A few Narrowboat live aboard Stats

It is now nearly 11 months since we left Upton marina on the River Severn and we have now travelled 802 miles and Carolyn has operated 544 locks while i have done just 3 locks !!!. During last summer we were averaging 3.6 miles per day, but over the winter months we have been averaging only 1.7 miles a day. As continuous cruisers the rules state that we must be on a continuous journey and we can not stay in one area for more than 14 days and if you look back through the blog you can see we have been very good and adhered to the rules.( except for the one night we over stayed in Paddington basin. But that was due to excess wine and we lost track of the days !!)  In total we have used 941 litres of red diesel at an average price of 0.89 pence per litre. During the winter months we did run the engine for 2 or 3 hours a day when not travelling to charge the batteries. We have also used 5x13kg bottles of gas at about £27 a bottle . As for coal we have found that Homefire Ovals works well for us and we have used it for most of the winter. It is only used to keep the fire in overnight as we use wood during the day and evening.We are averaging about a bag and a quarter a week so at £12 a bag its not too bad.
I have started to work out how much we have spent this year and it is a lot more than we expected. But having said that we have bought a lot of one off items like the generator , multi fuel stove, pram cover and solar panels. When we get to having been afloat for 12 months i will sit down and add everything up and have a shock i expect ,even so it is all still well worth it.
We pulled pins on Wednesday from Napton on the hill at 08.30 and headed towards Braunston and after a couple of hours picked up a mooring in one of our favourite areas about 2 miles south of Braunston below Flecknoe. With very high winds on Thursday we will sit it out here then head into Braunston on Friday.

                                                                                                  Lucky us we have these moorings all to ourselves.
We should now be on our way to north Wales and onto the Llangollen canal but we have a problem with our hull blacking. When we had Inca surveyed last year the blacking started to come off when it was jetted so we were told it could be due to mill scale on the steel from when Inca was built. The advice we were given was to black the hull and then check it in 12 months time and if it was still coming off the hull would have to be grit blasted and blacked again with a 2 pack blacking. Well sure enough it is coming off ,so we are booked into Debdale marina in April to have the work done. In the meantime we are just killing time in this area but we are getting excited about our summer adventure.
                                                    Happy Days