the boating life: Preparing for Winter and other news

I haven't posted for a long time for a number of reasons, one of which is that I have been busy preparing to travel overseas next week for a seven week work commitment.

The other reason is that I have been rather low of spirits recently. The lovely Jack the Whippet died a few weeks ago and even though he wasn't my dog, it hit me very hard. I miss him dreadfully, not least because I no longer have an excuse to get out and have refreshing walks along the tow path any more. I went out last week in search of Sloes to make my usual sloe gin, but I felt quite lonely without Jack to talk to or interact with. He was such a character and he had a very special place in my heart and always will do. RIP Jack the Whippet.

Recent weeks have been full of activity as I want to make sure everything is 'shipshape' before I go away. The weather has been very variable recently and we have been meaning to take the boat out to turn her around so that the stern entrance is adjacent to the end of the jetty for easy access. However there has always been something that has prevented us from doing it. Ideally I wanted to tie it in with a night out on the tow path, but we have been too busy to even think about that. I did manage to have my usual few days away in the middle of nowhere though, as a treat before I travel far away. This time, we couldn't book in at our usual place, but found somewhere equally comfortable where we could have some great walks and also which had a great red squirrel population in the grounds.

We finally managed to get time to turn the boat around yesterday, but didn't even get a chance to have a trip down the canal. We just steered her out into the cut, turned around and came straight back in again. However, we are now nicely set up for winter, with the back canopy on and an extra room to boot!

Here she is as she was....

Now turned around .......

.......... and now with the canopy on

We have an extra room ....

This brings me to the endless problem of damp. Over the last three years, since we moved to the boat, it has been a constant battle for us. When we first moved onto the boat, we used to have to wipe down all windows every cold morning as they were soaking wet. Then we installed our own 'Heath Robinson' style of double glazing which has worked really well. This did not prevent the wardrobes getting damp and, although everyone told me that my clothes did not smell, I was very aware of the musty damp smell and in deep winter also the sooty smell from the wood burner. The real test of this was when we went away and we stayed in a hotel. The smell of my clothes really came into sharp relief then. The great news is that I have been away several times this last month staying in hotels and my clothes did not smell at all. This is entirely due to the dehumidifier we bought last year. It is definitely the best item a boater can ever invest in, it costs about 10p an hour to run and as ours came with a 'weather station' it tells us the precise humidity of the room it is in. There are times when the humidity is as high as 90 (virtually raining!) and we do use it a lot, but it is worth it's weight in gold and has kept the boat and our wardrobes dry and warm.

Now 10p an hour may seem like a lot, but with energy bills hitting the news recently, we couldn't help but feel very happy with our situation on the boat. We were paying huge amounts each month to the energy companies for our gas and electricity when we lived in a house and many people are struggling with this now. There are estimates that people will die this winter from the cold, because they cannot afford the heating bills. I believe this will happen and I am also shocked at the number of working people who are now having to use food banks in our country, because they cannot afford to feed their families. This is the state we are in, with the rich - poor divide getting bigger. I don't wish to get all political in this blog, but I have to say that it sickens me! I see a wide range of life now and there are definitely people who are playing the system and not willing to pay their way, I have lived near to people like that and I find it frustrating to witness. However, I also see the other side, where very rich people are grasping, arrogant and equally selfish. Both are wrong, but there are a lot of people in the middle who are genuinely struggling and I don't have any answers for them. We are lucky, in that we have a wood store full of foraged wood which will keep us warm for the winter, we use gas from a bottle which costs very little and our electricity use again is minimal as we use very few appliances which warrant it

There are now an increasing number of people who visit our marina with a clear view to living as cheaply as possible. A number of times in the past few weeks, we have had people turning up asking if there are boats for sale, because they have been told that living on a boat is cheap. Not on this marina it isn't!!

Our marina is definitely the most expensive on this canal and probably the most expensive in the whole of the north of England and the facilities are very very limited. Why do we stay then, you may well ask? Well many people have left, voting with their feet ( or should I say engine). The one thing that our landlords have as a lever, is that local councils are becoming more aware of people living on their boats when they shouldn't be and they are evicting them with very little notice. This is correct and is probably an effective scare tactic. Boat owners like ourselves are looking for legitimacy and security and we support residential status. However many other boaters are happy to take their chances and our marina has been emptying as a result, despite our marina manager confidently stating that there is a waiting list to fill the empty spaces.

The problem is that the prices are high, (probably more than you would pay for a well appointed rented property) and the facilities are not good. Our toilet and shower block are in good working order but are primitive compared with the kind of facility offered by, for instance the caravan and camping sites these days. We were promised that the marina would be dredged this summer since it is completely silted up with many boats sitting on a bed of mud - it hasn't happened to date. Some of our post occasionally arrives soaking wet because the main post box leaks - this has been reported for the best part of a year but no effective action has been taken to rectify it. We feel that we are paying a lot of money just to be within the law and that the money is definitely not being reinvested in enhanced facilities, apart from a few new storage boxes. However, other private marinas are slow to follow suit by offering official approved residential status.We can't wait for that to happen because it will open up the market and add some competition and maybe our current landlords will be forced to review their prices as a result.

So .... I will not be posting for a while as I will be on the other side of the world. In the meantime I will miss the beauty of where I live: