Tuesday 27 December 2011

The Day of Reckoning

Each year I keep a check on the use I've made of Starcross- partly to justify to myself the not inconsiderable investment that goes into the upkeep of a narrowboat - but mainly just out of interest. I count the number of days I've spent aboard, the distance travelled and the locks passed through.
Here are 2011's totals compared with previous years:


Year       Days       Miles      Locks
2011       84         518        284
2010       69           508        276
2009       62           415        230
2008       64           396        206
2007       41           344        181
2006       60           514        378
2005       63           520        777


As expected, in the first full year of my retirement I spent more days on board, although not as many as I'd hoped due to moving house twice and finding a lot more work than anticipated needed doing on the second house.   The mileage and lockage totals show that the time I did spend aboard was more leisurely - again as expected - with the 15 extra days producing only 10 extra miles and 8 more locks than last year.
My use of Starcross seems to be increasing slowly each year with the obvious exceptions being 2007, when she was out of commission for three months awaiting a new engine and 2005, when the high number of locks was due to being moored in the middle of the Lowsonford flight on the southern Stratford, when we had to pass through at least 14 locks just to turn round! (The 2005 figures include the last few weeks of 2004, when I owned Starcross but couldn't use her very much due to winter stoppages).


As usual, the annual totalling-up doesn't quite match the running totals I keep posted in the sidebar and as I have no independent record of these I have adjusted them (slightly) to match the figures above.


I wonder what 2012 will bring?  I have great plans, but who knows whether they will come to fruition.. . 

2 comments:

Mr Punch (K&A) said...

Make use of the boat, it does not get any cheaper as time goes by!

Halfie said...

One other potentially useful - and easy - thing to record might be the engine hours.