Doug Scullery

I know it's a bit late now but for anyone else the most important thing to try and save a phone (or whatever) that's been dunked is to get the battery out of it as soon as humanly possbile. After that the tips about drying it out are all good ones, especially to leave it for a long, long time.

Wise words

Brian Blessed once waved to me from the bow of a narrowboat going the opposite direction to me through Hilperton on the K&A, and a friend of mine once saw Camilla Parker Bowles on a boat nearby in Semington while her security patrolled the towpath. Also, I've heard that Bear Grylls has a Dutch barge on the Thames.

That's the one.

Luctor was telling me about problems on the Oxford because his boat has spread. Where is he?

I can't remember the specifics but I think the logic was: Moving water=fresh Still water=stagnant therefore some movement of the tank is a good thing. I believe I was fairly skeptical at the time.

We have an integral steel tank (which means the hull sides are the tank sides, and we have to black it like you do the outside of the hull), which is best in terms of capacity but requires more maintenance than stainless or plastic tanks. We always drink straight from the tap and have never had any problems with that. The only person I know who has become sick from the water on their boat was storing spring water in plastic barrels, it is my understanding that spring water shouldn't be stored without treatment of some kind because the water being still gives the harmless quantities of bacteria the chance to breed and become harmful quantities. I have been told that the movement of a boat sloshing the water in your tank around helps to keep it fresh, but I can't remember who told me that so I've no idea how true it is.

One of the most important things for me when first considering getting a boat was ensuring that we'd still have enough space for plenty of books. On a narrowboat the space under the gunwhales can often make a nice triple layer bookshelf, with the books only actually encroaching an inch or two into the usable living space. Damp hasn't been a problem (it was a problem in the Georgian flat we lived in before!), I'd be more worried about that if it was a leisure boat that would be left unattended for long periods, especially in the winter. If you're living aboard you will be keeping the boat warm and dry enough for your own sake, your books should be fine. I guess it does depend somewhat on what your definition of alot of books is, we have around 8 feet of triple layer book shelf in the living room, 5 or 6 feet of single layer in the bedroom and various piles of overflow books dotted around here and there. We still have to go through them and create a charity shop pile every few months, but it's enough to make it feel like home for me.

It certainly sounds it compared to me, but I have been paring my showers down ever since I moved onboard, I'm a real sucker for just standing under the hot water not actually washing, just standing there, living aboard has forced me to put some real effort into using less water. As someone else mentioned I now lather up with the water off, something I never would have considered when I lived on dry land. Most of my livaboard friends use much less water than me, so I'm quite happy to see that some people here seem to use more!

I also have an integral tank, meaning that the hull sides/baseplate are also the walls of the actual tank, which I have to get into every couple of years and paint just like you do with the outside of the hull. We have 'measured' it in a manner of speaking. Basically we set the hose running on full, timed how long it took to fill a 1 litre container, then timed the tank filling, then measured it filling the 1 litre container again just to be sure that the water was coming out at a consistent rate (it was). Based on the calculations we did from that I believe my tank is somewhere around 1000 litres, which sounds about right for the size of the space (1000 litres being 1 cubic metre). 1000 litres is a large tank for a narrowboat but not unusually large, for us (2 adults, living aboard, 1 showering on the boat every day one approximately every other day, no washing machine) a full tank lasts around 3 weeks. I also keep three 25 litre containers of water in the gas locker for emergencies, a practice I highly recommend having been caught out with conditioner in my hair on more than one occasion. Wow, I thought I took some long showers but you've just made me feel a whole lot better! I'm assuming you've got an instant water heater because there's no way my little calorifier could handle that!

We don't have life jackets, although she is a strong swimmer. It happened as we cruising through Bath, she lost her footing as she was making her way along the gunwhale with a cup of tea. I'm going to make some modifications to my engine room to make it easier for people to come to the tiller through the boat rather than gunwhale walking when underway, how close she was to the prop gives me the chills, I had a friend with me who is fairly new to boating who was shouting "Reverse! Reverse!" as I drifted past her, I think he thought I was frozen in shock and not doing anything to help rather than doing my best to keep the massive steel thing away from the potentially injured person in the water. She swam to the bank and was helped out by passers by and I backed up to get her once she was back on dry land, which I think was the safest way to deal with the situation.

Yeah, she's fine, she managed to do the best thing which was to push herself away from the boat when she knew she was going in, so she got a proper dunking but no injury's, thankfully. It happened when we were underway so it could have been one hell of a lot worse, it's made me really think hard about this gunwhale walking issue. The river is fast but manageable, any more water than this and I wouldn't want to be out on it, though.

As a livaboard I have so far been unable to find a conventional bike insurance company willing to insure me. My bike is covered by my boat contents insurance, which means it is covered against theft when chained to the boat or chained up outside work, but this is both very expensive and doesn't include any of the legal/liability cover you get from dedicated bike insurance. It also doesn't help that my bike is a high end frame that I built up more than 10 years ago and have replaced parts as necessary since then, not exactly an easy thing to quantify the value of! Do you happen to know if any of the clubs might be the answer?

I don't know about Data Protection but I was reading somewhere about train spotting becoming increasingly difficult as authorities have come under more pressure to be seen to be preventing terrorism

Hmm, today Rosey took an unplanned swim in the river and we nearly lost Geoff's boat over Kelston Weir. The weather was nice, though.

So much anger gets stirred up whenever cycling gets mentioned. I am a cyclist who frequently uses the towpaths and would be hugely upset and put out if cycling was banned on them. I always ride with consideration to other towpath users, I use a bell, say please and thankyou, keep my speed right down around pets and people and do my very best to keep my lights out of peoples eyes at night. Why should I be prevented from doing something perfectly quiet, safe and environmentally sound just because some of the people doing the same activity are not responsible about it? Also, I happen to ride a mountain bike with many gears (shock horror!), where is the problem with that? I live in a very hilly area where the gears are completely essential unless I'm going to get off and push up every hill I come to, and besides, I like my bike, I like it as it is, it doesn't effect how responsible (or not) I am about my cycling. As for the comments about lights, I would certainly agree that some of the brighter lights on the market are too bright to be used for day to day cycling, and it would be nice if this was recognised by more cyclists. But whinging about dayglo (hi-vis), ridiculous. I'll wear whatever colour clothing I like, thankyou very much, as it happens I find it makes a noticable difference to how drivers react to me on the road (and I have had nothing but positive feedback about it in conversations with drivers), it makes me feel safer and hurts nobody. If someone wants to make a reasoned argument against cyclists go right ahead, but yet another thread full of vitriolic generalisations and storys of "nearly getting hit" (there's another term for nearly getting hit: Not getting hit) is an absolute yawn fest.

I would also love to know more about this, especially after the Avon floods a few months ago, where I ended up feeling that I was fairly close to the river level limits of my riser set up. On mine I was afraid of either the bow riser meeting the gunwhale or the arc af the risers ending up pushing the boat into the trees (not sure which would happen first, and I hope I never find out). A list of reasons that insurance companys have used not to pay out on claims would make very interesting reading for virtually all of us on the forum.

I have emailed the guy, explaining that I think I know where the picture was taken but I'm only willing to pass information directly to the police. No reply as of yet.

I am inclined to believe he works in insurance, but that doesn't necessarily mean he's "one of the good guys". If this is a cut and dried help track down the stolen boat (in which case should be being handled by the police) I would be over the moon to be able to help. If this is some sort of a civil dispute between an insurance company and their customer I would really rather not get involved.

Fair shout. Will email him. I'm still only happy talking directly to police, though, otherwise I can't really be sure what I'm getting involved in.

You'd think so.

Try putting up a sign saying "Tow Needed" facing in the right direction. I will be heading your way in a few weeks but I suspect you'll be sorted by then, what does your boat look like? As others have said poling it isn't as crazy as it first sounds, especially a shorter lighter boat. Poling from the bow should give you quite alot of control once you get used to it.

I'm 90% certain I know where this photo was taken, but I'm not willing to say here. I would be happy to call the relevant police station (I'll look the number up myself) and tell them if the OP would like.

I see why people are upset by the mess and possible dangers of this but, to be honest, I find it far more interesting than I do upsetting. Rather than looking down on the person/people doing it, I'm far more inclined to be impressed by their ingenuity.