Holly goes walkabout

Have you seen my missing canal boat? - Middlewich Guardian

Middlewich Narrowboats rented out Holly for a fortnight from March 9th, and it's not been returned.  And police are now looking for it - as well as for the single man in his 40s/50s who took it.

Middlewich Narrowboats is noted for its rather traditional boats, and Holly is (was?) no exception, featuring a traditional boatman's cabin - a rare thing in the hire trade.

Johnny Essex alerted me to this story, having picked it up off the Canalworld forums; thanks Johnny.  The news originally started on uk.rec.waterways, on March 30th, and by tonight the original post had attracted 120 replies, most of them the usual pointless flippant one-liners and echoed off-topickery (...zzzz).   Today the boat is reported as missing on Waterscape too.

It's hard to report a missing narrowboat with any sense of urgency, because they rarely go missing for long.  And Middlewich Narrowboats still appears optimistic about its return - it's listed on their website as available for hire from this Saturday at £860 for the week.  Don't count on it - it'll probably be forensic evidence for a while after its found.

Comments

[Jon Belcher]

Just to let you know, Nb Holly was found this afternoon at Kirtlington on the Oxford Canal and Pigeon Lock. The Police were called and are now investigation. The boat was in the process of being re-painted black.

Jon

[Jon Belcher]

Just to let you know, Nb Holly was found this afternoon at Kirtlington on the Oxford Canal and Pigeon Lock. The Police were called and are now investigation. The boat was in the process of being re-painted black.

Jon

[Andrew Denny]

Iain, all modern hulls have to have registration marks in the last few years, but that's not retrospective, certainly not for a boat of Holly's (nor Granny's) age. Boats go missing so rarely that it wouldn't be cost-effective to fit them with transponders.

Some hire companies might consider it, and it might help them - e.g. checking that people aren't taking them too far to return in time. But that would really be to stop inexperienced crews from leaving it too long before turning round.

[jo]

We took a weekend break on Holly in the middle of feb and were very worried when we saw the news about her. For the 1st day and a half all was great but by the end of our 2nd day Holly started listing very badly on the right hand side. This got so bad that other boats were stopping us and asking us if we owned the boat, when we said no, they suggested we take Holly straight back to the yard as there was something very wrong with her. We did ring the owners who suggested switching on the bilge pump in the boatmans cabin, but to no avail, they then suggested we use our luggage on the opposite side to balance the weight, this didn't work. We finally got Holly back to the yard but due the listing on the boat had to go through the last lock backwards due to steering problems. We thought no more of this as Adam joked that this was normal and sometimes the boats come back in even lower in the water. I just pray now that this chap is ok. Holly is a beautiful boat, it'd be so sad if she has sunk

[Raymond Harvey]

Thought Brian Holmes (Thursday's Child) in his column on Narrowboatworld a week or so ago mentioned he had seen it (near Braunston, I think) but not realised it was/or about to be reported, missing.
Have in my mind that I saw somewhere that it had been found but maybe wrong about that.

[iain]

Do narrowboats have identifying features - e.g. numbers - on them that could stop a respray and reregistration? Considering their cost, some sort of ownership scheme should be considered. Some expensive cars have locators on them that may be of use.