Reproduced with kind permission of Canals and Rivers, May 2007.

Jackie Sherman and her husband were bitten by the boating bug after a holiday on the Kennet and Avon. This first part of a two part feature describes how they got into boating by going for a shared option.

It only took one week on a narrow boat, cruising down the Kennet and Avon towards Bath, for us to fall completely under the spell of this tranquil and unique form of transport. Knowing that we would want to repeat the experience, we spent the next few months investigating the best way to get ourselves back onto the water. There appeared to be three options - to hire, to buy and own shares in a boat.

Reproduced with kind permission of Canals and Rivers, June 2007.

Jackie Sherman and her husband were bitten by the boating bug after a holiday on the Kennet and Avon. This second part of a two part feature describes how they got into boating by going for a shared option.

This article is intended to give guidance on boat share syndicate ownership but is of course one person's views on the subject.

With the rising costs of owning and keeping a boat there is an increasing interest in sharing the costs by joint ownership. I am not referring to time-sharing, i.e. buying two weeks' use of a boat in the sun and forgetting it for the other 50 weeks - I just do not see how that can work. By joint ownership I mean a syndicate of two or three sharing the costs, the work, the worry and the joy of owning a boat. This syndicate can afford a larger ship without the worry of how it is getting on its mooring if they have not seen it for a week or two and without the guilt of all that money sitting doing nothing.