The weather forecasters are improving at their job! The sky's blue and the suns out again today, although that wind is still pretty chilly. I reckon it will turn quite cold tonight.

Some more pictures for you today. Here is the view from the bridge looking north towards Market Drayton. That's our long term moorings on the right hand side and the visitor moorings on the left.


Here's another one for you. This time looking from the towpath and back across the basin to the wharf buildings where we house our tea room, gift shop, chandlery, hire fleet and boat sales.


I managed to get a picture of our new day boat for 2011. That's Victory looking resplendent in our Norbury livery and awaiting completion and commissioning ready for the up and coming season.


Here's her Beta engine that Bernard has been busy installing. We are agents for Beta Marine and can supply or supply and fit engines throughout the year at very competitive prices.


I thought that I would get you a picture of Fred's handy work too. Here's Pendlebury in the dry dock. Lee will be top coating her gunnel sides tomorrow and giving her counter bands another coat, ready for Fred to apply the final coat of blacking to the hull when he returns to work on Tuesday.


Pendlebury is one of the 13 shared owned boats that we operate from here at Norbury. Since the demise of Ownerships Ltd back in May 2010 we have worked very closely with the owners of all the boats that we operate from here at Norbury to ensure that the they run as smoothly as possible for everyone. As well as working with the private syndicates we have also joined forces and work closely alongside BC Boat Management and ABC to open up even more options for our customers and to give them the very best service. If you are a share holder in a syndicate and would like to become "part of the family" here at Norbury for the 2011 cruising season (2010 is now full!), please express your interest ASAP - as spaces are filling quickly.

Here comes Quartz, she is another hire boat that we will be introducing for this season. She has just been delivered to us by one of our regular customers who has been and collected her for us.


Ember has just emerged from the paint dock too, to show off her excellent paintjob to all. She will now be on display on the wharf outside the shop for all to see whilst the work on her is completed. So if you are passing, pop in and have a look at what we can offer!


That's it for today and back over to Simon tomorrow!

Regards,

David

The weather forecast was correct for today; Sunshine - We had nearly forgotten what that big yellow thing in the sky was. Although the sun has been out for a couple of hours, the wind has been mighty cold and now it has blown some clouds over. More sun tomorrow hopefully??

Fred's been busy working on Pendlebury. We've got her in the dry dock at the moment, so he has kept himself out of mischief today with blacking, painting the counter bands/gunnels and blacking the water tank.

Bernard finished off the winter engine on Oasis Too this morning and has been doing some running repairs around the yard. He is now finishing the day off by working on the engine installation in Victory. That's our new dayboat that we will be introduced into our expanding hire fleet by Easter. That will allow Phantasy to be relieved of dayboat duties through the week and allow her to be returned to a Monday to Friday 2 berth hire boat, although we will still continue to use her as an extra dayboat at weekends.

Paul is fitting the windows and mushroom vents back onto Ember whilst Mick continues with putting the finishing touches to the electrics, commissioning the water and heating systems and complete the gas installation. She will be out of the painting dock tomorrow to show off her new paintjob - so I will get you some pictures of her then.

Winter works are progressing well now that the ice and snow has nearly gone. Just before Christmas I was sat looking at a check list of all the works that need completing over the next three months without a single tick in any of the boxes, feeling quite depressed. We now are looking to be back on track - which prevents me from sleepless nights (OK, Simon... Maybe not quite sleepless!).

Well we have been telling you about the boats that we have for sale and the ones that we have sold, but today another boat has arrived to be sold through our Brokerage service. Sandrella is owned by a lovely couple who are regular customers here at Norbury. They have now sadly decided that they are going to "hang up their windlasses" and retire from boating. She is a perfect example of a 2006 cruiser stern narrowboat having been built by J.D Narrowboats and could be used as a luxury holiday narrow boat or luxury live aboard. I will be advertising her over the next few days so keep an eye on our website HERE. Here's a picture of her. That's Bernard moving her off of the wharf this afternoon.


We are seeing more and more boats starting to move now after they have been unable to do so for the last six or so weeks due to the ice. That's meant that we have had a number of boats pull on the wharf to take advantage of the services that we offer daily to all of our customers, including pumpouts, Calor gas, diesel, solid fuels etc.

Phantom has been collected this afternoon and is out for a period of two weeks. During that time her occupants are intending on visiting the BCN. I know that they keep abreast of the news from Norbury via this blog - so have a great holiday from all at Norbury!

We only have three long term moorings available and one less after today as a couple from Telford who have just bought a boat from the Northamptonshire area have taken it on. For further details about our moorings please visit http://www.norburywharfltd.co.uk/moorings.htm. If you would like to take advantage of this fantastic opportunity please don't hesitate to give Simon or myself a call and reserve the mooring as they will be snapped up before the start of the cruising season.

So that's it for today folks.

Best regards,

David.

TFI

Whhhhhay Its Friday so no work for me for the whole weekend, well apart from a small repair required at my partners rental property, and washing my very dirty car, oh and forgot that the house is a tip as we havent cleaned it for a couple of weeks because we have been busy over Christmas and New year, and need to get the logs and the coal in as we have run out.Thoroughly depressed now and don't want it to be the weekend! Only kidding.

Bookings are really coming in thick and fast now for the hire boats, its amazing how the bookings pick up just after Christmas, it shows that people are looking forward to the summer and I cant blame them, I am now thinking of where to go for my holiday, unfortunately I cant have time off when it is busy so I end up going somewhere out of season when nothing is open and the weather is not very good! I hope you are feeling sorry for me now? Any way here are a couple of pictures of Sovereign lady breaking the ice last week near to High Bridge just north of us, just in case you had forgotten what the winter looked like.

Sorry folks I cant upload the pictures as the internet connection keeps coming and going, David might post some pictures tomorrow.

Until Monday

Simon

not very exciting today

Its been a busy sort of day but i suspect that is because Angela is off, poor thing wasn't very well yesterday but she had already booked several days holiday so she is now at home all bunged up and full of flu. The bookings are coming in thick and fast now for the hire fleet and our new ten berth boat Ember has had an amazing amount of interest and is now officially our best booking boat. The others will catch up soon, i am sure.

Work has continued on as normal, Steve has finally finished off the new office, Mick is finishing off Ember's bits and bobs, Bernard is doing more winter services, Fred has been blacking. Not much more to say about Norbury, at this time of the year its quiet but spring is on its way and then there will plenty to write about.

Simon

What a wet day

It makes a pleasant change to have some rain rather than snow, i hope the snow and ice stays away, most of the ice has gone now,just some rather large ice bergs floating around in the canal but at least it seems passable at long last, we still had to break the ice this morning down to the dock to facilitate a docking, thank the lord, we managed to dock a boat! There is still some ice in the dock but at least it is workable again!

Fred pressure washed the boat in the dock, Bernard set to replacing its anodes and sorting out its worn out rudder, Steve is back off his holiday and his first job today was replacing the broken soil pipe it the cottage, lovely job! that's all done now, new pipe and two tons of concrete later! Mick has nearly finished the wiring in Ember and Lee is just putting the finishing touches on it, it will come out the dock on Sunday, hopefully David will post some pictures of it, it does look smart!

We even had two boats on the wharf today for pump outs etc, i got really excited, customers, i haven't seen many of them in the last six weeks, almost forgot what they looked like.

My dinner has just arrived so until tomorrow.

Simon

New start to the year!

Today got off pretty much to the normal start today, no real problems, just a phone call complaining about one of our hire boats going passed moored boats and breaking the ice!

So this is the start of 2011 and what a start to a new year, VAT increase, fuel increase and we still have Ice everywhere making life difficult, we are absorbing the VAT increase on most of our services, moorings and shop items, there are a few items that have had to go up as the "mark up" is so small that if we didn't we would loose more money!!

The lads have been busy as usual today doing winter maintenance on the boats while Fred has had to do some digging and dig up a soil pipe from one of the cottages as the ice has damaged it and it now needs replacing, there is always something broken somewhere around Norbury.

Still plenty of ice around on the canal, but by the time I left tonight it looked like it was melting, I dint clock the temperature in the car but I am hoping that it stays above freezing as I need to dock a boat tomorrow.

Until tomorrow Simon

I thought you deserved some pictures today for following our blog daily, so here we go!

There was a little bit of 'cat ice' on the canal this morning, as you can see from the picture below. That's one of our hire boats on the left, Phantom. She is due on the dock on Wednesday for blacking and her winter maintenance to commence - let's just hope that the cold weather holds off long enough! The blue boat on the right is one of the boats that we have recently sold. Boats are still selling slowly and we sold an amazing five during the month of December. To view a full list of the boats that we currently have for sale see http://www.norburywharfltd.co.uk/boats_for_sale.htm.


The Boat Safety examiner has been to put a certificate on Staverton and Paul's busy with some bits and busy that the surveyor picked up on. She is another boat that we have for sale at the moment. Staverton was built by Simon Wain and Steve Priest of Brinklow Boat Services back in 1998 for the present owner. She is a replica of a Fellows, Morton and Clayton motor boat dating from the 30s and is a real treasure. I really hope that she goes to a good home soon - she certainly deserves it. Click here for a PDF link to the full colour brokerage brochure.


Mick's still busy with Ember's electrics whilst Lee is making a superb job, transforming her with a splendid new paint job. Our signwriters going to start putting his brush strokes on later in the week, so hopefully her paintwork will be completed by next weekend. There's just the woodwork to finish off then, carpet the floor and commission all of the systems and she will be ready for being put to work this season.


We have had some new diesel display boards made, as one of the previous boards was blown away when we had some strong winds, some months ago. I had to capture the picture below and send it to Simon yesterday. I had to chuckle to myself, as I could imagine his face when he saw it! If only it were true??


Obviously we are not selling diesel at 9ppl. The price of diesel keeps creeping up. Hopefully it will stop fluctuating soon. We've had to put ours upto 74.9, but I'm hoping (for one!) that it will come back down once this cold weather has finally gone.

Well that's about it for today.

Over to Simon tomorrow.

Regards,

David