PeterCr

Would be strange the other way round!

Hi all, we're looking to buy a boat. Ideally we would like something around the 52 - 55 foot range. Sadly though after some months of looking we really haven't seen anything around those lengths that we would even look at. But we have seen the odd boat a little longer than that which we would look at. 61 feet, 63 and so on. I know that a longer boat is a bit more expensive to licence and moor, and there are a (very few) places on the system where it may be an issue. But apart from this can anyone offer any reasons why we shouldn't start considering boats that are a little longer. Are there any other downsides (or upsides) to longer boats? Cheers all

Thanks. I assume also that if there is any finance owed on the boat that is another can of worms. How do you know? And I'd assume that any finance company has the documentation all stitched up so the documents will provide that the boat is subject to finance owing, and they have the right to seize the boat if finance owing isn't paid. But if finance is owing the buyer would never be made aware of that documentation.

Thanks all, it's not complicated at all is it? By the way I see Alan includes The VAT Paid certificate. Is it important to establish the VAT status of the boat? On some ads, eg appolloduck, I see tax status. What is the significance of this?

We are in the market for a second hand boat. I'm a little nervous about what sort of paperwork we should be looking for, both before we buy and once we've had an offer accepted. Establishing title to the boat for example, how do we do that? Any and all suggestions gratefully received, many thanks.

Thanks all, I've got some reading to do now. I haven't done my own car servicing so maybe now is a good time to learn! The electrical stuff leaves my head spinning though, all those watts, amps, volts etc. Maybe I need a book about electrics to start learning a bit more about that. I know one of the boat owners I spoke to said that electrics is one of the hardest things to deal with on a boat.

I had this exact situation when doing 4 wheel drive trips (we live in Australia, no narrowboats till we visit the UK but plenty of 4 wheel driving). My wife wouldn't drive for quite a while, she was scared of it. Eventually she had a go. Now I can't get her out of the driving seat. She loves it and now I have to passenge (is that a word) for much of the trip, despite loving driving. Be careful of what you wish for!

Thanks for the welcome guys. I love this forum, I know there's others but they are underpopulated, it's nice to see some experienced people providing answers on this forum. I've read quite a lot here and it's great. Thanks Mross. I'll take a look at that book. I know about Pauls site, I've been getting his newsletters for some time now. In fact I knew we'd be passing Calcutt boats late June and so I thought I'd drop in and have a chat with him then if he was around but he wasn't. I did see his boat though as we did the bottom lock. He did have a question in the newsletter a few weeks ago about setting up a new part of his site for potential buyers, and I emailed him about it, but I've not seen anything further about it. He's got other things on his plate at the moment I think. I hadn't thought of a cheap boat to try out, though of course there's always the costs of buying then selling and buying again, if you can sell, and I've heard that the cheaper boats can be an issue to sell there's so many of them. I'll keep an eye out. And we've thought about boat sharing but have some issues with that. When doing Tardebigge we met someone on a shared boat and had a good chat and a look at the boat. Nice enough boat but our available weeks vary from year to year with our daughters school holidays. And it's not so easy to buy a month. This year it would have been June and next year July. And it's probably pretty hard to buy 4 months over the summer which is what we'd like to do once our daughter is independent and we have more time. Other owners might not be so happy with that Next year is the last year we hire, after that, hopefully, it's our own boat. I'd love to visit some of the marinas and talk. Sadly we live in Australia and our time over there is limited, this year we had 4 1/2 weeks and we spent 4 of those weeks on the cut. I tried to talk to as many moored boat owners as possible and got to see some boats. But moving around popular places and stopping and talking isn't so easy when on a schedule. We did go through Braunston a couple of days before the rally and would have liked to stop and see it but when you've got limited time .......... oh well. And I'll take a look at those youtube channels too RichM. I had seen some of Mylo's videos but some of the others are new to me, I'll take a look, cheers. I also follow quite a few of the blogs that boaters write, but there's not much on them about boat features, buying etc. Cheers all

Hi all, my wife and I have just come back home to Australia after a lovely month on a hire boat on your beautiful canals. It wasn't my/our first trip, we've done a few weeks here and there previously and have another 3 weeks booked for next year. We like it enough that we'd like to buy our own boat, but that won't happen for at least 2 or 3 years till we're retired and can spend much more time over there on the canals. For a month at a time it's not worth buying, we may as well hire, but for 3 or 4 months at a time buying should be cheaper, and nice to have our own boat. When we ended our hire at Mercia Marina we looked at some boats for sale. No intention of buying, just starting the process of learning. I'm neither particularly mechanical or electrical. So whilst we're happy hiring I'm not all that confident buying without learning a whole lot more about all things boating and buying. Apart from reading here, which I do, can anyone suggest a good way to get learning from afar? Perhaps a good book on buying a narrowboat? Or any other suggestions? Cheers Peter