High waters on the K&A

Well as those of you who living in the UK (and who actually read this in the next week or so) will know it has been raining cats and dogs over the last few days. The K&A is at it's highest point this year, the water was flowing straight over the weir on Tuesday night in the centre of Reading by the Loch Fyne restaurant.

I don't think there is a hope for me moving Sirius this weekend, for a start I won't fit under the first bridge with the current height of the water. Fingers crossed it comes down a lot in the next couple of days as I had hoped to move on Saturday, others I think it will be a weekend of boat spring cleaning and DIY, a job I must admit I have been somewhat postponing ;-)

I will see what the water levels are like this evening and if it's still as high as yesterday I will try and take a photo for the blog :)

The repairs are beginning!

Craft Insure, who are the insurance company who I have my Narrowboat insurance with have given me the go ahead to replace the smashed windows and repair the window frame.

Apparently they are not sure I should be claiming for new carpet and bedding, I would be interested what you all think? I had two windows smashed on top of the bed and over the bedroom carpet. The glass shattered into thousands of tiny pieces which I have tried to hover up, but if course, I keep finding tiny shades of glass in the carpet and it's even more difficult to hover a duvet. Personally I don't like the idea of getting cut by a bit of glass in bed or when I step out in bare feet in the morning!

What do you all think?

It seems to me like they are trying to back track on paying out for the claim which is really annoying as I thought they were a good company. We will have to see, watch this space.

I am hoping to start cruising again on the 14th February (as long as the Thames is not on Red boards) when the lock onto the Thames has hopefully been re-opened. I am looking forward to reaching Lower Heyford for a pint in the Bell Inn!

British Waterway mooring tenders

I placed a bid on a BW mooring this afternoon to see if I could get myself a mooring. I am in two minds about having a mooring at all, because I just feel if you pay a fortune for a mooring, you should use it.. but then that means your not cruising around the network visiting all those nice little village pubs and meeting lots of fellow boaters :)

So, my plan was to try and get a cheap mooring that I can use for the winter and for the odd month here and there where I want to keep Sirius local to my bricks and mortar home.. (yes, sorry boating friends.. I still live in solid ground most of the time)

There are moorings in Reading near the IDR (ring road bridge) which to be honest, are not the best moorings, obviously noisey from the bridge and also the area is not the best, I've often wondered if the boats there get any trouble... I guess I should really pop along and ask them.

270 people had apparently viewed the tender (probably 10 of those viewings was myself and my friends) and there was apparently no-one on the waiting list for the mooring, and, I was the only one to put in a tender.

BW say that the reserve price is set to ensure they cover their costs for the mooring, now what could those ongoing costs be at this mooring? There are no services provided, it's next to a public footpath which is presumably tender by the local council... so.. we're talking about looking after the rings that Sirius would be tide onto?! Surely these don't need a lot of ongoing maintainence?

So.. I put a bid in for £300 / PA yes, I know, it's about 20% of their asking price of £1500... but come on.. that mooring does not cost £1500 to maintain PA! And another mooring on the same site went for £752 and that was above the reserve price, so, any guesses what I should have bid?

If it was a popular mooring I could understand the price, but, it's really not...

Come on BW.. cut me some slack and let me have a cheap mooring so I can use it for a few months here and there... the rest of the time.. you already have my £1052 / PA license fee!

Official Google Blog: Google Maps for mobile now with Street View and walking directions

Now this is pretty cool, Google Maps for mobile now has walking directions. The question is when will they buy a site like Canal Plan, who have a lot of photos of the canals and then produce a boating directions guide with boat eye photos :)

Official Google Blog: Google Maps for mobile now with Street View and walking directions

Working on water :)

Hi All,

I've no idea how many people actually read this blog, maybe it's just my mum.. infact, maybe she doesn't read it?! Anyway, for those of you who have read it, thank you, and do leave some comments so I know your out there :)

As you will have seen from my previous post Sirius was broken into, since then I have tried to spend more time on Sirius, the problem is, as I work in IT I have a constant requirement to be online, so I needed a solution!

I have previously used various GSM and GRPS data cards and to be honest, none of them were really very usable compared to sitting at home connected to a broadband connection. This time around, my house mate Nick offered to lend me his Vodafone 3G data card, wow! What a difference! It was almost as good as being connected to a broadband connection and perfectly acceptable for working on Sirius, finally technology has caught up and floating working could become a reality :)

I was so impressed that the following week I signed up and bought one of the Vodafone 3G data cards. For those of your interested, I bought a Express Card version as they are Quad Band ( i.e. work pretty much in every country including USA ) and they support the full 7.2mb current maximum speed, where as some of the USB modem versions do not support the full speed.

If you are interested in getting one, go onto the Vodafone business site as they are not available in the consumer area. The costs FREE card and £15 / month for 24 months gets you 3GB of data per month. So far I have used about 100MB in 1.5 weeks, so it doesn't look like the 3GB limit will ever be a problem!

Jerry Cans from Freecycle

A couple of days ago I ran out of Diesel, miles from a filling stop, so I thought I would try and get hold of a couple of Jerry cans ( the big 20 litre fuel containers ). I decided to put a note onto Freecycle to see if someone had one they would like to give away, and low and behold, 24 hours later, I now have three!!

I am going to use them to give Sirius a good drink and then I will probably give one or two of them to a couple of my boatie friends :)

Boat vandals...

Sirius was unfortunately broken into twice this week, I think by some local kids from the Theale / Reading area. They were apparently spotted a couple of times, the first time was after they smashed a window for the second time, and the second time they were spotted they were again hanging around Sirius, looking like they were about to cause trouble.

2 white boys and 1 black... all on bikes.. unfortunately that is all the description I have, but if you moor around the Theale area along the K&A keep an eye out!

Now who's going to help me translate my blog into 37 languages !?

I just noticed the following post on the Blogger Buzz Blog. You can now create your blog with the user interface in one of 37 languages! I thought I might post my next few articles in Manderin, Arabic and Jedi ;-)

Blogger Buzz: Three new languages and a whole new direction for Blogger

Starter motor in for repair.

Well, a quick update for you all. It seems the reason Sirius was not starting very well ( or eventually at all ) was due to water damage to the starter motor. I took the starter motor off last weekend and have now been told by the service company it will cost me about £100 to get it fixed. Fingers crossed they do a good job and i'll be able to get Sirius moving again at the weekend :)

I have been neglecting Sirius a little!

Yes, it's true. I have been so busy this summer that Sirius has been rather neglected. So much so that I have not cruised anywhere for over 2 months! I need to replace the starter motor, and have a diesel heater to fit.

If anyone has any spare time and would like to help with some boat DIY just let me know... 

Form an orderly queue please... one at a time... no pushing I know you all can't wait to get your hands dirty ;-)

Skiing in la plagne

Hi blog readers I am currently skiing in la plagne and the snow is great as you can see.

New Blog website address.

Hi Sirius blog readers :)

I have today changed the URL for my blog, hopefully the old one is also still working. The new blog address is:

http://www.narrowboatblog.com/

I was thinking that I could set the domain up with Sirius's name as a "subdomain" and hence allow others to also use the domain... eg. "sirius.narrowboatblog.com" etc... if enough other Narrowboat bloggers are interest I could be persuaded, so do get in touch.

Sirius has spent her winter in a health farm

Hi there blog readers!

For those of you who have subscribed to my blog, (which I was surprised about) I am sorry I've been so quiet over the last few months. As you have probably guess I have not done a lot of boating on Sirius over the winter months.

The good news is that during the last month Sirius has been to the Narrowboat equivalent of a health farm, aka. A boat yard! She has hopefully by now had the diesel leaks around the engine fixed and the exhaust replaced so that she can now breath out without forcing the rest of us to breath in her smokey breath! (of course, all timed to ensure she doesn't smoke inside herself before the July smoking ban!)

A different kind of boating.

St.Mary's in the Scilly Isles. A great place to visit if any of you blog readers are interested. We have just spent the week camping on Bryher which is the smallest inhabited island.

Arriving at dusk..

On my way to the inland waterways festival

I am Travelling on my own to the beale park festival.

Granny Buttons spotted :)

Gently travelling along the Oxford canal we passed Granny Buttons a couple of times. I don't seem to have much time to update this blog, but here's a photo of Granny Buttons.

Baby Nicholas's Blog

I thought some of you might like to see my friends blog about their little boy Nicholas... Matt, Mia and Nicholas' Blog

The Oracle at Night with Sirius covered in Christmas Lights

First of all, Happy Christmas everyone!

The plan for today was to leave Theale in good time so that we could go through the Oracle shopping centre just as it was getting dark. Unfortunately we didn't take into account that we'd all like to stop for a pub lunch on the way, so by the time we got to Fobney Lock it was already getting dark.

As you can see, as we were waiting for Fobney Lock to fill up, the sun was gently setting over the horizon, both Melanie and Jeni had decided it was too cold outside, so they had retired to the living room leaving Alex and I to do the work! They did make us a couple of hot cups of tea, so all is well :)

Alex Looking "Off his Head" again...
Alex was the main lock keeper of the day! Thanks Alex, it's always great to have your company. (Especially when you do the locks ;) )

It's not a very clear photo, but you can just about see the christmas lights all the way along the top of Sirius, and the little Christmas Tree!

The Abbey Gardens to Theale Second Attempt :)

As you can see from this photograph, when you go through the Oracle shopping centre in Reading there is a traffic light controlled one way system.

As mentioned a couple of days ago, here is Fobney lock, you can see the annoying weir on the right of this photo.

Has anyone any idea what this is beside the lock? Please leave a comment if you do!

Nice hat Alex :)