Neil2

Cruisers are great for having the crew, dogs etc on deck but the ideal way to handle a narrowboat is from a "trad" position, with the tiller and throttle control to hand and a proper view down the boat. Cruiser stern boat owners end up doing that side to side shuffle when manoeuvring and the throttle lever is too far over to the left. That's why folk are attracted to the semi trad which seem to give the best of both worlds, but in fact it's a compromise and removes all the advantages of a cruiser without giving much in return. In my view. What you do need with a trad though is a decent amount of external space up front, and this makes the lines of the boat much more attractive too. I've had all three types, we hated the semi trad for the reasons stated. Of the other two I wouldn't care what I had now it's a six and two threes. What is a pain though is needing a deck cover on a cruiser, I hear what Tony says about drains but I wouldn't leave a boat for weeks on end in the winter just relying on the deck drains.

Just keep taking the pills Biz.

FWIW I am shocked at the attitude of the Coastguard, presumably at that stage you could not be totally certain how/why you were taking on water? I think you did exactly the right thing with the flare. My brother in law used to be in the Coastguard service but he left, along with several others because, in his words, "the new chief was a complete twat". I wonder if this is a trend.

Glad to hear you have a sense of humour - you'll fit right in here! Yeah, I'd go with that, if you eschew the Pennine crossings you may as well have the extra room. You can still do the Rochdale and the HNC in a long boat just have to turn round at the end.

Remember narrowboats sell on condition and spec, not age. £65k gives you a lot of choice, even these days, I'd keep looking. For that sort of money you should expect no concerns at all.

Walk though bathrooms are one of those things that seem to make a lot of sense (space-wise) but don't in practice. Honestly, a 57 foot trad makes so much sense up north, for the sake of three feet you can do all the canals both ways. And you'll look like a proper boater, you won't with one of those silly pram cover things on a semi trad. Folk will tell you the C&H and the Huddersfield wide can be done with 60 foot but why have the anxiety.

They say 62 foot is actually the max but as I say, the state of the locks these days I personally would want a bit of wriggle room.

Water in the cabin bilge will stay there - there will be a bulkhead between the engine and cabin bilges. IMHO a boat with no proper access to the cabin bilge has been done on the cheap. Ditto no access to the water tank - assuming it is a tank and not integral. Don't like the look of it for a fairly new boat. I suppose it depends how much they want for it. Northwich are nothing special, think they use imported Polish shells but I may be wrong.

Got to agree there - semi is the worst of both worlds IMHO. The big advantage of a cruiser is not the party size stern deck which is a waste of space, it's the ease of getting on and off especially if you have any mobility issues and/or have dogs. I had two old dogs on our trad that needed lifting on and off the boat and a cruiser stern would have solved the problem but not a semi trad. 61' might just do the Leeds Liverpool but with the state of many of the lock gates you stand a fair chance of getting wet with a boat that size.

Was the Lister designed to do that or was it modified - it's a great idea anyway. Do these Harborough boats have a completely flat bottom or is there a very slight "V" to them? I have a memory of a hire boat many years ago that had a wet bilge, and the baseplate was designed this way so the water flowed straight down the centre line to the engine bilge.

North East, yes, not the North West. It's another example of how things are better on the Yorkshire side of the Pennines!

Not sure about that... Apart from the Manchester Ship Canal all the canals in the NW are pretty tight for a fat boat. For good measure though, wide beams seem to stir up more prop fouling material as well. CRT really should make them book passages and post these on the net so we can avoid them.

Or he could be in the canal...

Thank goodness sanity has returned.

These are affectionately known as "banana boats" and unaffectionately as "window smashers"... I love them, with the low pro roofs and increased tumblehome compared to modern boats, and those louvred windows are surprisingly practical especially if you have a solid fuel stove, you can/get keep the boat really dry inside. You can tell it's wet bilge as the guy in the bow is standing in the deep bow deck which you obviously can't have with a self draining deck. It's quite nice having a very small step from the cabin to the outside but the wet bilge does need a good look at. In the modern day a lot of wet bilge boat have had a cratch cover fitted to stop the rain water entering at the bow. Then you only have to worry about the shower drain which is usually right aft. The old Harborough boats don't really suit a cratch though so you have to assume this boat has had a wet bilge its entire life. If they only want £5k that's leaves you an awful lot of headroom, but your main worry is that it's entirely possibly there is not much steel left below the water. Everything is fixable in theory but if the hull is like a colander it could be a very expensive fix.

If you look at a map of the English canal system you'll see what the problem is: http://travelsfinders.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/canals-map-uk_8.jpg In theory the wide canals and rivers are navigable by wide beam craft but in practice it's not quite that simple. Apart from water depth issues, if you want to go across country via the Pennines your boat can't be longer than 60' and even that limits you to the Leeds Liverpool canal. A lot of owners of wide craft tend to inhabit the waterways of the North/East where you have a decent run of truly navigable canals and rivers. As for the "ideal" layout, the point is that you need to spend quite some time on a boat before you know - there are a surprising number of permutations on a boat, eg do you want you galley in the bow or the stern, or midships? Until you have lived/cruised on a boat for a while you simply won't know. It is actually quite common for boats to come on the market only a year or two because the owners have decided to start again... Hiring a narrowboat for a few weeks - not just a week - is one way of finding out what you like and don't like, and if you are not convinced about the argument against wide beams you can hire one of those too

If it's steel with a grp cabin I had one many years ago and TBH I regret parting with it now. Even today these boats are universally shunned by secondhand boat buyers but I would happily have another. As David says the Achilles heel is the joint between the hull and the cabin but it is repairable, if awkward. If you were renovating one of these boats I reckon you could now make sure the joint was good for a long time. Most of these boats will have had some overplating by now, that's to be expected, but one advantage is because the cabin section is lighter, there should be a lot of ballast (to remove) which is a good thing when overplating becomes necessary. If it's from 1970 I would guess this is a wet bilge boat, ie surface water drains into the bilge and is pumped out at the stern, same with the shower waste water. That means inspection of the bilge (for rust) is essential. I'll bet it has an air cooled Lister pushing it. If it isn't the engine has probably been replaced which is a good thing, for your ears if nothing else. I'm tempted to say that these days £5k for any narrowboat is a bargain, what ever its condition. Any clues as to who built it? Do you have a photo?

Most of these "reciprocity" arrangements don't give you quite the benefits they appear to, there's usually strings attached. It's a marketing thing that usually looks better than it is. As for the caretaking service in my experience it depends on how large the workforce is. Our last marina pushed their service quite hard especially with boat owners like me who lived hundreds of miles away, but they had quite a few people on the payroll.

I think Calcutt used to fit a 19" prop to their larger boats, but with a 3:1 ratio. I had a 47 foot boat with the BMC 1.8 that had 17x12 which was ok but I would get black smoke if really hammering it on a river, so I can see why Colecraft would fit a smaller prop on a bigger boat, I did feel mine was overpropped once I got it into deep water. The BMC is a high revving engine that does need to be worked quite hard and I suspect a lot were fitted with insufficient cooling.

Jeez the Rochdale is in a state at the mo isn't it. I know it often has "issues" but what with the lock closures as well... We're supposed to be doing it on a hire boat at the end of the month and I'm thinking it was a mistake.

Yes of course I respect your right to do as you please, and can I offer an apology for my rather strident initial reply. It might sound as though we're anti widebeam on this forum, but it's not quite true. Those of us with a bit of experience of navigating the uk canals just get a bit exasperated sometimes when people with little experience seem to be heading down a certain route without doing much research. But the fact that you have joined this forum suggests you want to research views and opinions from other canal users to improve your knowledge and decision making. That should be recognised and welcomed. Wide beam boats on canals are, of course, nothing new. For example back in the industrial days the Leeds Liverpool canal was designed to accommodate boats 70 foot by 14 - a huge boat - but these were built sympathetically with rounded hulls and low cabins and they were meant to travel fast. The modern slab sided flat bottom widebeam is designed to maximise internal space and they are not sympathetic to canal navigation. Plus, these days canals are much shallower and narrower than in the days of cargo carrying. So it only fair to point out that a boat with the dimensions you describe built by one of the popular fabricators, will be pretty much unusable on the canal system. Fair enough, you may say we'll just stay in a marina, but your first problem is finding somewhere that will accommodate such a large boat and is happy for you to live on it 12/12, receive your mail etc. You do, of course have to consider what happens when you need to have the boat docked - for hull maintenance, say. If there are no on site facilities then you will have to move the boat at some point. I appreciate your desire for a change of lifestyle but if it's simply swapping a house for a boat moored permanently in a marina, the "like minded" people you expect to meet will have to be on the same wavelength. these are not boat people, they are marina dwellers. If you want to be part of the boating community you may have to rethink your plans.

Probably, and maybe the broker is hoping in the current market some unsuspecting newbie will come along and take the thing of his hands. Despite what the surveyor says, once concerns are aroused you have to assume the worst. No-one can be totally sure what the state of the hull is until it's taken back to bare metal.

I think there's something in this, you see so many narrowboats with the prop slammed right up against the swim but if you observe "proper" boats there is always a fair distance. Peter Nichols sadly no longer builds narrowboats but I'm sure his boats have a distinctive stern tube arrangement that sets the prop well clear of the swim, and Nichols boats do have a reputation for cutting through the water. I seem to remember looking at an old Water Travel boat that also had a fair amount of stern tube extending the prop well clear of the swim. But how many narrowboat buyers today could care less about what is going on below the waterline.

That sounds great - apart from the Sea Otter...groo...