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Hi Sarah
You have it correctly! Because of where we are in Cambridge there's not a lot of options for blacking. The £700 was from the Little Ouse Moorings where they did and extremely good job of blacking but we weren't allowed to do it ourselves. In March it's a bit less at £600 or so but not quite such a good job. As far as I know there's nowhere around here where you are allowed to black it yourself. We did it for £200 ourselves but that was in Birmingham where there's lots of competition.
Amy -
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I wrote this post a while ago about moorings in the area, which includes a link to a list of local marinas, Good luck! Amy
http://nbluckyduck.blogspot.com/2011/09/any-questions-v4-mooring-in-cambridge.html -
Hi Tony
Refer to point 4 on this post I wrote about mooring in Cambridge: http://nbluckyduck.blogspot.com/2011/09/any-questions-v4-mooring-in-cambridge.html?
The moorings he refers to do not belong to the Highways Agency, nor to anyone else. They are a legal grey area. Yes they are free until the council decides to evict the boats, but if you leave the mooring, and.someone takes your spot you would have no claim over it and nowhere to go.
Buy the boat by all.means but take the promise of a free mooring with a pinch of salt.
Good luck
Amy -
Will get back to you in a comprehensive blog post I am.planning but basically marinas are your only option for widebeams and the nearest is Ely way unfortunately. Amy
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Hi,
The price of a narrowboat can vary so wildly (ours was £25500, but they can go up to £200,000!) that it would be best to head to boat sales sites and just browse around and see what is available. Price will depend upon what you want from a boat, its age, fit-out and all sorts of other things. Head to
Apollo Duck for hundreds of boats for sale privately:
www.apolloduck.co.uk
and there are loads of brokerage companies seeling boats too. Whilton Marina is a good place to start, but a google search will bring up many others.
www.whiltonmarina.co.uk
Good luck! -
We've actually been pretty lucky. In our two and a half years boating we've only been let off our mooring twice, and neither time was at our home mooring. The first time was by kids in St Neots on the Gt Ouse, which was scary because it is a river, but they only let one end off and we were up so were able to secure it straight away. the second time was in Wolverhampton at the top of the Wolverhampton 21 on the BCN. We were moored near lots of other boats but the bow of the Duck was the only rope not tied either to a ring or looped over the same bollard as another rope. The only problem that time was that Lyra fell in! But she was OK, and we were quickly back on the bollard.
At home, we've never been bothered by any anti-social behaviour, but wherever we moor we always tie the ropes through closed loop pins and then back onto the boat so that opportunists would have to climb on to the boat itself, thus waking us/alerting us to their presence. In really dodgy areas, we would just avoid mooring up, but occasionally we've used a chain as well as ropes just in case. -
The Elm Tree, The Radegund, The Spring, The Fort, The Devonshire Arms, The Free Press, The Champion of the Thames... the list goes on!
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The over-riding reason that we felt confident was that we had spent time on our friends' live-aboard narrowboat Kestrel. James in particular had spent a lot of time helping them move their boat, going to the waterpoint with them, learning how to moor up and steer. It also showed us that life on a boat can be great fun, but also perfectly normal - there are no huge sacrifices to be made unless that's the lifestyle you're after. But the confidence also came from having done the research. Both of us are the kind of people who when they get an idea, have to do everything possible to follow it through. So once the idea was planted, we just researched and talked and read and visited and thought and somehow made it happen despite setbacks and financial stress and people telling us we were mad.
As for boating experience, I had spent time in sailing dinghies as a kid, and James had his experiences on Kestrel. However, it had certainly not always been our dream. Although James had wanted to live afloat for a couple of years, ever since he'd spent time on Kestrel, I literally went from knowing sod-all about narrowboats, never having stepped aboard one let alone dreamed of living on one to owning a narrowboat in the space of just under a year.
I don't think we 'instinctively' knew, I just think that we'd done enough research, and got enough experience to know that it was definitely for us. And we were right, it is just the life we thought it would be and we are so glad we made that leap in to the semi-unknown. Two and a half years later, we've not looked back, despite drive chain failure, and two long cold winters.
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Amy’s Bio
Live-aboard boater!
