Morpheus is a lovely boat. She cost the original owners nearly £120,000 by the time they finished adding all those “little extras”, but she sat unused for the majority of the year – such a waste! They didn’t want to sell her, but they also did not want her to sit unused for the majority of the year. Renting her out was a non-starter due to the cost of insurance.
The dawn of the Morpheus Boat Share
So, they came up with the shared ownership idea – to sell shares in her. Other like-minded folk have bought a portion of her, and she is now used and loved for most of the year.
Anyone who owns a share within this scheme can arrange with another member of the scheme to swap weeks, so you could potentially have a different holiday each year if you want.
We also encourage weekend jaunts. You can swap weekends with anyone else on the scheme if you fancy a weekend away. If you fancy several weekends away, you can request time from other people’s slots and, if they are willing, all you do is pay them the portion of their annual maintenance fees for the period you use the boat over and above your own week.
How it Works
The boat is “split up” into shares. Each Share is a week of time on the boat. Each week starts at mid-day on a Saturday and runs to mid-day the following Saturday, although by prior arrangement with the owner of the adjacent Share to you, it is possible to arrange a different handover day or time – flexibility is what we want to achieve, to benefit all owners!
Our home marina was recently changed from Gayton, Northamptonshire to Springfield Haven, Warwickshire. This is now the normal handover location but Owners are encouraged to explore the wider network by arranging ‘remote’ handovers by agreement with each other.
Organisation
All Owners are Shareholders in a company called OurNarrowboat Ltd. There are no other stakeholders. We hold an Annual General Meeting at the start of each year to review how well Morpheus is running and agree plans for the future. It goes without saying that keeping a narrowboat in operation incurs significant cost so a key part of the AGM is to review finances and agree the Maintenance Fee for each week owned – the Maintenance Fee is shared equally across all weeks each year.
Plans for the future
The AGM is also the time when we discuss future plans for relocating the home marina. Having just moved we will probably stay where we are for a few years but after that…it will be the Owners who decide where to move next.
Apart from keeping Morpheus safe and operational, we are currently planning a significant repaint project – an expensive task that will take two or three years to properly plan and fund, so we are saving up for that.
In the meantime, the faded nameplates on both sides of the boat have been given a refresh by a professional artist!