Preparing for the big day

As we approached the big day of the launch we discovered just what the term "sailaway" means.

It means that, despite spending well over £30,000, you won't get any ropes. OK I said, fair enough, you don't need ropes to sail away, you only need them when you stop and we are new to this game so let's not pick holes. So we ordered some ropes and ordered a bilge pump and some stern grease whilst we were at it.

I can't remember at what point exactly we discovered that we wouldn't be getting a tiller arm (is that the right term, the brass tube and wooden handle you need to steer?) but this became apparent in one of our more and more fraught exchanges with Ben & Kelly Harp, who didn't seem to see customer service in the same way that we did.

Now to my mind, steering is an important part of sailing away, but apparently you can just sail away in circles and that's fine. We are new to this, I said to Sal... We would have obtained a suitable piece of tube ahead of the day, but despite asking Ben repeatedly about the diameter required we never found out. We only received the answer to "what kind of primer will she have?" when Ben stumbled over some empty tins outside Tim Tyler's yard. We are new to this and boatbuilders obviously work differently to other suppliers of expensive items.

We included a stainless water tank in our specification. I was surprised to find that it wasn't fitted, just slung under the front deck without the filler connected to a hole in the deck as I had assumed. Sal and I looked at each other and realised that you don't need a connected tank to set sail. Fair enough I suppose.

Still, apart from the missing knob on the throttle (no point in asking Ben about that) and the spray foam over the glass in the portholes and on the side doors, she seems to be pretty much what we had hoped for and ready to undergo her very gradual metamorphosis into a real fitted out narrowboat.

So, we obviously have a lot to learn and need to adjust our expectations.