Paper log, typed up after every trip
One steel boat, four households, and the patience that locks teach
The cruising log of a shared narrowboat on the Regent's Canal and the Lee: locks worked by hand, winter moorings, the stove, water and slow weekend trips.
Latest entry: A slow weekend ring by Victoria Park, Limehouse and the Cut (14 Jun 2026)
Down the cut, one entry at a time
Oldest on the left, newest on the right, the way the boat would meet them if she did the whole log in one long trip.
- Lock 1 · Mar 2025Working the Regent's Canal locks with a crew of twoLocks · 7 minutes
- Lock 2 · Jul 2025Water points, a tank gauge that lies, and a week of washing-upWater · 7 minutes
- Lock 3 · Jan 2026Winter mooring on the Lee: stoppages, the stove and the frost weekWinter · 8 minutes
- Lock 4 · Jun 2026A slow weekend ring by Victoria Park, Limehouse and the CutTrips · 8 minutes
Rules of the boat
- Nobody steps off at a lock without a windlass and a plan.
- Fill the water tank on the way out, not on the way home.
- Slow right down past moored boats, whoever is watching.
- Leave the stove, the tank and the log better than you found them.
Why this log exists
Four households share one steel narrowboat on London's canals, and this log is where one of us writes down what the water taught us on each trip, so that the next crew does not have to learn it twice.
Slow Lock Boating is the logbook of a fifty-seven-foot narrowboat owned in shares by four households who could not each afford, or each justify, a boat of their own. We bought into her in the spring of 2021, when the previous group broke up, and she has lived on a mooring up the Lee ever since. Each household gets a rota of weekends and one longer week in summer. Between turns the boat sits and waits, and the log in the table drawer is how the crews talk to each other.