Our Narrowboat

Welcome to our website.

We are a group of people who enjoy spending time aboard narrowboats on the UK’s inland waterways.

The cost of owning a narrowboat is quite high, too high for the average person! Apart from the initial capital outlay (£20,000 … £100K+), you have annual costs to keep her, here are but a few:

• Canal & River Trust license;
• Insurance;
• Mooring;
• Servicing;
• Hull blacking;
• Repairs.

Not to mention your time involved in making sure all the above (and more) are taken care of.

A typical 63 foot narrowboat costs around £8,000 a year to maintain and typically spends only three or four weeks each year actually in use.

We think that shared ownership is a much better solution: All of the costs are spread between several owners, for example with 10 owners the above £8K each year comes down to £800 – each owner would get at least 4 weeks of time aboard which equates to a fairly low cost holiday!

The hire cost of a typical narrowboat for a week is around £2,000

Interested? Get in touch and let’s talk.

Morpheus is a lovely boat. She cost the original owners nearly £120,000 by the time they finished adding all those “little extras”, but she sat unused for the majority of the year – such a waste! They didn’t want to sell her, but they also did not want her to sit unused for the majority of the year. Renting her out was a non-starter due to the cost of insurance.

So, they came up with the shared ownership idea – to sell shares in her. Other like-minded folk have bought a portion of her, and she is now used and loved for most of the year.

Anyone who owns a share within this scheme can arrange with another member of the scheme to swap weeks, so you could potentially have a different holiday each year if you want.

We also encourage weekend jaunts. You can swap weekends with anyone else on the scheme if you fancy a weekend away. If you fancy several weekends away, you can request time from other people’s slots and, if they are willing, all you do is pay them the portion of their annual maintenance fees for the period you use the boat over and above your own allocation.

The boat is “split up” into shares. Each share is a week of time on the boat. Each week starts at mid-day on a Saturday and runs to mid-day the following Saturday, although by prior arranagement with the owner of the adjacent share to you, it is possible to arrange a different handover day or time – flexibility is what we want to achieve, to benefit all owners!

When you buy a share, you are buying a part ownership in the boat. You pay a one off purchase price for your share. You then own that share for life, or until you sell it on, which you are free to do at any time and at any price you choose.

Boats are expensive things to run. That’s why shared ownership is so popular – you are sharing all those expensive running costs between several other like-minded people.

Each share will vary in price, depending what time of the year it falls in. The summer period being the most expensive and the winter months being the cheapest. Whichever shares you buy, you can always request a swap with another owner, or even offer to “buy” another persons time, by paying their running costs for the period you want to use.

The only other expenditure is the running cost of the boat. This is totalled for the year and you pay your percentage of this for each share you buy. So, if you bought a month, you would pay 1/12th of the annual running costs. As these costs potentially change each year, the fee and payment arrangements are agreed each year at the shareholder’s AGM.

The following are all included in the annual running costs:

• British Waterways licence;
• Fully comprehensive insurance;
• Engine servicing;
• Maintenance of all onboard systems;
• Gas for cooking;
• Contingency fund for future repairs;
• Management fee.

This means that when you go on holiday all you need to pay for is your food and your diesel – you must return the boat with the fuel tank full for the next person, that way you only pay for what you use.

Each boat comes with almost everything you will need for your holiday, including:

• Pots, pans and coooking implements;
• Crockery, knives, forks, spoons, etc;
• Mop & bucket, dusters, cloths, etc;
• Pillows, duvets, extra blankets;
• Road and Canal maps;
• A few books and other “general” reading material;
• Radio;
• CD Player;
• Television;
• Gas stove and oven;
• Microwave;
• Fridge/Freezer;
• Washing machine.

All you need to bring are:

• Food;
• Clothes;
• Your own sheets, pillowcases and duvet covers.

Interested in our boat share? Drop us an email at teammorpheus01@gmail.com and we will endeavour to get back to you soon.

Or you can fill out the form below:

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