Step Aboard
On Purchasing a Very Good Boat
Well. Here we are.
It is, as I type, Spring 2023. I have just shaken hands on what is best described as a wreck, a scrap boat, an ex working boat; at best ‘a project’.
At the risk of triggering some eye-rolls, she (for they are generally a ‘she’ until they become problematic, at which point they become ‘bastard things’) is a 44ft narrowboat, built in 1986 by or for British Waterways (the now-defunct canal governance organisation) as a motor working boat. As such she is pug ugly; flat bow and stern with big scooped-up base plates at both ends to facilitate ‘getting in’ easily (coming up close to the work-site, be that in or next to the water). Boats like these really do embody function over form in the most perfect manner. I love them.
Upon meeting, she is called MORLAS, which I am led to believe is a Welsh word for aquamarine (or alternatively a name for Pollock, it seems). She is half filled with rain and bilge water, and sports a cargo of part-rotted wooden planks and rather amusingly a nameplate stating ‘Greased Lightning’, something that is so loaded with irony that the boat lists heavily to one side under the weight of it.
She has fore and aft cabins and a central hold which has a flat roof fitted, keeping the cargo heap not-quite-dry at all times. As a motor boat she has a standard issue Lister 2 cylinder Diesel engine, your de facto narrowboat engine; loud, slow, virtually indestructible. As the engine has no oil in it, we can only assume that someone has had a reasonable go at destroying it; and failed.
What does one do with a boat like this? Well, sensible people would cut her up for scrap, make decent use of the engine in something more elegant, and repair to the nearest pub to rejoice in a job well done. I have been accused of many things over the years, but being sensible is not generally one of them; so my plan is to spend some money on bringing her up to water-worthy standard again, and then create a floating forge for the metalwork side of my conservation business. In this regard it represents the culmination or bringing into reality of a plan which I have held for some twenty years.
First things first however, this boat is a LONG way from home and needs a fair lot of urgent work before many of these miles are undertaken. Join me as I attempt to bring what has been described already as a ‘floating skip’ back to life. It promises to be an interesting ride…
