our first trip - help! sunbury to bath

[Lucy Joy]

Hello,

 

My boyfriend Jonathan and I have recently bought our first 55ft wide beam which is currently moored in sunbury-on-thames. We are planning to sail it to Bath to live on and continually cruise in 10 days, we've been told the journey should take us about 2 1/2 weeks!!

 

We are just compiling a list of things we need such as fenders and a boat hook... can anyone help?!!

 

 

Thanks!

 

Lucy x

[bottle]

Hi Lucy

 

Welcome to the forum and your first post.

 

Two links, for you, not about the equipment you need but just some guidance.

 

http://www.waterscape.com/media/documents/1862.pdf this is a pdf document from BW, and is a guidance to Continuous Cruisers

 

This link will assist you in planning your journey, click on 'Plan a Journey' on the left.

 

CanalplanaC

 

Enjoy your boating and have great trip.

[Lady Muck]

Make sure you've got your BW key, windlass, mooring spikes, mallet.

 

Aprat from the obvious such as Nicholsons guide for the canal area you are cruising in. As you have a wide beam, familiarising yourself with the rivers and canals you intend to cruise on will be absolutely vital as you may find you are restricted by your size as to where you can moor (compared to narrowboats and cruisers). I've heard it's particularly busy around Bath, you need to be able to plan where you will moor if you show up somewhere and it's full and also how long the time limit for each mooring is, and where you will moor next. I scribble all my own notes in my nicholsons guides, it is a useful memory jog for next time.

 

Another poster here recommended hedge clippers - great suggestion, have just been moored up the Stort this weekend, they enabled us to cut our way through all the nettles on the towpath.

 

A gang plank for rivers where it's tricky to moor.

 

A sack truck for transporting rubbish, coal, laundry, groceries, loo cassettes (if you use them).

 

A hand water pump.

 

A tarp (millions of uses, just really handy), I also keep a box with string, bits of rope, carabiners, scissors, cable ties.

 

I keep a diving knife, useful for clearing a fouled prop. We also have long sleeved heavy weight rubber gloves otherwise it is painfully cold to try and clear the prop in the colder months.

 

Bolt cutters and sheet metal snips (buy the best quality you can afford) for if your prop is really fouled (sprung steeled mattress is particularly bad and hard to remove), don't buy the cheapest one in B and Q , it'll last five minutes.

 

Proper waterproofs, (we needed those this weekend, for sure).

 

Sunblock, first aid kit.

 

A head torch (especially in winter - you always end up having to do stuff in the dark)

 

The phone numbers of as many local boat engineers as you can collect, because invariably if you have one number, when you need him he'll be too busy or on holiday.

 

Make a note of where all the boatyards are in the area. Familiarise yourself with your diesel tank, your water tank and power consumption. Check your gas bottles, it's quite easy to find yourself stranded and out of gas/fuel/water if you don't familiarise yourself with this kind of thing or keep up with how full/empty you are. Many of us boaters keep a log book where we note the engine running time, etc, when we got fuel.

 

Keep spares of the fuel filters, drive belt etc for your engine, you never know when you might need them. With boat engines it can sometimes be tricky to get spares - we can't buy anything for our engine in Halfords, we have to send off for it, so I always make sure we have spares). We also keep spare tubes for our lights (because you can only really buy that kinds of thing in camping shops or the chandlery).

 

Back up stuff in case anything fails - once ended up moored in the middle of nowhere on my own, with a broken water pump and out of gas. Fortunately I had plastic camping water carriers, a trolley and a camping stove. We also keep a wind up radio and lantern. We have a roll up solar panel and a 12v battery charger so we can charge our radio / lantern batteries etc. Those wind up torches are pretty good, too, I find.

 

Old clothes and warm clothes, you will find yourself getting utterly filthy, believe me. Really old clothes can be ripped up to make rags - useful for when you are in the engine 'ole.

Edited May 26, 2008 by Lady Muck

[pquinn]

lifejackets dont hurt,experienced or not.

[Amduck]

Red wine and a corkscrew. (strictly for when you collapse at the end of the day, mind!)

[Nickhlx]

Assuming you are going along the K and A, we were quite nervous at Newbury, just East of the lock where the river rejoins the canal as the current was running quite fast and more so after rain. Fortunately this was at New Year and there were very few boats so we had the whole width of the flow available - both ways.... on the way up against the flow we were pretty much flat out and only making about 1 knot, but on the way back we were well over 4 knots - you needed a couple of knots over water speed to maintain any sort of steering which was considerably mind-focussing with 20 tons and "no brakes" and limited steering... A caution is given in Nicholsons after rain !

 

Nick

[wrigglefingers]

Hello,

 

My boyfriend Jonathan and I have recently bought our first 55ft wide beam which is currently moored in sunbury-on-thames. We are planning to sail it to Bath to live on and continually cruise in 10 days, we've been told the journey should take us about 2 1/2 weeks!!

 

Thanks!

 

Lucy x

 

Lucy,

 

I may have misunderstood your post but I have surmised that you intend to live in the Bath area and continuously cruise in that area alone - is that correct? If it is, have you checked out Bath for mooring places? It's very crowded down here and more so in summer. Most moorings are very short stay only and there is limited space in other areas. Due to problems in the past with over-staying (and on-going), BW are more active down here than in other areas asking people to move on.

 

If I have misunderstood your posting, my apologies.

 

Shep