This will be a text-heavy post, I’m afraid, as without a boat in existence there’s not much to take a photo of. But I thought it was worth noting some of the things we’ve already decided on. In some cases we’ve opted to go the same as our current boat, Briar Rose, and some are different.
THE SHELL
The shell is being built by Tim Tyler, and we’re having the same length as BR, 58ft 6in — which we know works and can go pretty much everywhere. We’re also sticking with a trad stern because we like it: in my view it”s the best looking, it offers more protection in bad weather, and we like having the buffer of the engine room between the outside and the inside. When we told Tim and one of his fellow boat builders that we were having a trad, they were delighted; trads are a rarity these days. But we are having a longer stern hatch, to give more room for two people at the stern.
Briar Rose has windows and portholes, but for Kingley Vale we’re going all portholes, but with four sets of side doors. Again, portholes look better, and they’re also good for security. We like the side doors on BR, but we always wish there were some on the other side too. So we’re having glazed doors over the dinette and the galley sink on one side, and either side of the galley units on the other side. It means they’re all offset from each other.
PROPULSION AND BATTERIES
We’re going for a parallel hybrid system, the tried and tested one from Hybrid Marine. We thought very seriously about a series hybrid, where you just have an electric motor with a generator to charge the batteries. But it’s more expensive, Braidbar have never done one (whereas they’re the biggest installers of Hybrid Marine systems in canal boats) and we liked the idea of being able to have both diesel and electric propulsion.
Usually, the batteries for the Hybrid Marine system are tall 2 volt cells. In a semi-trad, they’re normally put right across the boat at the forward end of the engine hole. In the one trad we’ve seen with them (Sheila Napier’s Salodin) they took up the whole bottom half of her wardrobe in the cabin. We didn’t want to lose all that easily accessible space, so we have some up with another solution. We’ll still be using lead acid batteries (lithium iron’s were too expensive, and Hybrid Marine didn’t like lead carbons) but James at Braidbar has found a different shape, so they can go under the bed. They’ll take up about half the space, and will be on the centre line of the boat. The bank will be 1000Ah at 48 volts — which is big.
LAYOUT
The layout is almost identical to Briar Rose — which means we’ll have many things which are not currently fashionable! For example, it’ll be standard layout, with the saloon at the bow and the cabin at the stern; and we’ll have an off-corridor shower room rather than a walk-through. The galley will again be between the saloon and the dinette, but appliances will be moved about compared with BR to make better use of the space. So the fridge and the washing machine will be on one side of the boat, with the oven and hob on the other. We’re having a pull-out unit and a set of drawers. And because of the massive battery bank, we can have an electric oven, an induction hob, and a Quooker boiling water tap — so we’ll be gas-free.
COAL FREE TOO
Rather than a log burner, we’ll have a Lockgate Refleks diesel stove. It means we won’t have to lug bags of coal and logs about, won’t have to store them, and shouldn’t have so much dust.
NOT YET DECIDED
We still have quite a lot of decisions to make. The colour scheme is one. We like Briar Rose’s although I’m keen to avoid having to repaint red handrails every couple of years. But Kingley Vale does seem like a green boat to me! So maybe a combination of green and grey; we’re hoping to get some good advice from Briadbar’s painter. Similarly, the fabrics for internal fittings can be decided upon later, and while we have ideas for what type of worktops we’d like, there are no firm decisions yet.
But things are happening. Tim will being in work on the shell very soon, as we’ll be visiting Stoke to see the boat in build — so stay tuned.
All sounds very nice…. I like the idea of the refleks stove, ever since seeing Lesley’s on Yarwood. I’m surprised on the battery option, I’d have thought there would be a good choice of Lithium at 48v now…. What really pleased me was to hear Sheila did go ahead with her boat. I often think of Bruce and Sheila so very pleased she did go ahead with the smaller boat after Bruce’s death. All very exciting !! .
Hi Nev, there are cheaper Chinese LiFePo4 batteries, but if you want ones that are approved to work with all the Victorian kit, then the prices are still much higher.
I guess a special CB Mag is coming up….. sounds like lots of midnight oil went into those thoughts and plan. Green/grey smart