Narrowboat

After my last post, it does seem that as there are many people who didn’t attend the meeting (and may well find the Ownerships forum too busy/muddled) and don’t know what happened. Hopefully the links do point out what went on (I could have reiterated it again, but it seemed succinct enough), but essentially Anthony Trueman explained that as Allan Mathews embezzled £1.8million which could rise to mean the Ownerships have a £4m debt, the company is to be wound up. A transcript, or maybe just a summary, of the meeting is to be posted out to all owners this week so everyone should at least know what’s going on. It is going to be reported to various places such as The Serious Fraud Office so that no-one is under the illusion things are being pushed under the carpet, but essentially any owner investing in the various schemes has probably lost their money (as Ownerships has no cash left, and its main asset is now the bank’s), additionally all owners (including those who never joined any scheme and just boated) have lost their sinking fund.
The meeting was also discussing a new company, which before the meeting I was highly sceptical of (you hear about people who declare bankruptcy to clear their debts and reopen with their wife as a director), but was convinced by the meeting – I’m sure I’m not alone. The core business model of Ownerships : managing boats for a fee (not to mention the share sales of new build boats, and brokerage of re-sales of existing shares) is a profitable one – if it wasn’t there wouldn’t be other companies out there offering to take over boats wanting to bail. After Challenger Syndicateships went under their new management company paid the receiver £20K so they could take over managing! Luckily we own our own boats (it was mentioned that a paragraph in the ownership document says that Ownerships keeps our boats in trust, to which Anthony Trueman said he would look into and agree to sell back to each owner for a nominal fee of £1).
So a company goes bust, should we trust a new company? Well the meeting was mainly a Q&A which included about the “potential” new company and to ask whether owners to consider if they wanted the new company to go ahead – without support from owners waning their boats to be managed there is no business! The new company would be a mutual – because Joan Linderman, the new director who was left the poison chalice of OS in Allen’s will, feels sorry so many people were duped so aims for shares be allocated equal to the debt owed. These shares will initially be worthless, and we don’t have to invest, but it is hoped they will give dividends and so accrue value over time. I would assume that people will be asked if they want to receive the shares and can refuse. Transparency is to be the watchword of the new company, with monthly accounts to be publicly available so that miss use of funds couldn’t happen or would be noticed quickly (the downfall of Ownerships was Allen Mathews kept funds into accounts he didn’t keep records for and used like some Vegas gambler to invest in new “big schemes” in the hope the next one would reap enough to repay everyone back). This was roughly all the detail given really, because at this stage they just want an indication as to whether to go ahead and set it up, if so then a proper prospectus would be produced. Anthony Trueman also outlined that his involvement would be purely to set the company up, and afterwards he was aiming to walk away – his professional advice had been that Joan Linderman didn’t have to accept Allen Mathews’ “gift” of ownerships, but had stayed on (unpaid) to sort out the mess as a favour.
As a final element I would like to extend my thanks to Ownerships staff – there has been many, probably libellous, things said about how Ownerships staff “must have known”, but some were there at the meeting on Saturday, and all the staff had been continuing to work trying to help owners in all this mess, even though they would not be paid (as they are paid monthly on 12th). I ask you, how many would, once being told that the company is going under because it has no funds and you won’t get paid, would carry on helping increasingly frustrated and probably irate client base.

My narrowboat, Silhouette, is actually a shared owned boat managed by Ownerships, and I’ve had a decade of good boating. At the end of April I found out that the management company was to be wound up, this was confirmed in a letter, for more details see this post on narrowboat world. I had invested in one scheme (the free management scheme as it seemed a good way to keep my annual costs down) so I suppose better than many who had gone into all the various schemes, but it did leave people in a lot of turmoil.
Owners on different boats (the company managed 100+ boats) have faced various problems, some have had considerate yard owners, others receiving unpaid invoices in the post, and some turning up to the yard to find their boat chained up and presented with a sometimes large bill needing to be paid before releasing their boat. This is on top of finding out any of their money the company held (e.g. for insurance, maintenance, licensing costs) is gone, and set adrift on how to progress.
Silhouette’s owners have been been talking by email, like many other boat syndicates, to try and save this years holidays and ensure costs are met – essentially managing the boat ourselves. Many of the Ownerships staff are still helping owners, even though they are now working unpaid, in the short term, and yesterday there was a mass meeting explaining why Ownerships was going to the receivers. I attended the 1200 strong meeting and came out fairly positive. Yes, money has been lost, but unless owners in any particular boat don’t want to be owners no more then some method of managing their boat needs to be found. I still want to carry on with my trips out on Silhouette (until I can afford my own boat I guess), so we’ll need some method of managing the boat whether this is the new mutual company, some other management company, or we go self managed will need to be decided upon at some future meeting.

Canalplan is quite a good website for planning your cruises, I’ve often used it to get an estimate of what distance needs doing, so I can judge whether I need to get up earlier the following day if I’m behind or want to get a bit further – conversely if I’m ahead and want to detour somewhere instead. Another feature is the Gazetteer that users can upload snaps of canal features they’ve taken. Since I have my camera on automatic, I have quite a few photos of features, so I keep adding some. Just added some from the first few days of my March cruise. Having a leader board of contributors is quite nice a spurns me on to add more – I’m 4th on the list so far edging towards 900 photo’s submitted. If you’ve some photos of a trip try uploading some. Does that sound like a big ask? There’s 250+ people uploading, uploading 2 will get you in the top 200, or upload a dozen and you get into the top 100. Then you may get addicted and start uploading more.

We stopped for a very quick lunch, see my previous post for details of the morning trip, it had being prepared on the move as we didn’t want to delay too long. Catherine-de-Barnes is seen as the last place on the GUC to be able to moor safely on non-secure moorings and advice seems to be to stop overnight before taking a full day to head into Birmingham. It was just after noon, was it too late to attempt, bearing in mind its March, so dusk is 6pm.

Well we weren’t going into the city centre and had used moorings at Aston Science Park before. Ideally, though, we were heading for Cuckoo Wharf and hope there’s space (previous times it’s being full, so maybe we’d ask to double moor if needs be). I’d been told at a push there was a secure pontoon at Camp Hill locks, so if we were delayed, that’s a back up.

So off we set, the weather was sunny, though the strong wind still gave a chill. For a few miles the canal is in a tree lined cutting, so it isn’t as urban as you’d expect looking at the canal on a map, though every so often patches of litter, would be urban lilly pads, greet you, and ever wary of getting snared and another trip down the weed hatch I put the boat in neutral and coast through. The canal then gets increasingly industrialised, less of the town houses hidden behind foliage, and more the warehouses and industrial units peering over the canal bank asking you “wot you looking at”. All this exposed industrial brickwork is a canvas, no longer blank, but covered in spray paint, by one time youths inking out where they was, though they are probably now settled down somewhere with a family and either a steady job or steady dole cheque.

Despite the urban and industrial surroundings, its a fairly quiet canal and a nice trip in the sunshine. We reached Camp Hill locks by 2.30pm, so carried on – still plenty of time. A British Waterways boat had just come out of the lock below when we got into the first, so it meant these locks should all be set for us. Camp Hill locks are on a strange S bend, which I assume means they were rebuilt at some point when the major A roads were modernised.

As we entered the last lock a hire boat came though Bordesley junction and then came up to the lock gate. I can only assume they thought we were going up, but at least we could say “Boo” when the lock gate was swung open. So which way now? As we hoped to go along the Tame Valley canal tomorrow, then continuing up the GUC seemed best. Next up was the litter collecting Garrison Locks, which we soon got through, though the strong wind was still present, so holding the boat from the tow path whilst waiting for the next lock did seem best on the exposed parts. It was now after 4pm, but we were almost there. Once through the locks it was the final stretch and although there were moorings at Star City, we opted not to use them (they were completely empty and the small gate-less fence meant it wasn’t convenient to access, nor was it completely secure. Round the corner, or round Salford Junction, was Cuckoo Wharf, which we reached just after 5pm.

I compiled Day 3 into a single video but as youtube has a 10 min max had to split the 16min video. I chose to render each half again instead of simply splitting the file, so I could add a proper end and begining to each part. I shall upload the second part today or tomorrow as I’te got it on a flash disc with me.