Boating worries and battering rams

‘I love the idea of moving onto a boat and leaving all my worries behind ‘ is a typical response when people ask us about our current lifestyle. But the truth is you leave behind one set of worries and replace them with another when you move afloat. (I am reminded of the person who once said that ‘Most of the bad things we worry about happening never come to pass and most of the bad things that do happen to us we didn’t know were going to occur, so that although we are worrying about the wrong things, we are at least doing the right amount of worrying’!

So what is it that so consumes our thoughts? I am thinking here more about day to day living issues rather than the wider world concerns such as whether Donald Trump is about to start a trade war with Europe or whether the England cricket team will rediscover their mojo.

The day to day issues are certainly more basic than our previous life concerns ashore. The daily conversation is filled with discussion about how much water we have in the tank, how full the toilet cassette is and where to moor so we can access shops to re-stock the cupboards. We also have a constant discovery of things that have stopped working that were perfectly fine yesterday, with a consequent need to effect running repairs using whatever materials are to hand. Creativity is at a premium and you get used to scavaging so that a piece of expanded polystyrene foam floating in the river becomes a patented head protector for the hatch cover and a plastic bottle becomes any impromptu vase for flowers.

However the greatest issue of concern is the state of the batteries. Boats are fitted with two sets of batteries – one for starting the motor and the other, in our case a bank of four batteries, for running the domestic facilities (fridge, freezer, water pump, lights etc). If you are travelling constantly then by and large the alternator does enough to keep the batteries charged, but if you want to dawdle along and moor up for a few days at a time as we do (one week we managed to progress our journey by a net 500 metres in seven days!) then this becomes a problem.

The answer is you need to have an alternative source of energy and that is where these babies come into their own – solar panels.

Fitted a few days ago, in theory they should provide sufficient energy to keep the batteries healthy, at least three seasons of the year. So we have left another worry behind but have replaced it with two more – where can we moor so the panels aren’t shaded by trees and when is it going to stop raining? So our net gain is one additional problem. QED (as my old maths teacher taught me to say).

Still, one has to keep matters in perspective. We at least didn’t have the problem this chap did when he got his enormous boat wedged under a bridge, blocking our passage up the canal.

Sally’s pragmatic solution was to suggest we used our boat as a battering ram to push him backwards and promptly handed the execution of the plan to yours truly (she missed her calling as a director). I was somewhat sceptical and feared that we would end up with a boat with a squashed nose (bow) like an aged boxer, but to my surprise the plan paid off. It is certainly the first time I have been openly invited by another boat owner to ram their boat. It is not however the first time I have actually rammed another boat, but that is another story 😋.

For those interested in our progress we have reached Nottingham and are heading north up the River Trent (a big river with a whole host of associated worries to get our teeth into).

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