venice was mentioned, but when we got our new moorings bill, (which included prices and details of all moorings in London), we were surprised to see that it isn't residential. (Although I doubt whether this is enforced). There are only two or three BW moorings in London that are truly residential and they want unbelievably high rental fees - for a sixty footer you could be looking at over seven grand a year. Have you thought of Virginia Currier? They sell boats with residential moorings, but beware, if you are looking at getting a boat mortgage, they will only lend the value of the boat (i.e. not the overinflated London mooring included price for a boat), so you can be looking at finding tens of thousands of pounds extra, for a boat from the 1970's thats worth at the most 25 grand and needs loads of work. It's very true what Anhar says, the only way to buy a boat in London and get a mooring is to buy it on the mooring and before you hand over any money, get it IN WRITING that they will transfer the mooring to you. If you don't do this you could be looking for a mooring for years. We realised that this has been made worse recently - there are some private residential moorings at Three Mills Island, but everyone has to move for 18 months whilst they improve the river there (they plan to transport building materials by barge, to construct the Olympic village and stadiums), It seems that BW has not been letting newly available moorings (we have two empty spots on our mooring), but reserving them instead for these liveaboards to rent whilst the building work is being done. This must be having an impact on the waiting lists. Finally, if you do want to rent a BW mooring, bear in mind the River Lea is a lot cheaper than the GU (about 40% cheaper) and is nice and quiet, especially further out of London.

That was the worse bit for us too - three days of hell when we moved after about two months of ebaying, charity shop, freecycle etc - most of our furniture we had tried to freecycle, but then the person who was supposed to take most of the stuff sent a really dozy van driver to collect it, who then left most of it behind! That furniture wasn't tthat great, but it was solid wood, so we decided to bring it with us and put it to another use. We burned the last bit of our old bed this morning!

What made us leave the rat race? Well we already left the ratrace when we ditched our jobs and went self employed four years ago. Why a boat? Well this is my partners second boat and he has been a skipper for a community boat scheme for over 15 years. Regarding electricty - we have no shoreline and we had to adapt. I bought a 12v black and white telly from Woolies but I never watch it. The boat has a car stereo but we also use a wind up radio. I don't have a george foreman grill - I have a cast iron ridged pan with a cast iron ridged panini press lid. I bought a potato ricer and a food chopper and use them instead of a food processor. Learn to love laptops coz you can get 12v adaptors from Maplin, and use a 3g datacard so you can get the internet. Canon even do a printer (the ip90 I think) that runs off 12v. New purchases include a sunlinq solar panel(to supplement the two we have already) which I plan to use with my new 12v battery charger and also our phones. I changed my hairstyle so I don't need a hairdryer and I rarely iron. To save space I scan recipes (I used to keep in a scrapbook) and our cds are stored in plastic wallets. I keep an archive of all our old projects and all our old accounts etc on dry land and regularly back up our computer data to an off site location. We are proof that its possible to work onboard. Bank statements and phonebills are downloaded and printed so I only need to pick my post up occasionally. Our clients pay is by bank transfer and we have blackberry phones that can be charged off 12v to receive work emails instantly.Our clients have no idea until We tell them! Before the boat I used to panic about getting rid of loads of stuff, but once its gone you don't miss it. If its too scary to get rid, hire a storage unit or store it at a relatives and see how much you miss it once you've moved. In my opinion, with modern technology and the plummeting prices of alternative energy equipment there is no better time to move onboard. You just need to think creatively. But I wouldn't say its the easiest way of life, no, there is always stuff to do.

I've got one and I even manage to run my business via it - and post on here! It's just lucky theres a mast near our mooring, but I can usually get a good connection whilst cruising!

OOh lets see - on our mooring, two broken cratch covers, three canopies, two chairs blew into the cut and my partners hiking shoe blew off the bow deck and whilst I was fishing my neighbours solar panel from the cut our dog fell in! Last night I felt like I was sleeping on an oil rig (well at least that's what I think it might be like!)