You have chines where the edge of one steel plate is welded to another to form the shape of the hull.The overhanging structure aboveand beyond the waterline is the swim,fall of that and you start swimming.
Swim.
On a narrowboat, the underwater section of the hull side that reduces in beam to allow water to flow to the propeller.
Thanks, now I know 
Lived on a boat for several years and my parents for more decades than I care to recall.
There are good sides and bad, for a single blokes it’s probably ideal and for young couples it can work well as they don’t mind being under each others feet.
Up sides
your house is easy to move - even if you’re not a boater you can haul it out and transfer it by road
less to clean
cheap to own/run
novelty factor
Down sides
lack of space, inside and out
lack of privacy
damp gets into everything eventually, you will fight mould forever and lose many precious possessions because of it
takes a lot of getting used to (including many, many bangs to the head)
toilets etc on boats take some getting used to as well
I wouldn’t do it again unless I was paid (a lot) to.
Just for anybody else interested, here’s a quick video tour of my little boat “Desiree”. See if you can spot the deliberate mistake!
Over the last week or so I moved her south, and she’s currently moored near Rugby, I’m planning to spend most weekends on her and once the finance on my truck is paid off I will probably spend six months a year aboard, just working the truck over the Winter. However, I might just sell up and ■■■■ off, and live on the boat all year round.
I love life on the canals, it’s just so slow and relaxing. If anyone wants to pop in for a cup of tea and a cruise one weekend, they’d be more than welcome! 
Good luck with the venture Harry and welcome to the canals and rivers of this country. Myself and the other half have been liveaboards for many years now and spend the majority of the year sailing around, this year we have been down London and then up the Thames as far as Lechlade before turning and back to Oxford . I still work driving low loaders for various companies helping out holidays,ect ( mostly in the midlands ) and Ive found that a couple of hours on a train will get me to where I need to be no matter where we are moored be it N,S,E,or West . We still have a land based place that we rent part of out and we usualy spend Jan/ Feb there while we put the boat in a local marina and do any maintainance that needs doing whilst the stoppages are on then off we go again. A bit of planning and it works ok for us, so enjoy get used to living at “canal time pace” and you,ll be ok.
Harry Monk:
Just for anybody else interested, here’s a quick video tour of my little boat “Desiree”. See if you can spot the deliberate mistake!https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmwTZ4-I-eg
Over the last week or so I moved her south, and she’s currently moored near Rugby, I’m planning to spend most weekends on her and once the finance on my truck is paid off I will probably spend six months a year aboard, just working the truck over the Winter. However, I might just sell up and ■■■■ off, and live on the boat all year round.
I love life on the canals, it’s just so slow and relaxing. If anyone wants to pop in for a cup of tea and a cruise one weekend, they’d be more than welcome!
Brinklow is NOT in Leicestershire!!
redboxer850:
Brinklow is NOT in Leicestershire!!
You found it! 
Two very nice boats, both very similar to my own, mid-length trad sterns. I must admit, I’ve lost all interest in driving a truck now, I’m just counting down the days until the finance is paid off in about 8 months time, then I’m going to park it up and go cruising.
Good on ya m8 
You’re missing three things!
Rosie, Jim & Duck
Is the name under Desiree the place where she was built?
bazza123:
You’re missing three things!Rosie, Jim & Duck
Is the name under Desiree the place where she was built?
Shardlow Derbyshire is the place Desiree was first registered when she was built, in 1987.
Much as I would love them, my girlfriend refuses to allow me to have any Rosie & Jim dolls!
I started out on a 26’ Springer with my Mrs. and lived on that for about 10yrs. Always dreamed of a nice huge boat with a bit of history and eventually found a knackered old BCN joey boat with a rotten wooden top and a very thin original bottom. 72’ riveted iron built in 1904 with a motor back end added in the 70’s.
Smashed all the top off, rebottomed and put a new back end on and a lovely Lister JP3 in the engine room. Didn’t have enough money to cabin it over so left it with an open front hold and lived in the back cabin/boatmans cabin for a few years. Smaller than the boat we moved out of!
By that time I’d got my Class 1 and eventually got a job involving nights out (finally a PROPER driver 
). When I got home on the weekends it really struck me how well designed a back cabin is. After all it is the same thing as a sleeper cab. The original even. Small as possible to maximise cargo space, but with everything you need to live on the move, it was developed over a couple of hundred years and is an incredibly efficient use of space.
Front hold could carry around 20t
After a bit of saving eventually cabined the front over leaving a 16’ clothed hold to retain the working boat feel and now live in relative luxury!
Towpath for most of my time but have a permanent mooring now.
Not paying council tax is one thing but that comes from having no address. Being essentially homeless causes all sorts of problems. Registering to vote, registering with the doctor… the DVLA won’t accept a mailing address… there are ways around it but having no legal footprint can raise eyebrows in some situations.
Now on a permanent mooring and not planning on investing in a pile of bricks anytime soon. That said, a boat won’t appreciate like a house and needs constant maintenance.
Get used to people asking “isn’t it cold in winter” and “how much does a boat cost?” My favourite reply to the latter is that I’ll tell you if you tell me how much a car costs.
Yes, mine is a fairly run-of-the-mill leisure boat but I’ve been shown around a few historic boats and the boatman’s cabin is an ingenious use of space, as you say it’s about the size of a sleeper cab but the difference is that as well as Mum and Dad, there would also be children living in it, sleeping under the fold-down bed/ table.
Also love the historic engines, Lister, Gardner etc especially when they have their own engine room so are on display, mine has the BMC 1.5 diesel but while it does the job perfectly, it is essentially a car engine and is kept out of sight under the rear boards.
Boating isn’t cheap, they do say “boat” stands for “Break Out Another Thousand” but also that it’s either an expensive hobby or a cheap way to live. At the moment it’s the first, but it will one day become the second. But either way, I love every minute on board, whether on the cut or in the marina.
Just to add to the above post, and for anyone interested in the technical stuff, here’s a picture of my engine bay.
The engine is a marinised BMC 1.5 diesel, although my boat was built in 1987 these engines stopped being produced in the mid-1960s. It was probably obtained from a breaker’s yard and re-built; it might have been fitted to an Austin Cambridge or a J4 van, it is a dieselised B series engine. Road vehicles fitted with it had a reputation for being awful, it only develops 40bhp, but they work well in boats and many are fitted with them.
The gearbox is a Hurth HBW150, this was made by ZF who used to make Volvo truck gearboxes. It’s very simple, it has one forward gear and one reverse gear, and two conical clutches, one for each gear.
Cooling is done by a skin tank, this is at the top of the photo, the tank is baffled and works by using the canal water as a heat exchange, and further cooling is provided by the calorifier, another heat-exchange system which supplies hot water to the taps, and by a towel rail in the wet room which acts as a radiator. You can’t use a car radiator to cool a boat as there is no forced through-flow or air.
Touch wood, it all seems to work fairly well, there’s a bit of white smoke at start-up which soon clears, It only runs at about 1200 rpm when cruising so it’s neither over nor under-stressed.
As said, I do like the vintage engines with their paint and polished brass, but mine does do the job, fingers crossed it stays that way!
A few photos from the past two months. I just can’t wait to sell the truck and go off doing this all the time.
Kings lock Middlewich? Is the final photo somewhere near Barlaston/Stone?
Looks good to me Harry, I’m as jealous as ****
The last photo was taken at Brinklow village, shortly before I arrived at Brinklow Marina in Warwickshire which is where the boat is currently moored. Yes, King’s Lock is at Middlewich, that was on the way down south as we bought her in Cheshire and that’s too far away to get there for the weekend.
Next year we’re planning to take her down to London starting in early July when the truck finance is paid off, along the Regent’s Canal to Limehouse, then I’m going to turn around and go up to Llangollen, that should take six weeks or so, then maybe round the Pennine Ring on the way back down, I’m going to park the truck up on a SORN notice, then I’ll go back to work for six months, then after that I plan to spend May-October on the boat and November-April driving the truck until the engine blows up or whatever, then I’ll go and live on the boat full-time.
I love life on the canals, it is just so peaceful and tranquil, wish I’d done this years ago.
For fellow canal enthusiasts, here’s how we spent Christmas Day 2014, just me, one of my children, and the ducks…
Leaving Brinklow at first light.
Christmas Dinner has arrived!
Only joking.
Here’s our real Christmas Dinner, cod in parsley and thyme sauce, roasties, spinach mornay, peas. Yum, can’t stand turkey!
Tomorrow we’ll be transiting the rather scary Braunston Tunnel.