Acquiring our Narrow Boat.

Part 1.

We talked about going on our adventure in '91 so had plenty of time to prepare. However, with our limited knowledge of the narrow boat market, we had a lot of learning ahead of us. First we made some...............

Assumptions:

In early '91 we sat down and ask ourselves a few basic questions, we didn't have any answers but did make some assumptions......

How long would we cruise the canals?

We assumed......six to nine months.

If we bought a boat, how long would we keep it?

We assumed...... we would sell at the end of the cruise.

Should we buy new or secondhand or look into leasing?

We assumed..... we would buy a secondhand narrow boat.
Our reasoning being:-
a. We did not feel 100% confident that a new boat would be ready when we wanted it? We had heard stories about late deliveries from builders plus it would be some time before we knew enough to design a layout to our liking.
b. Living in the USA would make it difficult for us to inspect the ongoing construction of a new boat.
c. Knowing there was a good chance we would be selling at the end of the year we guessed a new boat would drop at least 20% in value in its first year, and
d. Initial inquiries led us to believe that 6 to 12 month lease rates were not very common nor financially attractive. Later research indicated they were 30% to 50% of the weekly rates.
The downside to buying versus leasing was we would be taking a risk of tying up a significant amount of money and incurring ongoing expenses for an indefinite period if we were unable to sell at the end of the cruise.

Would we be on our own most of the time or have friends and relatives share in our adventure?

We assumed...... we would have lots and lots of guests.
This being the case, we would have to look for a 4 or, maybe, a 6 berth boat with a minimum length of 50'. It also meant we would be faced with some interesting logistics on scheduling our company and meeting up with them.

Did we want to limit our travels to specific waterways?

We assumed...... we would want to explore as much of the country as possible; but-
the Fens were eliminated because of our previous assumption (at that time 47' was the maximum length) and, if we wanted to cruise all of the northern waterways we would be looking at under 56'. Knowing we definitely wanted to cruise the Leeds & Liverpool we set 62' as the maximum length for our boat.

Were there other important, or desirable, boat specifications?

We assumed....we would want all steel construction; a permanent double bed and a pump-out toilet.
In reality we were rookies and would learn more as we went along.

What was the maximum price we would pay?

We assumed...... £25,000.
This was a tough one because we didn't have a feel for the market. If necessary, we could tap further into our "kid's inheritance money" if we had to; but felt that this amount would open up a fairly wide market.

We knew these assumptions were not cast on concrete but
they gave us a starting point to start our Research.

John.....The Canaloholic in Reno.