Life Aboard

Living on a canal boat can seem to be a very pleasant existence!

Judging by the emails we get it's a lot of peoples dream!

When you conjure up images of brightly painted cosy craft tied up alongside sunny country fields or in handy, friendly, economic city centre basins, and then being able to move on whenever the mood takes you.
Many people do live on boats on the UK canal system, and most people do it because it's the life they choose. Take me for example. I gave up the rat-race 18 months ago. A 50K a year job, plus car, plus expenses!
However the reality of being a 'liveaboard' is not quite so straightforward. Make sure you buy the right boat! If you have the money then a new build can cost anything from 60K to 100k. Dependent of coarse on the specification. A decent used boat can cost 35k upwards but you need to know your stuff!
There are a multitude of rules and regulations that you have to be aware of and a range of things to consider that you would not have to bother about if you were 'ashore'. I've learnt a lot in our first couple of years on the water, becoming a dab hand in mechanics and electrics. There are certainly a range of new skills to be learnt. Weve also met some great people in our time afloat.
Deciding where to moor your boat is the most crucial decision. Although we sail during the Summer months we decided to take a permanent mooring. First at the TK Marina in Reading and now at the new Wigram's Turn Marina in Napton, Warwickshire. It's good to have a base for the Winter. Were not complete river gypsies yet and enjoy the comfort of on tap electricity and water, the latter when it's above freezing! Plus at Wigram's we have the added benefit of a broadband hotspot! Living aboard a narrowboat is cheaper than living in a house. Some people describe it as an expensive hobby or a cheap way of life but don't assume you'l be happy because it's cheaper! It has to be right for you.
My advice is to take a narrowboat holiday first. You may well get a shock! We actually just went for it! Mind you we did a good 12 months research.
I could write a whole chapter about 'Living aboard', licence, insurance, running costs etc but thats for another day. Surfice to say myself and Dee wouldn't change our lifestyle for anything and look forward to May 17th. Our 2006 tour begins.....

Weekend at Wixoe, Suffolk

Weekend at Wixoe...

We spent the weekend visiting our friends John & Pat (NB-Hoddydod) in the little known village of Wixoe in Suffolk. Well we didnt know about it until we met them! Yes a whole weekend in a house! Quite a novelty for us. For nostalgia's sake I thought I'd take one last picture of NB-Hoddydod moored on the River Nene middle level. She disappears, after a major overhaul, from the UK Inland Waterways for pastures new on the French Canals later this later.
Saturday was an amazingly springlike day in Suffolk with temperatures in double figures and prompting these two ladybirds pictured above at 'Clare Castle' into early action! A lovely walk around the Suffolk town of Clare and it's country park without a coat was a bonus for the middle of February.
However, on Sunday it was back to the harsh reality of winter as temperatures plumeted with a nasty Easterly 'wind chill'. Our visit to the Raptor Foundation at St. Ives in Cambridgeshire was a pleasure and well worth a visit but I do hope they retrieve 'Ischia' the Kestrel who decided to fly off during one of the displays. Obviously not feeling too hungry!

Photo's taken at The Raptor Foundation Falcon, Harris Hawks and Long Eared Owl.

Our PSP

Another addition to our techno world!

Those who know me know that I can't resist technological gadgets. So when I discovered that Dee had bought me a new Playstation Portable for my birthday there was no way it was staying in the box until April.
Mind you guess who's been getting the most use? I should never have bought Dee Sims 2.....

Having the PSP now enables us to download our digital photo's, video film and music, enabling us to show our travel images to friends and familar whenever we visit. Another excellent feature is wireless access. Rather than rely on our Orange Office Card when were out touring we can now find wi-fi access points when visiting towns during the summer months and simply recieve and send our emails through the PSP.
One other point to bare in mind if you do buy one of these excellent gadgies is that it's very difficult to download your personal dvd's to PSP, as advertised by many software companies and internet sites. One piece of kit I bought from PCWorld was rendered totally useless when I tried my first download. A message appeared stating that it was illegal to copy DVD in the UK. However, they recommended a small file which I obtained from the internet and tried. The download time to convert was over 8 hours but after an hour it shut my PC down. Why go through the bother I thought and returned the software to PCWorld, who in my opinion shouldn't have been selling it in the first place!
Thanks Dee for a great 'early' birthday present xx

Satellite Broadband

What's the story with Satellite Broadband suppliers?

Over the past 3 weeks I've been researching the possibility of Satellite Broadband for our NarrowBoat. We currently have SkyTV, which I can access by using my sat-finder from anywhere on the canal system, provided I can see the southern sky. So why can't a similar system be found for internet access? Before you email me I'm aware that Sky provide email etc, but this is in fact through a phone line, which we don't have the luxury of aboard.

Being moored for the Winter at our base at Wigram's Turn we have the luxury of a Broadband 'Hotspot' which the site manager Ray has had the wisdom to install. This works great. When were out on the 'cut' in the summer months we currently use an Orange Office Card. This I have to say is very slow and in my opinion too expensive. That is to say when you can get a connection and when you do it's only useful for checking and sending email. I want to be able to upload pictures to my blog etc so I'm looking for 2-way Satellite connection.

There are plenty of suppliers listed on various search engines but I have now emailed over 10 suppliers who advertise 'Satellite Broadband' and to my horror have not yet recieved one single reply!

AVC Broadband I've now mailed twice, although some of the reviews have been poor on this particular supplier. Broadband@ccelerator which is the company that came up top on my research have also been contacted twice but with no reply. So what is going on? Are they simply not interested in the business, god only knows why, is it that they have no confidence in their equipment, or simply is it that we boaters are too smaller fry to be bothered with! Who knows? Bare in mind suppliers that there are hundreds of us out here!

If anyone out there can help and point me in the right direction then please drop me a line I'm getting deperate....