About Narrow & Wide
“A practical platform for life afloat, built from real life.”
“Boat life should be easier to understand before, during, and after you step aboard.”
Narrow & Wide exists to make narrowboat and widebeam life on the UK inland waterways clearer, less scattered, and easier to plan, find, manage, and understand.
We wanted a calm, useful place for people navigating costs, listings, services, records, places, and all the practical details that tend to live in forum threads, Facebook comments, old notes, and half-remembered advice.
Why this exists
Narrow & Wide did not begin as a cold startup idea.
It grew out of real life: our family in rural Mid Wales, caring responsibilities, adult children with disabilities, health pressures, money worries, animals, chaos, and the need to build something more stable.
Mandy and I are trying to create a better future for our children, while also building something genuinely useful for other people.
The waterways became part of that because they represent space, movement, choice, and a different way of living.
We are not building this from outside the journey. We are building it while trying to understand the same questions ourselves.
And the more we researched, the more obvious it became how scattered the practical information was.
Narrow & Wide is one of the practical things growing out of that hope.
What we’re building
The platform is structured around the complete lifecycle of life afloat.
Plan
Understand costs, boat types, layouts, moorings, and whether life afloat could work for you.
Find
Browse clearer listings for narrowboats, widebeams, project boats, sailaways, and other inland craft.
Discover
Find services, moorings, facilities, useful stops, and public notes from boaters.
Own
Keep track of journeys, costs, maintenance, documents, memories, and the reality of life afloat.
The aim is to connect the things boaters usually have to piece together separately: costs, listings, services, places, records, notes, and lived experience.
Where Explore Moor fits in
Explore Moor
Explore Moor is the story behind the project. It is where we share more of our real-life journey: family, caring, rural Wales, animals, mental health, learning, setbacks, and the slow attempt to build a better future.
Explore Moor is personal.
Narrow & Wide
Narrow & Wide is different. It is the practical platform growing alongside that story, providing the tools and clarity we wished existed when we started figuring it out.
Narrow & Wide is practical.
You can follow the story, use the tools, or move between both.
Why costs matter
One of the biggest questions around narrowboat and widebeam life, after toilets and ‘is it cold in the winter?’, is also one of the hardest to answer:
‘What does it actually cost?’
The answer changes depending on boat length, age, condition, mooring style, cruising pattern, licence fees, insurance, toilet type, heating system, engine hours, propulsion type, fuel use, battery setup, solar, inverter size, gas use, blacking schedule, hull condition, maintenance history, liveaboard versus leisure use, DIY confidence, local labour costs, what previous owners maintained or neglected, what breaks at the worst possible moment, and the deeply unscientific but very real force of plain old luck.
That is why simple averages are not enough. The useful answer depends on the boat, the setup, the lifestyle, and the choices behind it.
Narrow & Wide is being built to help people estimate, track, and eventually compare real costs in a way that is more useful than scattered forum answers, one-off YouTube cost breakdowns, or one person’s monthly total.
Why the logbook matters
Boat ownership creates information everywhere: receipts, photos, manuals, blacking dates, engine work, battery changes, mooring notes, water points, pump-outs, repairs, journeys, facilities, costs, and the things you were absolutely sure you would remember.
Boat Log is designed to bring that together.
It gives boaters a private place to record the boat, the journey, the costs, and the memories, with the option to share selected public notes where they may help others.
Some notes may stay private forever. Others, if shared publicly, could help another boater find a better mooring, avoid a problem, discover a useful place, or understand what a stretch of water is really like.
What this is not
Narrow & Wide is not:
- a noisy social network
- a place for towpath drama, pile-ons, or gossip
- a spammy directory
- a place for fake reviews or fake costs
- a platform that pretends canal life is simpler than it is
- a replacement for surveys, legal checks, professional advice, or due diligence
Built for the long term
Narrow & Wide is being built slowly and carefully.
The aim is not to chase noise, fill pages with rubbish, or pretend the platform is bigger than it is.
We would rather build slowly and be useful than launch loudly and become clutter.
Some parts will start simple. The cost tools, Boat Log, directory, and public notes will grow as real people use them.
The aim is to build something useful enough to earn trust over time.
“Clear enough for beginners. Useful enough for boaters. Honest enough to earn trust.”
Welcome to Narrow & Wide.
We’re very glad you’re here.