Chloe in and Floydtilla Out

At their Stoke Prior base Black Prince has what looks like a floating polly tunnel. They use this to float the boats into so they can control the conditions while they work on the paintwork, both stripping back to bare metal and respraying.

These picture cover a few weeks work in the tunnel.

Chloe in the paint tunnel
Chloe in the paint tunnel
Bit of a dent to repair
Bit of a dent to repair
Stripping the paint
Stripping the paint
On with the undercoat
On with the undercoat (note dent repaired)
Masked up being painted
Masked up being painted
Floydtilla Logo
Under the masting Chloe changes to Floydtilla

The New Colour Scheme

Black Prince will paint your boat almost any colour you like, we wanted the boat to be a little brighter and Sonia my wife likes blue, we had also been advised that a dark colour on the roof could lead to a very hot interior.

Colour_Original
Black Prince Original Colours

So with the aid of Photoshop I took a picture I had of the boat we had hired in 2019 and started to recolour it.

Colour White
Side panels to white

First was to replace the red sides and remove any logos

Final Colour Selections
Final Colour Selections

Then after a bit of tidying up we could add the colours we had selected from the Black Prince recommended paint supplier Symphony Coatings (West Midlands Ltd), we could have chosen any paint from any supplier, but I have found it always best to stick to the recommended. Our picture was meant only as a guide to the painter to what we had in mind, I am sure he will improve upon our work.

We are buying a canal boat

Today we visited Black Prince Narrowboats to look at the range of boats they had coming up for retirement.

We originally wanted to look at a 57ft NB that was the same spec as one we had hired the year before, but we also looked at a 2007 62ft Lautrec 4 example and while not a lot of extra length, all the extra space was in the living area. Also this configuration did not come with a fixed table, but instead was equipped with a table and four chairs. At £47,500 this was near our budget and was pretty much what we wanted.

After a chat in the car park after our viewing we decided to put a £5000 refundable deposit on the 62ft NB that was called “Chloe”.

While the boat would be hired out for the 2020 season, it could be ours in 2021.

As part of the deal, they would fix anything that needed fixing, repaint to our colour scheme and make any basic alteration we needed. We also got to book her for a week in the summer so we could make sure we were happy.

Before we visited Black Prince we had done our research and talked to a few other X-Black Prince owners via Facebook. They all sang the praises of the team at Black Prince I could also find a few other X-Black Prince boats that were being sold at either higher or about the same price as we where paying.