Hey guys welcome back!
Today we're going to tell you
all about the most challenging aspects of living on a boat
We absolutely love
living in a boat don't get us wrong
it took us a while to
put a list together
none of the reasons in here would be a
deal breaker for us
i think we've only really got one issue
that we think
might put people off but the rest of
them more just to be aware of, compromises that you
might have to make living on a boat
So if you guys are new here we live on a 62 foot narrowboat
we're continuously cruising so we move
the boat every few days or a few weeks, we live in
a new spot
and we've been on a boat for a year and
a half now
ultimately living on a boat is amazing
and we'd highly recommend anyone who's considering doing it and
whatever your background, whatever your age we think
narrowboating and boating inland waterways in the UK
is the most accessible form of boating
Number one on the list and i think this
is actually the only one that is the worst thing about living on the boat
is... can you guess?
the toilet yep it's the toilet
there are many different types of toilet
and we've got a compost loo so arguably it's the most convenient
it doesn't dictate sort of when we're moving or where we're
moving to
if you had like an elsan or pump out
very much sort of dictate that so it's good in that regard
doesn't smell
eco-friendly
cost-effective
don't have to have blue chemicals or tanks that leak and
take up space but emptying it is the worst thing I think
Whenever you
move on to a boat be prepared to deal with your own shit
Which is a shit job
So the next point is you need to be organized living off-grid
you will be filling up the tank with water
and using up that water, running engine to create electricity
and some solar, solar as well but most of the time you
will run an engine you obviously need diesel, gas and
taking your waste somewhere so bins and toilet waste
therefore you need to be
organized with where are you going, where you're staying
how long you stand there for
where you're getting water
where you're emptying your toilet
we don't need to worry about that but some people do
i think ultimately you get used to how much you use
so we know our water tank lasts just over two weeks
so we know every two
weeks when we have to move the boat anyway
water is always on that list
and also that might stop you from having long
showers if you're used to really nice long
showers especially in the winter you're not going to get those
another quick thing there is a rule for boaters
you can only run your engine between 8am
and 8pm so you need to watch your electricity
consumption if you're working late you can't just
turn up at 10pm and run your engine to get electricity or charge your batteries
so that's another thing to worry about
Equally, if you're going away for two weeks
you can't just leave the boat
you can leave it for a few days without draining the batteries but
not charging batteries for a long time will deplete their health
We normally get a friend in every few days to come in and
run engine for us
What's the longest we've left the boat on its own for?
Four days we went to a festival
Next on the list
is waste
now we've talked about This waste is normally like the bins
on the canal or even worse on the river trying to find
facilities and again every two weeks when you do
your water and you have to move tie in a facilities day it's going to
take you a day to move the boat if you are doing all your chores
yeah finding bins that boaters can use and the worst part
about it is most places don't have recycling so
luckily in our bow we keep all of our recycling
there in the world deck with bikes outside out of mind
But we can have like a
month and a half worth of recycling there
We tend to use supermarkets if they've got
them big supermarkets we do recycling is important to us
that's why we go into these lengths
Obviously not everyone
have this value
The next point on the list is
downsizing
When we were thinking about moving on to a boat we thought we were
going to have to downsize more
so we were actually really
surprised, as Marina says, we've got a 62 foot narrowboat
with one bedroom so probably when this was built it might have had two bedrooms or
or more but having one bedroom and all that space
has been good so we didn't have to downsize much it's keeping
what you have tidy as well because it's a very small space
so all of a sudden you take your keys and wallet and phone out
it can feel a mess quite quickly so you have to be tidy and organized in that
regard so the next one on our list is probably
the reason most of you who are watching who haven't yet
got a boat, has put you guys off is
random boat issues
just to caveat before we moved on board we knew nothing
about engines, electricity, solar converters
or much about anything in general
and nor do you need to
there's
always a boat group with a people with a lot of good advice
and opinions who can point you in the direction of
what you need to know.
Just take a photo
of a pump they'll know what make, what year so you don't really need to know
anything You do learn naturally things over time
how your batteries work, keeping them
healthy but you know with a boat stuff does go
wrong and i would say in general on a narrowboat people scare
you as well with the price of stuff It's nothing more expensive than
getting a plumber or an electrician round to your house
because you've got a leaky bathroom or the lights have gone off somewhere
Every time something does go wrong you
have many first-timers so first time the engine
doesn't work first time you get flat batteries first
time your inverter bleeps at you
first and long time that
the shower isn't working
Our boat is almost 30
years old so we're naturally experiencing a little bit more
of these issues you might get a brand new boat or a boat
that is a lot newer then you might not have this
issues at all
And I want to caveat that
It doesn't always mean buying a new boat
you won't get issues We have met a number of brand new boat
owners who have bought boats that everything
absolutely everything that could go wrong has gone wrong
for them
I think of two people that we've met that that's happened to buying
an older boat doesn't mean you're buying a bunch of problems either
every boat is different every boat is built by an individual
at a different time they're all bespoke and they've been added to
years upon years one years as well so yeah it's really hard to say but buying
a new boat does not mean you're gonna be problem free
To be honest i don't think we've had many problems.
No we haven't, we've been really lucky!
The next point is not having an address
so not having an address people always ask what's it like not having an address
and I always turn around and say well you only get bills
posted to you so can live without those But in reality
not having an address, particularly this year has shown how challenging
it is. Usually get stuff delivered to work but 2020
the year of online delivery you have to be a bit more organized
and find out where to get stuff delivered to
First of all
we do have an address we just use our family of friends addresses
for the time being.
What we know is that through CRT you can apply for a postal
address you don't have to be addressless
You can do it!
And in terms of deliveries you can deliver to a local post office,
amazon lockers
the next one on the list is public places
So living on a boat most of the time
you're going to be near the tow path and as you've noticed just now
there is always someone walking by
Especially at the beginning for me
personally when we were in Central London
living basically on a towpath was slightly challenging it took me
over a month to get used to it
When you're cooking your dinner and everyone
walks by and looks in the window so you've gotta find a way how you're going
to do it Perhaps you're gonna have your
curtains closed But after a while I personally just
don't care anymore
Yeah I think at first one of the big
things you noticed was just how public the spaces that you're
living in are but yeah it does take a couple of months to get used to
So we always have our curtains closed on the towpath side and open
on the other side that's quite nice
If you're in a city you're going to expect
to hear noise and people walking around
On the whole, it's been fine and
at night in winter cyclists cycling by and the lights coming in your window
it takes some getting used to but you do get used to it
The next challenge is cold.
Sometimes in winter it can be cold on a boat
We're really lucky because we have
two sources of heating: We have a five kilowatt multi-fuel stove
that we can use coal and wood in and we also have
diesel heating that we can set timer on three times a day if we want to that
It comes on an hour before we wake up so it's warm
enough to walk around have a shower
So when we moved on to the boat people
had said you know it could be cold in the winter
and this was a little bit of a worry for us particularly running into our first
winter but actually we were quite surprised now
our boat does have insulation and then yeah we have two
forms of heating
I would highly recommend investing in a good pair of
slippers because particularly the floor is below
the waterline so it's a metal boat sat in water
In winter it's always going to be cold at that level but if you've got a good
pair of slippers and guest slippers
you keep your feet toasty
it's absolutely fine
and the last main
point in the list is safety
Being so close to towpath and
public places you can have lots of people walking
around
but this also means that all the stuff that you've got
outside is in public space and it's really within reach of anyone
When we were in London we had quite a few plants stolen,
some garden furniture, a few bits and bobs
Nothing that we have outside really have any value, we make stuff ourselves
like this bench
Everything we've got has been upcycled really
so nothing outside has any monetary value
other than just the value it serves to us but yeah we've had quite a few plants
get nicked
When we're away for Christmas on Christmas Day
ssomeone took all the roof furniture and stuff like that
We've not had any issues like breaking in or anything like that
But when your plants do get nicked you do feel quite
violated someone's been on the boat
We thought it'd be worthwhile mentioning
challenges that we don't have but you might have when deciding to live
on a boat
so the first one is the fridge
quite a lot of boats don't
have fridges you need a 12-volt fridge as well so it
runs straight off of your batteries there's an even 24 volt as well but
we couldn't live without our fridge it's not a sacrifice I think we were willing
to make but quite a few people do it
Check the height of the boat you're buying if you're short
you might not need to think about it but then when all your tall friends come
over and they're like this can be quite funny I went to go
see a boat that was 5'11 inches tall
and i'm 5 foot 11 and a half and all of a sudden it just changes the whole
dynamic of the space
Our head height is about
six foot two on the boat so we've got plenty of room inside
Type of toilet as we've mentioned before, there's many different types of
toilet if you've got a cassette toilet
regarding on how many people are living aboard and how often you're using it
and how many you've got you might have to empty that
a bit more regularly than two weeks when you might be doing the water
If you've got a pump out you've got a tank to empty and that will dictate
where you move to on your moving weekends and
quite often we've heard, because we don't use them, that they get
blocked or become out of service so if you've spent all day
getting there you might have to spend another day getting somewhere else
Don't leave it too late folks!
Some boats have a small
water tank
To be honest we have no idea how big our water tank is
We just know it lasts just over two weeks
On our first week of living on a
boat it ran out in a week
So you get used to that some boats have
to fill up their water tank every week or every 10 days you know we'd highly
recommend having a boat where it's at least two
weeks so when you're doing your continuous move
and other boat jobs you can take that one off and then rather than making
special trips
And then finally some boats don't have
an inverter
An inverter out here you say?
What is an inverter?
Well this takes your
battery charge and turns it into mains electricity
voltage 240 volts and so it means you can use most of your
appliances or electrical gadgets that you had at home again depending on
the size of the inverter will depend on how powerful gadgets you can use on
board ours is 3000 watts something like that begins
with a three it's the big one
We can use most things - we've got a blender,
hoover, well ours is a chargeable cordless hoover.
Get a cordless hoover
you will need it! They are epic!
some boats don't have them
They rely solely on 12 volt which does power your lights,
water pump, fridge then you have like what you have in a car - a cigarette
lighter sort of charger for your usb gadgets
Some boats just have this.
The last section are
very very small challenges that I thought i'll just mention
You will need to get friendly with spiders
On the boat
you are living in Nature there are insects around so naturally there will
be spiders around too so when at night you've got the hatch
open and you're eating outside and you've got the light on outside
when you get in you can find oh my gosh there are so many bugs
in here so we have found our balance with spiders
Spiders are your friends!
We tend to not kick out all of the spiders particularly the ones that have got webs
by the open windows because they can catch all the bugs that are coming in
Another thing that might be important to you is keeping up the exercise routine
If you are a continuous cruiser you will be moving a lot
You will need to adapt
your running routine
Maybe you would need to have a gym
membership that allows you to go to separate gyms or all over
the country and sometimes, if you don't know where you need to go or you
moored next to a place that doesn't have a visible towpath that might be overgrown
you might find it difficult to keep up
exercise routine
It's really important for me it really contributes
to my health and mental health
Sometimes it is challenging to be consistent
because you're constantly moving, you don't know where you are
So that's it folks hope we haven't put you off like we said all of these
things are so minor and become part of your
daily routine that you don't even notice them
Hope you enjoyed
watching it and i hope we haven't scared you off
like to you out on the water
Why are you laughing?
The geese are
ruining the video!
I hope you guys found this useful
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Ihope that you didn't ruin the video
and you enjoyed all the nature sounds it's pretty authentic
See you in the next one
See you next time
Keep on cruising! Bye!
To make this video concise we had to leave out quite a few bot stories
if you want to see the full version check out our Patreon page for the
extended 24 minute cut
Thanks guys!