Taken from NB Lillyanne‘s blog.

The last few days we have done lots of thinking and discussing of our boat builder for NB Oleanna. The reason for keeping the hire car was so that we could go to Sheffield for the Tyler Wilson open weekend to have a second look round the workshops there and chat things through with Jonathan before we finally made our minds up.

Although Congleton is only 45 miles away it still took us an hour and a half to get there. The roads across the Peak District are beautiful but wiggly both horizontally as well as vertically. As on our last visit we went past the right road into Victoria Boatyard, but this time realised our mistake straight away. Once corrected we found the proper entrance into the yard instead of the tradesman’s.

The yard had been given a bit of a spruce up since our last visit, tubs of flowers lined the way from the office (a lady said they’d arrived this last week!) and all the workshops were tidied. We spotted Jonathan and had a brief chat, then had a look round the narrowboat that was being fitted out on our previous visit. Still not quite completed but only a few days short. We also looked round a Dutch Barge that was nearing completion. In the main fabrication shed two Josher Semi Trads were on show, one a semi tug, the other just a large bath tub so far.

After looking back around the Sheffield Keel they’d displayed at Crick, 60ft by 12ft, we managed to get to chat to Jonathan. He said all the right things, confirming the payment details with us that Ken and Julia had mentioned two days ago. A look between Mick and myself with a nod to confirm our decision, “We’d like to go ahead then please Jonathan”.  A shake of hands all round, although mine may not stand as it was with my left hand! This might mean that Mick has to pay for it all!

We waited for Ken to become free then had another look around the boats and discussed various options we had with the hull. Jonathan’s son was on hand, his enthusiasm was such that it sounded like he’d make a start straight away. Our first meeting is already arranged for this coming week back in Sheffield. Our build will happen next year, with NB Oleanna hitting the water, so to speak, late spring/early summer if all goes well. This time around everything already feels better.

We will be doing a separate blog on the build, we’ll post a link to it shortly.

Our trip back was quicker as there were fewer cyclists on the road. We’d passed signs on our journey this morning to an Ice Cream Farm. But sadly Ken had kept us talking too long in Sheffield and we arrived ten minutes too late!

For several years Mick and I have been wanting our own narrowboat. We started hiring boats together in the autumn of 2006 when we explored part of the Leeds and Liverpool Canal. Hiring more and more boats we bought into a share boat NB Winding Down on which we enjoyed our four weeks a year greatly. The natural progression from here was to have our own narrowboat, so we planned on having one built to our own specification. Having been patient for several years we decided to look for a secondhand boat of the right layout to keep us going until we had our own bespoke boat built, a bit of a try before you build. We were very lucky in finding NB Lillyanne in March 2014, the right sort of layout, low engine hours. She needed a couple of alterations so we could have people to stay, but other than that and being 2 foot longer than we originally wanted, she fitted the bill very well.

In July 2014 we moved on board fulltime, renting out our home in Scarborough for a year (initially), Mick dropped out from being a telephone engineer and myself (Pip) reducing the amount of work I took on as a Theatre Designer. Sadly things with our boat build didn’t go according to plan, so in May 2015 we visited the Crick Boat Show to shortlist possible boat builders. Since then we have visited four companies, asked for quotes based on our now altered spec. A year afloat has been good for us and has changed our minds on various things. With our shortlist down to two builders we paid them both a second visit last week.

That is a quick roundup of how we started this journey. This blog is intended as a diary of NB Oleanna’s build for us to be able to look back on in years to come. Please feel free to follow us on our journey. Posts will be as and when things happen. Our other blog NB Lillyanne will continue about our travels aboard our yellow boat.