tomandsophie

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Hmm, interesting. Thanks for the delicately-put advice about price Alan, but we have set the price at a level that we consider to be right for our boat. She is built on a Colecraft shell of exceptionally high quality, and the fitout is superb. I know I'm biased, but I have had many many people approach me on the towpath and comment on how nice our boat is, and many of those people have recommended a much higher selling price. After careful scanning of the current prices, we have set ours at about the same or slightly lower than other comparable boats. Plus of course we're open to offers! It's a very difficult thing to get right, and in the end I think it's down to being patient and waiting for the right buyer to come along at the right time. In the meantime though, I'm just trying to figure out if it's worth going through a broker or not. I'm not sure I can justify the £5000+ that they're going to charge. Does anybody have any really positive (or negative of course) experiences of brokerages? Any recommendations or otherwise would be much appreciated.

Right then, she's on ebay, apolloduck, boatshop, gumtree, and a couple of other sites I found via Google. Any other ideas? What do you think of brokers? Are they worth the money? Bearing in mind that one of us is as at home most of the time, we don't need a mooring or somebody to take charge of the viewings. It seems that paying a broker 6% of the selling price (which could end up being a fee of around £5000!!!) would be a bit ridiculous. That is, unless they could actually sell our boat significantly quicker than we can. Hmmm. Would it be worth going to one of them?

If you're passing Claverton, feel free to knock on our door (evenings and weekends) and I'd be happy to do it for you. Tom.

Hmm, ebay is sounding pretty good. I might wait until the weekend though as we have a couple of people coming to have a look around in the coming week. On second thoughts I guess the sooner the better really. This all makes me feel very sad. I can't quite believe we're selling our beautiful boat. Why aren't there any canals on the South West coast (except the Exeter Ship Canal which is just too busy with tourists)?! Grrr.

If you looked more carefully you'll see that there are lots of photos there. 12 in fact - the most Apolloduck would allow me to put up.

Definitely, chickens on the towpath. Actually, we were going to get some pigs too, I guess they'd be ok out on the towpath. They'd act as speedbumps for the cyclists too.

Here is the link to the updated apolloduck ad with photos: here

Thanks for all the replies. Sorry, haven't looked on the forums for a while. In answer to your questions: I will put a new add on Apolloduck tonight when I have got all the new photos ready. It has nothing to do with the blacking (that was a separate comment unrelated to interior pics), but just that I had to wait for some sunshine to take the interior pictures! With regards to ebay, I guess I might as well put a classified ad on there. The more internet coverage the better. Still sad though, although I'm excited about being able to grow vegetables, keep chickens, and live near the sea in the South West!

Link to apolloduck here

I will put it up on this forum as soon as the Apolloduck ad goes live. With regards to a broker - I have considered it but they generally take a fairly big cut of the price and as we're not in any hurry to sell I'd rather do it myself if poss.

We've put our boat up for sale :lol: I've put an ad on apolloduck, but I'm not quite sure where else to advertise. Of course we'll put a sign on the boat and a couple on local noticeboards, but does anybody else know of any good places to advertise?

Thanks or all the replies. Carlt, I have looked at the land in Lewes that you suggested and spoke to the owner, but the absolute maximum length is 52ft. I even asked about buying 2 moorings and using them both for our one boat, but the owner said that it's something to do with the planning permission - maximum length of boat is 52ft. Anyway, from what everybody's saying, it sounds like if you have a good quality boat with no hidden problems, at a reasonable price, then selling shouldn't be a problem. So here goes...

We're thinking about selling up and moving further South. Yes, we are finally succumbing to the call of a house with a garden for chickens and veggies. Mostly though, we want to be near the coast and that doesn't seem to be possible if we stay on the boat. In order to be able to put an offer in on a house we need to be fairly confident of how much our boat will sell for. I've been trying to keep an eye on Apolloduck and similar websites, but it's hard to see what's selling and what's not. So what I'm after is an idea of what the boat-selling market is like at the moment? Is it easy or difficult to sell? I know that may be a 'how long's a piece of string' type question, but somebody might be able to give me some kind of idea. To give you an idea of what our boat is like: 57 x 10'6 widebeam built by Colecraft in 2005. 2 bedrooms, semi-trad stern. Just been blacked and BSS checked. I know there's a lot more to it than that, but those are the basics. And no, this isn't a For Sale ad; I will be sure to put that in the For Sale and Wanted section. This is just so that I might be able to get some opinions about how easy it is to sell a boat at the mo.

Nope, as I now have a much better option - I simply unplug my work laptop at the end of the day (it stays plugged in all day so is fully charged) and use that at home. Lasts a couple of hours. Brilliant. No need to do the old battery pack trick. Oh and by the way, to all those boring old sods who said I shouldn't 'steal' electricity from my employer, two things: 1. My employer (primary school) is perfectly happy for me to charge up my battery pack at school because they are real, down-to-earth, nice people. 2. My school is solar powered anyway by a massive solar array, so the power is free. In reply to the previous question, my alternator is the standard 90amp one that came with our Beta Greenline 43, and the batteries are 4 x 110ah. The secret is using very very little power. And it's not because we are frugal, but rather that we don't like TV (so we don't have one) and so all we use is LED lights (very very bright and 'warm' but only 1w each) and pumps. Altogether, we probably get through around 8ah a day.