Aussie Boater

I love working out stats on the boat. As I left London on 20 July 2022, I filled the tank with 500L. The capacity of the water tank is suppose to be 1400L (according to the original brochure by Whilton Marina).  Yesterday, 18 August 2022, I filled the tank again, this time with 1058L, less 40L to half fill the washing machine and fill a water carrier.  I bought one of those water meters as I've never truly known exactly how much water my tank holds. But yesterdays exercise gave me a good indication of just how large my water tank actually is.  So 1018L. That's 30 days use for 2 people and includes showers daily plus extra cold showers during the heat wave, all cooking/dishes, hand washing and drinking water. This figure excludes the washing machine as this was filled separately by hand.  That equates to just under 34L per day for 2 people or 17L per person. Not bad eh?  How much water do you use? 

With the economic climate pinching at all levels, one of my mates has taken it upon himself to make his very own biodiesel. The blend still uses diesel fuel but at significantly reduced quantities.  The ingredients for his unique blend consist of the following:   He takes used vegetable "chippy" oil, combines it with engine oil (which also includes products like gear box oil, transmission oil etc) and filters it down to 3.5microns using Hoover vacuum cleaning bags.  Then he adds diesel, a proportion of petrol, white spirit and cetane. The end result is a lovely mix of biofuel, which not only uses 75% less diesel but also uses products that would otherwise be discarded and possibly not recycled.  With a 180L fuel tank, it costs me anywhere between £150 and £200 to fill my tank. With my mates biofuel, my costs would be reduced by 75%. So once the warranty is up on my rebuilt engine, I plan to try out his biofuel.  He said he already uses his biofuel in his ca...

As many of you know, my partner Duncan is moving to London at the end of the month. Over the course of the next couple of years, I’ll be renovating NB Elementary from the inside out. I’ve been given a stipend of just £500 a month to run the boat AND to spend on renovations. That means I have to now start watching what I spend.  Unlike the majority of bloat vloggers, I don’t make money from my channel. But it’s costing nearly £400/year to keep the website going and that money can frankly be better spent on the renovation. I mean that’s almost an entire months budget. Inflation in the UK is currently at about 9% with some predicting a rise of up to 13%, so the cost of living is going up. Boaters are not shielded from this hike in costs. Our licence fees go up by 8% this year. A bag of Excel smokeless coal has risen from £13.50 to £19 for a 25kg bag. And don’t forget the price of diesel. Even red diesel is up around the £1.50 mark. So, as I’ve become a budget boater again, I too have ...

July 2020 Having now lived on the boat for over a year and survived all four seasons, I have concluded that I don’t need most of the clothes I brought on board with me initially and that got me thinking about another article to write about. What exactly do I wear living on a boat in England? The clothes I recycled included a couple of pairs of dress jeans, suit pants and smart-casual business type shirts, none of which I’ve worn since moving onto the boat. Living on the canals is one of the most casual of anywhere you’ll find in the country. I dare say the same applies to boating communities in most other parts of the world. People wear what they like…it’s all very casual and not formal in any way.  Summer Over the summer, I’ll wear a pair of shorts and t-shirt or vest (singlet) but sometimes on cooler or wet days, I’ll often put on a pair of lightweight trousers and a pair of hiking boots with cotton socks. That’s it for summer…all fairly easy. Winter Winter is quite complicated i...

The name Bletchley Park is synonymous with code-breaking glory by the British during World War II. Located about 30 minutes walk from the Grand Union canal in Bletchley, Buckinghamshire is a piece of modern war history that many overlook. It’s here that genius mathematician Alan Turing and his team broke the code of the Nazis which helped win the war.   Inside this vast estate you will find a mansion that was built circa 1883. With a staggering 28 bedrooms plus the various outbuildings called Huts, there was enough accommodation to house the eventual 9000 personnel who worked here at the peak of the war, 75% of whom were women. There’s been a mansion on this site since the late 18th century but the original was demolished to make way for this new one. It was sold in 1938 and almost became a housing estate but was bought by the most unlikely character, the head of the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), Admiral Sir Hugh Sinclair using his own money to buy the entire site because...

  Since the installation of my new 12v system, I’ve tried out a few battery chargers. Here’s my review of all 3 devices.  Photonic Universe Fully Automatic “Domestic” Charger £99 Firstly, I started with a Photonic Universe 7 stage fully automatic charger rated at 20 amps. The issue with this style of charger is it’s designed for domestic use and really needs to be left on overnight so it’s not really suitable for off-grid marine applications. It spent a lot of time “massaging” the batteries @ 10 Amps, instead of giving them a good thumping high output charge @ 20 Amps from the outset. It didn’t work too well with my solar controller so I had to ensure it was switched off prior to switching on the charger.  One annoying design flaw of this unit is that the output charge connectors are located at the top of the unit. A power switch turns the unit on/off.  Not delivering the charge/rate I was expecting I purchased another with a higher amperage output rating.  No B...

In the 4 years I’ve lived in the UK, one of the things I love most about boating life is the sense of community. When we moved to Stockport, south of Manchester, one of the first tasks I did was to go around to each of my neighbours with a jar of my home cooked jam to introduce myself. Since then, only one of neighbours bothered to befriend us. Now I’m not saying I expect everyone to become my best overnight but at least it would have been nice to get to know my neighbours.  One of them, a lovely old lady called Peggy actually went out of her way to get to know us, invited us round for tea and looked after our cats when we went away. She was the only one in the entire 2 years we lived there. Most never bothered to give us the time of day, let alone anything else.   With boating, there is always an opportunity of getting to know your neighbours. Again, I don’t expect everyone to become my best friend but in the year I’ve been cruising I can honestly say I’ve developed more...

Winter is one the most challenging times as a fulltime liveaboard on a cruiser, well for any boater really but I think especially if you’re living on a cruiser. The days get shorter with the sun setting at 4pm. It gets cold, it rains a lot and is generally much more unpleasant than during spring, summer or even autumn.  First Winter (2019/20) This is my first winter on board my boat and to be fair, it hasn’t been as bad as I was expecting…in fact it’s been quite mild. The coldest it’s been was when I was up on the Ashby Canal at the start of December when the temperature dropped to -5C with the canal freezing over on several occasions and many frosty mornings.  At one point I didn’t cope when I had run out of coal and was trying to keep warm, lighting fires with damp foraged firewood. It prompted to think about booking myself into a marina so I’d have an electric hookup or find a winter mooring provided by the CRT so I’d be around other boats for support. But after the ice had...

When I first began cruising back in April 2019, I was excited by the prospect about being able to finally live my dream. Summer was on it’s way and the canals were beginning to get busy with not only boaters but also walkers, joggers, cyclists and anglers. It was a time to enjoy the canals at their finest time, meet lots of people, be socialable and make new friends….and that’s exactly what I did.  However, there is a downside to living fulltime on a boat and that’s the isolation. While many boaters I meet thrive at the thought of being isolated and cherish this, this is one aspect I’ve struggled to cope with as there are often times when I’m totally alone, far from anyone or anything. That’s part of the reason I started writing this website and also having my YouTube channel as it gives me a purpose and sense of belonging.  As the days get darker leading up to winter, once the sun sets, one of my biggest challenges is to remain active which is difficult living on such a small...

Living on a boat full time means that you’re not subject to the normal “Monday to Friday, 9-5” conditions that most others experience. In winter, I’ll often cook dinner (at 4pm) and I’ll be in bed by 6pm. I’ll usually wake up again at anywhere between 2 or 4am to go to the toilet and stoke the fire as the fire is usually out by then so that being the case, I’ll often stay up for a couple of hours, light another fire to heat up the cabin again and then go back to bed for a few more hours sleep, waking up again around 7 or 8am. As soon as the sun rises, that’s when I make the effort to wake up and start doing things I need to do.  Summer is a different story as the sky begins to light up extremely early, like 3.30am so I’ll often wake up at that time, make coffee, have breakfast, do some work on the computer and then hit the sack for a few more hours kip until the sun rises and warms everything up. Of an evening, I’ll often cook dinner at around 6pm, leaving time for my food to settl...

Being cooped up in a small space for extended periods of time can have adverse affects on one’s wellbeing, especially when one lives in a very small cruiser. Flying on a long haul flight can have similar affects on your body and mind.  When I first began cruising, after only a month, I was up on the Macclesfield Canal when I suffered from cabin fever for the first time. Not realising exactly what was happening, I woke up at midnight. It had been raining constantly for 4 days and I hadn’t been outside and I began to get depressed. I began to worry about anything and everything and it seemed like the world was about to cave in.  At the time, I was moored up with other boaters and one of them I befriended, invited me into his boat for some tea and a chance to chill out. He told me this little saying which has stuck with me ever since.  “Your Boat Is Your Shelter. It’s where you eat, sleep, shit, keep warm and dry. Life is on the outside.” My friend is absolutely spot on. For...