Mike Stevens' UK Inland Waterways Pages

ABOUT ME

OUR CURRENT BOAT

FELIS CATUS III : THE STORY OF HER BUILDING
PART 1 - THE PRELIMINARIES

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[Finding a builder] [On the waiting list]

PLANNING

Felis Catus III is a boat decided to have built in order to sell up ashore, live aboard her and cruise full-time. That had been our long-term intention for many years, and when, in 1990, we had Felis Catus II built, it was with the intention that this would not be our final boat, but one for holiday cruising until we'd retired from work and were ready to proceed with the next stage of the plan. I think that as soon as we took delivery of FC2 we were thinking "What have we got right? What have we got wrong? "What better opportunities will we have in a bigger boat?" "What more will we need in a boat we're going to live on?. I'm not sure how soon the first back-of-an-envelope sketches for FC3 appeared, but Mk.2 of the proper drawings was dated 1999.

On August 31, 2002 we both retired from our jobs, having inherited some capital a few months before. This retirement was on schedule for me, but a few years early for Wendy, so we were in a position to move afloat rather sooner than we'd expected. We decided to take our time getting the design of the new boat right and, given the waiting lists that decent boat-builders have, to aim to make the final transition sometime in 2005. We're still on schedule for that date.

Since designing FC2, quite a lot of evolution had taken place in the technology available, much of which looked useful to us in achieving what we wanted in the design of FC3. By the summer of 2003 I was content that I'd got as far with the designs as I could without talking to whoever was going to build the boat, and we decided that the time was right to start searching for a builder.

[Planning] [On the waiting list]

FINDING A BUILDER

In 30+ years' boating we'd seen a lot of boats by different builders, known a lot of boat owners and heard their views. So it wasn't difficult to draw up a short-list of six builders we thought we might be interested in.

Then we heard of Orion Narrowboats, who weren't on our original list. This came about because Terry Waldren wrote on one of the Internet boating fora about the boat they were building for him and mentioned that the hull-bracing was diagonal rather than rectangular, commenting that this was unusual. My reaction was "Yes, it is unusual, but it's what we've got on FC2 - I wonder if there's a connection?". The firm who built FC2 for us, Delph Marine, had gone out of business some years later, but we would certainly have had them on our short-list again had they still been around. Terry enquired for us, and discovered that some of the people working for Orion had worked for Delph Marine. I've since learned rather more of the connection between the two companies.

As I now understand it, Delph Marine had been founded by a chap called Dennis Granger, whose two sons worked with him, Steve on the steelwork and Anthony on the fitting-out. It was Dennis who came up with the idea for the diagonal bracing. Another fabricator/welder called Alf also worked for Delph, as from time to time did Richard Ibbotson who was later to found Orion Narrowboats. Dennis died, and it was found that although he was an excellent boatbuilder, he was less effective as a businessman and the company was in a rocky state. Alf, with Steve and Anthony, supervised a rescue mission and re-established the firm on a sound basis. It was during this phase that they built FC2 for us. Subsequently Delph came under a squeeze from their landlord and decided to go out of business. Alf went off to a different kind of work. This must have been at around the time that Richard decided to go into boatbuilding on his own account and founded Orion, aiming at the quality end of the market. Steve came to work for him in charge of the steelwork. Anthony has a job elsewhere but does part-time work for Orion. All this history was very much plus points in attracting us to Orion, and we added them to our short-list.

In June 2003 we divided out short-list of possible builders into an A-list of four and a B-list of three. I wrote to the A-list, sending them a detailed design brief (almost identical to the design here) as a starting-point for discussion. In the end the choice came down to Orion or Roger Fuller. After very pleasant visits to both boatyards, Wendy and I agreed that while both firms built excellent boats, Orion's style was the one we were looking for, so a further visit to them on 3 July 2003 clinched the deal.

[Planning] [Finding a builder]

ON THE WAITING LIST

We weren't surprised to find that Orion had a substantial waiting list - that's characteristic of boatbuilders who aim to make top-quality boats tailored-made for the individual customer. We clinched the deal with Richard Ibbotson (boss of Orion) in early July 2003 with a promised start-date in February 2005. In practice he managed to start a bit earlier than this

The waiting time gave us the chance to start fine-tuning the design of the boat. Neither Richard nor I was happy with having only a 9-foot front section, so I went back to the drawing-board and played with the internal layout until I'd save enough space to give us an 11-foot front section.

I talked to Beta, our prospective engine suppliers, who convinced me that the model I'd had in mind would be over the top in the way of electrical generation, given that we weren't proposing to cook by electricity. So we decided to go for the smaller Beta 1903S with a fitted 3.5 kVA generator.

In December 2004, Richard 'phoned us to say he was nearly ready to start and would like a further meeting with us. This happened on 14 December. We gave Richard my latest revision of the drawings, discussed a whole load more details, and he ordered the steel. The boat in his fabricating shed was to go into the water next day and Richard would start work on Felis Catus III as soon as he came back from his winter holiday.

In mid-January he rang to say the steel had been delivered and he was starting work the next day. Meanwhile we set out to choose which models we wanted of the larger pieces of equipment that were to be built into the boat.