Final weekend at Stone – Part 2
We didn’t really do much at all today. We had a couple of cups of coffee in bed as we waited for the heating to warm the boat through before we eventually got up and got showered. We had a bit of a tidy up in the cratch and Sue set up our table and chairs ready for our maiden cruise in little over a week’s time.
We had lunch on board and then settled down to watch the Liverpool v Chelsea match. We had very little to take to the car when we left at 4.30, we now have everything on board that we need for our trip to Braunston on May 6th.
We have had a weekend trip to Paris planned for a few months now, we fly there next Saturday and return on Monday 5th, a bank holiday and my birthday! The following day, we plan to drive to Braunston and park the car there. We’ll catch a bus into Rugby before getting a train to Stone and then probably travel by taxi to Aston marina. Once there, we won’t be long before we are on our way, heading south on the Trent & Mersey in the direction of Great Haywood.
Final weekend at Stone
We avoided the Friday afternoon M6 traffic and left our journey to Aston Marina at Stone until Saturday morning. After we arrived it took us about an hour to drag our stuff to the boat and put it away, that was it-all of our boating belongings were on board!
We then drove into Stone and did a little bit of shopping, including an hour in the local Wetherspoons, before returning to Aston Marina and our “new” boat, Caxton.
Sue wandered off to the marina farm shop while I stowed my tools away. She returned with a hotpot which, when heated up, was absolutely delicious!
After dinner we just kicked back and enjoyed the rest of the evening.
Phoenix III is sold
Proof, if any was needed, that our first boat Phoenix III is now sold. The money is in the bank and we have no idea who has bought her but we are sure that her new owners will be as happy as we are on board Caxton.
Easter Monday
The wind had dropped and the sun was shining when we awoke on Easter monday, a complete and welcome contrast to yesterday’s weather. Sue had seen a laundry box on the Argos website so after reserving it online, we got ready and drove into Stafford to collect it.
We took a walk down Gaolgate street in the sunshine and stopped to listen to new boyband, The Secrets who were playing in the Market Place. They were very good and Sue has tipped them to make the big time!
We had lunch in The Butler’s Bell, a Wetherspoons pub which was very stylish and a credit to the company. After lunch we wandered to Argos and picked up the laundry bin before returning to the car. My phone rang and it was Libby at Braunston marina telling me that she had shown Phoenix III to a couple who wanted to make an offer on the boat. Libby told us that they were in a position to buy immediately, weren’t bothered about a survey and had gone for a cup of tea. We had a short discussion about what we were prepared to do with the price and within an hour, the deal was done! The couple had been back to Phoenix III with a marina engineer who started the engine for them and apparently they were full of beaming smiles when they returned to the shop. Everything should be complete by the end of the week which is great because it is one less thing to have to think about.
By the time all of that had been concluded we were back on board Caxton doing the laundry. A mundane task maybe but significant in our boating life since we will no longer be dragging clothes to the boat every time and then carting bags of dirty laundry home afterwards.
We were in no hurry to leave Caxton but we had to go home at some time so we picked up the two small carrier bags of bits that we had, secured the boat and left at 4.30pm.
We’ll return on Friday with some more of our belongings and stay for the weekend. That should set us up nicely for the following weekend when we will leave Stone and move Caxton to Braunston.
Easter – A new beginning!
Four weeks ago we had lunch in the Bistro at Aston marina and contemplated the purchase of nb Caxton. Not quite a month later and we are spending our first weekend on board familiarising ourselves with our new boat. It’s been a hectic few weeks for us because apart from clearing and cleaning Phoenix III in preparation for her sale, Sue spent a week in hospital having a pacemaker fitted.
Despite only being discharged on Thursday, Sue felt fit enough to travel on Good Friday so we packed the car and drove the fifty miles to Stone. After we arrived we spent the next hour unpacking and installing our bits and pieces, mainly bedding, towels and kitchen equipment, before making the short trip into Stone where we had lunch at the Crown and Anchor and then did a bit of food shopping in Morrisons.
We spent the rest of the evening just pottering about and generally chatting about how we would be using our new floating home, although we were briefly interrupted by a tap on the window.
Saturday arrived and we were pleased to have had a good comfortable sleep in our new bed. The shower was next to be tested, Sue can’t use it yet due to her operation but I am pleased to report that it does an excellent job. After a light breakfast we drove to Midland Chandlers at Penkridge where we bought a spare cassette for the toilet and a couple of other bits and pieces. We then drove to Sainsbury’s at Stafford where we had lunch and did some more shopping before heading off to another retail park to buy even more bits for the boat, little wonder that some say BOAT is an acronym for “Bring Out Another Thousand”! We had a late dinner, collapsed into the chairs and eventually headed for bed.
Sunday, Easter Sunday to be precise, came adorned with rough weather so Sue knocked up a couple of bacon banjos for me, no doubt trying to ensure that I was fortified for another round of retail therapy. Luckily, Easter sunday is a day when shops over 3,000 sq feet in area are not allowed to open so when we drove into Stone at 11am, nothing was open and we had to return to the boat and watch Liverpool beat Norwich as they edge their way towards their first Premier league win. We’ve just generally lazed about on board ever since, listening to the radio, reading, crocheting and knitting, well one of us has anyway.
Tomorrow is a bank holiday and in principle we should be returning home but neither of us are very keen, preferring to stay here on board Caxton.
Sue took some pictures which are posted here
Phoenix III is up for sale!
Regular readers may have wondered why we have apparently done no cruising lately, despite the reasonable spring weather. Quite simply, we have bought another boat and Phoenix III is now up for sale and that whole process amongst other things has kept us busy for the last few weeks.
We bought Phoenix III for leisure purposes in 2007 and agreed that we ‘give it a go’ for a couple of years. Six and a half years later and we have had many holidays, weekend trips and even weekends based in Braunston marina. With a new paint job and a replacement engine with gearbox fitted in 2011, we intended keeping Phoenix III until I retire when we would spend six to eight months cruising the system before deciding on whether we could become continuous cruisers and buy a bigger boat. At 52’, Phoenix III is just about big enough for living on board but to make the leap to CCing, most people would go for something close to 70’.
Despite our plan to wait make the final decision after our first summer ‘out on the cut’, we still regularly looked at brokerage websites in case that special boat was up for sale somewhere. It was always to no avail, there were a few contenders but there was always one thing or another that would put us off and as a result we got no further than looking at web pages on Apollo Duck.
I regularly peruse the pages of a canal discussion forum which is a bit like the proverbial ‘Curate’s Egg’, good in parts! Mainly, it’s crap, there are a handful of members who regularly hijack posts by arguing amongst themselves as they try to score points off each other. Some of these sad people have averaged more than 8 posts per day since they started on the forum but that’s my rant over. One of the good parts of this Curate’s Egg came on the day when someone asked about narrowboats for sale which were 45’ to 55’ in length. One response included a couple of links to boats that were for sale. One of the boats, Caxton, hadn’t been officially advertised and the owners included a link to the blog of the original owners who had carefully recorded the building of the boat.
When you imagine what your ideal boat would consist of, there are a number of big decisions to make, the stern layout, windows, engine and equipment to name but the basics. Caxton is a semi-trad and that was on our list. We like windows and a saloon at the front of the boat so that we can see along the canal. Caxton has portholes and the saloon is in the middle but those holes are large, there are two side hatches and a couple of Houdini hatches so we are happy with that, the engine is the bigger brother of what we bought for Phoenix III so that was OK too. The rest of the equipment swung it for us, engine generator, sine wave inverter, washing machine, tumble drier, dishwasher, full size shower cubicle, fully fitted bedroom, huge front deck, the list went on. It was easy to see that Caxton had been built to a very high specification with every piece of equipment given a great deal of consideration.
I realised that I had spent hours reading the blogs about Caxton so I figured that it was time to confess my obsession to Sue. She was impressed and intrigued and then we both spent an hour or so trawling Apollo Duck again but with the same result as usual, nothing that interested us.
The following morning, Sunday 23rd March, we talked again about Phoenix III, Caxton and our boating future before deciding to take a drive to Aston Marina near Stone where we could take a look at Caxton. We knew from their blog that the owners, Paul & Elaine weren’t around but it was a lovely day so we were happy enough to make the trip up the A5 into Staffordshire. We discovered that Aston marina has a Bistro and a farm shop so we decided to have lunch before walking around the marina to catch a glimpse of Caxton and she looked as good in real life as we had seen in the internet pictures.
I sent a text to the owners and arranged to return the following day to view the boat properly.
We met Paul and Elaine the following day, Monday 24th March and were given the grand tour of Caxton. Having pored over the blogs, it was all very familiar to us and we had very few questions to ask, Caxton was exactly what we expected to find and as a result we very quickly struck a deal to buy her from Paul and Elaine.
Although we weren’t dependent on selling Phoenix III for the purchase of Caxton, we wanted to get her ready to sell as soon as possible so we moved on board Phoenix III three days later. It took us another three days to remove all of our belongings, three car loads and a load into the skip before we were able to hand the keys over to the marina at Braunston to put her on brokerage. So despite the fact that storage on board was seen as being a restriction, there was a hell of a lot of stuff to remove.
It was a strange weekend, I was emotionally unhappy on Thursday, Friday and on Saturday morning, remembering and picturing the great times that we had enjoyed over the last six and a half years. Something changed in my mind as I drove back from Hinckley to Braunston on that sunny Saturday morning and I felt much more positive about the situation. Sue was quite bemused by my emotions since she had been unaffected by it all until the last few moments on Sunday when the final sweep through took place and she was suddenly overcome and cried unexpectedly.
We handed the keys over so Phoenix III is now up for sale and we have arranged to buy Caxton on Wednesday 16th April with the intention of cruising back to Braunston over the following week.
That plan went out of the window when Sue was admitted to hospital on Thursday where she is awaiting an operation, our trip from Stone to Braunston is on hold for the moment but hopefully not for too long.
As for this blog, I haven’t decided on its future. We had always thought that our CCing boat would be called BRAMLORE after the first two letters of our children’s names; BRett, AMy, LOuise & REbecca so maybe our new blog should reflect that. We have nothing against the name CAXTON but the name of that blog is already well known. The answer will come to us I’m sure but until then, we’ll keep posting here on applebeesfarm.co.uk
Winter is officially over!
We had a lazy start today, the sun was shining but it was still cool when we awoke. Being in no hurry, we had a couple of cups of coffee before we dragged ourselves out of bed.
It was still windy when we left our mooring but with no turning round to do, we were untroubled by it. Sue prepared dinner in the slow cooker as we made our way to Calcutt locks on what was turning out to be the first glorious day of the year. We were up and through the locks in no time at all, the first being our way and the other two needing to be emptied suggesting that we were following someone on the way up. By the time we left the top lock, it was warm enough to strip down to short sleeves, hard to believe how dull and cold we had been just twenty four hours earlier.
We had a pleasant journey back to Braunston and decided that we would make the most of the weekend by staying overnight and return home in the morning. After a short stop to take on water and empty the cassette we nudged our way into our berth in the marina. Our plan is now to have a walk before returning for our sunday dinner, a beef hotpot which is already smelling delicious. We have to get out of here before the aroma forces us to abandon the walk !!!
Climate change
It was quite cool inside the boat when we awoke this morning and a quick peep through the curtains showed us why. Thick dark grey clouds filled the sky and a strong wind whipped up the surface of the G.U. Canal.
It was eight o’clock so we got up and got dressed and prepared to cast off. I untied the back of the boat and immediately the wind pushed the stern out from the bank, not a good start but with a bit of muscle work Sue and I managed to get everything under control. We chugged along to the junction where we took on water before reversing into the wind and taking the left turn towards Napton.
The strong wind persisted with its cold blasts all the way to Wigrams turn and then as if we had entered a different land, we turned right and the sun came out. By the time we had reached the top lock at Calcutt, we were enjoying a beautiful spring day. We worked down the three locks on our own, crossing two boats on the way and by the time we left the bottom lock we were actually quite warm. We were soon on the way to Stockton where we have stayed many times before, this time would be slightly different for us because instead of turning at Birdingbury Wharf the following morning, we were able to turn at the arm currently being restored and developed by Willow Wren. After our turn we reversed four hundred yards or so back to a convenient towpath mooring.
After showering in the lovely, newly heated fresh water, we walked the two miles down to Long Itchington and had a late lunch at The Buck & Bell. We sat outside in the sunshine and marvelled at the contrast between the weather in the afternoon compared to the morning, that’s the sort of climate change that anyone would welcome!
After lunch we made a quick trip to the Co-op and started the long uphill trudge back to our mooring. Although the sun was still shining when we got back, it wasn’t quite warm enough to sit outside so we retreated inside and flopped in the reclining chairs.
Tomorrow is forecast to be sunny, we are pointing in the right direction and are only four hours away from Braunston so it feels like there is a very relaxing day in store for us.
All that remains now is to light the fire and then mellow for the rest of the evening.
Off we go again!
We haven’t been out on Phoenix III since last August for a whole host of reasons but with the first weekend of decent weather forecast, we decided that we had to embark on our first voyage of 2014.
I drove to Braunston from Basingstoke while Sue made her way to the boat from Hinckley, we arrived within a few minutes of each other, either side of 3.30.
After a hurried shuffling of stuff from car to boat followed by all of the essential checks and re-tying of mooring ropes, we slipped out of our mooring and let the wind turn us towards the southerly marina entrance where we exited on to the Grand Union and turned left.
Our cruise only lasted 10 minutes before we tied up as planned, right outside The Boathouse pub. We took a few minutes sorting ourselves out before disappearing into the pub for our evening meal. I’m writing this in the pub using their free wifi and enjoying a post-dinner pint of Amstel.
Mobile Internet
In this article I am going to describe how I set up mobile broadband internet on board nb Phoenix III.
MiFi – The travelling solution
For the last three years we have successfully used a Huwaei E585 MiFi dongle from ‘3’ on a monthly contract. I unlocked it sometime ago so not only has it given us mobile broadband in this country but we have been able to use it when travelling overseas too, with a locally bought sim card of course.
It’s a super bit of kit and I really can’t fault it except that in marginal reception areas it can often prove difficult to pick up a reliable signal so we usually resort to trying to find the best window to hang it in. Battery life after three years is not what it used to be so invariably the MiFi needs to be plugged into a power supply, not great if the best window is not near an outlet.
On the domestic front
We live in a house most of the time and until recently had a fixed telephone line which gave us broadband at home. We came to the conclusion that the line was very rarely used for telephone calls and so I started to think about rationalisation, after all, we had a mobile broadband contract and we only ever needed one connection. On the very rare occasion that we were in different places to each other, smartphone internet access is good enough. The MiFi was the first solution that I tried at home but I found that after extended use plugged in, the device froze and had to be restarted by removing and replacing the battery. It was no more than an inconvenience but it prompted me to look for a better solution.
After a little research I found a wireless router that uses a USB dongle to connect to the internet rather than a fixed telephone line. The TP-Link MR3420 does everything that a fixed line router does, in fact it can connect to a conventional router to give a failsafe connection. Not all USB dongles are compatible but TP-Link have a list on their website.
I bought one and put it on test using an old unlocked vodafone USB Dongle and it worked a treat with the ‘3’ sim card. I conducted tests over three months to make sure that the mobile solution was reliable, the speed was acceptable and that we didn’t exceed the monthly 15GB allowance. We only suffered one loss of service at home, one evening for around four hours – a transmitter fault I think. The speed varied between 2Mb/s and 6Mb/s which compared favourably with the landline constant speed of 3.5Mb/s. We used between 5GB and 8GB per month. So we took the plunge and had the landline disconnected, all we had to do was switch between the TP-Link at home and the MiFi on board Phoenix III.
Broadband on board
I couldn’t resist experimenting with the TP-Link on the boat but of course the problem is that reception in a steel tube is difficult and with the USB dongle plugged into the router, the option to hang it up in the window as we did with the MiFi became even less practical.
The Dongle
The Vodafone K3765 has a secret, it has a socket for an external antenna connection lurking beneath its white shiny exterior so that opened up a new possibility for me. I removed the cover, marked the position of the socket, clipped the two halves back together without the internal circuit board. I then carefully drilled a 6mm hole in the case before reassembling the dongle ready for use.
There are two versions of the vodafone K3765, the Huwaei version and the ZTE version, This article references the Huwaei version only. It’s easy enough to pick one up on Ebay either as K3765 or E1762. They’re generally unlocked but if you have a locked one you can either take it to your local shopping centre and get it unlocked or do it yourself for less than £5 with dc-unlocker which you can download from the website.
The Antenna
I bought the antenna with a CRC9 adapter, the plug that fits the internal socket on the K3765.
This is a panel mount antenna which requires drilling a 12mm hole in the roof of the boat. Not everyone wants to drill a hole in their roof but magnetic mounts are available. I already had a redundant car radio aerial that I wanted to remove so all that I had to do was enlarge the hole and mount the new antenna. The unit is sealed to the panel with a rubber washer but I wasn’t happy with the seal so I dispensed with the washer and applied a bead of silicon inside and underneath before tightening it all up.
Power Supply
All that remained was to consider power for the TP-Link. It is a domestic unit and is supplied with a 3-pin plug transformer which is all very well when plugged into a shoreline but not really practical if you are out in the middle of nowhere and you have to switch your inverter on just to power the router. Of course if you have no inverter then it’s not going to work at all.
Handily enough, the TP-Link has a 12v dc 1A supply but the last thing that you would want to risk is plugging it into your domestic battery bank, particularly when the engine is running. My final purchase was a car adapter designed for tv/lcd monitors. This piece of kit has an input of between 12v and 30v dc with an output of a constant 12v dc at 5A. The TP-Link has a socket which takes a 2.1/5.5mm plug, the car adapter has a 2.5/5.5mm plug but it still works properly.
Summary & Cost
With everything in place I actually bought another TP-Link router so that all that needs to be moved between boat and house is the USB dongle. The system works well and I can recommend the quality of the parts that I used. As for the cost of it all, here’s how it all breaks down.
TP-Link MR3420 router £27.00
K3765 USB Dongle (Ebay price) £20.00 ?
Antenna £35.00
Power Supply £13.00
Total £95.00
Prices include P&P, the dongle depends on what is on ebay, I already had one so my estimate is based on what is available on ebay at the time of writing.