Rank these boat builders!

[Mad Harold]

Just now, Athy said:

Fenestration being windows or the arrangement thereof, I used to the word in the sense of "replacing the windows". Apparently it can also mean throwing something back through a window, which I did not mean (and indeed did not know). I am unsure where virginity comes into it (and am unsure that I want to find out).

Yes,I know. Just being flippant because I have a fortnight's leave and am getting quite bored looking at all the stop notices,and wondering where to cruise in the next two weeks.Am in Huddersfield and I think I could get to Leeds and possibly Skipton.Going the other way on the Calder I think I could get as far as Sowerby Bridge.

I could also just have a fortnight's holiday on the boat at it's mooring.  Where's this torrential rain we've been promised?

Decisions,decisions.

[TheBiscuits]

8 minutes ago, Furness said:

Yes,I know. Just being flippant because I have a fortnight's leave and am getting quite bored looking at all the stop notices,and wondering where to cruise in the next two weeks.Am in Huddersfield and I think I could get to Leeds and possibly Skipton.Going the other way on the Calder I think I could get as far as Sowerby Bridge.

I could also just have a fortnight's holiday on the boat at it's mooring.  Where's this torrential rain we've been promised?

Decisions,decisions.

Just keep an eye on river levels.  Looking at the pictures of the storm blowing in from York you could get a lot of runoff into the rivers, and then you might get stuck on red boards.

 

The ground is so dry that any hard downpours will all nearly end up in the rivers, not soak in.

[Captain Pegg]

50 minutes ago, TheBiscuits said:

Just keep an eye on river levels.  Looking at the pictures of the storm blowing in from York you could get a lot of runoff into the rivers, and then you might get stuck on red boards.

 

The ground is so dry that any hard downpours will all nearly end up in the rivers, not soak in.

 

I suspect there may be some urban myth in that last statement, although the phenomenon does appear to happen. It's certainly counter to the basic principle of hydrology that infiltration capacity increases as soil moisture decreases. Hard dry ground, especially in the clay soils found in much of the UK, will be full of shrinkage cracks for water to flow into. I suspect the reason for the apparent high levels of run-off is that summer storms caused by convection are often far more intense than rainfall at other times of the year and hence more likely to exceed soil infiltration capacity and lead to surface runoff.

 

Any hydrologists who can confirm one way or another?

 

JP

Edited July 27, 2018 by Captain Pegg

[rusty69]

4 minutes ago, Captain Pegg said:

 

I suspect there may be some urban myth in that last statement. It's certainly counter to the basic principle of hydrology that infiltration capacity increases as soil moisture decreases. Hard dry ground, especially in the clay soils found in much of the UK, will be full of shrinkage cracks for water to flow into. I suspect the reason for the apparent high levels of run-off is that summer storms caused by convection are often far more intense than rainfall at other times of the year and hence more likely to exceed soil infiltration capacity and lead to surface runoff.

 

Any hydrologists who can confirm one way or another?

 

JP

I was right with you up til "I" 

[TheBiscuits]

Table 7 BASIC INFILTRATION RATES FOR VARIOUS SOIL TYPES

 

Soil type	Basic infiltration rate (mm/hour)
sand	less than 30
sandy loam	20 - 30
loam	10 - 20
clay loam	5 - 10
clay	1 - 5

 

http://www.fao.org/docrep/s8684e/s8684e0a.htm

[tree monkey]

20 minutes ago, Captain Pegg said:

 

I suspect there may be some urban myth in that last statement, although the phenomenon does appear to happen. It's certainly counter to the basic principle of hydrology that infiltration capacity increases as soil moisture decreases. Hard dry ground, especially in the clay soils found in much of the UK, will be full of shrinkage cracks for water to flow into. I suspect the reason for the apparent high levels of run-off is that summer storms caused by convection are often far more intense than rainfall at other times of the year and hence more likely to exceed soil infiltration capacity and lead to surface runoff.

 

Any hydrologists who can confirm one way or another?

 

JP

I was thinking about this recently and wondering where I could find out how or if this actually happens.

 

I know from personal experience rain or water applied from a hose or watering can will bead and run off the surface of drought baked soils.

 

Purely based on that I think there is some sort of increased run off effect but how much I don't know

 

Sorry massively off topic

[Captain Pegg]

51 minutes ago, tree monkey said:

I was thinking about this recently and wondering where I could find out how or if this actually happens.

 

I know from personal experience rain or water applied from a hose or watering can will bead and run off the surface of drought baked soils.

 

Purely based on that I think there is some sort of increased run off effect but how much I don't know

 

Sorry massively off topic

I had exactly the same thoughts. There may be an effect of creating a hard pan like can happen around gates in fields of cows when a soil gets flattened down. Just made me wonder if it was really the case that most of the rainfall becomes run-off or whether it's simply that in a storm there is a lot of runoff but even more infiltration. Of course you can see the former but not the latter hence it would be easy to believe there is more runoff.

 

Anyway, I've probably said enough about hull builders and runoff now.

 

JP

 

Edited July 27, 2018 by Captain Pegg

[Athy]

2 hours ago, Furness said:

.  Where's this torrential rain we've been promised?

.

It reached here, with audio and visual accompaniment, in the early hours of this morning. For the first time in about a month I shan't need to do any garden watering today except for the tomatoes in the greenhouse.

[zenataomm]

Getting back to the subject of short listing boats for sale by objective elimination. 

As many of us here have already said it's only by getting out there and experiencing the magical or awful qualities every individual boat has to offer will present a 3D feel.

 

Trying to bring my last "wordy" 32 words sentence down to the objective kind of view OP has of the world I offer: -

 

Things You Choose with your heart: -

 

Life Partner

House

Pet

Boat

Holiday

 

Things You Choose with your head: -

 

Brand of Corn Flakes

Where to bank

Insurance policies

Make of family car

Restaurant for mid week meal

 

Admittedly you'd do as much research for both groups, but wearing out shoe leather and burning time can't be replaced by graphs and Gantt charts.

[mark99]

19 minutes ago, zenataomm said:

Getting back to the subject of short listing boats for sale by objective elimination. 

As many of us here have already said it's only by getting out there and experiencing the magical or awful qualities every individual boat has to offer will present a 3D feel.

 

Trying to bring my last "wordy" 32 words sentence down to the objective kind of view OP has of the world I offer: -

 

Things You Choose with your heart: -

 

Life Partner

House

Pet

Boat

Holiday

 

Things You Choose with your head: -

 

Brand of Corn Flakes

Where to bank

Insurance policies

Make of family car

Restaurant for mid week meal

 

Admittedly you'd do as much research for both groups, but wearing out shoe leather and burning time can't be replaced by graphs and Gantt charts.

 

And things you don't ever choose........

 

Pump out or widebeam. 

 

 

[Movin' on]

On 24/07/2018 at 20:00, David Schweizer said:

Les Allen, Reeves, Colecraft, all good boats, but based upon hull profile the only one I would consider buying would be Les Allen.

With that budget a good old allen or Norton canes would be my choice 

Edited July 27, 2018 by Halsey

[sarahavfc]

18 hours ago, Halsey said:

With that budget a good old allen or Norton canes would be my choice 

I may be a little biased but I would agree with this. 6 months ago I purchased a 70ft Norton Canes built in 1991 for what I thought to be a sensible amount of money. The fitout is in solid Brazilian mahogany, it has a vintage (ish) engine and back cabin and a great liveaboard layout. I’ve done a bit of modernising inside and the boat is now looking great. We’ve just had her out of the water for gritblasting and 2K epoxy blacking. Hull is in sound condition for its age, a little pitting but nothing scary, which the 2K epoxy has now put to bed.

 

Do your homework and go for a pedigree builder would be my advice.

 

Sarah 

[David Schweizer]

47 minutes ago, sarahavfc said:

I may be a little biased but I would agree with this. 6 months ago I purchased a 70ft Norton Canes built in 1991 for what I thought to be a sensible amount of money. The fitout is in solid Brazilian mahogany, it has a vintage (ish) engine and back cabin and a great liveaboard layout. I’ve done a bit of modernising inside and the boat is now looking great. We’ve just had her out of the water for gritblasting and 2K epoxy blacking. Hull is in sound condition for its age, a little pitting but nothing scary, which the 2K epoxy has now put to bed.

 

Do your homework and go for a pedigree builder would be my advice.

 

Sarah 

You would not be able to get that these days, as the sale of Brazilian Mahogany has been severely restricted for the last fifteen years, and if you can find any the price is something like £300 a cube. Your boat was fitted out before the current (or earlier) restrictions were put in place, Cherrish it.

[TheBiscuits]

26 minutes ago, David Schweizer said:

You would not be able to get that these days, as the sale of Brazilian Mahogany has been severely restricted for the last fifteen years, and if you can find any the price is something like £300 a cube. Your boat was fitted out before the current (or earlier) restrictions were put in place, Cherrish it.

And for goodness sake don't paint it white! 

[sarahavfc]

1 minute ago, TheBiscuits said:

And for goodness sake don't paint it white! 

I’ve not had to touch the ceiling. The original varnish is still in excellent condition. The only bit I have re done is where I took out cupboards between the galley and saloon.

 

Its not quite finished, but I’m pleased with how the modernising is going.

[jetzi]

1 hour ago, sarahavfc said:

Do your homework and go for a pedigree builder would be my advice.

Someone after my own heart then. Your boat is absolutely beautiful, congratulations!

Many people have mentioned my budget of 30K as being a severely limiting factor. If we were to wait a bit we'd be able to increase this to 40 or even 45 after say 6 months. Would you say you get more value at that price point? We'd obviously have to make even surer that we don't get a lemon - it's proportionally worse to overspend on a 45K boat than a 30K boat. But presuming we pay an appropriate price for her, do you generally get better deals on a slightly dearer boats?

[Robbo]

43 minutes ago, sarahavfc said:

I’ve not had to touch the ceiling. The original varnish is still in excellent condition. The only bit I have re done is where I took out cupboards between the galley and saloon.

 

Its not quite finished, but I’m pleased with how the modernising is going.

 

I like that.

[Movin' on]

38 minutes ago, ivan&alice said:

Someone after my own heart then. Your boat is absolutely beautiful, congratulations!

Many people have mentioned my budget of 30K as being a severely limiting factor. If we were to wait a bit we'd be able to increase this to 40 or even 45 after say 6 months. Would you say you get more value at that price point? We'd obviously have to make even surer that we don't get a lemon - it's proportionally worse to overspend on a 45K boat than a 30K boat. But presuming we pay an appropriate price for her, do you generally get better deals on a slightly dearer boats?

You do better by increasing 30 to 45 than 45 to 60 if you see my point - 30 is really pretty marginal for that length

[jetzi]

3 minutes ago, Halsey said:

You do better by increasing 30 to 45 than 45 to 60 if you see my point - 30 is really pretty marginal for that length

OK, I think I see what you are saying.

Would it be fair to say that narrowboats don't get much cheaper than 30K, so buying at the bottom of the range means you're likely to get something worth less? Conversely throwing much more money at a boat also doesn't have as big an impact?

Would you say that 45K is the budget we should aim for, then?

[Captain Pegg]

 

48 minutes ago, ivan&alice said:

Someone after my own heart then. Your boat is absolutely beautiful, congratulations!

Many people have mentioned my budget of 30K as being a severely limiting factor. If we were to wait a bit we'd be able to increase this to 40 or even 45 after say 6 months. Would you say you get more value at that price point? We'd obviously have to make even surer that we don't get a lemon - it's proportionally worse to overspend on a 45K boat than a 30K boat. But presuming we pay an appropriate price for her, do you generally get better deals on a slightly dearer boats?

Increasing the budget does obviously increase the consequence if things go wrong but at the same time it decreases the likelihood that things will go wrong. That's providing you use due diligence of course. However, I mostly think it opens up opportunities that you are unlikely to have with the current budget unless you get very lucky.

 

Certainly my advice would be different if you had a budget of £45k. You would be in territory where you can start to factor in preference rather than focus on need which is pretty much where I think you are at present.

 

JP

[Richard10002]

43 minutes ago, ivan&alice said:

Someone after my own heart then. Your boat is absolutely beautiful, congratulations!

Many people have mentioned my budget of 30K as being a severely limiting factor. If we were to wait a bit we'd be able to increase this to 40 or even 45 after say 6 months. Would you say you get more value at that price point? We'd obviously have to make even surer that we don't get a lemon - it's proportionally worse to overspend on a 45K boat than a 30K boat. But presuming we pay an appropriate price for her, do you generally get better deals on a slightly dearer boats?

The boat you were looking at at the start of this was asking £37,000, although I'm guessing you were expecting to be able to buy it for your £30,000, so you were already looking at boats over £30,000.

 

Given that you are new to this, and are fairly cautious, (to the point of possibly not buying anything IMHO  ), you can do no more than find a boat that you like, that is not obviously in poor condition, agree a price, and have a full out of the water survey, by a good, and reputable, surveyor. After that, it's a bit like "luck of the draw", but for most people it works out fine. If you find it's not for you in a couple of years, unless the market has changed massively, you will have a carefully bought boat, with a recent full survey by a recognised and reputable surveyor, and evidence that you have put right everything in the survey that was an issue. So it should retain its value in relation to the market in general..... having said that - it is much easier to turn your money into a boat than to turn your boat into money.

 

IMHO £30k is limiting for a 70ft boat, and your focus on builder is also limiting. For example, if a 1995 boat built by Hallmark, (one of the so called bottom of the market builders), is still floating, looks fine, and gets through a survey without too much trouble, you could almost certainly say that it was a well built boat, that has been well looked after, given that it is now 23 years old.

 

One thing that crosses my mind is that, if you are concerned that you will lose money when you sell in a "few" years, this is another criteria which could contribute to your finding reason not to buy any particular boat.

 

There can be no doubt that you will have more choice, of better boats, if your budget is actually £40k to £45k, but you will also find boats asking £45k with inflated asking prices. Thus, if you are able to generate an extra £10k - £15k over the next 6 months or so, it is definitely worth doing and, let's face it, you will have looked at many more boats in 6 months than you have so far, and you will be much more aware of what you are looking for after that time. In the meantime, if you find the boat you want before the 6 months are up, you might find a creative way of funding it, or you may get it for what you have available at the time.

[Movin' on]

17 minutes ago, ivan&alice said:

OK, I think I see what you are saying.

Would it be fair to say that narrowboats don't get much cheaper than 30K, so buying at the bottom of the range means you're likely to get something worth less? Conversely throwing much more money at a boat also doesn't have as big an impact?

Would you say that 45K is the budget we should aim for, then?

Not so much “aim for” but yes I think you will do much better if you look at £45k and then offer you might still get for £38k

 

There is no substitute for looking esp in that price range so you do need to put the time in and sadly you will probably waste a lot of it

 

Whilton is a good place to start to see what you can get (I’m not promoting them just there is always a lot to see) - Calcutt often have good stuff in this price bracket

[MtB]

39 minutes ago, Richard10002 said:

There can be no doubt that you will have more choice, of better boats, if your budget is actually £40k to £45k, but you will also find boats asking £45k with inflated asking prices.

 

 

This is especially true. Don't be disappointed if the first two or three boats you look at for £45k seem no better than the £30k boats you've already seen! 

 

With a higher price there is more scope for encountering sellers kidding themselves over value. Don't stop looking at £30 boats though, you might yet run into a screaming bargain.

[Ray T]

An alternative idea.

We bought a second hand 45ft boat that had been let go a bit. It had been on brokerage for three years, we never discovered why. I know this from looking at back dated magazines where the adverts appeared.

Because of this we were able to get the boat at a price that was acceptable to us, plus blacking and new batteries thrown in. We had a full survey and the hull was sound.  The interior had been well cared for but the exterior was shoddy. In the first couple of years of ownership we set about giving the boat lots of TLC. A complete strip back and repaint. We had some of the interior altered, a stove and extra cupboards fitted as the boat was fairly basic inside. We had the mains rewired and a full sine wave inverter fitted by Dave Reynolds. It is a Reeves hull with a Weltonfield fit out. 

One incident spurred us on, about a week after we bought the boat we were sharing a lock with another boat. The woman steering the other boat said "Oh have you bought that boat?" on my affirmative reply she remarked "We looked at that boat, didn't think much to it." 

Yes with the money we subsequently spent we could have bought a newer boat but we now have a boat that suits us and will see our canal days out. 

So I suppose the moral of the story is don't write off tatty looking boats with a sound hull, providing you are willing to spend time and money.

[jetzi]

1 hour ago, Richard10002 said:

The boat you were looking at at the start of this was asking £37,000, although I'm guessing you were expecting to be able to buy it for your £30,000, so you were already looking at boats over £30,000.

Yes we anticipating that we could offer less than 37, we've been looking at boats up to 40K. The 30K budget is not a hard limit and becomes less so as time goes by.

 

1 hour ago, Richard10002 said:

If you find it's not for you in a couple of years, unless the market has changed massively, you will have a carefully bought boat, with a recent full survey by a recognised and reputable surveyor, and evidence that you have put right everything in the survey that was an issue. So it should retain its value in relation to the market in general

That's kind of what we were hoping for.
 

 

1 hour ago, Richard10002 said:

£30k is limiting for a 70ft boat, and your focus on builder is also limiting.

There is no focus on builder. That's just the purpose of this thread. If you look at my other threads I've asked questions about overplating, accessibility by length of boats, engine type, and pre-purchase surveys. I'm sure as I learn more about narrowboats I'll ask other questions that could later give the impression that I'm focused on those other factors too. I'm not focussed on the builder, I'm just learning about them because in my question about how to value a boat that came up as an important factor. *An* important factor, not the only one, nor a limiting one.


Regarding buying a "fixer-upper", I'd be open to that but we will need to be able to live on it while we make improvements, so that kind of puts a lower limit on how much of a project we can take on. We're certainly looking at such boats, but it's even harder to judge when you strip it back to a hull and a marine engine, when I know next to nothing about either!