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Why!?


tehmarks

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I can remember very clearly my first and only stint of living aboard...two years of temperamental access to electricity, of arriving back home after days away for work to a damp and freezing cold boat in the depths of winter, and of moving the boat in the pitch dark after work when all I wanted to do was cook and sleep.

 

...and yet, here I am, longing to live on the cut again as a continuous cruiser and very seriously looking at boats (from afar thankfully, currently in the Alps).

 

Boat life - you really can't beat it, can you?

Edited by tehmarks
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I was asking myself this question back in April during two days of torrential rain when a roof leak soaked every single item of clothing we had on the boat.  Boats are capable of creating a particular sort of misery that makes you question your sanity sometimes.

 

But you get one perfect warm sunny day when everything is going right and all is forgiven.  The fact is there are those days when you wouldn't want to be anywhere else but on the canals, - there is frankly no other way is this crowded little country that you can reproduce that sensation.

 

 

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Nothing like hours at the tiller in cold wet weather then mooring up and stepping down into a warm cosy boat, but it wouldn't feel as cosy without the suffering beforehand, that's why I think boating is popular, the upsides are magnified by the downsides, creating a sharp contrast. 

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18 hours ago, Neil2 said:

...when a roof leak soaked every single item of clothing we had on the boat.  Boats are capable of creating a particular sort of misery that makes you question your sanity sometimes.

 

Oh yes, I forgot about the roof leak around the Paloma chimney, and the flooding of the bilge with a full tank of water when the pipework froze. And yet I'm still not put off?

 

Sanity is being questioned, for sure. Thankfully I suspect it might take a while to find the ideal boat this time around, so plenty of time to reconsider...?

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  • 2 months later...

We took over our boat on the shortest day of the year and on the towpath in the middle of nowhere (as the skipper we employed to move her to our moorings was hampered by the Severn being in flood). She was ex-hire and had no stove (does now) and the batteries were so knackered that they wouldn’t fire up the Eberspacher.  Pleased to say that it all went uphill from there.  We recon that surviving that means we can survive anything!

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On 06/07/2019 at 19:14, tehmarks said:

I can remember very clearly my first and only stint of living aboard...two years of temperamental access to electricity, of arriving back home after days away for work to a damp and freezing cold boat in the depths of winter, and of moving the boat in the pitch dark after work when all I wanted to do was cook and sleep.

 

...and yet, here I am, longing to live on the cut again as a continuous cruiser and very seriously looking at boats (from afar thankfully, currently in the Alps).

 

Boat life - you really can't beat it, can you?

I don't understand why you would have to move the boat in the pitch dark after work.

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Because I'm self-employed with odd and long working hours, and in busy periods I frequently work longer than two weeks without a day off. I was continuously cruising - legitimately and without taking the mick - and so some dead-of-night locking was par for the course unfortunately.

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Its Friday the 13th today. I wouldn't lift a finger to do anything today or something terrible might happen, like a tree falling on your head, treading on a rusty nail, getting savagely pecked by a bi-polar pigeon or by the  boat sinking or the gas bottle going off bang and blowing you to kingdom come.  :closedeyes:

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When I first started business fitting windows, three of my customers, all living at number 13, had their windows broken into. Around the same time, two women were murdered in the town I was living in, both lived at number 13.

 

I'm not the superstitious type but that made me think. We seem to have veered off topic a bit. 

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On 06/07/2019 at 19:14, tehmarks said:

I can remember very clearly my first and only stint of living aboard...two years of temperamental access to electricity, of arriving back home after days away for work to a damp and freezing cold boat in the depths of winter, and of moving the boat in the pitch dark after work when all I wanted to do was cook and sleep.

 

...and yet, here I am, longing to live on the cut again as a continuous cruiser and very seriously looking at boats (from afar thankfully, currently in the Alps).

 

Boat life - you really can't beat it, can you?

Hi

We picked up our lined boat in the middle of March last year in the middle of the beast from the east. Slept in what can only be classed as a fridge for the next 10 days bringing her over the Rochdale Canal from Lymm to our mooring in Wakefield. With a full carpet out of the weed hatch, me going in the cut at Todmorden and an armor cabling round the prop dredging everything possible off the bottom of the canal. Still wouldn't swap her for a house.

 

What you got to lose, go for it.

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18 hours ago, stegra said:

When I first started business fitting windows, three of my customers, all living at number 13, had their windows broken into. Around the same time, two women were murdered in the town I was living in, both lived at number 13.

 

I'm not the superstitious type but that made me think. We seem to have veered off topic a bit. 

 

I hope blackrose isn't superstitious.

Blackrose.JPG

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I read a book once called ''The ship that sailed on Friday'' by Rolf Bennet.  It was about an old skipper with an old steam lugger that sailed out of Kingston harbour Jamaica with a bunch of geologists on board to investigate rocks and oolite on various islands in the Carribee's. After being at sea for months and months, even touching on places like Arabia and othe exotic lands and many adventures they sighted land again, hoping it was one of the islands with more oolite on. But it wasn't, it was Kingston harbour.  They had scribed a massive circle. They discovered why.  The helmsman had sat on a keg of nails at the wheel for the whole trip which had distracted the compass.  Isn't that nice.

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And as to why god knows. After 25 years on the boats  emigrating to a large property in australia, and owning perfectly good properties in the uk, as well as a lovely but unsuitable  for living on boat.

we are again looking at boats suitable for living on. Weve ‘lived ‘ in this house since may but spent  most of the time on the boat.  Clearly  we have a virus.

 

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On 13/09/2019 at 12:50, bizzard said:

Its Friday the 13th today. I wouldn't lift a finger to do anything today or something terrible might happen, like a tree falling on your head, treading on a rusty nail, getting savagely pecked by a bi-polar pigeon or by the  boat sinking or the gas bottle going off bang and blowing you to kingdom come.  :closedeyes:

My Friday the 13th on the cut involved a dog developing diarrhoea, one crewmate’s stepson getting mugged (remotely from the boat), and another crewmate breaking his ankle tripping over a mooring line so the day ended in A&E. I’m reminded of a tale from long ago about a rural aged Irishwoman asked if she believed in faeries: “Ahh no. But they’re there.”

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