Butty moving

[DutchBargeFrancisca]

Hello. Looks like we're about to buy a 19ft butty to add to our 40ft narrowboat. Problem is that butty is in Cheshire, and boat is in London (and needs to stay there due to one of us working full time). Looking at various ways to get it down including.

1. Pay a mover to take it by road.
2. Find someone planning on making the trip, and pay them to tow it.
3. Find someone who needs their boat moved and do it for free as long as we can tow the butty along.

Any thoughts? Or anyone interested in any of these propositions? Thanks smile emoticon

 

[David Mack]

Do you know anyone with a horse?

[zenataomm]

Hire yourself a FORD IVECO CARGO BOX van.

They have a big enough carrying area for you to shove it inside.

[Paul C]

What's it made out of, and how heavy is it? You might be able to find someone on www.shiply.com who can move it.

[DutchBargeFrancisca]

It's a steel hull. Hard to say how much it weighs - in the water at the moment. I'm assuming 1.5 - 2 tonnes?

[ditchy]

Might get it onto a recovery truck.. Got to think f the logistics at both water ends though

[Peter X]

Any of the three plans sound credible to me, but you might need to check the small print of the insurance of the boats involved, could there be restrictions there?

 

Re plan (1) : As has been said, you need to plan where you can get it out of the water, and back in. The weight will be more like 6 tons, and can be calculated fairly accurately from displacement. I've based my figure on 6m length, 2m width, 0.5m draught; in fact your draught is probably a bit more but the length a bit less allowing for the rounded ends. Multiply those for a displacement of about 6 cubic metres, which at the density of water gives us 6 metric tons, almost the same as imperial tonnes.

 

Re plan (2): You might get lucky and find someone doing the whole trip, but I think there's more chance of finding people who'll do it in stages. One of the professional boat movers may be able to help.

 

Re plan (3): Like plan (2), you may need to do it in stages.

 

Plans (2) and (3) would both go more smoothly if at least one of the people doing it have some experience of towing a butty I would imagine. I've only read a bit about that and never been involved in doing it, but if you need crew to help with either plan, and it isn't happening until the autumn, I may be interested in helping.

 

It also probably helps if the boat doing the towing is short enough that the butty will fit in a lock behind it, although once you reach the GU you can get a pair in the same lock anyway.