So Mike and Liz Holloway are coming off the canals after five happy years and 'returning to the bank' as the old boaters used to say. www.snecklifter.com is no longer to be a cruising log, and Snecklifter is for sale:
If any of our friends out there know someone who is looking for a 60ft live-aboard in good condition with a boat safety certificate to March 2010 and a full year's BW licence, please tell them about us. Snecklifter will be at Barton Turns marina at least until the end of April and we will drive there to meet prospective buyers at weekends.
(Mike ought to add that it has probably the most minutely documented history of any boat on the cut, from baseplate-laying through to all the the places he cruised and moored, everyone he met, any technical glitches - right through to final laying up! If they get a quick sale they'll presumably be laughing all the way back to the bank)
Mike was perhaps the pioneering online canal log in England, in the sense of writing regularly on the internet about his cruising, about the people he met on the way, the friends he made, and repeated meetings with boaters as they criss-crossed the country.
Snecklifter.com has always been friendly and charming, free from bad temper and always featuring simple, cheerful photos of happy boaters and friends or relatives who'd rendezvous.
It's not really a blog, more of a letter home, and you'd have to go to the 'Latest news' page and read the latest month's gossip in a full page. But it well-deserves a rare non-blog place in Granny's boatroll. I'm only sorry I never met Snecklifter on its travels so that we were able to write about each other.
It would be a fascinating exercise for the next owner to download, print out and bind the entire Snecklifter website, for reading aboard on long winter nights. You could do it on self-publishing website Lulu.com, and it would be a unique record.
www.snecklifter.com will presumably continue, albeit sans canals.
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