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New Liverpool boat


Roughchippy

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3 hours ago, Mike the Boilerman said:

Alan there's no need for that sort of language.

 I now see what I wrote was ambiguous. I meant there is no connection between Collingwood and  Aintree boats. 

In which case I apologise.

I took your intended meaning to be the opposite.

Edited by alan_fincher
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Seems a bit unfair to me to compare Liverpool Boats or Collingwood boats to much more expensive offerings from other builders.

Whilst it is true that there were a few issues with LB boats being wider than the now accepted 6' 10", I doubt this applied to many, and I have never heard the same said of a Collingwood boat.

I think LB probably produced more boats than any builder since Springer, so their sheer volume in terms of numbers means there are more likely to be some dissatisfied owners,  (in fact there may very well also be more satisfied owners than for any other builder, just because there are more of them in total!).

I don't know how Collingwoods' prices compare to others, but assuming competitive, I think I would prefer them to some of the newer builders that have sprung up producing fairly insubstantial looking boats.  Liverpool / Collingwood have more experience under their belt than someone new still trying to make a business out of it.

Has anybody actually got experience of an unsatisfactory recent Collingwood shell, if we consider just them, and not the LB name that went before it?

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10 hours ago, alan_fincher said:

Seems a bit unfair to me to compare Liverpool Boats or Collingwood boats to much more expensive offerings from other builders.

Whilst it is true that there were a few issues with LB boats being wider than the now accepted 6' 10", I doubt this applied to many, and I have never heard the same said of a Collingwood boat.

I thought most of Collingwoods output are widebeam, so I would expect them to be considerably wider than 6' 10". :P

Edited by cuthound
Spillung
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If Liverpool is convenient have a look at Aintree Boats.     15 years after selling our liveabord Hudson tug to go and live in France, we are now on a little Aintree Beetle at Pyrford on the Wey, which was delivered new last May but never used.   We bought it without seeing it, just from many photos and details.

I had never heard of Aintree before but am very impressed with the quality and spec. of all the equipment fitted, the steelwork is excellent with no visible welds above the waterline, 10/6/5/4 plate and covered with 7 hand painted coats giving a great finish.    The windows and porthole are all Caldwells double glazed,

We had a couple of problems likely caused by road transport which were dealt with under warranty, by Aintree coming here to Pyrford 2 days after I contacted them.

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22 hours ago, alan_fincher said:

 


That's total bollocks Mike, but then I'm sure you know that!

There has never been any suggestion that Collingwood was unconnected with Liverpool Boats, and it is daft to suggest there has.

If you look up Collingwood it clearly shows that it was originally called Liverpool Boats

https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/04953783

Aintree boats on the other hand show no obvious connection to either Liverpool Boats or Collingwood, other than that they have a Liverpool based address.  However the addresses are miles apart, with evidence of two completely different boat building sites easily found on Google Street View.   There is no obvious tie up between the directors of Aintree Boats and those of Liverpool/Collingwood.

https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/07333796

It is not hard to find this stuff out, and not really helpful to potential buyers to post stuff that simply doesn't seem to be supported by actual fact.

Aintree Boats came out of Skater Marine.  They had built a trip boat for a charity, The Pride of Sefton, IIRC (or it might have been The Pride of Sefton 2).  When Skater Marine folded, the chairman of the charity employed some of the staff to finish the boat off, and they ended up setting up Aintree Boats.  Tha Chairman of the charity was involved for a few years, even though he'd never intended to run a boat builders in his retirement.  They showed their first boat at Crick a good five or six years ago.

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Folk on this forum do get very emotive about shells and usually love the shell that they actually own.

If you like the look of a shell and the price is right then go for it.

I often hear that Liverpool had less than perfect quality control so there is an increased chance of getting an over-width or banana shaped shell. If buying an old Liverpool shell it would be wise to check this out, but if buying any shell then its wise to check. I know that Barry Hawkins (who some consider a top name) built at least one seriously over-width shell. Our Colecraft is a little over-width at the back but then its not the typical Colecraft style.

I have seen less than perfect welding on both Hudsons and Northwich Traders.

Collingwood and Aintree may or may not be related to Liverpool but its likely that the people involved have changed, and even top name builders might sometimes use a new or subcontract welder.

I am not convinced that the more expensive shells are actually better value, except perhaps for the really top name specialist builders. At the very bottom of the market it is likely that some corner will have been cut to get the price right down.

The only essential advice is that doing top quality fit outs on budget shells is not a good investment.

..................Dave

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49 minutes ago, dmr said:

I have seen less than perfect welding on both Hudsons and Northwich Traders.

 

..................Dave

My Hudson developed a leak at the bottom plate to hull side weld, so I had to go back to Glascote dry dock for repair.   Steve swore he had sacked the welder as soon as I phoned him.

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On 22/09/2017 at 15:37, Mike the Boilerman said:

Alan there's no need for that sort of language.

 I now see what I wrote was ambiguous. I meant there is no connection between Collingwood and  Aintree boats. 

That's what I read it as meaning just now, yes.

And no, there isn't. Perhaps "spheroids" would suit?

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I bought a 1998 Liverpool narrow boat 5 years ago to live on and have had no issues. It wasn't fitted out by them but a self fit out which I like. What drew me was being a trad 50 footer I got more space inside and boats I had viewed were terrible at 20k and another 5k extra got me a nice boat for £25,000. I like the Beta Marine 1305 engine and it passed the full survey with flying colours. The surveyor that I found even said "if you don't buy it I will" He said that Liverpool had an unfair reputation by being a volume builder and we always hear of the bad ones but never the most likely satisfied owners.

My boat has the scroll in it. What years did they do that? There are quite a few LB in our Marina. Another owner has a Collingswood boat and that hasn't had any issues.

James.

Narrowboat1003.jpg

Edited by canals are us?
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The 'issues' all arose on the customer first getting the boats as brand new. The massive lists of after sales complaints had to be seen to be believed. 

Once all the faults on delivery have been ironed out they are very good boats. Usually ironed out at the expense of the first purchaser. 

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12 hours ago, Mike the Boilerman said:

The 'issues' all arose on the customer first getting the boats as brand new. The massive lists of after sales complaints had to be seen to be believed. 

Once all the faults on delivery have been ironed out they are very good boats. Usually ironed out at the expense of the first purchaser. 

At the core they were very good boats, some nice little features on them and very good value. It seems, in my opinion, to be that the main shell and build were good but there may of been problems with the QA on the ancillary work that was undertaken post the main shell build

But I do believe the strategy, if indeed that is what happened, to retain the good bits and start afresh retaining the good bits, which are evident in the new boats, and applying better QA to the peripheral and ancillary bits was and is good business sense. End result for us is that there are some decent older sorted out Liverpools about at a good price and an experienced builder producing what appear to be decent boats, at least the odd few owners of the new boats that  I have spoken to all seem to be happy with them.

Shouldn't really talk up the older boats to much people might start adding to the asking price.

 

 

 

Edited by reg
Randomly italicise a clarification, edit mode got me beat
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On ‎9‎/‎22‎/‎2017 at 21:51, The Bearwood Boster said:

All I can say, is that we've had our Liverpool boat from new since 2004 & it's been great..It's not posh but does what it says on the tin!The Ford Fiesta of the boat world-ie reliable,hardy & easy to sort out.A great boat which we love.

Ditto as a sailaway in 2002, had it stretched in 2015 by RW Davis, that should be interesting on the sale particulars when we eventually do.

  • Greenie 1
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"Cobweb" is a 1998 Liverpool hull and fits through every lock I've come across, she sails in a straight line with minimum wake, previously I spent some very happy times aboard "Moonbeam" an even earlier Liverpool hull that also sailed in a straight line with minimum wake and fitted through every lock we came across.

That's only two I admit, but for me that's 100% 

I'm hoping to get a "sailaway" in the next year or two, I'm planning a visit to Collingwood to see if they suit.

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A friend of mine has a 57' Liverpool boat, he does about 1000 hrs a year sailing , heavy use and has never had a problem.

He is an extremely experienced boater and says theres nothing at all wrong with them. On our marina of 85 boats about 60% are LP boats.

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On 22/09/2017 at 09:49, Mike the Boilerman said:

 

I doubt it. When I did the gas PDIs on them for New Boat Company at Thames and Kennet Marina, LB didn't give a sh!t about after sales problems according to Chris the guv'nor, and they refused to fix anything once the boat came off the lorry.

That wasn't my experience. Chris at NBC sent his team to fix one warranty repair on my boat and paid for another to be done by my own contractor without any problem.

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