Wednesday, June 27, 2007

The Stove Arrives


Well its been a long wait but today our stove arrived, we think it is beautiful and now cannot wait to see it installed into our boat. The Hotpod is N0.75 and even comes complete with a poker a pair of gloves and a bagful of logs.

Thursday, June 14, 2007

Build Update

Well we decided to book a pitch for our tent and rough it for the Crick Show, we should have known it was too good when we got sunburnt faces on the Saturday, only to get very wet on the Sunday. We didn't even bother going back on the Monday as we had seen everything that we needed to see. We have to confess to packing up on the Saturday evening going home and travelling back for the Sunday (A comfy dry bed an hours drive away was to much of a temptation).
It was great to finally meet Mark & Lorain http://lorimar-thebuilding.blogspot.com/ showing their new boat Lorimar on the Heartwood Stand. We weren't sure but Netty was pretty sure she knew Mark from years back through some mutual "biker" friends of ours, so it was good to meet up and confirm this. This was a pretty spooky thing to stumble across their blog by accident and to find them embarking on the same "Lifestyle Journey" as ourselves. We wish them many happy hours cruising with Deefer and Daisy along the cut.

Up early this morning. Wasn't sleeeping to well as yesterday (14/06/07) we had our first "proper build meeting" with our builder. We have been over numerous times whilst waiting for our build slot but this was the real start of the process to design and layout our boat. Well my head is still buzzing we covered a lot of ground about the layout and equipment that we want on the boat. As always with these things a decent win on the lottery would not make us have to make some of these decisions but that's life I 'spose we all have to have a budget.

Our builder is now going to come back with the broken down quotation hopefully in a couple of weeks so we can finalise, sign the contract and start our build. We are running about 3 months behind our original dates but to be honest this has suited us better, as we are now looking at a March/April delivery which has got to be better than the December/January that we had before.

They seem to love the wood burning stove we have ordered and are keen to make this a main feature of the boat.

I think I have mentioned in previous blogs we have been so glad of this waiting time as we have had time to research and think about layout etc. We have been told by experienced boaters we still won't get it perfect, but we are happy with the solutions and answers we have come up with.

One of the main things we cannot make our mind up on is a bow thruster, that is if are they worth the money or not. Still lets see what price the builder comes back with. I must admit reading nb. balhama's blog http://www.blog.co.uk/index.php/balmaha and finding out that some kids who have been raised on narrowboats shouted out "He's got a girlie button" when he used his close to their boats might have something to do with the decision, there is nothing better than male pride when it comes to making decisions. As always any comments would be welcome on this subject just let us know.

The layout has changed slightly from our orignal that I posted way back, but working from the bow the layout is now :-
Bow 9'
Bedroom 9'6" (2 Portholes)
Bathroom 7' Full Width (2 Portholes)
Saloon 12' (4 Portholes 1, Houdini Hatch)
Office 5' (1 Side Hatch)
Galley 8' (2 Portholes 1, Houdini Hatch)
Engine Room 6'
Stern 3'6"