Looking through the canal magazines there are a myriad of boatbuilders so which one to choose? It really is a question of you pays your money and you makes your choice.
We reckoned about £1,000 a foot was where we should be looking. We already knew that some builders were going to charge a lot more than that plus there were some builders we had seen at shows where we didn't like their standard finish. I contacted at least 20 builders before we began compiling the list of builders to visit. (If you are about to embark on the same sort of exercise, Waterways World produces an even larger list - the number of builders advertising seems to have increased exponentially).
We
thought that if we went with a builder who produced boats we liked the
look of internally, then we were at least part way there. We had been
very impressed by Inaminit - winner of the best professional fit out
at the 2003 IWA Show and built by Crown Narrowboats. A tour of their
website showed a lot more boats which were very much to our liking so
they went on the list.
"Inaminit" - Crown Narrowboats
During
our travels we had come across a brand new boat for sale that we had
been impressed with - nb Whisper. Had we not decided that we wanted
to have a boat built to our design, we would probably have bought Whisper.
She was being built by Darren
Aldridge, a young builder who had recently set up on his own
after 10 years with Colecraft, so he went on our list as well.
A partially finished "Whisper" - Darren Aldridge
Also at the IWA we had spent a long time talking to Price Fallows (who fabricate the steel shell) plus another young builder from Premier Narrow Boats who were jointly displaying a cut through section of a boat. We decide to add Premier Narrow Boats to our list.
We went off one Saturday in September for the first of our boat builder visiting weekend. With our 18(!) page wish list in our hand our first port of call was to Braunston to talk to Darren as he finished off Whisper. He was very helpful and we learned an awful lot (little did we know how much more we still had to learn!). After a couple of hours we left Braunston and drove to Riverview Narrowboats - again we were met with helpful suggestions and comments.
From there we drove to Manchester (with an overnight stay at a very nice hotel) to see Crown Narrowboats. At first, we thought we must have got the address wrong as we were on an industrial estate without a canal in site - but Crown build in an industrial unit and then transport the boat to a canal. The husband and wife team who own Crown were very helpful and we spent about 3 hours learning more about boat design.
Down the motorways to Henley in Arden to Premier Narrow Boats and again we found the builder to be generous with his time. After discussions via e-mail, including pictures of the current build, we went to New Mills Marina on the Peak Forest Canal - the journey took much longer than expected and we were disappointed to find that the builder of the boat we had been sent pictures of no longer worked for them. However, the team were enthusiastic and helpful and we again spent nearly 3 hours talking with them.
On our return journey we had planned to meet with Nantwich Narrowboats but ran out of time so Ian took a trip up to see them the following week. We then visited Barry Hawkins at Baddesley Wharf - beautiful interior wood with wonderful workmanship plus they build the boat from scratch, including the shell, whereas a number of people we spoke to bought in the shells. Less detailed discussions were had with 4 more boatbuilders with a view to possibly asking them to quote.