JUMP

Hi, Thanks for the response, most helpful despite the trail off on 12v TVs which really aint that important to us, thanks all the same.. Debbifiggy :- thanks for the mooring advice, can you tell us if we'd be right in thinking that mooring a widebeam at somewhere like apsley would cost double that & would they charge less if it is shorter, also can you get moorings for 6month & cruise for 6months & how would we go about finding other non towpath side moorings.? Bottle & Sueb :- some interesting comments about invertors & generators, tell us more, what are the pro's & con's, with a generator would we stil need to run the engine each day, surely mounting a generator will vibrate the barge more & prob not look that nice either, however i can see power being more of an issue than space, perhaps we should have it all, invertor, generator, solar panels, turbins, hehe.

Hi, We are saving to buy a live aboard eventually & are keen to learn as much about canal boats as possible in our spare time whilst saving, so if you are on the grand union & would like a hand feel free to get intouch as we will do it just for the experience ?

Hi, We would really like to live aboard staying local to Hemel Hempstead on the Grand Union for family reasons, so whilst saving to buy something small to start with we decided to hire a narrow boat over the new year, it was a great idea to do it at that time of year as it helped us get a real feel for all of the elements with not many moving boats about, We had a wonderful time & are still keen to live aboard even though we realized a 45ft narrow boat is to small for a fairly tall couple like us, so we have come away with plenty of questions, we will start with a few & add more to this post as/if we get answers… Our biggest issue was height & space; do the widebeam boats provide plenty of height as well as width, surely there are othe 6ft + boaters? Which then leads to where can you take a widebeam, we know they can go on the grand union but how far & what other canals could we take it on from the grand union? Sticking with the widebeam questions, would they cost more to moor? How long a widebeam would we need to get to comfortably have 2 bedrooms onboard? Another issue we had was electricity, we had to run the vibrating diesel engine for 8 to 10 hours a day then go sparingly on the electrics & in the morning the inverter would beep telling us we are low on electricity, does this sound right ? We are sure we have seen places that sell 110v televisions? Surely that would save using the inverter for what seemed to run the power low on our hireboat? But if we were to live aboard we’d need to run a washing machine & some sort of computer, how could this be possible? We thank anyone who can answer any of these questions & in the mean time we continue to save...