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Lady Muck

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Everything posted by Lady Muck

  1. Yes, we sketch too, infact I've got a whole 8 hours of ideation sketches to do before Monday. The main issue I had with that was having enough light to sketch in a boat which has portholes, I managed to get an LED desk lamp with daylight bulb that works off an inverter, especially as I have to do Pantone colour referencing it's important. The boat lights we have at the moment are rubbish for this!
  2. I don't know any graphic designers who don't use computers (Macs) constantly. If the Op and his partner don't then that's incredibly rare, now. My best mate is a graphic designer and travels constantly and manages with a rather heavy Macbook pro. We use the same software that she does for our jobs, too. And if you've never lived onboard you may not realise what an issue power is going to be and quite how much power a decent set up can use - we certainly didn't, like the OP we thought the main problem we'd face was internet. i never went around looking at the back of laptops for the power spec until I lived onboard.
  3. I know two pro photographers who live aboard.
  4. As someone who has done similar - I'm freelance, it's a design type job, we bought with a marine mortgage, my business is 14 years old and I've had my boat for 10 of those years. Aside from the nitty gritty of buying etc these are my observations. You will either have to spend a fortune on the electrics side of things or compromise - we've gone for the compromise route, because it's cheaper. I work from a single solid state laptop, which has a high res screen (Yoga pro series) no big monitor. I use it in tent mode with a wireless keyboard when onboard, fitted a little shelf at the back for it to sit on. If you have big macs and big monitors you will burn through electricity. Macs don't tend to get on with the 12v adaptors that are available. I know people who work onboard who have had to have them repaired from using these things., so you'd be looking at an invertor, I reckon. Power consumption and space are a big deal on a boat. When I work onboard it's from a tiny folding desk. I've had to look at the size of everything I use for work and think how I can make it smaller. We had desktop computers but they just weren't practical, they got full of ash from the burner, the cases developed condensation inside in the winter and they were just too big (we are on a narrowboat). BUT If you go for a big widebeam and full size kit, then how are you going to power everything? Because electrics on a boat are a really big deal if you plan to cc and work onboard, you really need back up systems and a plan b so you can keep working, the engine isn't enough, we have solar panels and a genny. If you really want to make it your permanent office then it will mean a different license and insurance. I don't meet clients on my boat. It's a big risk to your business moving onboard and getting used to it and trying to keep things going. We bought wireless internet dongles and practised before we moved, but we didn't predict how difficult managing the electrics was going to be and it was incredibly difficult. We had no shoreline to begin with. Starting a business on a boat seems like too much all at once, to me, maybe do one or the other but not both at the same time. If you're cruising and working and living onboard it does has it's advantages, you can do jobs outside in the winter when it's still light, you can keep the boat warm all year. You can work in nicer places in the summer, we are out of town now. If you do cruise you'll encounter problems such as getting to meetings, mooring up somewhere where your wireless internet service provider has no coverage, work equipment breaking when you're miles away from anywhere that sells replacements. It's a nightmare getting deliveries, especially if you're outside of London. Even on my mooring I just cannot, but we now have Doddle in London and that's a godsend. You have to consider how you are going to back up - I back up in three places - Dropbox, drives on the boat and drives offsite. I've lost the boats set of drives and a laptop before (stolen on a train journey) so I can't stress enough how important this is. Internet is a major expense, I've had to go for maximum deals on our phones and I have two sims on business deals for the dongle, plus spare pay as you go sims incase one service provider doesn't work. I've had to faff about unlocking the dongle so that the other sims work. I've discovered that I can't use the cheaper deals for business because the upload/download speeds are throttled. BUT it's far easier than it used to be, I pay £75.50 a month just for the two sims for the dongle but 10 years ago we had two vodafone contracts for 10gb in total and it was about £120 a month and it was only gprs. I had to mail cds out and dropbox didn't exist. Technology continues to improve and it gets easier, for every aspect of our business. Printers can be a pain onboard and personally I've given up. They get dried up or full of dust, I spent far too much on colour printers, but now I have a b&w laser printer and go to a print shop for anything else. But thankfully I no longer need to print things out much as the laptop works as a big tablet. To conclude, you have to really really want to live on a boat to decide to work from one, my work life is way more difficult than my land based colleagues. The only thing that was easier was insurance - our boat insurance provider (Towergate) also does business insurance especially in the creative industries and it was no problem at all to get a policy that combined our home and work life. Much harder when we rented a house and actually cheaper (no idea why!)
  5. In London it can be opposite as residents complain about smoke from boats.
  6. I'd have to check though, they keep changing these things.
  7. Those moorings are 14 days. They'll have to be heavily monitored. There is a single mains plug outlet in the now permanently locked up laundry facility near me (for ironing), I came home after the xmas holidays to find that it had been broken into and several cabin cruisers and some leisure batteries were all plugged in and an impromptu boatyard going on on the waterpoint, welding, angle grinding....it was enough to send the health and safety brigade into orbit. But there are plenty boaters desperate for cheap/free places with mains electricity to do boat work. Maybe they'll have to add to the already big sign of rules there, 'no anglegrinders' . I've gone boating without announcing it anywhere and I've already had one request to sublet, from someone I don't know.
  8. it freaked me out slightly, when I set off on my summer cruise earlier this month and received an email from Metermacs informing me my 'vessel was disconnected from the power supply.'
  9. More like £25k p.a. now for a flat plus bills, Tim. A room could be £16k in rent and bills. So. Budge up everyone! I wonder if the OP bought their boat and if they are still onboard?
  10. The problem with relying on winter moorings is that CRT keep mucking about with them, there's no guarantee that they'll be available/affordable/in the locations that they were last time, from one year to the next. Every year there seem to be changes, just don't bank on them or base your decision around them. If you want to spend winter moored up, then you might want to look into marina availabilty. The Shropshire union is a narrow canal, the Grand Union is widebeam. Despite having a mooring that would easily fit a full width widebeam, I'm sticking with my narrowboat, mostly because Oxford Canal, but also because I'd like to do a few more visits up north, that and I'm permanently skint and maintaining a narrowboat is a bit cheaper. I can live without the extra space, not everyone can though.
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  13. the Stort is really small, you cannot fit two narrowboats side by side in the locks and its very windy and bendy, that's where the boats in my link are based and that was my point, the L & L is massive compared.
  14. I don't think they're any more difficult to helm? We have widebeam community boats in the SE and they are often helmed by novices. Some of them are maximum beam for the waterways they operate on, sure they can be a bit of a liability sometimes but I've not heard of any accidents? http://www.canalability.org.uk/
  15. him indoors brother smashed the window on a hireboat in exactly the same way, it was narrow. We also travelled the L&L and met a few hireboat widebeams, they didn't seem that bad to me, maybe the OP happened to catch them on a bad day. Some people really don't get on with boating, do they?
  16. Lady Muck

    Laundry.

    its not gonna be at the top of the i wants list for that price.
  17. Lady Muck

    Laundry.

    Just to add, there are a few laundry services in London that collect and deliver now, they are well used by boaters, I think there is Washbox and Laundrapp. Never used them myself. Just be sure to only send the type of laundry they permit (I think some don't do towels or sheets only clothes) or they'll send you a hefty bill. I have now so badly got the I wants for that. Do we know any chandlers who could be talked into importing it?
  18. Lady Muck

    Laundry.

    Do you have a photo? Under the back steps is the only space i'm prepared to give up, but him indoors refuses to believe that one can fit a washer in that space. We use a dehumidifier for laundry drying but we are on shore power in the winter.
  19. the only thing that got me (we were there last year the week before the festival) was that they threw away all their frozen food to make room for booze. You can't buy much to cook a meal in there once the festy is on. Have to go into Banbury. Didn't notice any price hikes though, it was corner shop prices to start with.
  20. Lady Muck

    Laundry.

    thats what I'd have if I were prepared to give up space but I don't. Sadface. thats why I bought a bigger single tub, its a 3kg max load (I think the little ones are only 1 or 1.5kg) . I need to be able to do the bedding and towels. It even washes small rugs,
  21. Lady Muck

    Laundry.

    I've a similar set-up except I use a normal spin dryer and a single tub washer I bought on ebay for about £60, that's quite a bit bigger than the norm, it's big enough to do the bedding. The washer isn't available to buy anymore, though, so if it broke I think I'd end up with one of the twin tubs instead. I tend to wash when the engine is on and we are moving, I run both off a cheap Maplin invertor. We do occasionally use launderettes when we cruise, especially ones I know are good. but as you say, some areas just don't have them, it's also the time taken finding them in order to use them. Twin tubs are quite tedious to use, yes, but I find the wash and spin is far superior to an automatic.
  22. I fold them away, they are chained together and stacked up, when we are on the move, because we have only so much roof space, we take a 3 man canoe, a mountain bike, a fire pit and *ahem* a stepladder (for fruit picking) with us and we still want to leave some roof space. They don't tend to get folded out and switched on again, when we are back. We'd rather have the batteries permanently on a trickle charge off the shoreline, in the winter, perhaps that's one reason they last us so long.
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