Yet Another Narrowboat Thread

[pinkmonkey]

cc ing is VERY hard indeed. We constantly see people move aboard around here and then it all goes to pieces once they get a electrical problem or something like that. If you have a FT job, its better to have a mooring. The boaters that I know that have made it work are mostly self employed and used to roughing it, most of them lived on sites, in trucks, that kind of thing. They don't fall apart if anything goes wrong.

 

[ymu]

cc ing is VERY hard indeed. We constantly see people move aboard around here and then it all goes to pieces once they get a electrical problem or something like that. If you have a FT job, its better to have a mooring. The boaters that I know that have made it work are mostly self employed and used to roughing it, most of them lived on sites, in trucks, that kind of thing. They don't fall apart if anything goes wrong.

Yeah - we both work mostly from home and we're both 90% flexible on working hours too. Other than that, I don't see why CCing is harder - unless you're not going to fix faults as soon as they occur. You certainly need to budget for disaster, which I guess is where a lot of continuous cruisers run into problems.

We go to get water every weekend and every other weekend end up in a different area from the one we started from. Bikes come with us on the boat, so it makes no difference except for some new scenery.

 

[ymu]

I want to buy one

I don't want a stupid 'Rosie and Jim' style painted one with authentic 1830s genuine replica furniture, I want a boat, that floats, drives and moors, that I can then unleash my interior and exterior designer skills on.

How much for this sort of thing? Completely empty or aborted project would do nicely - £5,000?

Anybody got one for sale?

Also, how do you know that a safety certificate is genuine? I don't want my new boat to sink three weeks after I've just spent a grand on doing it up!

This might be interesting. It's a Springer, which is kind of the pre-VW Skoda of the narrowboat world, but a lot of people love them.

The hull needs plating - as older Springer's usually do because they were built with thinner steel to start with (6mm instead of 10mm which is now standard). I don't know much about engines, but I think that Sabb is pretty decent.

They're asking £5k for the boat, or £8,500 plated. They don't know which year she was built, so you can suck your teeth a bit about that. I'm not sure how long she's been on the market as I haven't been looking at boats this small (the ad date isn't much of a guide as they recycle frequently), but you might be able to get it down a fair bit if there's not been much interest.

 

[subversplat]

Yeah I noticed that one a while ago, being out of water made me a bit but that's been advertised for ages - I'll offer him 50p and a packet of crisps!

 

[BoatieBird]

It might be worth while getting in touch with British Waterways.
They have boats that they've seized for not having a license and stuff.
Not sure how they get rid of them - but I think they auction them
Could be a way to pick up a bargain.

On the other hand you could buy my boat - 57ft by 10ft and up for sale in the new year at somwhere around £75 - £80

 

[pinkmonkey]

Yeah I noticed that one a while ago, being out of water made me a bit but that's been advertised for ages - I'll offer him 50p and a packet of crisps!

The good thing about it is the not having to pay £500 to have it craned out so you can look at the hull. The bad thing is that overplating is really easy to do badly, you'd want to know that the welder knows what they are doing.

 

[ymu]

You could try a very cheeky offer on this one. Sooo cute.