Tag Archives: narrowboat

“Your boat is on the bottom”… Happy new year!

Sep
10
2023
by Simon Harding | Comments Off

As 2022 ends the Boy and I have left Marple and moved in with R across the other side of South Manchester. As the Boy’s mum doesn’t live far from Marple I make sure I regularly visit the boat on swap days. Being a cruiser stern, water can get in the engine bay and it can build up a fair bit of water so regular checks are really critical and over the run up to Christmas the temperatures dropped and the canal froze so I upped the number of visits. On my Christmas Eve check, I pump the little water that was present out the bilge and made doubly sure the remote heating and dehumidifier was properly working and left her to enjoy Christmas safe in the knowledge everything was usual.

Note: At home I have Home Assistant, a smart home system that enables me to control the house lights, smart plugs and all sorts of things over the internet. Following an incident of frozen pipes in 2021 I added the boat into this via a Zerotier network node so that I can remotely monitor the boat’s temperature and humidity so that I can switch on an oil filled radiator and a dehumidifier via smart plugs on the boat as the situation dictates.

Note: At home I have Home Assistant, a smart home system that enables me to control the house lights, smart plugs and all sorts of things over the internet. Following an incident of frozen pipes in 2021 I added the boat into this via a Zerotier network node so that I can remotely monitor the boat’s temperature and humidity so that I can switch on an oil filled radiator and a dehumidifier via smart plugs on the boat as the situation dictates.

Christmas was as busy as usual and we start the new year with my parents visiting and so on the 2nd January (a bank holiday in the UK) about 2:30 we sit down to have our 3rd (or even perhaps 4th) “Christmas dinner” of the season. As usual was cooking and so I missed the multiple phone calls from an unknown mobile number. However as the meal was complete and the others tidy away the mains to get space for desert I check my phone and notice the multiple calls and a voicemail… Multiple calls from the same number on a bank holiday (or indeed any day are not usual) and as there was a voicemail I decide to listen to it and I hear the words that will remain with me for some time…

“Hi Simon, it’s Colin, your boat is on the bottom”.

I think that can’t be true so I quickly check Home Assistant and confirm the boat is not reporting home and hadn’t been since about 7am that morning… fortunately I hadn’t had more than a glass of wine at that point so Dad and I jump into my car and drive to the marina and indeed the boat is sat on the bottom of the marina. The light was going so nothing we could do that night but set an alarm and ring the insurance company the next morning and work out what to do next.

A bit of background into my narrowboat project

Sep
10
2023
by Simon Harding | Comments Off

In late 2016 my parents bought “Forget Me Not”, a 40ft cruiser stern narrowboat in Devizes, Wiltshire as an option to use as a movable base for my Dad whilst he was working on IT contracts in the run up to his retirement.
According to a survey they had done when purchsing the boat was apparently made by Brummagen Boats some time in the early 1980s it is powered by a raw water cooled BMC 1500 and at some point has been overplated it’s life before us (this is not unusal for a boat of this age).

“Forget Me Not” at the bottom of Caen Hill flight of locks

It stayed in the Devizes Area with me being a regular visitor through the start of 2017, where I took her down the famous Caen Hill flight of locks, one of the longest continuous lock flights. In the summer of 2017, Mum and Dad took the boat on a long summer cruise up the Kennet and Avon canal, on the the Thames and on to the Oxford canal to Cropredy music festival. At the same time Dad got a contract near Birmingham and the decision was made to move the boat up to Fazeley Marina on the Birmingham and Fazeley canal where Mum and Dad lived on board during the week. Apart from the odd couple of weeks where I took the boat out for short breaks this is where it stayed until May 2019 when Dad finished the contract and retired (for the first time).

At that point I was living in a house in Marple, that backed onto the towpath of the Macclesfield canal and as they live in deepest Somerset, an hour and a half away from the closest Canal, it was decided that I was best placed to keep an eye on the boat and use her. So the trip north started and she would be based in Marple’s Top Lock marina whilst they focused on refitting another boat; a wooden river cruiser, down near London.

The boat arriving in Marple in early June 2019

Whilst the boat has been in Marple I made various internal improvements including replacing 2 chairs my parents liked with a sofa I made from 2 Kelax units as the base and some custom foam cushions (I even sewed the the cushion covers myself). Whilst under my loco-parentis she’s been taken it on various trips including the Cheshire Ring in summer 2020 and to explore the Silver Propeller locations at the ends of the Leek and Cauldon canals in summer 2021.

In October 2021, delayed by Covid-19, the boat received blacking and a fresh coat of paint and she also had a new survey giving her a good bill of health for the years to come.


Coming back from paining and blacking in October 2021

Summer 2022 was marked with the Marple and Bosley lock flights being closed so due to a lack of water so she was restricted to going on local trips. She regularly visited the local hot spots of Bollington on the Macclesfield canal and Bugsworth Basin on the Upper Peak Forest canal and the odd night in the marina and hopes were high for a summer trip in 2023

However, fate had other plans and that’s where the story will continue.