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About buying a boat
The boat came into my life almost as soon as I moved to London. I really wanted to try unusual accommodation and save money. At first I thought about vans, but then I spent a few months on a friend’s boat who flew to Canada. I didn’t know how to operate it, but we found a guy on a forum who also lived on a boat – he came and showed me how everything worked, and then I learned by video. Of course, there are courses, they are passed in a couple of days, but there are no regulatory bodies and no rights, so you can buy a boat and learn on your own as much as you want. Since the speed of “narrow boats” reaches only 4-5 km per hour, they are not considered a dangerous mode of transportation and serious incidents on the canals are very rare. Traveling by boat is a rather slow and meditative activity.
It’s been four years since I bought my boat. Once you get into it, it’s hard to stop, and if you get bored and start thinking about alternatives, you hear friends complaining about the cost of rent, cold in the winter, and asbestos in the walls. It turns out, in a way, I’ve traded apartment problems for boating problems, but made it my own specialty. That said, I have everything I need to live: a living room with a desk, a kitchen where I make cheesecakes and coffee in the morning, a bedroom, and a shower.
Of course, living alone on a boat is not so easy – with two people moving around, coping with boat life is easier. When I have a girlfriend living with me part-time or friends come to help me – there is someone to hold the boat when I moor, or to heat the stove while I cook dinner. But in general it is possible to manage on your own, there are plenty of singles of either sex on the canals.
About types of boats
There are two different camps on the canal: the first are those who stand on the “moringa”: they have a permanent parking space, water and electricity. But getting your own space in London is quite difficult, because the competition in the city is big. The big plus is that the owners and tenants of the spaces can move quietly or not at all. And if they go somewhere, they always have somewhere to leave their boat. Many boaters dream of such parking lots, they even pass them on to their grandchildren by inheritance.
The second are those who don’t have a permanent parking spot, like me. We have to move through the canal about every two weeks to swim 20 miles in a year. You can’t swim the entire route on the last day, back and forth in the central areas either. All of the flyhacks that might work have already been tried. Volunteers make sure that the rules are followed: they walk along the canal as park rangers and mark the location of the boat on a tablet. And those who break the rules can have their license revoked for the next year.
When you have been living on a boat for more than a year, you know in advance where and when to go and what kind of infrastructure will be around, if you can moor where you want. On the way you usually need to throw away garbage and fill up the water – a 500-liter tank is enough for about two weeks, if you do not save much money.
About everyday life
I pay a boat license fee every year – about £1000. It includes maintenance of the canal and rivers, locks, garbage removal and water. I also get a safety certification every four years: a person comes and checks that everything is in order with gas and electricity – that costs about £400.
In the summer I get electricity through solar panels – there is even more than I can consume now, so I plan to replace the gas stove with an electric one in the near future. For warmth in winter I heat the stove with wood, coffee briquettes and coal, and I also have batteries that run on a Webasto diesel heater. That takes money too: in winter it’s 200-300 pounds a month for heating and electricity. In addition, you need to regularly monitor the humidity: I try to keep the level closer to 50% so that nothing gets damp and mold does not appear. But it doesn’t seem to be just a problem of living on a boat – the same thing happens in London apartments.
Of course, the expenses do not end there. Compulsory insurance of the boat costs 200-250 pounds a year, blacking – when the boat is lifted by crane and from the bottom clean all the barnacles, and then cover it with special black paint – 2000 pounds. Spending on repairs to the boat in general never stops and depends on its original condition. This type of housing is definitely not for the faint-hearted, because you have to combine cleaning, repairs, eternal dissatisfaction that everything is not perfect, with the usual routine. But the advantages of living on a boat are obvious: you don’t have to pay London rent, you can try something unusual and get your own place – albeit very unusual. Over the last four years, many of my friends have changed several countries, apartments and houses – all very unstable. I change my location, but my desktop and wifi network remain unchanged for several years in a row.
Miscellaneous
In London, my favorite place to park is near Victoria Park and in the Haggerston area. That’s where my first summer and first lockdown took place. Hackney and Hackney Wick is my neighborhood in general. It’s not as congested as the city center, but there’s still plenty of things to do around it: there are stores, cafes, and subways. Delivery works here too, but it can be a problem because you have to order to the address of the nearest house and then catch your order. But letters and parcels come to my physical address – there is a separate mailbox for that, which I rent in Islington for such things.
I am often asked how far you can go on a boat like this. My answer is that I can go anywhere in Britain, but I prefer to stay on the canal and not go into the Thames, where the current is quite strong and the infrastructure is more complicated. You can go to other countries, but it is dangerous because you have to cross the English Channel – the current is even stronger there and the boat can capsize. From time to time there is news in the newspapers about a British pensioner crossing it, but I don’t want to risk it until I retire. After all, the boat is my home. A place where I am calm, cozy and where I can always return. It is quite possible that at some point I will decide to move to an apartment. Of course, these thoughts occur to most boaters, and yet some of them spend their entire lives on a boat. The average age of life on a boat, according to my observations, is three years.
The original text is printed in a special issue of ZIMA magazine #Englishhome . You can order your copy by clicking here.
