Floydtilla is now back in the water at Stoke Prior, she has been blacked and all the outside work is now complete, just the kitchen to complete and we will be ready for the big pick up – we cannot wait.
Back in the water
The survey and our report
Having not owned a narrow boat before, we did have a small boat on the Thames at Henley, but that is a long time ago and a very different story, we asked Black Prince to recommend a company for our boat survey.
They passed our details on to Tom Keeling at Small Craft Services Ltd who emailed me and we arranged to chat on the phone. I was impressed with how Tom described the survey process, so we ask Tom to proceed with our pre-sale survey.
While Tom was recommended by Black Prince, it is very clear that he is working for us, his reputation is based making sure he finds what needs doing.
Tom arranged with Black Prince to come to Stoke Prior to survey the boat on 3rd February 2021 and we received his report a few days later.
The report starts with a boiler plate section that covers the scope of the survey and what we should expect to see on the following pages, it then describes the boats construction and thickness of the steel used as a baseline for the later test results.
The general condition of the metal work is described and explained, followed by the results of the Ultrasonic measurement of the thickness of each part show the range of measurements found.
| Area Tested | Ultrasonia Results (mm) |
|---|---|
| Cabin Side | 4.0 |
| Bulkheads | 4.0 |
| Hull Sides | 5.8-5.9 |
| Counter Plate | 9.5-9.9 |
| Base Plates | 9.1-9.8 |
| Transom | 5.8 |
| Swim | 5.9 |
“Floydtilla remains in a condition considered usual for a craft of this type, builder, use and year. There are recommendations detailed throughout the report and highlighted below which should be followed, as well as establishing a good programme of on-going maintenance.
It is known that the vendor will correct known faults prior to the completion of sale. If any further guidance is required please do not hesitate to contact the surveyor. Recommendations
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The craft should be re-blacked at this time (A)
Long-term, you are advised to follow the advice given regarding sand-blasting and epoxy coating (or similar) (A)
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The transom edge where the rudder makes contact, has minor notching occurring. This should be repaired at this time (A)
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The sacrificial wear edge should be reinforced to the aft shoulders where an area of around 1m has reduced profile through wear (A)
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There were deeper corrosion pits to the forward aspects of the swim plating, approximately 7 per side that should be welded up at this time (A)
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The new aft anodes should be fitted closer to the stern gear to provide better protection with the existing anodes remaining in situ (A)
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The propeller is damaged and should be dressed (A)
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There was some play apparent in the stern tube bearing at the time of survey; this should be further investigated and the worn or damaged components replaced (P)
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Descale and repaint the weedhatch, including the trunk faces and seal faces. Replace the seal (A)
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The LPG locker base should be descaled and repainted at this time (A)”
We also received a short form of the survey that we could send to Black Prince, all of which they happily agreed would be done.
The price of this pre-purchase survey was £395 Inc VAT which seemed like great value to us. It does give you a good feeling about your purchase and makes sure there are likely to be less surprises in the near future.
We will be working on a maintance schedule for when we finally take delivery, being an X-Hire boat the engine will have a high hours count, but should have been well maintained.
Lift Out
We had planned to be at the lift, but it was delayed by a few weeks and we ended up in the national lock down. The lift still went ahead and Leighton Jones at Black Prince took some pictures so we could see the process.
Now Floydtilla is on the hard standing she is ready for her survey by Tom Keeling of Small Craft Services Ltd
Then any external work will be completed before she has the old blacking removed and some new coats applied. They will also be working on the interior modifications.
Our plans for modifying Chloe/Floydtilla
We visited Black Prince in December 2020 to see the progress on the painting, we had provided a basic colour scheme a while earlier which was based on the current Black Prince design, but with the dark red replace with a lighter blue and the roof a cream colour, hopefully to reflect some of the summer heat.
We also looked at some other boats that Black Prince were working on to get ideas we could use for changes we wanted to make to the internal layout of our boat.
When we had hired Chloe during the summer, we had found that the kitchen was probably a bit small for our needs especially as many of the normal restaurants and pubs we would have used were closed.
Our idea was to take out the 2nd toilet and extend the kitchen into that space. This would give us a longer galley style kitchen with possible space for a washing machine and more counter space for a microwave and my coffee maker.
We also added 2 x 2 ways 240v sockets to the design that would pop up from the kitchen surfaces when needed.
We also hoped to add a cupboard door at the end of the kitchen units that could be used from the dining table area. This would mean we had access to the space next to the cooker for additional storage.
The bedrooms and remaining toilet/shower room would remain as they were, with the small addition of moving the television into the main bedroom and getting a larger more modern wall mounted TV for the living area.
When we had used the boat in the summer it was noticeable that the leisure batteries where coming to the end of life as bed time was governed by how long they lasted. These were to be replaced with new batteries with an additional leisure battery added.
A new higher capacity inverter was also going to be fitted that provided 3000W. Black Prince recommend the Photonic Universal 3000W unit which included a built in battery charger and lots of programmable options.
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.