Should I buy a narrowboat

[Dunworkin]

Some honest advice needed.....! We are a mid 50’s couple who have retired early and would love to buy a narrowboat to spend 6 months of the year cruising. We’ve heard loads of people say that we shouldn’t hesitate...and others say that it’s financial suicide....! Some honest advice would be very welcome.

[MtB]

I'd say both are right.

[Naughty Cal]

BOAT = Bring Out Another Thousand

[MtB]

Whichever way you cut it, it costs £5k a year to run a narrowboat. (Plus any mooring fees should you take a permanent mooring for winter.)

 

So, can you comfortably afford £5k a year? If so, go for it! If not, then don't. 

[OldGoat]

Both above are quite right!

Before you even do some research - go NOW and hire a boat for a week. It's still lowish season so you may get a good deal - see if you can actually cope with the style and restrictions.

DO NOT see it as an investment

Boats are overpriced

Consider what you'll do with the boat for the other six months of the year. Moorings are not cheap. You can't just dump the boat and walk away for those months.

 

If all the above are OK then - welcome...

[Alan de Enfield]

1 minute ago, Mike the Boilerman said:

Whichever way you cut it, it costs £5k a year to run a narrowboat. (Plus any mooring fees should you take a permanent mooring for winter.)

 

So, can you comfortably afford £5k a year? If so, go for it! If not, then don't. 

AND - much like a car, your 'investment' is likely to depreciate in value - particularly as at the moment the prices are the highest they have been for years - have they reached the peak - who knows ?

 

 

[Dunworkin]

We’ve hired a boat on the Mon and Brec the other week.....loved every minute. The investment aspect is not an issue...you’ll always lose money when you sell....really appreciate the advice though. Runnin* costs are the main concern.

5k per annum is about what I’d been given to understand for the costs.

[MtB]

13 minutes ago, Dunworkin said:

5k per annum is about what I’d been given to understand for the costs.

 

Bear in mind it cn be very 'lumpy'. One year you'll spend perhaps £1k, another perhaps £9k. 

[Guest]

29 minutes ago, Dunworkin said:

We’ve hired a boat on the Mon and Brec the other week.....loved every minute. The investment aspect is not an issue...you’ll always lose money when you sell....really appreciate the advice though. Runnin* costs are the main concern.

5k per annum is about what I’d been given to understand for the costs.

You can save yourself a considerable sum if you are good at doing 'stuff' yourself such as servicing the thing and importantly you enjoy grubbing about in the engine hole or other confined spaces fixing things.

 

If not you are resigned to paying somebody else to do it. I can gurantee you there is always something to improve, put right, paint, or fix on a narrowboat, especially one more than a couple of years old. Then you have your other costs such as licence which you cant really offset other than buy a boat in accordance with a reduced licence cost, ie a small one!

 

The two happiest days in your life as a boat owner, are the day you buy and the day you sell.

 

In short, don't underestimate the upkeep costs and time if you want to keep the boat looking smart and well maintained. It isn't all about pootling along like you do on a hire boat where fixing and looking after the thing is someone else's problem.

 

Martin - ex. boat owner.

Edited May 9, 2018 by MJG

[Dunworkin]

Cheers Martin. My son is an experienced mechanic so hopefully a narrowboat engine has some cross overs with an HGV engine...so I hope that may save some costs. Given that we are retired then having a go at things is all part of the attraction too ...but still all very sobering at this stage!

[pete.i]

And then on top of all that you have the frustrating vagaries and inadequacies of the Canal and River Trust to contend with.

 

Pete   ex narrow boat and cruiser owner.

[Athy]

16 minutes ago, Dunworkin said:

Cheers Martin. My son is an experienced mechanic so hopefully a narrowboat engine has some cross overs with an HGV engine.

In bygone days, when lorries were smaller than they are now, they were quite often the same engine!

The majority of modern narrowboat engines are marinised Japanese units which were intended for industrial use or powering dumper trucks and mini-diggers - Mitsubishi and Kubota being favourite base engines, though there are also some Korean and, I believe, even Chinese ones about.

Edited May 9, 2018 by Athy

[Dunworkin]

I’ve picked on CRT issues recently.....not easy!

[Alan de Enfield]

Just now, Dunworkin said:

Cheers Martin. My son is an experienced mechanic so hopefully a narrowboat engine has some cross overs with an HGV engine...so I hope that may save some costs. Given that we are retired then having a go at things is all part of the attraction too ...but still all very sobering at this stage!

The biggest 'thing' to get to grips with is management of electricity.

 

Ideally you should read up as much as possible about the subject - remember that you are now responsible for the 'power station', the 'power storage', and the 'power usage'.

If any of the items are out of balance you will have problems - planning to have 'bricks & mortar domestic appliances' (from a hair dryer, curling tongues, microwave or even an electric toaster) requires a lot of planning and forethought.

It can be done but you need to know how to do it.

Most newcomers will destroy a battery bank before they learn (a battery bank can be £300 or £1000) so it pays to try and understand the requirements.

 

General guidance for maximising the life of your batteries is to NOT discharge them below 50% (ie down to 12.2 volts) and charge them every day to as high as possible state of charge (possibly 4 hours engine running per day) and once a week take them to 100% state of charge (another 8 hours running)*

 

The 'trick' is to know what state of charge your batteries are at and there are a number of methods, each of which has its detractors and its supporters. The simplest (& cheapest) method

is to measure the tail current of the charger so it is down to below 2%. This means that if you have a battery bank of 5x 110ah batteries (550ah) then once your charger is down to around 5 - 10 amps you can say they are pretty much fully charged.

 

What some people find difficult to comprehend is that IT IS THE BATTERIES THAT DICTATE THE CHARGE RATE & NOT THE BATTERY CHARGER / ALTERNATOR so having a 100amp battery charger DOES NOT mean that you will put 100 amps into your battery in one hour.

 

* These times are a very rough guide and will depend on the state of your batteries and the number of your batteries.

[Graham Davis]

33 minutes ago, Dunworkin said:

We’ve hired a boat on the Mon and Brec the other week.....loved every minute. The investment aspect is not an issue...you’ll always lose money when you sell....really appreciate the advice though. Runnin* costs are the main concern.

5k per annum is about what I’d been given to understand for the costs.

Whilst I know the Mon and Brec is lovely, I would suggest that hiring from somewhere "on the mainline" might be a good idea, as the ambience is very different.

[Tony Brooks]

1 minute ago, Alan de Enfield said:

What some people find difficult to comprehend is that IT IS THE BATTERIES THAT DICTATE THE CHARGE RATE & NOT THE BATTERY CHARGER / ALTERNATOR so having a 100amp battery charger DOES NOT mean that you will put 100 amps into your battery in one hour.

 

* These times are a very rough guide and will depend on the state of your batteries and the number of your batteries.

 Tut tut, you know better than that Alan

 

However a good post and point sohuld be taken.

[Dunworkin]

Very wise words.....I tried to understand Journey with Jonno’s latest missive on batteries etc and couldn’t understand a word...so definitely some reading to do here.

In what way is the ambience different....interested to hear

[Guest]

6 minutes ago, Dunworkin said:

 

In what way is the ambience different....interested to hear

There are parts of the system that are a lot busier for one thing.

 

The m and b is not as you probably know not connected to the main system and combined with its location is a lot quieter. Other parts of the system can get very busy around the 'honey pot' locations like Fradley, Braunston, Oxford. etc

[Dunworkin]

Aah ok....I noticed that the M & B appeared to consist entirely of hire boat traffic....

[Dartagnan]

The latest vlog from journey with jono was dreary and too complicated for me as he was changing settings.  His previous 2 with regards to him changing to lithium were more interesting and useful for me.

[Dunworkin]

I think it will still take some time for it to sink in with me.....but an issue we need to grasp if we are to do this.

[Alan de Enfield]

20 minutes ago, Tony Brooks said:

 Tut tut, you know better than that Alan

 

However a good post and point sohuld be taken.

Indeed - but I think that your post could be misinterpreted to mean that the suggestion I made was incorrect rather than (as we know) the units of measurement were incorrectly quoted.

 

For the benefit of the OP :

Amps are an instantaneous measurement and for example something drawing 10 amps will draw 10 amps for the whole period it is 'on'.

The correct units in my example should have been amphours (Ah) which is amps multiplied by time,

So to be correct the 100 amp battery charger running for 1 hour does not put 100Ah into the battery.

 

so an item using 10 amps for 6 minutes uses 1Ah, the same item running for 1 hours uses 6Ah and if left running all day uses 144Ah

 

I was trying to simplify things, but as usual it is correctly pointed out that it is better to use the correct units from the start.

Edited May 9, 2018 by Alan de Enfield

[magictime]

I suppose this is stating the bleedin' obvious, but it might just be worth saying that although £5k is no doubt a good middle-of-the-road, ballpark figure for the sort of annual costs you might expect, there's going to be a huge amount of variation from boat to boat and owner to owner.

 

Cruise 200 miles a year in a brand new 25ft boat and it might average out at more like £2,500 a year over the next ten years. Cruise 2000 miles a year in a 40-year-old 65-footer and it might average out at more like £7,500. A more 'average' 20-year-old 45-footer might indeed come out roughly in the middle. And any one of those boats might cost you £35,000 or thereabouts upfront. So to a great extent it is about weighing up the trade-off between living space on the one hand, and the costs and hassles of ownership on the other. 

 

Personally, even if looking to live aboard for six months a year, I'd be inclined to look very closely at newer, smaller boats before anything else. They can be so well-planned as to be surprisingly 'liveable', even for extended cruises - especially if you're not talking about the winter months where you might be stuck inside much of the time.

 

I speak as someone who's 'upgraded' from a 23-foot holiday boat to a 55-footer for living aboard all year round. That extra space is indispensable to us if we want to accommodate all our possessions and avoid  'cabin fever' in the winter, but it's surprising just how little difference the extra space makes when you're simply out and about cruising and just need somewhere to cook, sit, sleep and wash.

[MtB]

58 minutes ago, Athy said:

In bygone days, when lorries were smaller than they are now, they were quite often the same engine!

 

Not really.

 

The Gardners for example in lorries, were usually six cylinder iterations of the two and three cylinder vintage lumps we have in our narrow boats. 

 

[Boat&Bikes]

Yes you should buy a boat. It’s flipping brilliant, we love being out all summer, best thing we ever did was retire early to go boating.