In the space of less than one week we've visited nearly ten marinas in search of our new home! We put in an offer for one boat only to have our offer rejected and a subsequent offer voided by some sneaky so-and-so getting a deposit stuck in there minutes before we made our second offer! Thus, yesterday was not great fun. Jem tenaciously scoured the net for boats while I sulked heroically in the next room...
Back to the drawing board. So today marked the start of Boat Hunt Mark II! We visited three marinas today, covering a hundred miles or thereabouts in the car, and some interesting finds it turned up too! One of the things that I've been most impressed with since we started looking for a boat way back in the halcyon mists of 2008 is the energetic and positive advice we've had from all sorts of folk, marina workers, boaters themselves, all sorts. Answering our questions, advice on everything from where it's best to moor up - right up to reasons not to own a pumpout loo if you're cruising up north in the winter, even posing new potential problems to watch out for when looking for boats. At this stage, all advice is welcome.
It seems like the one piece of information we started out with has held out to be the best, if the engine and the hull are sound, that's the main thing. Obviously we don't want something that needs completely rewiring or that needs major work in a serious way, but interior fittings we CAN do! I think. I hope. For one thing it's beginning to look very likely that we'll need to fit a washing machine of some description, as so few narrowboats in our price range seem to have them fitted already! We don't intend to live residentially in a marina so using laundrettes is out of the question for the time being, and it seems there are some really well-designed creations out there for saving space and getting the job done in confined areas, such as wot we will 'ave soon! If we go for a washing machine we'll almost certainly need a new inverter, which could easily set us back another £2000... Food for 'fort! We've probably looked at twenty boats in person by now, and the tiny details of each one just blend one into the other after a while... I was staring at brokerage websites for so long the other day that I thought one boat had an anti-gravity toilet... Which led me to believe I had discovered the hallowed narrowboat-buyers zen trance, when all details are clear even when the website contains only half of the things you need to know, when all you need is a fuzzy exterior photo to tell what size the inverter is and whether the fixed seating in the saloon is comfy or not.... I wish!
In short, the hunt continues, but it feels like we're getting there! One day we'll be river rats!
Toby.
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