Is shared ownership enough?

Although we have enjoyed our time on Scimitar, with the move up to Etruria she is not as accessible as she used to be plus, having to choose your holiday weeks over a year in advance is a bit of a pain, as evidenced by the fact that on 3 of our trips either Liz or I have had to cut the holiday short because of work commitments. Scimitar has, however, confirmed that we love boating.

Our trip to the IWA Show at Beale Park on the Saturday of the 2003 August Bank Holiday was the turning point when we decided that it just wasn't enough to have a share in a boat - we wanted to own 100% of it. So on the following Sunday and Monday we went looking for a boat.

Braunston Marina and Wilton Marina are not that far from home so we went to see what was on offer. About 40 boats and 3 weeks later we came to the conclusion that we weren't going to find a secondhand boat that matched what we wanted or that could be adapted to meet our requirements.

We came closest with Hephzibah, the penultimate boat which David Piper built, but the layout wasn't what we wanted plus we really don't like the mahogany trim against the oak panelling. However, she was very spacious and had great headroom. We thought about having her remodelled but that was going to take the costs pretty close to the cost of a new boat. Decision made - we would go for a new boat.

Ian inside Hephzibah (David Piper)

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