In the short time I have been living on a narrowboat, just over 15 months now, I have come to realise that boaters have 3 main preoccupations. Top of the list is toilets, next is usually the weather and finally batteries. The endless conversations boaters will have regarding cassette versus pump out are amazing and my neighbour throws a fly in ointment as they have a composting toilet, very new wave they are. The cold weather over the last few weeks has left us cassette people feeling very smug as we walk up the pontoon to empty our cassettes at the elsan point as the pump out people fret as the boats are frozen in and so they can’t get across to the pump out point and are left having to ration toilet use on the boat to night time only and using the marina facilities during daylight hours. How it makes up for the times of emptying a cassette on a hot Sunday afternoon at a ripe elsan point because you forgot that morning and you know it won’t last till the morning!
Now if you live on a boat you are a lot more aware of the weather, if you are moored on the river it goes up and down in level by inches overnight, leaving the unsuspecting boater waking up on the floor with a boat at a precarious angle and when it rains the flow goes up to a sometimes quite astonishing rate and if you haven’t moored securely, it is the weir for you. So you do become slightly fixated with weather forecasts and every boater has their favourite forecast and many hours can pass discussing the pros and cons of your chosen forecaster, who is always spot on!
The choice of batteries for your boat is something you can agonise for hours over and everyone you ask will have an opinion, the type of battery, the capacity of the bank, 12v or 24v the choices are endless and as the weather gets warmer, well that is what my preferred forecaster is telling me, batteries will replace weather as the second favourite preoccupation of boaters, but I don’t believe anything will usurp toilets as the all time favourite.
