enigmatic

tbf I wouldn't buy that boat for liveaboard use either. Exposed centre cockpit between the cabins and a British winter don't go well together...

I would say pretty likely It's a punt. You might get a cheap-ish boat that needs time and money spending on it, you might get a money pit on the verge of sinking. The price, lack of recent blacking and age point to the latter. The patching might have covered the hull and solved all the problems of decades of rust 10 years ago, or it might have been an indication that 10 years later the bits not patched would be in a world of trouble. It might have been done well, or it might have been done badly. Proper replating it might need would cost you a lot more than £8k. Interior work may not be as cheap or straightforward as you hope and you'll be doing your own exterior repaint, although it sounds like it is at least livable. In fairness, you might get a fair bit over £20k for it in current markets after you'd done the work. Edit: also, have you looked into marina cost and availability? Annual cost of a marina berth is a sizeable fraction of that boat price, and not all marinas want scruffy boats with people doing work on them...

I don't think even the government knows yet tbh. Spoke to someone at a marina who doesn't think even his residential moorers are getting it, NBTA think everybody's getting it, the guidelines can be interpreted any way you want them to

I forward all those scam SMSes to the Action Fraud number 7726 https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/collection/phishing-scams/report-scam-text-message which is supposed to get the messages blocked and the sender investigated (and should also be able to get the dodgy fake websites taken down) Some of them are more convincing than that one!

On the size issue, a widebeam or cruiser gets you all the way to Northampton in one direction and Bedford in the other, which is quite a lot of fun summer cruising. At least it does if no fixed point on your boat is more than about 6'5 above water level (in which case you won't get through Upwell on the Middle Level or Oundle after that) For related reasons, if you buy a widebeam elsewhere in the country it'll need you to pay someone to put it onto the back of the lorry to move it, but that might be better than some of the options on Anglian waterways (many of which are cruisers designed very much for short breaks in the middle of summer) A 60-70ft narrowboat gets you everywhere (apart from Wicken Fen and a couple of canals wayyy up north) and can have a separate-ish bedroom for your son but it still might feel a very small place. If he's expecting to move out in a couple of years after finishing college I'd still be tempted to wait until then...

If he's at CRC, I think that's on the guided busway too, which might open up Hartford and Huntingdon, but you'll still want to check timetables carefully

Public transport from most of the marinas is going to be slow and occasional, especially if his school/college isn't either near Drummer St bus terminal or very close to the bus route. A lot depends on that last bit actually Hartford has a nice big marina but it's nearly 1hr into central Cambridge which might be more commuting than your son wants. Not sure the marinas at St Ives or St Neots which probably have the best bus connections are suitable. Westview, Fish& Duck, Lazy Otter and Pike & Eel are closer but I think you'll need to drive. Ely with its station might be your best bet if the marinas there take liveaboards.

Was good of them to (they had seen the emergency services, and it was the Stainforth and Keadby, so there were a few more swing bridges to help each other out with)

Wow, I didn't think anyone would do that outside of warranty, especially not for a 30 year old mount which is clearly just wear and tear and possibly oil damage. Might have to take my own advice and figure out who made my own 24ish year old mounts to ring them up!

Are the mounts themselves manufactured by Beta or by some third party like R&D? If not Beta themselves, I assume the mount manufacturer is another party that would have an opinion on the correctness of the installation (and again, may be prepared to offer a professional opinion that the installation is incorrect).

Better than that. I've opened a swing bridge, letting the boat behind me through as agreed and shutting the bridge behind them, then realised I haven't moved my own boat through the bridge, then as I started to reopen the bridge realised my boat is also on the wrong side of the canal.... At which point a group of emergency services personnel turned up and needed the bridge kept open for them. The other boat had a long wait for me at the next bridge...

Thames locks aren't normally manned in winter, but the buttons and slow fill rate (and nice friendly steps) make them the easiest double locks to work on the system, at least when the buttons are working. Kennet and Avon locks require a bit of ladder climbing and you'll want to keep hold of your rope and wrap (not tie) it round a bollard when getting off the boat (and go back to your rope as soon as you've opened the near-side paddle), but most not too difficult to operate once you've got the hang of it Fobney lock just outside Reading is a right pig to operate single handed because it doesn't fill very well, which means trying to force the gates when there's still a water level difference. Doing that with the weight of only one person is hard. Last time I went through the single hander ahead of me had given up and called out CRT staff to help (Going the other way, I'd been helped by the large crew of a hire boat!) so don't be shy about doing that if there's noone else around to help. The more callouts they get, the more likely they are to sort it out... The turf sided locks are weird looking and you need to be careful where you put your rope, but aren't actually that difficult, and neither is Woolhampton provided you remember to empty the lock and open the gates before opening the swing bridge going up so you're not slowing down traffic. And the swing bridges at the Reading end of the K&A actually have bollards to stop on the correct side to operate the controls, which is better than some other parts of the system! Or, if they're a narrowboat, wait and share locks with them for an easier experience...

Moored there for a week after buying my boat (to cc on, not a judgement on the marina!). The few moorers I spoke to and staff seemed friendly enough. Quite exposed and windy and bit of rail noise from adjacent minor line, but no road noise so quieter than Whilton. Boats lined up on regular and tidy pontoons. Surrounding countryside featureless but the really nice bit of the Middlewich Branch is only an hour or so's cruise away. Marina wifi and O2/Three mobile reception was fine. Tiny village with no facilities but friendly chandlery stocks basic food and drink and there's a cafe. Nantwich is a short drive away. In addition to the other suggestions in the same general area there's Tattenhall Marina on the Chester canal branch of the Shroppie

I'm aware I had more legal rights as the brokerage firm was the legal owner, so (unlike normally) they could have had issues if they sold me a leaky sieve even if I hadn't surveyed it. Doubt I'd have had much legal comeback for most of the things the surveyor picked up though (non BSS compliant wiring, seized regulators on cooker, swapping gearbox for one with a more suitable ratio) though. Presumably a cost of business they live with because they make a big enough margin on the trade-in

From personal experience, the warning is when you get a rope/coat/tarp wrapped round your prop the week before that does the majority of the damage. Apparently sometimes it makes a lot of noise when it's almost completely wrecked and about to fail, but with mine it didn't. And when it fails properly, you might be getting some rotation in the correct direction from the prop at high revs, but not enough to properly move the boat Most recently, I noticed because I was on the River Thames, and whilst my engine was running smoothly enough, I was going backwards

The bit that confuses me is "6mm sides (including overplating)". Do they mean the sides were originally 6mm and some parts of it have a 6mm overplate/replate, or that the original 6mm hull got pitted and someone patched it with the thinnest possible bit of steel? £35k might have been OK in current inflated market if the hull condition matched the lovely cosmetics, asking an extra £5k on top of that sounds cheeky Sounds like you got a particularly bad surveyor. Spotting issues with stuff like the engine mounts for the benefit of the average person that doesn't know about engine mounts and that the alternator doesn't actually charge is what surveyors are for...

Extra revenue from slipway/craneage fees and often for additional work/items the surveyor says are necessary or recommended If someone wants to pay a deposit (quite possibly for the full amount of your commission) and slipway fees into your account in ten minutes and subject to a survey which will likely generate additional paid work for you (at a premium if you're busy), I'm not sure waiting until tomorrow or maybe next weekend to see if someone wants to pay the deposit without the slipway fees or likely extras is worthwhile for the broker. It's not like brokerages have so many boats they're running out of space! Anyway, I spoke to a good dozen brokers in summer 2020 when boats were selling really quickly, and not only did all of them expect to accommodate a survey if I wanted them but most of them said they'd "always recommend" buyers should find themselves a surveyor (including the one I actually bought my boat off, who had a busy dry dock rather than a slipway and actually owned the boat and so picked up the tab for the work instead of profiting from it!). Prices have gone up since then, but I'm not sure brokers have completely changed their process as well, especially not in ways which would tend to reduce the margins they make on boats at a time their brokerage is half empty. And if I do use a broker when I come to sell my boat, I certainly wouldn't be interested in a broker that doesn't bother letting me know about offers today because someone else might make an offer, possibly for less, without a survey tomorrow ...

The hope when you make an offer subject to survey is that you don't need to look at any other boats! I understand some private sellers will reject offers made subject to survey (and in this market, that'll even include boats that would get good survey reports!) but I'd assume most brokers want the extra revenue....

I would say the most important thing is the car. Accommodation can often be booked cheaply near to where you have driven to look at boats (I got a room above a pub in Middlewich on Booking.com for about £30 after driving up to Cheshire via boats I looked at in Staffordshire and found the boat I wanted the following day) which might work out cheaper than renting a camper van instead of a car... The other big question is how fussy you are about choice of boats (especially bearing in mind in the current market there are fewer boats available and the best value boats often sell very quickly). It would be quite easy to spend one (long) day looking at the boats at Braunston, Whilton, ABNB Crick and maybe Welton/Rugby and find something that is OK for your needs. It would also be possible for you to spend your first few days looking at boats just figuring out what you want, and then having to wait for the weekend for the private seller of the one boat you think is best to be available to show it to you, and drive a long way just to see that boat (and then realise its not what you want and have to look at some more boats before you find one that you really like). If you are working full time that will slow things down too! And as @Barneyp said, when buy a boat you'll probably have to wait a week or two for the survey (you should get a survey!) and another week or two for the yard to complete even pretty minor remedial work. (But you don't need to be in England whilst that goes on)

Main thing to be aware of is that if it shares water with the canal (when the canal exists again), the navigation authority will probably want to charge you for it, whether it's the CRT or not. Charges for water use, charges for access, marina fees if boats are permanently moored there even if there's just one boat and it's the landowners'. Being there first and being involved with the restoration project might, of course, be an opportunity to join the many mostly historic arms and wharves with exceptions grandfathered in... I guess you might also need it if you need a team of navvies to dig it

Boaters back then were more concerned with navigating than their blacking...