Narrowboats in the US?

I belong to three boaters' groups on Facebook, and have been astounded by the number people in the USA who are members. Many of them just love our canals and boats from afar. They've read books by UK boaters - lots have read mine - or they watch one or more of the very many vlogs on YouTube. Many have been over to the UK for a boating holiday, and loved it, of course!

One such American gentleman promoted his own vlog on one of the forums, and I went to have a look. I had a particular interest in this post because he talks about the history of the Erie Canal in the US, something I'd learned a bit about when I did some googling for a woman in the States who asked in a FB group if she could travel on the canal in a narrowboat.

It turns out that the answer is "yes". More than that, an American couple came to the UK some decades ago to experience our canals. They hired a boat and had a wonderful time. So much so that they went back to the States and started a business building and renting narrowboats similar to those we have here (except that theirs are all 43 foot long). Another similar company has started since.

A further link the Erie has with the UK is that it was designed here; engineers met with our famous canal-makers and learned the art from them.

I do recommend you watch the vlog. You'll find that YouTube has a lot of videos about the Erie https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=erie+canal

but this one's a good place to start. Enjoy!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YV9BK0-gX9o

Picture from eriecanal.org

So we took the boat out for a jolly...

Just a short one, about an hour's jaunt to Crick Marina and back.

The sole purpose of that was to see if the guys had fixed the water-heating problem yesterday. They hadn't, so we'll have to rely on the gas boiler to heat our water while we're out next week. Meanwhile, I've posted the problem in the Canal World Discussion Forum, and we'll see if anyone else can suggest a solution.

We were back at the house over the weekend, mainly to collect various items needed for our cruise, and clothes for the approaching winter. While we were there, Steve played us the tracks for Said the Maiden's upcoming new album "Here's a health". He's not entirely finished engineering it, but three tracks will be going out to radio stations very soon, and the official album launch will be on November 1st at The Water Rats in London's Kings Cross - a prestigious venue! Their promotional 22-venue UK tour has already started, though. Is there a gig near you?

If you don't already know this fabulous trio, there's a wealth of videos on YouTube spanning five years of gigs. And this is the video they made to accompany the release of their last EP.

Ah! I have a reply on the forum already! Please excuse me! (Fingers crossed!)

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Please note that another update to "Hints and tips..." has been added to the Addendum Blog.

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The OTHER Kantara! (real time)

We saw the other NB Kantara twice in our first year on ours. On neither occasion were we able to meet the owners. We've scoured the web, but found no mention of her apart from her entry in the registry of UK boats. Imagine, then, my surprise and delight when David Martindale, a mutual Twitter follower ("Loving reading your book"), contacted me to say he'd found her. On Ebay!

 
Any potential buyers out there? The advert answered a number of questions we had about her - age, interior layout and appearance, specification. The price sounds a bit high to me, but she's up for auction. I'll be watching.

Some weeks ago, I posted a video on YouTube, a short, speeded-up clip of the first few minutes of our latest cruise. Nothing big or clever, just a bit interesting, I thought. Later that day, we descended Watford Locks, and the dashcam on the front of Kantara captured those 40 minutes, too. This is now posted on my channel, too. 10 minutes of speeding down an iconic flight of locks. You might want to watch out for the Charlie Chaplin antics of a couple of vollies and me!