Sploshing Otters

The weather over the last few days has been wet, windy and miserable and put paid to our hopes of Spring on the way. However, there are still some signs of Spring despite the cold, with the Song Thrush opposite our boat beginning to tentatively practice his repertoire and many Crocuses and Snow drops coming out.

I went to a rehearsal yesterday at a friend's house, to practice for our next concert. This time we have quite an ambitious program, which includes a Piano Quintet by Mozart and I have to play many very fast passages. It was here that the contrast between a draughty house and our cosy boat was most marked. Although they had the heating on, my hands were still cold enough to hamper my playing. It was lovely to return to the boat and our wood burning stove, which was throwing out heat throughout the boat.

A number of leisure boaters are returning to the Marina now that Spring is on its way and it is nice to have some company and to catch up with them. There were only three of us residential boaters (liveaboards) on the Marina over winter and it can feel a bit lonely and bleak at times.

On the wildlife front, I have been too busy practising the piano and preparing for my next work stint in March to stake out the Kingfisher, but I did move the otter camera to a position at the end of the jetty pointing at the water, because we hear it very regularly splashing around and swimming under our boats, especially at night. The latest images are inconclusive, but the camera has definitely captured something:

This is the water with no disturbance

There seems to be quite a bit of disturbance under the surface here

I think I can see a rough otter shape and maybe an eye?

Again I feel there is some shape here

 I may be mistaken, but there is hope that we can capture something, as I think we are now training the camera on one of his favourite spots. What we really want, is for him to pop his head above the water. I must also remember to reset the date and time on the camera, so we have an accurate recording of when he appears.


On the subject of wildlife, this is the theme for this years village photography competition, so I am starting to sort out some photos. here are a few possible entries:

Bottle Nosed Dolphins near Inverness

Cormorant Catching an Eel

Grebes doing their courting dance

Moorhen Chick

Barn Owl Hunting

Hopefully, one of these might be in with a chance of winning a prize.

I  hope that we can get more otter pictures for the next time, watch this space!

Al :)

A possible end to the boating life

I was going to write this Blog yesterday as promised, but before I could put pen to paper, so to speak, I needed a day to do some sums and consider our options, before I could give an update on our current boating life.

I have occasionally given news of how the Residential status has affected life on the Marina. We were granted this status two years ago and Phil and I really welcomed it. We were very happy to become 'legitimate'. We wanted to pay our way and be officially recognised as living on or boat, rather than skulking under the radar and trying to avoid paying such things as council tax, TV license etc. The main positive about being granted this status is that the empty berths are now full of lovely people, who we really relate to and who have become good friends. Our status has also impacted on how the people in the village react to us. Whereas before, people would often treat the lot of us as social outcasts, we are now treated with friendliness and respect.

However there has been a disproportionate financial impact of this upgraded status, which is hitting us hard.

Our Marina owners have been negotiating a rate of tax with the local council which would reflect the fact that they also pay tax on our behalf and pass the cost down to us in our hugely increased fees, ( we are now paying double what we paid when we first came onto the Marina). These negotiations have dragged on and on and now the council have lost patience and have issued us all with a demand for full council tax for every boat ( the same as an owner of a small house would pay) and have backdated it to the date of the planning application, before Residential status was actually granted. We have had to pay £2600 in arrears to the council.

We have a hearing on this in April, but if we are told after this that we must continue to pay full council tax, while still paying for council services in our Marina fees and an element in our waterways license, then we will move back to dry land.

We have spent this weekend looking at adverts for rented accommodation in the area and we could rent a very nicely appointed flat or house for less than we are paying here.

Our utilities bills are obviously much reduced by living on the boat and I love foraging for wood to keep us warm etc. but things are all starting to turn a bit sour. It seems that these days everyone is after a slice of your money!

I will update on this issue as events unfold. We both love the life and have had five very happy years of boating, but there is a limit to what we are prepared to pay for that privilege.

More news soon and hopefully a more cheerful posting next week!

Al

A Sunday Update

I have been too busy to post recently and I am finding it quite frustrating. I have a concert coming up and the music I have been given to prepare is fiendishly difficult! This has meant that I have been putting in several hours of practice every day, just to learn the notes. That is just one piece, which is a wind and piano quintet and in addition to this I have several accompaniments to learn for the soloists, who don't usually give me the music until a few days before the concert. Add to this the project I am working on with a jazz saxophonist, who wants to do a gig in April and also to put down a CD and my time is fully taken up. Such is the lot of a pianist - everyone wants a bit of you!

I have now been given my work schedule for this year and I will be away overseas in May/June and October/December, I shall be glad to get away for a rest!

I am not happy with the infrequency with which I post my blogs, so I am going to try and post once a week on a Sunday and see how it goes.

On the boating front, much of our time has been taken up with keeping warm in this icy weather. The canal is frozen on most days and looks very beautiful:

The ducks slip and slide across it in search of food:

We have nearly run out of burnable wood, although we have two wood stores full of unseasoned wood. We have spent many an enjoyable hour chopping the wood we have collected along the tow path. There is much tidying up of overhanging trees going on at the moment and every time we hear a chainsaw, we follow the sound and usually are rewarded with a pile of wood kindly left by the Canal and River Trust! Our new chainsaw has proved to be very easy to use and is efficient at cutting through even quite thick trunks, but splitting them down further has been problematic. The axe doesn't always work, so we have bought a log splitting 'grenade' from ebay and will see how that works:

We are now in urgent need of wood we can burn and the best place for that is the estuary, which is only about 2 miles from the canal. One of our fellow boaters on the marina works at the local tip and had an old bike trailer which had been dumped. I bought it off him for £20 and Phil has done a great job of turning it into an attractive wood collecting chariot!! Here are before and after pictures:

On the wildlife front we have heard the otter swimming about between and under the boats on many occasions in the middle of the night but still haven't captured it on camera. I have now moved the camera to the end jetty after we found a half eaten fish there the other day which could only have been left by the otter.

The kingfisher is also proving elusive and as his favourite perch is currently surrounded by ice, there is not much hope of catching him there and I'm too busy to stake him out at the moment. Here is the empty perch:

There is not much else to report, but I do hope that posting regularly on a Sunday will provide more information on a regular basis. We are about to do a calculation of costs this winter and also hope to have news on our council tax status soon, so that may be interesting and useful for prospective boaters.

All for now. I will leave you with a picture of a beautiful sunset over the marina a few days ago:

Al :)