Sunday, March 11, 2007

Boats, Floods, Be Prepared!

We were looking at the picture of the floods on the River Soar on narrowboatworld. Follow the link to First Mate. There are some boats stranded as a result of the widespread water on the fields. It set me thinking! Although we boaters glibly say "we'll be OK if global warming means more floods, after all Noah survivied!" it is not quite as simple as that is it?

Do we carry more that 2 cassettes in case we are standed for more that 10 days? What happens if we have a pump out system? Do we keep our larders full of food "in case" - rather like the Scouts motto "Be Prepared". Make sure we have longlife milk, freezers (if we have one!) full of meals. I could go on with ideas. This is tongue in cheek, I think!

However those boaters stranded on the Soar may wish that they had a "tender behind". Do you remember the old joke about trains? Will we see narrowboats towing tenders? (the sailors among you will know what I mean) Perhaps the market for the fold-up boat, as seen at one of the recent boat shows, might suddenly grow. Apparently they can be stored under a bunk.

Here is one I found on the web! It folds very small. Google 'folding wooden boats' for more information. The blurb says it is unsinkable - not sure if this picture inspires confidence though.

Maybe the moral of this story is
a. Keep an eye on the weather forcast
b. look before you moor to see if you might get stranded
c. we boaters should do our bit for the environment too
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2 comments:

  1. Sue16 March 2007 at 19:07

    Actually John, we do keep three weeks of stores and survival aboard No Problem at all times. Mind you we do live aboard all the time. We have a bread maker too, and I keep all the bits needed to make bread when needed.. and has often happened.

    Once every couple of weeks or so I check all sell by dates and note any that are passing between my next scheduled check and renew at the next tesco delivery.

    All the longlife milk is marked with a black marker pen as to the sell by date.

    We have tinned foods and vegetables etc to last three weeks just in case.

    We also have four loo cassettes aboard, again enough for three weeks and enough coal and diesel is carefully monitored for the same length of time..

    So there you go, just an insight as to how much we too feel the importance of taking care on the cut and making sure our family don't have to worry about us if we get stuck..

    Ummmmm snow next week?... /me scuttles to the cupboard to check..... ;)

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  2. John and Fiona on nb Epiphany18 March 2007 at 20:30

    Hi Sue,
    Thanks for your comment. By the way our blog author is Fiona! Glad to hear you are well prepeared - we certainly plan to be when we eventually move permanently on to Epiphany!May be see you when you get back to see NP2. Fiona

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