When we suspended our narrowboat hunt last November to toddle off to the warmth of Portugal we nevertheless kept a close eye on what boats were available and maintained a list of boats that were of interest to us with the intention of returning home in March 2020 with a current list of available boats to view, but when we made the plans we thought Covid 19 was something that only the Chinese needed to worry about. We soon discovered how wrong we were. Many brokerages (although not all) were closed for the lockdown period.
As the lockdown started to ease boat sales quickly picked up and many boats on our list, particularly those at the cheaper end were being snapped up often after languishing on the “for sale” list for months. Our hunt was also hampered somewhat by the sleeping at home rule as many brokers were outside the distance that could be reached in a day with sufficient time to view boats and return home.
We now however had a number of boats we wished to see and made appointments with four brokers to see eight boats all in the Northampton/Coventry area. Before we had even left home we had calls from two of the brokers to say that boats we had made appointments to view had been put under offer. Oh well.
One of the other brokers, when we phoned to make the appointment acted like, to put it plainly, a pig ignorant arse, and although we did make an appointment and (we try not to cut off our noses to spite our faces) if the boat had been particularly attractive we might even have attended . . . .
The day was organised around a boat we particularly wanted to see, built to a very high standard, a hull survey carried out in April 2020 showed the hull to be as good as the day it was launched, twenty six years ago however the fit out although top quality when installed had suffered badly over the years and had now, in our opinion, turned into a very deep money pit. So sad ‘cos it would have made a fabulous home.
We saw a number of other boats, some nice but overpriced, others we saw from the outside only as we were physically unable to gain entrance - it’s a bummer getting older!!!
We eventually arrived at Calcutt Boats where we had arranged to have another look at the boat we had almost made an offer on back in last November, climbing aboard we understood the saying “ . . . you don’t choose a boat it chooses you . . . “ we were comfortable. Our concern (and one reason we didn’t buy the boat in November) was the thought that the saloon was a little small, now it seemed quite expansive.
After spending a long time on board rummaging in cupboards, measuring and trying out, we decided that this was our boat and made an offer which was accepted, all we have to do now is organise a full purchase survey and BSS (Boat Safety Scheme) Certificate inspection, then pay the agreed price and RoJo will be ours - here are a few photos taken at the time we made our offer for RoJo.