Guys advice please if you can spare a minute - Thinking of moving onto a boat.

[junior]

Why a widebeam? 

[mrsmelly]

3 hours ago, junior said:

Why a widebeam? 

The pros

Much much much more comfortable

handle better

vastly more space

Ability to purchase household sized stuff cheaper than boat sized stuff

The Cons

Not as many cruising options

[Guest]

On Friday, May 12, 2017 at 10:42, Neil2 said:

The K&A might have been an idyllic place to set up as a liveaboard in the early days, but not now.  And definitely not on a widebeam. 

 

I have to disagree, I am on a widebeam on the Newbury to Devizes section of the K and A and it is absolutely fine.

[Ssscrudddy]

Use the search function. Despite the fact that it is utter shite,  yeah sure these questions get asked all the time, but try getting a relevant result from the search function... good luck with that. I typed every question the OP asked into the search function, the only result was this thread.

Lets not forget folks, this is a forum that has been around for years, every question has been asked, even if things have changed & moved on since then. Lets have a new rule, no questions to be asked ever because they've already been asked.

[b0atman]

39 minutes ago, Ssscrudddy said:

Use the search function. Despite the fact that it is utter shite,  yeah sure these questions get asked all the time, but try getting a relevant result from the search function... good luck with that. I typed every question the OP asked into the search function, the only result was this thread.

Lets not forget folks, this is a forum that has been around for years, every question has been asked, even if things have changed & moved on since then. Lets have a new rule, no questions to be asked ever because they've already been asked.

But the old hands have the T shirts and forget what its like being a newby.

[Wanderer Vagabond]

Just to pick up on one of your queries,".... can you be a constant cruiser and own a car.... IE parking.....", I'm not sure that parking is really an issue (depends on how far you are prepared to walk), what may well be an issue however is insurance. Now when you take out your car insurance they ask you where the vehicle will normally be kept and use that information to calculate your premium. You can either lie (unwise in the insurance world) and tell them you will be keeping it at your contact address, or tell them that you will have no fixed abode and see what their reaction is. I'm not saying insurance isn't possible, but bespoke insurance can be a bit pricey.

[dmr]

On 16/05/2017 at 21:17, Wanderer Vagabond said:

Just to pick up on one of your queries,".... can you be a constant cruiser and own a car.... IE parking.....", I'm not sure that parking is really an issue (depends on how far you are prepared to walk), what may well be an issue however is insurance. Now when you take out your car insurance they ask you where the vehicle will normally be kept and use that information to calculate your premium. You can either lie (unwise in the insurance world) and tell them you will be keeping it at your contact address, or tell them that you will have no fixed abode and see what their reaction is. I'm not saying insurance isn't possible, but bespoke insurance can be a bit pricey.

I note that in the latest Towpath Talk there is an ad from a company providing car insurance for liveaboard boaters, dunno what the premiums are like though.

In the winter we CC on the K&A and move the car as we go, a bit tedious but its doable. At the end of April we parked the car (at a friendly canalside business for a reasonable fee) and suddenly had a wonderful sense of freedom. Will not collect the car till November.

.............Dave

 

[Matt&Jo]

I take it you work from your boat dave or are not in need of work? We would need to earn a modest income to make this a reality so access to a car is crucial if we cc but i do see why many have said this is not really practicle.

We may need to look north to the trent and mersey canal for a high use mooring......due to cost around half that of caen hill the only place that would accept us at 600+ pcm

[chubby]

I dont get it .

You have a house . You are young . But you want to semi retire . Sell your home , buy a boat as a home - not as a boat , & then buy to let so some other poor bastard can fund your semi retired " lifestyle choice " .You want to escape the rat race whilst renting out your " spare property " . This means you re not escaping the rat race , youre just pretending to . You ll rent out your spare property for as much as you can  make according to the market . The market rate is determined by supply & demand . Yet you whinge that your preferred marina is £600 p/m . I wonder why its so costly ?  Could it be supply & demand possibly ?

You ask " why cannot CCing be made easier ? To stay within " The Rules " you move the boat somewhere else every 14 days " . How much easier would you like it to be ? 

Where will park our car ? Answer - in the places you park it now ... on the road ! In a car park ! Of course you will have no drive or dedicated parking space of your own ( unless you choose to accept the same market forces as your tenant , get a marina mooring which may have car parking ) so u need to apply a bit of forethought to such things and plan your boating movements to allow for car access . Sounds like a chore to me , but you want a car so you need to find a way . Maybe the dept for transport should make it easier too just like you want CRT to make things easier for you . 

At several points you have replied quite sharply alluding to " being well off " .or " millionaires " Not necessarily  accurate in my estimation . People who love thier boats , the canals & the life it can offer to those genuinely interested will / may often go without in other areas of thier lives . So they wont be well off , they just want to be on the water above all else and they make it work however hard & however costly . It is , for many , a genuine lifestyle choice . 

You seem to want to have your cake & eat it . You want to rent but whinge about mooring fees , you want easy access to cars , you want CRT to make it easy for you ( it already is - if u researched properly you d know that already ) , you want to base yourself on a very popular busy canal . Want , want , want . Take take take . 

It all sounds to me like " investment " as opposed to a genuine lifestyle choice . Sell big house , buy little house , rent it , buy widebeam boat as a house as its cheaper innit ( questionable ?) , and semi retire at 33 , whilst someone else knocks themselves out to pay the rent . Doesnt sound like any escape of the rat race to me . Just sounds like the same race but a different track . 

If you wanna make it work you can . If you think its gonna be cheaper , it can be . It can also turn out to be financially exorbitant , buying , mooring ( if needed ) , maintaining and fixing a boat . If you need the car you ll find a way etc etc . This will all likely be hard work .. which it seems you don t like . But if you genuinely want to live onboard you will make it work and accept the occasional annoyance and discomfort .

Personally to me it all sounds like the increasingly common pie in the sky . As soon as i read in a thread the word " dream " my heart sinks . Usually that dream is a recent one & more and more folk seem to having the same dream . Rose tinted spectacles must be flying off the shelves at spec savers . 

All of the above is very cynical isn t it ? Unfortnuately this is because this type of question is wearyingly common and often from folk who ve no interest in boats , canals , history , heritage but are instead " investors " & " dreamers " - such as yourselves . 

 

Edited May 18, 2017 by chubby

[Matt&Jo]

I dont like hard work? Chubby you make this assumption because you see me trying to go part time and take things easier.

But you dont know why we want to escape the 9-5 inner city bull.

You dont know that last year my wife was diagnosed with a life changing ilness and we need to make the best of the now as we dont know for sure what is coming later.

You dont know that my sibbling has an ilness that they wont come back from so stick your jumped up comments up your tail pipe pal. 1 shot at life and im gunna live it how i want

This is not a dream this is a chance so pipe down unless you have something constructive to say. Your not the only one who deserves access to the water ways. 

 

Most on this forum have been very helpfull but their are a few people who hate the idea of other adjusting to life on the canals. Its not a hardship to own a car and CC or travel 20+ miles a year, you can easily do 10miles a day but i know of people who stick to the rules and still get letters......yes thats right i know people living the lifestyle....... im getting my head around the practicalities as they are normaly far from the facts. I know CC is difficult hence looking and speaking with marinas......yes im suprised by costs but only from a pure financial aspect in order to make this work.

I dont feel bad about renting out a house and why should i.....im sure it funds other boaters life styles.

I keep hearing the boating community is so close and friendly...well chubby i dont wanna be anywhere near you......

[chubby]

6 hours ago, Matt&Jo said:

I dont like hard work? Chubby you make this assumption because you see me trying to go part time and take things easier.

But you dont know why we want to escape the 9-5 inner city bull.

You dont know that last year my wife was diagnosed with a life changing ilness and we need to make the best of the now as we dont know for sure what is coming later.

You dont know that my sibbling has an ilness that they wont come back from so stick your jumped up comments up your tail pipe pal. 1 shot at life and im gunna live it how i want

This is not a dream this is a chance so pipe down unless you have something constructive to say. Your not the only one who deserves access to the water ways. 

 

Most on this forum have been very helpfull but their are a few people who hate the idea of other adjusting to life on the canals. Its not a hardship to own a car and CC or travel 20+ miles a year, you can easily do 10miles a day but i know of people who stick to the rules and still get letters......yes thats right i know people living the lifestyle....... im getting my head around the practicalities as they are normaly far from the facts. I know CC is difficult hence looking and speaking with marinas......yes im suprised by costs but only from a pure financial aspect in order to make this work.

I dont feel bad about renting out a house and why should i.....im sure it funds other boaters life styles.

I keep hearing the boating community is so close and friendly...well chubby i dont wanna be anywhere near you......

Ok

Fair enough . Firstly i am sorry to hear of your personal circumstances and understand how these can lead to a shift of focus as to what is important & whats is less so . I had a similar awakening myself in my mid twenties . 

However 

My response was to the information contained within your posts prior to your latest one quoted above . I stand by all of it . Go back and read what have written previously and you will see that my reply addresses only the matters that you bring up . 

Whether its accurate or not your posts do appear contradictory - whinging about marina costs who set thier fees according to market forces as will you as a landlord . If you fail to see the hippocracy then so be it . There is nothing wrong with renting out a property to fund a lifestyle choice and as you suggest , there are probably several on this forum and many more away from it who benefit from it . But they dont appear to be moaning about marina costs and are therefore not being contradictory as you yourself are . 

You state above that its easy to travel 20 plus miles per year and its no hardship to have a car . But you are not talking about genuinely CCing with a car youre talking about shuffling around a bit with a car .

If the  friends you have who are " following the  rules but still getting letters from CRT " have given you the idea ( maybe they did , maybe not - i dunno ) that 20 miles distance is sufficient to comply with the very simple & not very onerous rules then i am not surprised that they are being reminded of thier obligations as they are not meeting them currently .

IF that figure came your friends then id think twice about taking much more notice of them to be honest . If im brutally honest the fact that you have brought up this figure of " 20 miles " will make it  apparent to some that your intention may well be not to " cruise " but instead to just mooch up and down a familiar stretch . I dont think anyone else has used the 20 mile figure and the fact you have speaks volumes . Maybe you will go on to do more - many more and if you are genuinely looking to have a " boating lifestyle " you will want to .

If you really want to go boating , grab life by the throat and make the most of now following your loved ones illness then that is to be commended and you should move heaven and earth to make it happen . Its not really gonna happen mincing around on the K&A though is it ?

By all means get a boat and spread your wings - go boating , further & further afield and immerse yourself in lifestyle thoroughly as a way of not only coming to terms with the family issues but as a way making the most of your precious time . If you can afford to do it then do it and do it soon . 

But - i do stand by my criticisms which were based on the info from the posts you made before my reply and with respect you do come across from them ,   as so many do like a dreamer . As also stated - this kind of thing comes up very very often .

Again , im sorry to hear that ill health has caused a wake up call that you are attempting to address . It is far from the ideal way to realise theres more to life than 9-5 & big salaries and if your enquiries are genuine then i wish you all the best with your endeavours but if you just wanna drift up & down the K&A 20 miles and back then you have to expect a bit of criticism . I hope you choose not to do so and instead go much further afield and make the most of the boat , the canal network ,& more importantly the time you have that misfortune has made you realise is so precious .

Edited May 18, 2017 by chubby

[Matt&Jo]

Chubby thank you for a much more civalised reply with regards to my drive to live on the canals. My friends are not the ones who only travel 20 miles its a documentary i have watched that illudes to this that people are doing 50 miles plus and being sent letters and denials for winter moorings from the crt. Yes 50 miles is not alot but its adgering to tge rules is it not......

I will not be cc i will be paying for a mooring and traveling from a base location whatever the costs but i was suprised perhaps naively to see these prices as i pay alot to keep my salt water vessel in a marina also but i expected a slightly lesser fee for some reason.

I also stand by my position that agressive and attacking stance with people starting out will do you no favours so perhaps refrain from commenting on newbies trying to make a life change instead of degrading and disheartening them. I assume you were not born on the canals.... well you started somewere too and i hooe you got the time of day from others just as i have.

As for hard work..... 1 tour of iraq and 1 tour of afghan and a mortgage paid means i know how to work hard!!!!

 

[Wanderer Vagabond]

17 hours ago, dmr said:

I note that in the latest Towpath Talk there is an ad from a company providing car insurance for liveaboard boaters, dunno what the premiums are like though.

In the winter we CC on the K&A and move the car as we go, a bit tedious but its doable. At the end of April we parked the car (at a friendly canalside business for a reasonable fee) and suddenly had a wonderful sense of freedom. Will not collect the car till November.

.............Dave

 

As you say you don't know what the premiums are for liveaboards I assume that you don't use the company in Towpath Talk, so where do you tell your insurers that the car is 'normally kept' as the question in the insurance application form says?

Initially I left my car at the land based address that I still own (uninsured, SORN'ed and in a garage). I've since dumped it and am car free, hiring one if ever I need one.

[efanton]

I'm still in the phase of looking into boat ownership,  seeing if I can personally fit into the lifestyle and dramatic changes that will be required to my existing lifestyle, and whether I can realistically afford a boat, its upkeep and the other costs such as mooring, licensing, etc etc.

To be honest, I find it amazing that you have set your heart on a marina that going to cost you many  hundreds of pounds a month, and at the same time complain about that cost.  Would you complain at spending a similar amount on a house or flat?  There are dozens of marina's up and down the country that will charge less than £3000 per year (£250 per month) and as many more that will charge less than £2000 per year (£170 per month) and then a large number that will charge up to 1500 a year (£125 per month) but this tend to be in isolated places or in the northern part of the country.  It seems to me that you are approaching this all backwards.  Instead of approaching it as you have with the 'what I want' you should be looking at 'what I can afford' or are willing to pay and then find the marina that best suits your needs and budget.  In fact with the rental income from a house you could live in most areas across the country, pay your mooring fees, pay your yearly license, pay for the regularly upkeep of your boat and still have a bit of change to spare.  Despite your current circumstance, and I really hope your wife recovers or at least enjoys what time you have left together, you are in a far better situation than most.

My sister and relations live near Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire.  Yes I would love to plant my boat in the Aylesbury marina but the simple fact is that will be extremely unlikely due to cost and availability.  The moorings nearby (Cow Roast, Tring for example) are also outside my realistic budget.  However  the Milton Keynes marina and others north of that will be within my budget.  You have a car,  personally I have a motorcycle, but 40 miles (about an hour) away from where I ideally would want to be located really is not an issue.  Had the distance or travel time been 3 hours then for the purposes of being close to friends and family that's still acceptable.  The point I am trying to make is how invested are you in really living on a boat?  What really motivates you to want to live on a boat? and what are you prepared to give up in order to live on a boat. If you want to give up nothing then sorry but I think you are in dreamland and you are actually doing a disservice to the woman you love by talking about a utopia that is extremely unlikely to happen.  Have your considered how your wife is going to cope living on a boat if her health deteriorates? What additional services and assistance you might need? After all the chemist or doctors surgery will not be just around the corner.  what else do you take for granted now that you will not be able to take for granted once committed to living on a boat and what contingencies have you put in place or will need to put in place for moving to a boat to be a success and enjoyable experience rather than a potential nightmare and very unhappy situation

  I and many others dont own a home, cannot afford to buy a home, let alone banking on living off the rent from a property.  Some do their research and planning for all aspects of their new life and succeed despite this, but I am guessing as many more fail miserably and regret the decision, unfortunately for some with no rental income or house of their own to go back to, they become trapped and possibly forced into a lifestyle that they see as worse than the one they abandoned.  I can see the attraction of a boat for you, time to spend extra time with the person you love, escape from the routine commute and drudgery of a 9 to 5 job, and escape the stress and anxiety that a 'normal' life brings.  the problem is as I see it, that you are not going to be able to give up daily routine or anxieties they will always exist but they will be different, there will still be daily chores required to live on a boat and upkeep it, some of them far more unpleasant than the ones you have in your current life such as emptying toilet cassettes or your pump out,  Lugging heavy gas bottles and shopping down a tow path or along board walks in a marina (even if you are permanently moored its extremely unlikely you will be able to park a car next to your boat).

What ever you decide I do wish you all the very best, but make your decision based on what you can do and afford, and more importantly what you and your wife  will be able to do,

 

Edited May 18, 2017 by efanton

[chubby]

1 hour ago, Matt&Jo said:

Chubby thank you for a much more civalised reply with regards to my drive to live on the canals. My friends are not the ones who only travel 20 miles its a documentary i have watched that illudes to this that people are doing 50 miles plus and being sent letters and denials for winter moorings from the crt. Yes 50 miles is not alot but its adgering to tge rules is it not......

I will not be cc i will be paying for a mooring and traveling from a base location whatever the costs but i was suprised perhaps naively to see these prices as i pay alot to keep my salt water vessel in a marina also but i expected a slightly lesser fee for some reason.

I also stand by my position that agressive and attacking stance with people starting out will do you no favours so perhaps refrain from commenting on newbies trying to make a life change instead of degrading and disheartening them. I assume you were not born on the canals.... well you started somewere too and i hooe you got the time of day from others just as i have.

As for hard work..... 1 tour of iraq and 1 tour of afghan and a mortgage paid means i know how to work hard!!!!

 

Again Fair Enough 

Hopefully you will go on to embrace boating and all its benefits . If so you will find it very worthwhile & it can go some way to rebalancing your work / life outlook . Its good that it is not your friends who' ve given any advice re 20 miles .

If as you say youre 33 and without excessive bills and financial ties then you re pretty much in ideal position to go about doing what you hope to . Therefore go for it , lifes too short to look back at regrets . I wish you well and hope it provides some level of " escape " or peace & that it helps with coming to terms with your loved ones health concerns . 

As for my comments re hard work . It seems i was incorrect & you indeed do know the meaning of hard work more so than i ever will . For my poor judgement i apologise unreservedly. 

Good luck

[Starcoaster]

On 5/12/2017 at 10:40, mross said:

I think you should work hard until you are 50 or 60 and build up a good pension plan, or one day you will find your savings gone and your health failing.  Then what will you do?  Unless you already have a property worth one million plus that can fund your dream long term?  Nothing wrong with dreams but sometimes that's all they are.  Some people's dream is to retire on a massive lottery win but this needs a 'plan b' because they never win it.

Not sure I agree with this. When I bought my boat at the age of 33, I had two choices:

Use that money as the deposit for a mortgage that would tie me to one location and see me working full time until I was about 60 to pay it off and retire, and hope that I was in good health and ready to start again by using the money from selling the house to buy a boat. By then I would have waited 27 years to start the lifestyle I wanted, and also would have been pretty much obligated to work full time to pay off this mortgage.

Or:

Use that money to buy a smaller, cheaper boat at that juncture allowing me 27 additional years (should I choose) of my lifestyle of choice knowing that I would at worst, get to do it for a while when I was young enough to have my health and lots of options, in case I was unable to for any reason when I was older.

 

Now I am 39, living on the same little cheap boat with no desire at all to ever go brick, working less than 20 hours a week, and in a freelance job that I would never have even considered trying in and that became obvious as an option only as a direct result of getting the boat and joining this forum.

To me it was a no brainer to not waste all those years in a house with a full time job, or wait all that time being a good little minion to retire and find out for sure if it wasn't for me? for-after all, I could be dead by then for all I know, never mind in poor health!

I am not trying to say it is an easy thing-Sometimes, some boat stuff sucks, where you are sucks, or there are boat-related people who you can't get far enough away from fast enough for whatever reason, and you will never know what exactly it is that you will find so sucky until you get there-it is different for everyone.

The last five years that I have been on the boat have in fact included the top scorers in the ranking of the very darkest times of my life for various reasons, and even the logistics of managing things like that (whatever your equivalent "like that" is) can be harder on the boat too.

But I think there is a big difference between "dreaming" and "wanting something nice that you can actually get." Sometimes people are too programmed to do what is expected of them without questioning it, and questioning if that is actually what they want-why SHOULD someone work until they are 50 or 60 if they don't desire to and have other options that they prefer?

There's a trade-off for everything in life, innit. That doesn't mean the trade is necessarily a poor one.

 

Edited May 19, 2017 by Starcoaster

[Matt&Jo]

Thank you all again for your thoughts. Chubby i would also like to apologise to you for getting a little hot under the collar. I would also like to thank a wonderfull person on this forum who has very generously offered me a short time aboard her narrow boat to experience life afloat. Blown away by this offer...

We spent the day yesterday calling lots of marinas to be told no no no no time and time again with regards to widebeams and even told some lists are a decade long to get a space.... we have had to open our eyes somewhat to a narrow boat and we are going to whilton marina today to look at a 65 ft lady up their built in 2015. I am going eyes wide open and a little concerned that their is no other heating source other than the stove and the fridge is 240v it does have however 5 leisure batterys and inverter plus engine or immersion heating for hot water.

I know the cost of solar will be around £1200 for a 475w system but a retro fitted eberspacher im not so sure on.....

The boat is considerably less than we were going to spend at around £50,000 but it just seems like what we were after from a boat. They also have a wide beam we like so will visit both.

Wish us luck and feel free to give any big watch out for this and check that advice.

 

[rusty69]

12 minutes ago, Matt&Jo said:

am going eyes wide open and a little concerned that their is no other heating source other than the stove

Good luck! 

We got by with only one heat source, a morso squirrel for 16 years, but in recent years fitted another at the other end for a bit more comfort(70 ft narrowboat) 

If this boat you are looking at today has a centrally located stove or pumped radiator system, it may well be sufficient. 

 

Whilst at Whilton, get as many bunches of keys as you can, look at lots if boats above ad below your budget 

Edited May 19, 2017 by rusty69

[Ray T]

This is an interesting resource:

www.livingonanarrowboat.co.uk

written by Paul Smith. Has a number of contributions from other liveaboards.

Mrs T

[Matt&Jo]

Will do rusty. My wife can be a bit of a heat monkey and yes it is centraly located but not hooked up to a radiator system. If we get a boat at this price point we can afford for a time to prepare it for living aboard ie solar and heating improvements. Thanks for your reply

[rusty69]

8 minutes ago, Matt&Jo said:

Will do rusty. My wife can be a bit of a heat monkey and yes it is centraly located but not hooked up to a radiator system. If we get a boat at this price point we can afford for a time to prepare it for living aboard ie solar and heating improvements. Thanks for your reply

Early days i know, but if you do buy a boat from Whilton, it would be wise to commission your own independent surveyor. 

[OldGoat]

38 minutes ago, rusty69 said:

Early days i know, but if you do buy a boat from Whilton, it would be wise to commission your own independent surveyor. 

Don't treat a survey as a tick box or MOT process -

Be present when it's done and make it clear to the surveyor when you engage him that you will be present and want to learn the good and the bad about the vessel. That includes indifferent techniques used in the boat's construction.

The canal boat industry is very fragmented and very much a 'craft' occupation. There are few standards (that's why the BSS was started) and far too many shortcuts taken either by the builder or successive owners....

 

[Matt&Jo]

Thanks guys 

[MtB]

I also suggest you do some research about whiltons business ethics. Use the search engine here to reveal a few horror stories. 

Don't think because it's boats everything's done in a gentlemanly and ethical manner. You will be dealing with people who I suspect got thrown out of estate agency for being too willing to mislead you and stitch you up like the apocryphal kipper. 

[rusty69]

1 hour ago, Mike the Boilerman said:

I also suggest you do some research about whiltons business ethics. Use the search engine here to reveal a few horror stories. 

Thats kinda what I was suggesting by advising appointing an independent surveyor. 

 

Its still a good place to compare boats. Well it was the last time I went 10 years ago. 

Edited May 19, 2017 by rusty69