After some seriously challenging engineering, difficulties sourcing key components, lots of hard work and considerable financial outlay – the conversion of one of our existing diesel narrowboats to fully functioning serial electric hybrid culminated in the successful launch of “Ollie Owl”, on Monday 14th March. For Ortomarine, the work completed…
Our first new boat launch of 2022 took place on 9th February – Helen and Russel Green are the proud new owners of “Professor Pat Pending”, a 58ft Serial Electric Hybrid narrowboat. Those of you who are old enough to remember The Wacky Races cartoon, will understand where the name…
Our final boat launch for 2021 took place on 25th November. We were lucky enough to launch “Zaniah” on a crisp, sunny, winter’s morning, before Storm Arwen hit. The owners, Trevor and Lesley have had their own boats for the past 30 years, so knew exactly what they wanted. Zaniah…
Canal holidays are a fantastic family break and a chance to be closer to nature and have fun on the water. Until now, with the exception of some day boats and all electric hire boats on the Monmouthshire and Brecon canal, the only option has been to hire traditional diesel…
Earlier this year we made the decision to really try to cut our carbon footprint as a business. Using a Carbon Footprint calculator tool provided at https://www.carbontrust.com/resources/sme-carbon-footprint-calculator we were able to see that by far the biggest impact we were having on the environment was as a result of our…
And the boats keep coming! Whilst working on Maymorning, some of our team were also working hard on “Count for Nothing” our latest 58ft semi-trad narrowboat. This meant we had another launch at Droitwich Spa Marina on 15th September. The owners, Mike and Yvonne Bonici, were keen to get going…
Good News – the long-anticipated Results Report about our Trials Event held earlier this year is now available! A really big “thank you” is due to Dave Jesse (owner of NB Perseverance) for putting together the report – a mammoth amount of work. At over 60 pages of facts and…
Just under 3 months from our previous launch day (yes, we’ve been busy!) we are pleased to announce the launch of our latest hybrid narrowboat – “Maymorning”. Named after a song by one of the owners’ favourite bands (Runrig), Maymorning was launched at Droitwich Spa Marina on 9th August. Don…
A drizzly start could not dampen the enthusiasm of the eight Ortomarine-built boats that assembled near Worcester Racecourse, all champing at the bit to take part in our Electric Propulsion Trials Event, held on Saturday 29th May. They all set off in convoy at 09:00, and made a fine sight…
Thursday May 13th was a red letter day for Ortomarine. We had rather a busy day launching first one boat (Perseverance) at Droitwich Spa Marina, then another (Hargreaves II), a trip boat for the Hargreaves Narrowboat Trust, at Baddesley Wharf, Atherstone. Thankfully both launches went very well (despite terrible…
