liveable used: 30-70k: project: 15-25k
leisure 2-4k: residential 4-8k: CCing GBP 0
Advanced options
The stack beyond mooring: CRT licence ~GBP 1,100/yr (57ft), insurance GBP 200-350, and the maintenance cycle everyone underbudgets: hull blacking every 2-3 years (GBP 600-1,000 incl. dry dock), engine servicing, batteries every 4-6 years, and the GBP 1,000/yr contingency experienced owners just accept. Continuous cruising is legal and mooring-free but means genuinely moving every 14 days over a real range: the CRT enforces it. Liveaboard economics are a different (often genuinely cheap) sum: this page prices the leisure boat.
What The Narrowboat Cost Calculator Works Out
- Annual running cost: mooring + CRT licence + insurance + averaged maintenance, with the per-night figure for the nights you are actually aboard. A GBP 3,000 leisure mooring and the standard stack puts a 60-night year at roughly GBP 100 a night before diesel and gas.
- The standing stack: leisure moorings run GBP 2,000 to GBP 4,000 and residential ones GBP 4,000 to GBP 8,000; the Canal and River Trust licence is about GBP 1,100 for a 57-footer; insurance sits at GBP 200 to GBP 350. Continuous cruising is mooring-free but means genuinely moving every 14 days.
- The blacking-and-survey cycle: hull blacking every two to three years at GBP 600 to GBP 1,000 including dry dock, batteries every four to six years, engine servicing and a GBP 1,000 contingency average out to about GBP 1,400 a year. The out-of-water survey at GBP 500 to GBP 800 is non-negotiable on steel.
- Licence, insurance and maintenance (advanced): the three built-in assumptions become editable. The licence scales with boat length and rises each April; a liveaboard or an older engine pushes maintenance higher.
- Diesel and consumables (advanced): engine hours x about 1.5 litres an hour at the marina pump price (the RAC average diesel price is the default), plus gas bottles, coal or diesel for the stove, pump-outs and shoreline electricity. A cruising fortnight burns 60 to 80 engine hours.
- Cost of the capital (advanced): what the boat's purchase price would earn in a savings account at the rate you enter. Boats hold value better than caravans, so this replaces a depreciation line, but the money is still not working elsewhere.
- All-in cost per year (advanced): the standing stack plus diesel and consumables plus the capital cost, with the true per-night figure underneath.
- Hire weeks the same money buys (advanced): the all-in annual cost divided by a week's hire (GBP 1,200 to GBP 2,500 depending on season and berths). If that covers more weeks than you spend aboard, hiring or a shared-ownership syndicate wins on arithmetic.
- Ten-year cost of ownership (advanced): the all-in figure over a decade, which is the horizon on which the repaint, the engine rebuild and the hull's condition actually show up.