Mike Stevens' UK Inland Waterways Pages

ABOUT ME

OUR FIRST BOAT, FELIS CATUS

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HER YEARS WITH US

Over the next few weeks, we week-ended the boat southwards to London, discovering the southern Grand Union for the first time and being pleasantly surprised by the beauty of what we had expected to be the M1 of the waterways. (Read the story of that trip here.) We had no mooring to go to, but wanted one in central London. We arrived at Little Venice and asked around. Turner Marinas, who at that date ran quite a lot of the moorings on the Regent's Canal, had a special arrangement with BW by which for the winter months they were allowed to double-up the boats on the moorings between Browning's Pool and Maida Hill Tunnel. (There weren't any off-side moorings on that stretch then). That suited us very well, as we intended to keep the boat moving around the system all summer.

We weren't very enamoured of the boat's colour scheme when we bought her, so soon began a re-paint. This was obviously the opportunity to change the name. As one of the things all four of us had in common (apart from our love of the waterways) was that we were all cat-lovers, we decided on Felis Catus, the zoological name of the common moggy. In subsequent winter seasons we did a certain amount of re-fitting, mainly to achieve more storage space, and also fitted a wooden seat on top of the rail around the spacious back deck.

Over the years, we used the boat to explore quite a lot of the waterways system. We covered a lot of territory, and never believed in the existence of a head of navigation until we'd been aground on it. As an old wooden boat, she had spread beyond her nominal beam and we had great fun whenever we came across any particularly narrow locks. We never did get her through the Stratford-on-Avon canal! (Read that story here.) At one time we were offered nomination to the Odd Boats Society. We were told that to join you needed one of three qualifications - you either used odd boats on the waterways, or used boats on odd waterways, or used boats oddly on the waterways. Our proposer said we qualified for all three!

Being an old boat, she took a lot of maintaining. In July 1979 she sank at her temporary mooring at The Globe, where we had bought her originally. Fortunately this was a shallow mooring, so she was easy enough to re-float and didn't suffer much lasting damage. Within a couple of weeks we were off on what was to prove our most adventurous trip in her, a cruise to the Fenland  waterways.

The final form of her livery is shown here. It was completed for the 1980 "National".

THE END OF HER TIME WITH US

Another sinking happened in December 1980, this time in deeper water at our home mooring at Little Venice. The Fire Brigade, and the local BW foreman, Charlie Green, helped us re-float her, and the late Ray Dunford towed us to Uxbridge. She spent some months on the hard-standing there while John Woolley fitted a new stem-post, re-caulked the whole hull and did various other repairs.

At some stage, I don't remember exactly when, Roger and Chris needed to realise the capital they'd got tied up in the boat to help fund a move of house. Wendy & I bought out part of their holding, and the rest was bought by Ian and Dave, two friends who had both done a fair bit of boating with us.

The final parting of the ways came in 1982, when the boat again sank at her Little Venice mooring. This time the pumps from refloating her came from the Post Office engineering department, thanks to Dave's father, who worked for them. The tow to Uxbridge was provided this time by High Line Yachting, who sent one of their hire-boats to do the job, crewed by Les Gibson. Once again John Woolley was summoned to try to save the boat, but this time the insurance company insisted that nothing short of a major re-planking would persuade them to continue the cover. This was way beyond our pockets, so we gave the boat to John in settlement of his bill.

SHE'S STILL AROUND (OR WAS UNTIL FAIRLY RECENTLY)

We met up with the boat again several times in later years and found out a little of what has happened to her since.

John passed her on to somebody who had the necessary skills to work on her hull himself. He replanked her along the waterline and replaced two wooden knees in the bow. For some years he lived on her as a static boat above Cassio Bridge lock on the Grand Union. We saw the boat there and later met up with her some years later at Ansty, still with the same owner. By this time he had rebuilt the engine and was talking of rebuilding the gearbox.

We last saw the boat in 1994 on the Kennet & Avon Canal near Bath. There was nobody on board, but from what we heard on the towpath telegraph it was still owned by the same chap, who was living on her and moving around a bit. In January 2000 we heard from a contact on the internet that the boat had been for sale in about 1998 or 1999.