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Misjudged Widebeam Liveaboard Purchases?


philjman

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cripes , if you bought an old 12 berth black prince or similar holiday boat you could make a fortune letting out the berths I bet .. WAIT WAIT dont tell me .. been done .. lol

already been done, there was someone moored in Paddington basin renting bunks out on airbnb for ages £25 a bunk. Enterprising, eh? (Yes by now we have seen it all).

What IS this attraction to London all about? Why? Am I missing something? Is it scenic, beautiful, peaceful, quiet, not many boats, no traffic noise, no train noise or something?

 

The last time I went there by train and foot, it was 4 hours before I heard an English voice. What's happening down there? Have we been invaded?

It's 2016? Aeroplanes have been invented. It means that people can travel and live and work in different countries, didn't you know? :facepalm:

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already been done, there was someone moored in Paddington basin renting bunks out on airbnb for ages £25 a bunk. Enterprising, eh? (Yes by now we have seen it all).

It's 2016? Aeroplanes have been invented. It means that people can travel and live and work in different countries, didn't you know? :facepalm:

 

But why do they all want to live in LONDON?

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But why do they all want to live in LONDON?

Lots of highly paid jobs for those with the right skills.

 

I have just been offered a job there paying 25% more than I got prior to retiring over 2 years ago. Not tempted though, as I am enjoying being retired too much. Might be different if I was bored, broke or both though!

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I love living here, can't speak for anyone else. Love my summer trips away but always happy to come back, it's home.

 

Clearly there are millions of others like you. I just can't see it myself, is all, unless I had so much money that I could live in a nice secluded place!

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What IS this attraction to London all about? Why? Am I missing something? Is it scenic, beautiful, peaceful, quiet, not many boats, no traffic noise, no train noise or something?

 

The last time I went there by train and foot, it was 4 hours before I heard an English voice. What's happening down there? Have we been invaded?

 

 

cant say its my bag either but then I grew up on farm so whatever floats your boat .. ( you see what I did there ? did ya ? )

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I lived in London for the first 40 years of my life and couldn't wait to get sway. Now if I visit reli's after 3 or 4 hours I'm gagging to get away.

Phil

Ditto, except I got out at 20, so I've lived AWAY from London for 40 years :)

 

Tony

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We (my wife and I) know all the other live aboards and it has only been widebeams here.

 

On the other hand I've never seen the phenomenon happen with a widebeam, but I have seen it happen with several narrowboats.

But the realities of living on a boat are the same regardless of your granite breakfast bars and plasma tvs ; limited power, gas runs out half way through your shower, filling water tanks, emptying toilets, lugging bags of coal in the dark with the sleet coming at you horizontal.

 

Very true.

We get the lifestyle blogger/journo types in London, they last around 2 -4 weeks before they realise the boatlife kind of clashes with their constant cocktail parties/MacBook pro lifestyle (stuff like keeping a fire in and needing lots of water for showers). They're not really cut out for slumming it for a much longer time than four days at Secret Garden Party. They often then rent the damn boat out to someone else who is as clueless as they as they are desperate to move away. I feel like screaming, 'get the damn thing towed back to Whilton!'

The worst one of these is this one http://www.cityam.com/225058/london-living-houseboat

figuring out the dates, she managed about, oooh three weeks onboard. it then looks like she moved off (maybe even she was only renting) and it actually sank about a month after that. Yes it sank, so much for the dream.

It's only the noobs who do articles like this, I don't think I've seen one of these interviews yet where the boater has been onboard more than a year..

We get the bigger boats too, with all the gear and no idea, not least it doesn't matter how much electricity generating gubbins, gadgets, gensets and toys you have onboard you are still faced with exactly the same problems as the rest of us - no taps, broken services, not enough fuel boats to cope with the demand, ovecrowdedness. Just because you're well off it doesn't mean you can buy your way out of it. Well, not here, anyway. There was someone offering a cassette emptying service but he stopped, no doubt the business plan was not working out because the elsans are always blocking up and your customers keep getting forced to move further.

 

Your portrait of boat life in London sounds like a complete nightmare! I think I'd probably abandon ship too if I was still moored there...

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I love living here, can't speak for anyone else. Love my summer trips away but always happy to come back, it's home.

 

Perhaps you could try to describe life in London in a more favourable light next time then! laugh.png

 

I lived aboard in London for 5 years and outside London for 6. I have to say I don't miss London at all.

Edited by blackrose
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I think having a mooring in a nature park kind of swings things for me, I really don't have to go into town. The Lea and Stort are great, if I could never boat anywhere else I'd be happy. That and I don't feel the need to justify loving it here to the internet. Heaven forbid it might even sound like one of those smug articles in the paper. Although I don't do yoga on the roof though, that'd be daft.

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It was the marina atmosphere that did it in the end for us. went to live on boat for a bit of freedom only to find ourselves more tied down by rules in the marina. it was in effect like living on an estate, only closer together and less room to escape from it all. The marina was in your face all the time. With work commitments it was not possible to get out on the water as we had hoped. In the end it was a relief to get back on land. We hope to have a boat in the not too distant future but purely for leisure. Edited to add that it was a narrowboat we moved onto, had it built 2 years ago for ourselves, sold it and did not make a loss on it.

There's no reason why you have to moor in a marina if you work. We lived in a marina for a while and didn't like it for the same reasons. However we now constant cruise and both work. We set ourselves a maximum commute to work of 1 hour and move around within those parameters. Where we are based we can cover a large area and still be within an hour from work.
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There's no reason why you have to moor in a marina if you work. We lived in a marina for a while and didn't like it for the same reasons. However we now constant cruise and both work. We set ourselves a maximum commute to work of 1 hour and move around within those parameters. Where we are based we can cover a large area and still be within an hour from work.

Sounds ideal! Where we plan to moor, I can see it would be entirely feasible; esp. in the summer months...

But we are wusses and are gonna start off in a marina at first and start with small forays! ?

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I'm not sure whether it's just us who are noticing a definate pattern; Brand new widebeam arrives in marina owned by someone who has never owned or even sailed a boat previously, live on it for a year or two and then sell it, normally at a huge loss and move back into a house! We've now seen our 6th iteration of this process happen in our marina in 3 years! Is this the same country wide or are we just unlucky?

 

In my 26 years I have met dozens and dozens of narrowboaters who have done precisely the same.

 

Tim

 

Clearly there are millions of others like you. I just can't see it myself, is all, unless I had so much money that I could live in a nice secluded place!

 

Do the sums. Approximately 10 million of us live in that enormous dump. Approximately 50/60 million of us live in nicer places in the UK. 1666 could have been a good year but some idiots rebuilt it.

 

Tim

  • Greenie 1
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Yeah, I think a lot of widebeams are marketed as floating apartments and the ones I've seen have been jolly nice too.

 

But the realities of living on a boat are the same regardless of your granite breakfast bars and plasma tvs ; limited power, gas runs out half way through your shower, filling water tanks, emptying toilets, lugging bags of coal in the dark with the sleet coming at you horizontal.

Well that is just stupid talking like that.

 

Surely one gets one's butler or footman to do all that?

 

Rob....

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Do the sums. Approximately 10 million of us live in that enormous dump. Approximately 50/60 million of us live in nicer places in the UK. 1666 could have been a good year but some idiots rebuilt it.

 

Tim

 

The Fire was really a bit OTT - the Plague would have cleared the population quite well by itself.

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There's no reason why you have to moor in a marina if you work. We lived in a marina for a while and didn't like it for the same reasons. However we now constant cruise and both work. We set ourselves a maximum commute to work of 1 hour and move around within those parameters. Where we are based we can cover a large area and still be within an hour from work.

It does depend on your circumstances. I do know of several people who work and cruise. It just was not suitable or feasible for us. I am pleased that it works for you. we loved the boat but it was unfortunate that our circumstances did not fit with how you work. Not everyone can set the 1 hour from work rule. not everyone works in one place. I am pleased for you that you can. I am just pleased to be away from the marina

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There's no reason why you have to moor in a marina if you work. We lived in a marina for a while and didn't like it for the same reasons. However we now constant cruise and both work. We set ourselves a maximum commute to work of 1 hour and move around within those parameters. Where we are based we can cover a large area and still be within an hour from work.

 

But doesn't that breach the terms of your license?

 

I have a permanent mooring on the Avon at the moment (ANT administered), but I'm going for a second interview for a job in Northampton tomorrow. If I get the job I'd be looking for a mooring for my widebeam on the GU or have it lifted onto the Nene, but if I fail to find a mooring would CCing within the area really be an option in these days of tighter enforcement? It's been 15 years since I last CCd and back then you could more or less do what you wanted. I wouldn't want to get into any battles with CRT. Life is too short for all that nonsense

Edited by blackrose
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But doesn't that breach the terms of your license?

 

I have a permanent mooring on the Avon at the moment (ANT administered), but I'm going for a second interview for a job in Northampton tomorrow. If I get the job I'd be looking for a mooring for my widebeam on the GU or have it lifted onto the Nene, but if I fail to find a mooring would CCing within the area really be an option in these days of tighter enforcement? It's been 15 years since I last CCd and back then you could more or less do what you wanted. I wouldn't want to get into any battles with CRT. Life is too short for all that nonsense

Following for the info.

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But doesn't that breach the terms of your license?

 

I have a permanent mooring on the Avon at the moment (ANT administered), but I'm going for a second interview for a job in Northampton tomorrow. If I get the job I'd be looking for a mooring for my widebeam on the GU or have it lifted onto the Nene, but if I fail to find a mooring would CCing within the area really be an option in these days of tighter enforcement? It's been 15 years since I last CCd and back then you could more or less do what you wanted. I wouldn't want to get into any battles with CRT. Life is too short for all that nonsense

 

First off, good luck with the interview!

 

Just going by a map, I'd have thought CCing in a narrow boat while working in Northampton would be very doable. There are so many different waterways in the area, you could surely cover a lot of water-miles in a year without ever being more than an hour from Northampton by road.

 

You're certainly a lot more limited in a widebeam, but I don't know - would CRT really have an issue if you spent seven months of the year on (say) a 60-mile stretch of the GU, four months on a winter mooring near Northampton, and four weeks doing 'holiday' cruises further afield? I know enforcement has got tighter, but surely it's not that tight.

 

I must say, it looks like a frustrating spot to be in a widebeam - so many narrow waterways so close, and that annoying 'pinch point' at Northampton itself forcing you to choose a side!

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But doesn't that breach the terms of your license?

 

I have a permanent mooring on the Avon at the moment (ANT administered), but I'm going for a second interview for a job in Northampton tomorrow. If I get the job I'd be looking for a mooring for my widebeam on the GU or have it lifted onto the Nene, but if I fail to find a mooring would CCing within the area really be an option in these days of tighter enforcement? It's been 15 years since I last CCd and back then you could more or less do what you wanted. I wouldn't want to get into any battles with CRT. Life is too short for all that nonsense

The river Nene and its various marinas are your friend. Sod the canal system in that area it will be a pain.
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Can anyone actually explain the rules please?

 

If you do not have a 'Home Mooring' then there is 'only one rule' - that you have to satisfy C&RT that you are moving 'enough' and not just hovering about in an area because it is 'handy for work' (schools / Hospital / Family etc)

You are not allowed to go from A to B and then Back to A.

 

The 'problem' is that the distance to satisfy 'moving enough' is not specified, and cannot be legally specified.

 

It is a legal requirement & up to the boater to satisfy C&RT, not for C&RT to tell you what satisfies them.

 

Is it all clear now ?

Edited by Alan de Enfield
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