The journey so far.

We have now been living aboard  Narrowboat Inca for 5 and a half months and in that time we have travelled from Saul junction near Gloucester up to Birmingham then down to London and then all the way up to Tixall wide in Staffordshire then up to the end of the Ashby canal and now we are heading south again and are at Hawkesbury junction near Coventry. We have covered 501 miles and gone through 367 locks. We have used 480 litres of red diesel at an average price of about 88 pence per litre . We have run the engine for a total of 427 hours but some of that was for charging the batteries before we had the solar panels fitted. We have also used diesel through the webasto boiler for the central heating when required and to give us hot water when the engine has not been run. We also need to service the 2 litre Beta 43hp engine every 250 hours ,It has been done once so far at a cost of about £50.

The solar panels have produced a total of 4262 amps since they were fitted at the end of June so that has helped a lot in not running the engine when stationary to charge the batteries.

 Back in July our average speed was 2.6 miles a day, That has now been increased to a massive 3.7 miles a day....wow!!!!! .

As we now go into Autumn and winter our cost will increase. The engine or generator will have to be run most days for several hours when we are stopped.  We will need to buy coal at £11 a bag . We have been told by other liveaboards if you just burn coal that you can get through 2 to 3 bags a week when it is very cold and you keep the fire going 24 hours a day .So we will supplement the coal with any wood we can find on our travels. We have a chainsaw and axe so we should be OK .
 We are lucky with Inca because we have double glazing which is not often fitted to narrowboats and the inside of the boat was sprayed with insulating foam prior to being fitted out.

At the moment we think we will stay out on the cut (canal) for the winter. But we do have the option of going into a marina if the need arises.

So far our new life aboard Inca has been very good. We have learnt a lot since moving aboard and still have a lot more to learn as we go into Winter. We have made some very good friends and met a lot of good friendly people. 
ps

We have now updated this blog 65 times........ Just hope we haven't bored you too much !!!!

                                                           Happy Days