Ok first things first ! I’ve sold Dawn Treader – though I sometimes forget I have, because it’s been such a long time -2008 !

More importantly I’ve sold her to people who would enjoy her and are very much like myself at their age – and I think that’s important. The world cannot be just about money: Ask two prominent members of society who fell from grace, if they thought it was worth it!

I think it’s like so many things in life; you gradually grow apart and familiarity keeps you together. Deep down I am a sailor, Atlantic winner, Royal ocean racing club kind of thing and I miss sailing – I miss the sense of power of wind and tide. And I still have a sailing Dinghy which seldom gets used.

Then there are the costs which are turning a hobby into an expensive past time – ok you can’t just divide the hours you spend on a boat with the annual cost of running it, but neither can you ignore rising mooring fees, licence, fuel, gas, - you name it. It all just keeps rising.

Whereas the Dinghy goes on a car roof and can be kept in the shed.

I’ve enjoyed every minute of canals and will (do) miss my adventures in an old Dawncraft my children grew up with – which was "home", escape pod - you name it, and kept me amused and doing something for years. But it’s time, as it seems it is from the adverts for so many other hobby-boaters.

All I can say is thank you for reading my articles. I hope they inspired some of you.

All the best,

Simon Woollen

I am writing this on board Dawntreader with wind and rain lashing down like it had gone out of fashion in the last few months, water dripping in from somewhere and the BBC issuing storm warnings for this evening. After what was the best summer since 1976 and sadly, I had to miss most of it – more of that later - just deal with here and now as always.

• First job: remove all the bungee cords that make lowering the canopy down in the summer easy, and replace them with bolt rope – it's just a nautical term for rope below say 5 mm - or lashings if you prefer, but the idea is to strap that canopy down as tight as possible, bungees allow far to much movement which shakes the stitching to bits. I even use a rope on canopy supports that ties down to the engine bay in case wind gets under it and lifts it.
• Next get some 50 :50 waterproof PVA glue and water and squirt this around the hand rail fastenings, which have duly dried out leaving a nice gap for water to drip through screw holes, and of course the vents which are mounted on wooden circles. Plus anywhere else that one thinks could leak. The beauty with this trick is that rain will allow pva to creep into anything and eventually thicken up and set.
• A couple of springs running from fore deck to aft mooring post will stop or lessen surging which puts a huge strain on mooring lines and cleats – I've noticed so many boats don’t seem to do this and wonder why their lines pull out.
• Clean all sliding window gutters and the stupid so called drains that are supposed to let water out, although the drip strips I fitted ages ago help.

So the season started fantastically hot and dry, the Kennet and Avon almost resembling the Mediterranean !! But it soon became problematic, as water levels started to drop significantly.

The biggest issue was the outboard blocking with clay silt as the prop was almost screwing itself along the bottom. I have to use a long shaft engine as it needs to be below the hull depth (draught) to get enough water to stop cavitation ( where the prop spins in a vacuum and the bubbles eat chunks out of it ). Worse than that, it's now in the path of anything that may be lurking just below the surface, stirred up nicely by what ever has gone before me.

The answer was a prop guard, which I think all outboards ought to have as the only thing stopping your engine from exploding as it goes from 2000 rpm to zero in a fraction of a second is a 5mm pin designed hopefully to break if you do hit something ( shear pins ) but you only need to blow two or three of these on a trip to the pub to ruin an afternoon.

The next problem was the sheer heat inside, which made Burma look positively cool. Before I could really go anywhere, I was chucking buckets of canal water over the boat in an attempt to cool it down. On the bright side, my insulation must work as inside was at least 12 degrees warmer than out !! On the down side, though, things dried out to such an extent that the hatches in the floor of the cockpit shrunk and wouldn’t latch. At one point I even disconnected the solar panels, as battery lights were green almost continuously, even though I do have a regulator that in theory only allows a certain charge in... (Never trust gadgets they have an inbuilt sod it up function!)

When I was young sailing around the east coast, which is renowned for one thing - Mud !!!! proper thick goo that gets everywhere, I almost blew my outboard up. As the tide went out, I started stirring the mud up and of course being water cooled it could only go one place – straight up the cooling pipes where it started to coagulate nicely in the cylinder head waterways blocking everything! Sods law dictates that if it can go wrong it will, and at the most inopportune moment. And that’s exactly what happened to Dawntreader, stuck in the entrance to the marina with steam issuing out of her exhaust ( I really must fit a simple engine temperature gauge as no one looks back at their outboard to check cooling water) – mercifully the electric was rigged and we made it in – there being an excellent advert for electric propulsion. After a blast through with a hose pipe and after removing a gunked up thermostat, there was no real damage - but it could have been far worse.

So sadly, as water levels dropped even further and reports came in of canals being closed, the boat, like so many and perhaps what most are already, became a floating -just! static caravan. Still it was nice to sleep in the cockpit and look at stars and walk down to the canal side pub.

We are a bit late with this because for once I have been busy.

Dawntreader is an old boat; it has polyester resin glass fibre decks which suffer a process called crazing, basically the glass fibre cracks, and no painting will ever work properly as water gets into cracks and lifts it off in the first winter.

For those with long memories, a few years ago I used DC fix all over the decks. Incredibly cheap and cheerful (I stuck it down with impact adhesive!) and much to my surprise it's still there today. However I wanted something more boat like, so I ordered (from a cheap internet direct from manufacturer) some of this new foam teak look-alike stuff which, after a bit of a wait and plenty of tracking updates as it made its way from Asia to Europe, eventually arrived.

The first and hardest job was to remove all the deck fittings. Here was the problem, Dawntreader has been owned by a series of owners, who, like me, have all been broke! So I doubt the fittings have ever been off since the boat was built. The fittings are a good quality aluminium which polished up with a wire wheel like new – also taking years of paint off which had been accidentally daubed on during “tart “ ups. However, the screws that held them were plain old steel, well rusted in and worse, much worse, about ¼ of their original size. Basically, one more good jerk and they would have given up. The only way to remove them though, is to centre punch the screw, drill a pilot hole and send in one same size as head. Once screw head is off you can prise it up and punch out anything left, then grind down any bits protruding through the deck.

With all fittings off deck, cleaned etc., I realised that the dc fix was so good it wasn’t worth removing. The decking cuts very easily with a sharp blade and the glue worked well (possibly because it was going over vinyl to start). However, my biggest fear was drainage, especially the fore deck and where the cabin top meets decks.

After much thought I used roofing gutter repair bitumen in a tube to seal all edges, this went off hard within 24 hours and even in heat hasn’t softened. The side decks being long, I laid in lengths with a gap to allow for some expansion and again shed water from the channels with foam.

The results! it looks like a boat. I did not do all the fore deck but left gaps between each section filled with bitumen because this is a boat's Achilles heel – the fore deck barely drains. Cost £2 rolls at £14 each if you prepared to wait and £5 of gutter fix and £6 of stainless-steel screws for deck fittings – that must be cheaper than paint. The whole job took a day although there are edges to finish.

The biggest issue I have had over years is the water pump. Open a tap, and water burst out under pressure, soaking everything nearby – usually the phone. What I needed was an accumulator like posh boats have to even pressure (basically a large rubber balloon stuck inside a tank you can pressure by pumping air in – the balloon fills with water, the air pressure in the tank pushes against it and even flows. Luckily work had one, or rather it was being replaced as part of a service. So I stripped it, cleaned, de-rusted the inside of the tank, checked bladder and more importantly changed valve rubber. £0.35 plus £7.99 for rust convertor – so for a tenner all in.

Now the clever bit, this must go near the pump and comes with 1¼ inch screw fittings. You can drive yourself nuts searching internet stores for fittings or you can use lateral thinking!!! A well-known garden watering system sells many fittings of the same size that allow you to do, guess what !! attach an approved drinking water clear plastic pipe to it. Cost of pipe per metre £12, fittings £8.

The hardest part was getting pressure right, remembering we have pumps and not mains pressure – and also remembering that 15 litres or so is going straight up the pressure vessel.  So top tips: 1) brim your water tank and 2) isolate the water heater – sending 45psi to shower so it behaves like a pressure washer is one thing , blowing the seals on a Paloma is another. The results are truly amazing it’s the one thing I am so pleased I did. The shower is even, and the taps work immediately without spluttering.

It still needs rubbing, strake sanding and painting and I still haven’t ever got around to finishing the shower room, but do you know, who cares? If I wanted perfection I could buy a new boat.

I’ve done nothing. This could be a challenging 800 words; you may as well stop reading now. What have I done on the boat in the last few months?? Hmm... Diddly squat. Actually, I ripped the entire shower out, but more of that later.

Years ago, racing very old wooden often leaky old dinghies, one would get quite excited by the end of February and start applying liberal amounts of glue, glass fibre and paint; all of which failed by end of June being a total waste of time, effort and money and leading to even more leaks, so you learn the hard way. Glass fibre needs 24 hrs above 10 degrees c to set properly, as well as what ever it’s being applied to needs to be dry, which with theamount of condensation about, just isn’t happening. Paint especially modern stuff, which is water based is exactly the same, in fact I will save you reading a list: just apply the above to any product we may use to “tart the old tub up “and none of them will work until April (later if this weather doesn’t stop freezing).

The boat is actually a mess, all the floor tiles are up and stacked against the bulkhead because condensation just forms under them and they freeze and never dry out. All the locker tops are off for exactly the same reason but with added mushroom growth if there is no air. There’s no water connected because it would just freeze the pump, pipes etc., causing bigger issues. Gas is off at the bottle. One concession I did make today was to remove the bubble pack from the windows and open them and the vents all afternoon: a good breeze can dry out better than any heater. As for the outboard – it’s still there! I haven’t even looked at it let alone try and start it recently. The very last thing I want on a water-cooled engine is water inside when temperatures get down to below minus five. The battery is at home in the warm and dry rather than freezing. Even with solar it’s getting very little if any charge and apart from that cold batteries don’t charge anywhere near as well as they do when warmer. I did repair a zip in the canopy after a storm, it was like trying to sew concrete the vinyl was so hard and stiff. However, another few weeks and it will all be fine again. I also can’t move in the cockpit because the canopy is strapped down at every location with “bolt rope” as the weather goes from freezing to hurricane in a matter of hours.

The shower! Twice I have put a new tray in and twice it’s cracked – because it has the thickness of a margarine tub. Also the floor isn’t level so it has to be built up about 9 inches and the whole thing unless built as a wet room, leaks into the void below growing better fungi than the lockers. So before what seems to have been a mini ice age I ripped it all out with the idea of new tray, may be even a decent shower screen - you know, the kind of thing like you have at home. Then I gave up because I saw that originally the shower was built into the boat, the drain went through and into the bilge plates collecting not at the back but in a large trough under the floor. I throw this in because that seemed to be the 1970s way of doing It and not just on Dawncraft! In the bow section there was even the remains of a pump - the whole lot exiting through the sink waste. However, someone had filled it all with expanding foam and although I did try and gently remove it using bent wire in a drill (sort of egg whisk thing) caution got the better of me, seeing as we are below the water line! So, what have I done instead – I come from old school where boat buckets served so many purposes!! My shower is a bucket, well actually it’s a large blue tub because a bucket isn’t big enough and it works a treat! I got the idea from some swanky B and B made of a corrugated iron shed on wheels! (shepherds hut). It’s cheap, it’s simple, can be lifted out easily withoutaffecting its function. Just add soap and hot water and gently agitate.

Last bit is a word of warning. If, like me, you have done diddly squat, do not start that outboard on last season’s fuel – it will be stale, full of water at bottom of the tank and liable to block your carburettor by the time you have done less than a mile. Ditch it and start afresh, there are recycling centres that will take it in an approved container.

It won’t be long. Spring must arrive.

I have been busy winterising a motorcycle engine. What really kills them is water creeping into the electrics either by rain pouring down on them or worse still, condensation, which eventually causes the copper wire to go green and then suddenly what is supposed to be 12 volts is down to 9 or 10, causing all sorts of anxiety on the side of the road.

I work outside for 7 hours a day in all weathers and have become quite used to dealing with winter.  But reading some of the “prepare your boat for winter" articles, one could be cruel and suggest that they are written by journalists that perhaps don’t!!

OK.  I’ve just covered the outboard (it’s the same as motorcycle engine) - a small tin of silicone grease over all the electrical contacts – spark plug caps, coil etc., goes an awfully long way to stopping problems, as does draining the fuel completely (modern corn ethanol fuel is actually Montana moonshine and extremely good at absorbing water, which doesn’t do fuel systems any good). I often wince when people lay up their bikes for the whole of the winter.  My advice is to start that outboard at least once a month or the oil seals etc. will dry out,  causing problems next year.  And don’t forget to grease the steering gear and control cables, if only because they will dry out without use and become heavy and unresponsive. It's worth using a penetrating cleaning fluid (the one that comes in yellow and blue can) to clean off all the old grease first as it hardens over time. If you have an out-board lift tilt and drain it, then bounce it a few times up and down. This does wonders for clearing the grill over the water intake. Inboards are slightly trickier mainly because of the prop shaft. Everyone is used to giving the greaser two turns in summertime but they duly forget it in wintertime and seeing as this grease is the only thing stopping water entering the shaft, plus a strip of greased soaked leather or rope, the results of neglect can be catastrophic. When Dawntreader was diesel powered, I used to drain the fuel tank in winter because the dreaded diesel bug loves the condensation which naturally forms as air heats and cools. So either drain it or brim it. Anything to stop this.

Bilge pumps!! Who ever thought that relying on an automatic anything was a good idea? I have three and only one is electric- the other two are very much manual. Your battery will naturally discharge in the cold and the chances of a failure are incredibly high. Also, nothing beats sticking your head down below the cockpit floor once a week just to double check. I read with interest that two boats went down on the Kennet and Avon after storm Bert, during which,although I don’t know facts, I can assume that 40mm of rain in 24 hours probably contributed.

Next, the hull. We spend a fortune on car products to give them glossy and protected paintwork and we never translate this to anything else. So my advice is a good waxing of the paintwork whatever the hull construction; anything to stop water sitting on flat surfaces and slowly penetrating the base layers where it will freeze and blow. I’ve used this anti- green cleaner: it leaves behind a residue that stops the algae from forming and is exceptional on the canopy, which also needs a coating of silicone based cleaner to help shed the rain. The boat has to breathe, windsocks over vents allows them to be left open without the fear of rainwater pouring in – although storm Bert disproved that theory! Canopies are my biggest fear- ever been in a tent in a storm and seen it blow in and out? My main issue is the wind trying to lift off the pram folders (metal supports) so I have a cleat on the engine cover and a large mooring rope pulling it all down tight. This seems to work, as last weekend was horrendous. Forget the elastic fasteners in winter, they are ideal in summer for quick removal, but the idea is to stop it shaking about which means bolt rope (it’s a sailing term used for rope of about 10mm that strengthened a sail).

Finally chaffing!! Even if you are in a marina, your boat will move back and forth day in, day out. We all use fair-leads (the holders for ropes in the deck) to reduce this. On many tall ships I was on, they even went as far as sewing in leather protectors. Just check around where your lines cross the deck and especially around a cleat where this can go unnoticed.

The best thing you can do for any machine is to use it! We seem to have an inbuilt psychology which says that after November we must all hide away until March. There are some lovely days in winter, why waste them?

I’ve been bitten badly in the leg and it is taking its time to heal. It was also incredibly painful, swelled quickly and made me feel quite nauseous for a while. The suspect a spider! A false widow to be more exact, from what I could work out from its mangled remains. I don’t mind spiders. I don’t go into panic mode when I see them, but just to give a flavour of how I feel let’s give this article a catchy acronym: Big Roaming Spider Territory Deterrents.

Did you know there are 650 types in the UK of which 12 can inflict a bite on a human? The false widow being most feared, followed by the garden and the cupboard. So that’s three we can find on board before we get past the galley. OK what to do? I made a school boy error years ago by using a direct killer from a well know brand – what I wasn’t expecting was the cockpit vinyl windows to age twenty years in a week and after that I never tried it again. So we are going organic and using a mixture of incense sticks (because I found some in charity shop going cheap) and tea tree oil, although peppermint apparently also works, as does half a lemon. This is after first giving all the cracks and crevasses a good hoovering out and, more importantly, emptying the hoover immediately as I’ve seen them crawl back out of the nozzle. Having said that, years ago I was complaining about cluster flies.

On with the show and it’s been a good summer cruising about– usually from pub to pub or tearoom and I will admit to pushing the old tub hard on a few Sunday afternoons to make it in time for a coffee and a pasty. As I have got older, I have realised that I am less agile, and the canal can be a lonely place. We shy away from thinking about safety because it’s rammed down our throat by every corporation’s, “It’s our number one priority!” And the boat safety doesn’t cover the most obvious danger - us!

So here is my over 60s list...

• Boarding ladder essential always have it down when cruising, I don’t think I could pull my self back on board up the hull any more.

• Deck-harness and two lanyard clips when using ladders in a lock, OK its slower, but an incident in Semington made me think! Hitting my own deck from 10 foot wouldn’t be good.

• Windlass, belt clip and lanyard – nothing worse than trying to climb a ladder with one in your hand.

• Drop the canopy!! I used to be able to enter and exit through roll up doors quite easily. Now I find its far easier just to step into the cockpit.

• Engine shut off, especially in the locks – I find this odd because on level 2 powerboats we must wear a lanyard that kills ignition if we leave helm. Anyway, I saw a boat leave Seend top lock by itself as its owner caught the rope around the morse lever.

• Life jacket – I never used to wear one then I started wearing self-inflatables which also have harness points built in.

• Centre mooring cleat, mine is lashed through the two handrails but a rope in centre makes handling so much easier on your own.

• Last but not least and we all carry one but never use it, the boat hook with one modification, the handle has been drilled out so you can attach it to your boat. I’ve even become a dab hand at being able to loop a rope onto a bollard with the hook and not leave the boat.

Improvement of the year is having one-way valves on the bilge pumps, this keeps a certain amount of water in the exit pipe so when you start the pump it has something to push against and stops that cavitation you get with impeller pumps and also stops what’s left in the pipe from falling back into the boat.

The second improvement is ditching the large batteries in favour of smaller motorcycle batteries – now I don’t have a large solar set up like some boats, mine are trickle charge in fact I doubt they give out more than 2amps. Also the out board is essentially a motorcycle engine and its generator isn’t that powerful and what have found is smaller amperage batteries are fully charged (obviously) far easier than some great lump of a leisure battery which doesn’t seem to get above 80percent without being hooked onto mains for two days. Now I have three small batteries giving a total of 120 amps but each with its own solar trickle -Lets see what happens over winter.

Lastly a few things that have worked well! That sticky-back plastic – I haven’t painted anything for ages and it’s been on the deck outside for years. Pouring dilute waterproof pva down every deck screw I could find - not a leak in sight! Remember - you read that here first!

Where to begin? I suppose some bright sparks idea to change the gas bottle sizes meaning if I wanted gas, I am going to have to earn one the hard way. I needed to raise the tank sides by at least 25 cm to accommodate the bottles. I did get a quote to do this in situ without disturbing the tank but sadly where it sat meant the extra size bottles wouldn’t clear the deck beam so nothing else for it. Time to remove the gas tank, its drainpipe, and half the cockpit with it. Oh yeah, the quote! £400 hmm. Now before we go much further there is a quaint term used when I am busy doing something that many have neither the skills nor aptitude to try - it’s called tinkering! How lovely... let’s get started.

First tank hasn’t been out in forty years so plenty of rust treatment – I use the Hammerite rust convertor. That done, order £50 quid’s worth of 3mm steel plate cut to size and a pack of 5mm welding rods – we going to have to get it hot. An hour's tinkering later, and the tank is now 25 cm higher. Next - which I hadn’t bargained for - replace the rotten ply it sat on. Tank painted yellow with a large gas sign, and it can go back in if I could find a 28mm Metal to copper fitting for hull and a small length of 28mm tube.

After a week searching (something has gone wrong post Covid: no one seems to stock anything) I found a second hand one on E bay. Always remember copper olives for anything gas never brass. Tank back in and guess what - it fouled the water pump locker and worst the door... OK, two foot of water pipe later and pump is moved; mercifully the boat was so badly built there was enough of a gap around the door to move it across by half an inch and I made it fit properly.

Now for the hard bit: the gas bubble. This came with two shocks: first the cost for what is a safety device and secondly the fitting. OK in the UK we tend to still use imperial pipes so in my case 3\8th but the bubble is made by our French cousins, and they don’t, so its 10mm. If you are a non-tinker and clueless on the gravity and severity of most situations, that’s a 0.5 mm gap – big enough to blow me and boat to Valhalla. There are no 3/8th to 10mm fittings and my tame gas engineer (or rather fitter, as an engineer makes things work) promptly shook his head and said he couldn’t or wouldn’t do it. Hmm ! OK. With years of old bikes, Morris 1000s and even a Morris Ital, one learnt to flare brake pipes – a process whereby they are stretched slightly, I used a proper hydraulic type to get an even flare to 10 mm – sorted.  Tool of the year - small pipe benders, remembering you can fail on unnecessary fittings.

Time for some gas which mercifully fitted the locker snugly, put fluid in bubble tester and try. I have never felt so deflated, mentally exhausted and down-hearted as it looked like a glass of champagne. Rowlocks now what the heck do I do? Worse still, where is the leak? One thing many can’t do is think laterally, start at cooker (the furthest point) and turn off its tap. Hey presto bubbles stop and why? because I ran out of gas this time last year and the cooker knobs rely on high melting point grease to seal them – that’s quite frightening when you think about it.

OK - magnetic tray at the ready and dismantle the gas rail and get the knobs out , if you have ever done this you will see what the magnetic tray is for, as the springs try and fall out the moment they are unscrewed. Cleaned, greased and re try and no bubbles even for three minutes- ooh we are winning. But not only that, the gas “ engineer “ was happy with everything including the pipe clips .

Next kettle de-scaler through the water heater and wait for leaks – the stuff that came out of there and shower was amazing !! Another bubble test and all is good. The engine bay has its own fire blanket because the outboard is probably the biggest risk, it also has a spill kit (not that that’s in the safety, but ought to be). We have two co detectors because of the fumes from boats in locks, and three extinguishers whose job isn’t to put the fire out but shove it back whilst I escape.

Day of the test and a heart stopping moment when gas pressure dropped because we left cooker slightly on (I think bubble is a brilliant idea) and she passed with one advisory. Wait for it ……………. Ventilation in the door - which if I hadn’t spent hours making it fit properly the gap alone would have sufficed. Still you can't tinker it all .

By the time you read this it will be spring, with new temperature records set daily and I should be in shorts and t shirt but now I'm not. Indeed, I have worked outside since the age of 15 and this winter has been hardest so far for keeping warm, mainly because it has been so wet, and damp is biggest source of heat loss. Dawn treader (Dt) has been an awful lot warmer since I turned the clock back to paraffin lamps, it's been 5 degrees outside and 20 inside - that’s a respectable lift of 15!  Oddly enough, it’s got rid of the cluster flies and hundreds of spiders I used to suffer from! But it's still been cold sat in the cockpit etc., and this got me thinking...

My great grandfather to the power of 30,  Erik Wolfensohn the Warm ( Viking bloke) managed to sail the north sea as far as Iceland in an open boat in February. Despite what we think, they were no hardier than us; they didn’t have magical anti-freezing powers, so there must be something he knew that time and fashion have erased.

Clothing! Ever since I started sailing at 15, clothing for boaters has been driven by fashion (blame Jan's Boutique on Howard’s way). Today we all wonder around in manmade fibres with some special property – feature plus benefit equals sales with the labels sewn where they can be easily read, and each label raises our social status.  But I am sorry to say none of it has kept me warm or dry. You will have to forgive my sketchy research on this as very little is written down on just what great etc grandad wore, but it would appear to be the following. Linen under trousers – (cotton wasn’t around just yet!) felted woollen socks (easy to do  - just buy large ones and tumble dry them), linen shirt,  then heavy woollen trousers and woollen jumper or top with a tunic and heavy woollen cloak, fur boots and wool around the legs bit like a 1980s keep fit thing. Because wool has an amazing property: it can keep heat in when its wet! Of course add some waterproofing which sheep make naturally, and although you probably smelled beyond today's social acceptance, you could survive what ever the weather threw at you – in fact the more I read about what these people did with wool the more I wonder if that’s how we got our name!

I am writing this snug and warm in sheep skin boots, sheepskin waistcoat, heavy wool socks and a sheepskin hat and thick wool reefer jacket – all my branded expensive gear is now in a local charity shop, help yourselves it's useless!!!

Anyway, on with the show and DT's gas tank is out, and I’ve welded 6 inches to the top to accept the new bottles. I wasn’t going to take it out and did get a quote to weld in situ, but I thought it’s been in there twenty years so better refurbish the whole thing with several coats of rust convertor. Having got this far I have ordered a gas bubble. Slightly expensive and I am in the habit of turning the gas off when I don’t use it, but I think it’s a good safety feature.

I’ve added two carbon monoxide detectors mainly because I was using paraffin lamps and interestingly, they didn’t go off which is unsurprising seeing as they don’t when the gas cooker is on full tilt. I have removed the bubble pack from the windows. The more it can breathe now the better. Indeed a day recently with the widows wide open and a wind blowing through dried it out more than any heater or dehumidifier could ever achieve. Whilst I had no gas and couldn’t use the paloma water heater, I filled it full of kettle descaler – what a difference! I should have done that ages ago! All the gas knobs have had a light smear of gas tap grease ready for new bottles – though I have sort of got used to living on board quite happily and cheaply without gas – it is part of the boat and I now know how to use it sparingly, whereas before I relied on it especially the heater which really burnt it – about 2 kilos in 24hours.

It’s my safety certificate this year; I quite like this because I like working from repair manuals. I just go through everything they check and make sure it’s still working, attached etc. CRT and the inspectors are always a good source of info if you are unsure (my new gas locker being a prime example). I think there is too much bending of the rules once they have left and dubious pressure gas portable stoves and heaters creep back on board, because we forgot how our ancestors coped with the cold.

Now if you will excuse me, I am off to plunder Lindisfarne, there being precious little on the Kennet and Avon worth a Viking raid.

When I was young I wanted a Thames barge. We lived near Maldon and some of my early memories were walking along the sea front with loads of old boats in various states of either rebuild or decay. West Mersea at that time was a true grave yard with many old hulls pulled up to the highest of spring tide marks and converted into house boats, getting wet probably only two or three times a year. It always seemed to me to be such as sad end to a boat. As for my Thames barge, well, I could probably afford one, but I certainly couldn’t ever afford to maintain or renovate one.

This got me thinking the other day about Dawn Treader and what would become of her if ever I was incapacitated. Sutton Hoo aside – the idea of being buried in it with all my worldly goods and my desire to go to Valhalla where probably for the first time in years I could stay up late and have a drink with a few friends - wouldn’t go down well from an ecology point of view as although the resin burns well the glass fibre remains. Sadly, the only option would be to break her up and put it all in a 6 cubic yard skip for land fill (may as well be buried in it then).

I did some research on this and came up blank – there are one or two companies that specialise in the destruction and salvage of old sail boats, but no one seems to be dealing with end of life boats on canals and waterways. This is going to be a major problem in say five or ten years. Ok Dawntreader is glass fibre, 1 pot of resin, some matt and gel coat and you can just about fix anything at a reasonable cost – even her brand new transom wasn’t overly expensive in comparison to say a wooden or steel boat. But as I make my way down the canal, you cannot help noticing that many of the barges are coming to the end of their life with what would be astronomical repair costs.

From an engineering point of view, steel and water are a nightmare for corrosion and require really good coatings (paint to you and I ) to prevent the rust. However, there are other problems. The moment we mix in electricity and especially direct current which most of us use from batteries, we set up a form of electrolysis that starts to eat the hull. Ok we all know that we should use sacrificial anodes but what we don’t realise is after a while these become inaffective. I have seen boats with almost a spider’s web look to the hull as the electrolysis eats away at the metal.

I noticed this on Dawntreader's outboard. What appeared to be a half-worn anode simply wasn’t working as it furred up, for want of a better term. Suddenly the edge of her prop or cavitation plate is acting as the anode and the outboard is being eaten alive!!

Add increased licence fees, price rises in both gas and fuel, the lack of places that a boat can be pulled out at a reasonable cost before you even start blacking, hull survey or paying a welder to fit new anodes. I once welded the floors into a Morris 1000, the welding took half a day, removing the interior and years of bitumen under-seal took two weekends and I am sure it's the same for a narrow boat.

This problem seems to be affecting many harbours and inlets around the Cornish coast where boats have been abandoned, leaving it to the harbour authority or local council to dispose of. It would seem dis-owning a boat is just as easy as buying one! From what I have read you inform CRT that you sold it to a bloke down the pub and cancel your licence and seeing as for many this is their home address it would be difficult for any agency to find the real owner should someone walk away.

So, what is the answer? I am lucky being at Foxhangers. I have a decent slip right next door and there is one in the marina at Devizes and a dry dock at Semington. However, head towards Bristol and there is nothing much at all. Considering the number of boats on the canal, that is rather worrying. What we need is yards like I grew up with on the East Coast where boats were pulled out at a nominal fee and there were enough skilled people around to either do the work for you or instruct you for a morning on how to caulk a hull, apply antifouling, change a prop, anode etc., all of which their marina shop had in stock!!! Of course, the tide went out twice a day so as long as you could park off the mud you had 8 hours of dry work time.

Maybe that is where it has gone wrong; may be CRT need to own and rent more dry docks and alleviate a potential problem. However, anyone can own a boat but not all have the practical skills or money to keep them maintained.

I would still love a Thames barge though, but I think we would slowly decay together.

We live in a canal side cottage, or rather we did in 1805 when the Somerset Coal Canal was opened. The canal actually ran so close that they piled the earth up against the cottage, so the kitchen appears to be 3-foot underground. Indeed, the neighbours still have the bridge in the garden and the loading bay for the earth mill. An evening's walk to the pub in Combe Hay passes bridges well cut with gritty ropes, and deserted locks complete with gates that haven’t seen a barge since 1898. It was then that the canal was replaced by the Camerton Branch Railway – which ran almost through the bottom of the garden and was immortalised by the 1950s film the Titfield Thunderbolt (about a group of railway enthusiast who wanted to save their line).

This sort of leads us neatly into this article as I have just read Sou'wester, the Inland Waterways Magazine and this has got me thinking.

The work being carried out and dedication to the cause should be applauded and recognised: parts of the old Coal Canal in Timsbury and Paulton now have water in them for the first time in over 120 years. Add this to work on Wilts and Berks, various canals in Gloucester etc., and it could be true to say that there are as many canal projects on the go now as there were during the  canal mania (the period of intense canal building in England and Wales between the 1790s and 1810s). One cannot but think the future of our network is a foregone conclusion considering the benefits to wildlife and to humans with walking, cycling and water pursuits. Plus the re-instatement of a simpler slow pace of life.

However, my concern is history will repeat itself.

The Somerset Coal Canal is a good point: it was extremely profitable in its day, making money for the company and more importantly for its share holders,  by moving a commodity that was becoming essential for the industrial revolution - coal. The canal was shut down and business converted to rail, because you could move more coal quickly and easily and thus make even more money. Until, eventually, 50 years after it was built, that too closed down because they mined out. The Bath council made good use of the canal's bed by filling it with the town's rubbish- which promptly caught fire and burnt for years !!! but is still a good source of old railings, glass bottles - you name it (even most of the toilet block from the old Somerset and Dorset railway station)!

So here’s the rub in the same magazine DEFRA have cut the grant to CRT by £12.6m a year. to quote the magazine, that means that means:

• Being unable to do winter maintenance on 586 miles of waterway.
• Being unable to operate maintain and repair 156 miles of waterway.
• 50 0/0 of the spend on reservoirs will be unfunded (one assumes these are to feed the canals with water?)

Add into this a recent BBC article on the Regent Canal boat dwellers, which I felt was skewed to highlight the fact that most residential canal boaters burn fossil fuel – the very thing the canals were built to transport - as well as running their diesel engines for hours in the winter to make and store a minimal amount of electricity compared to the energy used to make it – all rather bluntly pointed out in the article.

We are all struggling financially, none of us can really sustain an increase in licence fees, along with fuel costs etc. We have tightened our belts to the last hole and there’s worse: we have no time. Many of the people who are near retirement, or have already retired, are now raising grandchildren to keep their own children working to pay the endless bills. The skills required to maintain and restore a canal are dwindling, "retired stone masons , blacksmiths, brickies..." Soon the only skill any one can offer will be  "management or IT".

If we are going to save our way of life, we all need to start thinking up better arguments than environmental / green and social benefits and concentrate on the only thing government ministers ever understand. They are, I suppose, the equivalent of the old shareholders £ Sterling, and their 20% cut on any revenues raised. Today we have grown weary of the deadline headline. Ten years to save the planet, etc and gluing yourself to a canal could be problematic. However, I am concerned that history will repeat itself and the slow painful decline of our precious waterways will become evident by the end of my time.