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Living alone on a boat


Jen_P

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Hi Jen, I live on my boat alone but dont find it lonely I walk my dog with other boaters and their dogs. There are nearly always people on the towpath that over a period of time I have got to know. We are a community where I am which always helps and we know what each others jobs are or were before they retired so we must be sociable. The trouble is some people can be lonely in a full room and that is down to them.

Glad you have got your boating sorted out and you have gone the fat boat route icecream.gif

 

Peter

 

PS no matter what shoes you buy they will be muddy help.gif

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I live alone except at weekends where my son stays over on Saturdays. It can be as sociable or not depending on what mood you're in. Because of work patterns, commuting and regular evening commitments I'm not around the boat enough to mingle with other nearby boaters. That said, I've met some of the folk on here and they've been accommodating of my quirks.

 

There was one time when I was moored at Atherstone, I'd just been up to the water point and back down in the boat. I was tidying away my hosepipe when another boater was mooring up. I said hello, he said hello. We went to the pub, put the world to rights. Got very drunk, and after a great impromptu night, went back to our respective boats.

 

Rob

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Alone versus lonely, the first one might be out of your control but the second is optional.

I live alone except at weekends where my son stays over on Saturdays. It can be as sociable or not depending on what mood you're in. Because of work patterns, commuting and regular evening commitments I'm not around the boat enough to mingle with other nearby boaters. That said, I've met some of the folk on here and they've been accommodating of my quirks.

 

There was one time when I was moored at Atherstone, I'd just been up to the water point and back down in the boat. I was tidying away my hosepipe when another boater was mooring up. I said hello, he said hello. We went to the pub, put the world to rights. Got very drunk, and after a great impromptu night, went back to our respective boats.

 

Rob

I do find being occasionaly pissed puts the world in a better light.

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Also, after some unspecified but generally short length of time as a boater, other boaters seem to know this instantly, and can pick you out of any number of non-boaters hanging round the canals or in canalside pubs. I find this very interesting, and not really directly related to the obvious, such as big knitted jumpers and diesel stained jeans. Me and MtB discussed this at great length after about ten different occasions within six weeks where total strangers just picked us out, one lot even opening with, "scuse, me, you're obviously boaters, can you tell me..."

i think is the combination of odors, i am always getting accused of smelling of at least diesel, woodsmoke and paraffin, either all together or individually, i honestly don't notice and i suspect most long term boaters have gained the ability to ignore the smells.

Plus of course the splatters up the trousers from muddy towpaths

a more subtle indication is the almost direct route most will take to the pub bog, before going to the bar

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The diesel submariners used to shower and change into clean clothes kept onshore so that German spies did not know that they where submariners

I find the biggest give away is keys on a big cork

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After that Mike expect to see lots of corks bobbing down the canal or in the skips .

Loads of Portugese will be out of work as the cork industry collapses it was bad enough with screwcap and plastic bungs for wine bottles.

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Holidaymakers.

 

Rare to see a proper boater with a giant float on their keyring.

 

 

MtB

 

 

I know a tug skipper and a fishing boat skipper that have cork ball key rings (Mind you one of them has so many keys on the key ring that there is NO chance of it floating!!!)

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i think is the combination of odors, i am always getting accused of smelling of at least diesel, woodsmoke and paraffin, either all together or individually, i honestly don't notice and i suspect most long term boaters have gained the ability to ignore the smells.

Plus of course the splatters up the trousers from muddy towpaths

a more subtle indication is the almost direct route most will take to the pub bog, before going to the bar

See for me, it can only really be the coal smell, if it is a smell at all. I use only smokeless fuel, no paraffin, and my solar generates all of my power even in the winter other than days I have moved, so it's unlikely to be diesel.

There is clearly some kind of intangible to it. I can also pick out other travellers (Irish or Roma) and Jewish people from any crowd, and when I worked abroad, could tell British folk of any race from any other folk, without any hassle, without even hearing them speak.

 

**Edit, although you will know, having been part of Team Reg, that anyone else could spot me, you or MtB a mile off if we have spent more than an hour on Reg, due to the fact that our faces will be covered in diesel soot! biggrin.png

Edited by Starcoaster
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See for me, it can only really be the coal smell, if it is a smell at all. I use only smokeless fuel, no paraffin, and my solar generates all of my power even in the winter other than days I have moved, so it's unlikely to be diesel.

There is clearly some kind of intangible to it. I can also pick out other travellers (Irish or Roma) and Jewish people from any crowd, and when I worked abroad, could tell British folk of any race from any other folk, without any hassle, without even hearing them speak.

 

**Edit, although you will know, having been part of Team Reg, that anyone else could spot me, you or MtB a mile off if we have spent more than an hour on Reg, due to the fact that our faces will be covered in diesel soot! biggrin.png

 

This tickled something i my memory.....I can't remember the details exactly.........

 

There was a photographer that took huge series of photographs (men and women) of people from one area (ie North Wales, South Wales, Highlands, Lowlands, Northumbria etc etc. and made them into composite photographs of people from that particular area. The resultant photographs were androgynous but very attractive and what was weird you could immediately tell where they came from. I think that people had an uncomfortable feeling about racial profiling and it seemed to slip into history very quickly. It did seem to point to there still being a look of an area in spite of all the population shifts over the years.

 

The reason this came to mind was Starry talking about being able to recognise Roma / Jewish identity........I wonder if you pick up minutae of the way a person looks and associate that with an area or wide familial groupings (Can't see it helping with the boater bit.......or maybe we are all related and there is lunacy in the family smile.png)

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I live alone and love it: I've always been a bit of a loner, so alone but never lonely. It's definitely not the same thing.

 

That said, it's hard to walk the length of the marina without ending up in conversation with someone.

 

A book on lonliness Jen_P? Where can i get a copy? Might be interesting.

 

Cheers,

T.

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We got 2 sets of keys with the boat this year when we bought it. One set had one cork ball, the other (pare) set had none. We bought 2 balls for the spare set, and then one new one for the usual set as the original ball was a bit black from years of everyone else's finger grease soaked into it, yuk!

 

What's wrong with cork balls? Drop keys in water, they'll float and you can get them back.

Oh... it's the "real boater" cobblers - flat cap and long raincoat types?

 

I have taped string onto tools that I might be using when wending my way round the gunnels (that's real boater's speak for gunwhales, btw). If they fall out of my hand, the other end has been tied round my belt.

 

I'd rather have cork balls attached to my key ring than a fob that advertises Mercedes or BMW or Audi.

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We got 2 sets of keys with the boat this year when we bought it. One set had one cork ball, the other (pare) set had none. We bought 2 balls for the spare set, and then one new one for the usual set as the original ball was a bit black from years of everyone else's finger grease soaked into it, yuk!

 

What's wrong with cork balls? Drop keys in water, they'll float and you can get them back.

Oh... it's the "real boater" cobblers - flat cap and long raincoat types?

 

I have taped string onto tools that I might be using when wending my way round the gunnels (that's real boater's speak for gunwhales, btw). If they fall out of my hand, the other end has been tied round my belt.

 

I'd rather have cork balls attached to my key ring than a fob that advertises Mercedes or BMW or Audi.

a cork ball will hold one, or maybe two keys above water,most boats I have moved have had many more on their keyrings.

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I'm gonna have to invest in more balls, thanks for that matty40s.

 

Gonna have a laugh when I get to a boater's canalside inn and order a pint and put our key ring on the bar with 50 balls on it!

 

(will have to test keys in a bucket of water to see how many balls / floating or not).

 

(I wonder if cork balls would make original Christmas presents... for those who haven't got a boat yet...)

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I have a single ball (of the cork variety) which tests to support my car key, boat padlock key, bike padlock key, BW skeleton key and two additionals. It will almost entirely submerge, but will not sink.

 

 

 

I have taped string onto tools that I might be using when wending my way round the gunnels (that's real boater's speak for gunwhales, btw). If they fall out of my hand, the other end has been tied round my belt.

 

 

 

This is called a lanyard. I have several different types of tool lanyard, the retractable type (like you get for lift passes when skiing) a rather clever coiled spring type (like a slightly smaller version of a telephone cord), rated to 50kg! And of course several of the string variety... Having spent many years working on a sea going Thames Sailing Barge, they have definitely saved my tools a fair few times!


I believe a cork ball is supposed to be able to float three Yale-type keys?

 

Like EF above, I'll experiment with a bucket or somesuch when I get the chance.

 

Buckets are for wimps! Drop them in the cut and think sharp...

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What's wrong with cork balls? Drop keys in water, they'll float and you can get them back.

 

 

 

Oh really?

 

I discovered this was not true in about 1978. Never bothered with them since. I hold that all proper boaters know this!

 

 

MtB

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That buoy looks very plausible, but you're going to need a big pocket for it.

This is the problem, your overall density of keys plus flotation object(s) has to be less than that of water, i.e. 1g per cc.

To get serious lift for multiple keys, I suppose a helium party balloon would be the business, but they do deflate within a few weeks. You'd have to do the flying away test of course, might need some ballast at first.

I asked my brother, who has several keys attached to one cork ball, whether he's tested them in a bucket, and surprisingly he's had his boat over two years and has never got around to it...

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