Narrowboat Willoughby

Many of our family members share a common love of canal boat holidays stretching back many years, eventually I and a niece and her husband took the "plunge" so to speak and jointly purchased a share in a new narrowboat. Willoughby was commissioned by Ownerships Ltd, a company specifically formed to provide narrowboats for shared ownership. She is 58 foot 6 inches in length, was built to a semi-traditional style, has a mid position galley and was put into the water in July 2001.

There are twelve shares (including one shareholder living in the USA) and we each share running costs. Ownerships administer the boat for us including all arrangements for repairs, maintenance, licences, moorings etc but the boat is privately owned solely by the co-owners who retain full financial control. Currently, Willoughby is based at the Festival Park Marina, Etruria, Staffordshire on the Trent and Mersey Canal having moved from it's original base at the Blue Lias Marina (now known as the Stockton Top Marina) on the Grand Union Canal, Stockton, Warwickshire during March 2004.

My one twelfth share is in turn shared with my niece and her husband, Maria and Trevor Johnson; additionally other family members have recently purchased a one twelfth share that came up for sale in the boat. In addition to the one-off share purchase cost we pay Ownerships an annual management contribution and our share of the annual maintenance costs; these costs are pre-arranged at an owners annual meeting so we are aware in advance of the likely expenses. Ownerships will not commit any expenditure unless authorised by the co-owners.

Our share entitles us to a minimum of three weeks boating per year, allocated on a priority system including an arrangement for three co-owners to have priority over school holiday times; there is an adjustment made to the shared expenses to allow for this privilege. There is an opportunity for additional "spare" weeks boating again on a priority system however there are no additional charges for these weeks.

After many years of hiring narrowboats for holidays with ever increasing hire charges, it was a joy to read about the benefits of shared ownership and we needed relatively little persuasion to buy into Willoughby. We now have much more boating time per year with an even better benefit of greatly reduced weekly holiday costs.

In case you are wondering, I have no connection with Ownerships apart from being a very, very satisfied customer. If you want to look at their site there is a link below (click on the logo). I have also included a link to a Web Blog written by another of our Owners as well as to the OwnerShips Discussion Board and to "Boatshare" an independent share site.