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AT THE start of this boating season ten happy people set out onto the Shropshire Union Canal in what was, as far as any of them could tell, a brand new hire boat that they had managed to hire at a remarkably good price.
 Yet in reality, if they had stepped aboard it just eight months earlier they would have been crunching over a mixture of charcoal, water and unidentifiable, items and peering through windows blown out by the heat of a blaze, and with the cabin top distorted for several feet along the length of the 70ft vessel. The above picture shows the write-off being craned-in at Norbury Wharf.
Insurance write-off
It had of course been burnt-out and an insurance write-off. But luckily, Simon Jenkins, of the hire company Norbury Wharf Ltd, was something of an expert in restoring historic narrowboats, and not having the throwaway attitude sometimes common in modern business and society, set out to give the word recycling a new meaning, so bought the five years old burnt-out boat to turn it into a shiny new hire boat which people would be proud to hire.
 He knew that he could produce a restored vessel that would have then cost around half of what he would have to pay if he had bought the same boat un-scarred by fire, so started the task of bringing the boat, now appropriately named Ember back to life. The picture shows the buckled side having been replaced. But we will allow Simon to tell the story:
'Insurers write off boats—or cars or even houses—on the basis of what it would cost to replace everything with branded goods and paying for the skills of the necessary experts. That doesn't mean they can't be brought back to as good as new by someone not facing those costs.
 Here at Norbury Wharf we not only have our own experts in steelwork, engines, carpentry, painting and all the other skills, we also have a bit of a gung-ho attitude.
The picture shows Ember's restored galley, complete with the recycled cooker, looking like new.
My Dad is 66 years old and gets about in a wheelchair but he got onto the burned out boat with his two brothers and they cleaned out all the burned and ruined material over a period of 20 days. He was careering up and down the hull in his wheelchair and even using it as a sort of bulldozer. They all really enjoyed themselves.
We had to replace a 25ft section of the cabin top as the fire had twisted it but the steelwork below the gunwale was fine. The engine was not affected by the fire and we could keep the stainless steel water tank and many other fittings that were not damaged.
 The recycling wasn't limited to the shell though, as we regularly do refits here at the Wharf and sometimes people get rid of fairly new and perfectly good pieces of equipment because they want the latest thing. The recycled result of the boat is shown in the picture.
We pay them a small price for their rejects and hang on to them. I am even thinking about restoring some items in our stores and offering them for sale alongside our new stuff in the chandlery.
That meant we could put in a cooker that looked like new because we had cleaned it up and put on a new front. We also managed to recycle the macerator toilets and heating boiler and inverter and roof vents, just to name a few items that we fully serviced and reconditioned.
 With the paintwork completed in Norbury Wharf's paint dock, the bottom blacked in the dry dock and the woodwork and electrics replaced by the expert fitters, Ember made its maiden voyage (pictured) at the start of March and has been out almost every week since. Even the woodwork was varnished—with several coats by the Wharf staff, working relays to get it finished in time.
A recycled boat means cheaper narrowboat holidays—to say nothing of a vessel that has now been fitted out with high-quality, hard-wearing materials designed to last for the next 15 years.
We plan for the long term and we like to keep our fleet of hire boats in tip-top condition so they will keep serving us for many years to come. Narrowboats should not be throwaway objects, they must be a long term investment in the future'.
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