Th1rt3en was originally built by us in 2018. It was designed for shared holidays between the owners, Paul & Elaine Barber, and Elaine’s twin sister Ali and her husband Russell. At 64ft, there was room to accommodate 2 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms, one for each of the couples. However, this did mean that the living space was compromised and there was only room for a small galley and an L shaped dinette. Ali and Russell loved narrowboating so much that when another of our boats – Master Riley – came up for sale on the second-hand market in 2020, they decided to buy it! Once Paul and Elaine had experienced the comfortable layout of Master Riley, they decided that it was time to change Th1rt3en. They also preferred the lighter paint scheme of Master Riley, and as Th1rt3en was showing rather a few battle scars, they decided to have the boat completely repainted externally.
Internally, one bathroom has been removed to provide space for a larger living area. The L-shaped dinette has been removed and replaced with a standard pullman dinette and a built in curved sofa. A new, larger TV is now mounted on the cabin wall above a new media storage cupboard. The galley has a new slimline worktop, composite sink, new super-matt dove grey cupboard doors, and a new 2 zone induction hob. The existing remaining bathroom has been changed to a walk-through bathroom providing space for a much larger shower, new vanity unit and LED mirror cabinet, and the water pump has been changed to a whisper-quiet mains powered one.
On top of all the cosmetic improvements made to the boat, the electrics have had a big overhaul – so that despite it still being a diesel engine boat, Paul & Elaine can go a little greener! The boat now has 8 x 200W solar panels, a new domestic battery bank comprised of 4 x AES Gel Nano Carbon 12V 224Ah batteries providing 448 Ah @ 24VDC (10.75 kWh of power), plus an uprated Victron Inverter (from 3kVA to 5kVA) and domestic alternator (from 12V 110A, to 24V 180A) to allow faster charging of the large battery bank. We have also updated the boat monitoring system to our latest version of Ortomate so that Paul and Elaine can benefit from all the new and improved features which we have developed over the past 5 years!
