Gift of Spirit

.....was built from scratch, starting with a single steel sheet on the floor. Dragon Narrowboats, near Mold in North Wales, built the shell for us both on time and within budget. She was a 57 ft 'Semi-Trad' boat.

Gift of Spirit was our first boat and was delivered to us with ballast, ply-wood floor, spray-foam insulation, ply wall boards and windows. We fitted all the interior out ourselves which was a huge learning curve. Except the engine that is, which should have been installed by a friend of mine - but that never happened! That story is told in 'A Narrowboat at Large'. It took 10 months to complete but we turned out a decent boat.

We only had one real cruise on her before I decided to buy another shell and start again using all the knowledge we'd acquired with Gift of Spirit. That was 'M'.

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Narrowboat'M' 

.....is so named after my beloved Godmother who died during the build. This boat is a 'Trad' and was bought as a shell, off the shelf in effect, from Lymm, Cheshire. This time including an engine - a Beta Marine.

This one arrived literally as a hollow steel tube with an engine so we had to organise ballast, floors, insulation and walls. The whole project took eight months to complete - working full time, seven days a week. Long days too!

Once again we did all the fitting out ourselves and to be honest, it was a definite improvement on Gift of Spirit. We had learned a lot but still made a minor cock-up when installing the toilet. Somehow I plumbed it into the hot water system in error - ending up with a hot flush!

That apart though she was fine and we had two fabulous years cruising many of the canals of England and Wales.