New Horizons

If you’ve bought your first boat, there are bound to be a few adventures along the way as you set off...

- Graham Young

We started our search for a boat in March 2015 and, after several weekends going around marinas and brokers, I found one advertised five miles down the road on the Peak Forest Canal.

Blue Horizon had been built in 2010 and fitted out as a liveaboard but, amazingly, it had only cruised from Whaley Bridge to the mooring in New Mills and no further, so basically I had found a narrowboat that was five years old, still in primer and with an engine showing just 3.5 hours.

As it was still in primer we knew we’d have to give her a paint job – the bottom of hull was looking pretty shoddy, too, so she was booked in for blacking. Inside, though, it was pretty modern and she just needed a clean and tidy and a few alterations.

As there was no front deck as such, we started painting by giving the roof a few coats of non-slip grey. Next we needed to tidy the back end. For a first attempt we used Hammerite garage door paint from B&Q. It worked fine, but then we decided to go for a darker navy blue and bought some marine paint off the internet at £16 a tin.

With the painting done so far, it was time for the first run out… I hadn’t ‘driven’ a narrowboat since the late 70s when I had built them at Coles Moreton Marine and ‘driven’ a few away from the marina after welding repairs. Still, how hard could it be...

We decided to pop up to the turnaround bit towards Whaley Bridge, head back to the marina for fuel, carry on past to the next turnaround bit, come back and park up backwards. Easy. As our mooring is at an angle you have to head out in the direction of Whaley Bridge, so when parking you had to reverse in with the boat pointing towards Whaley Bridge. Getting out was a struggle; we drifted into the barrier, pushed the back out, reversed a bit and off we went to get fuel. (Memo to self: tie up securely.)