Ian Boud – Commodore
I have been boating for nearly thirty years with my wife and daughter, and now we have increased by another generation; and the little one loves the boat too. We bought our boat, Lock, Stock & Barrel in 2007. It is a light and dark green boat, and if you see us on the cut, say Hi! We are on the boat for three months in the summer, between the end of May and September, and in the time we have had the boat we have been around the whole waterway system. I joined Cutweb in 2012.
Outside of boating, I qualified as a Chartered Accountant in Manchester in 1979. I have used my qualification to become a Trustee in Bankruptcy up to 1983 in Toronto and then to go into the transportation industry, where I ended up the MD of a 1,000-employee concern in Shipping, trucking and becoming the first private railway company in Germany operating on Deutsche Bahn tracks. I lived in Canada for 17 years, Germany for 9 years. More recently in New Zealand, where I was Chairman of a five-star hotel in Queenstown and the top-rated hotel in the country. Now, when not spending my three months on the boat, I live in an old watermill in Tuscany for half the year, and an apartment in Switzerland. I call myself retired, but I am constantly active in one venture or another.
NB Lock, Stock & Barrel Calcutt
Pip Leckenby- Treasurer
Boating. My first narrowboat holiday was when I was 16 on the Llangollen, an eventful trip nearly ending my boating life there and then. In 2002 I got together with my partner Mick and we started to enjoy hire boat holidays, our first on the Leeds Liverpool Canal which is still our favourite canal. From this we bought into a share boat and enjoyed our four weeks a year, which fitted in well with our work.
Then with an unexpected inheritance we considered building our own boat. Bright yellow Narrowboat Lillyanne was bought to keep us going whilst we waited, moving on board in 2014 with my cat Houdini, we had the aim of taking a year off to travel the network. 2 years and 2 boat builders later we finally moved onto NB Oleanna. Our planned year expanded and we lived afloat fulltime until late 2020 when we reclaimed our house.
Now we spend several months a year back on land, doing winter maintenance in the house. But as soon as we can we are back afloat for spring, summer and autumn with Tilly our tuxedo cat, she far prefers life afloat than the boring house.
We joined Cutweb in 2025 and just before Christmas I put myself forward as Treasurer. Over the last eleven years we have cruised most of the network, there are still places to explore, each season of the year brings different characteristics to the rivers and canals.
Work wise. I trained in Theatre Design and Allied Crafts. My early career was spent in and around London assisting designers, scene painting and helping on props for West End shows.
In 1996 I was offered a job at the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough as Design Assistant. Over the following ten years I worked my way up to become Resident Designer, the last few years juggling work between Scarborough and across the Yorkshire Wolds in Hull for Hull Truck. Since 2006 I have worked as a freelance Theatre Designer, in more recent years choosing to boat and reduce the number of shows I design a year. But Oleanna was built with designing in mind and to date several shows including six pantos have been designed onboard.
I love cooking, painting, walking and will often be found knitting a pair of socks.NB Oleanna – currently out of the water awaiting a repaint.
Brian Holt – Membership Secretary
Boating, I have always been interested in boats right from bathtub boats, electric powered model boats and model sailing boats, this is all well before I was 10 but I was always scared of water. At 11 I went to a secondary school where they had a sailing club, the master had a half decker and kids were offered a try. I was hooked, but to go sailing you had to swim, that was sorted out the same year and I was let loose in dinghies.
14 and I built a wooden canoe at school as well as doing a canoeing holiday down the river Wye in my last month at school.
After leaving school I would sail anything I could borrow from half deckers to duck punts. At one time owned a Shetland Cruiser but with a young family it didn’t get used. Roll on a few years and I said goodbye to the wife and bought a Mirror Dinghy, met a young lady who wanted to go sailing and eventually we were married.
I never fancied canal boating until I saw Tim and Pru with the reopening of the K&A and we decided to give it a try. First holiday it rained every day except one, but that was it, like that first half decker I was bitten. Frome there we hired every year for 4 more years until one year we were moored up, about to go out and got talking to a couple on a rather nice boat, they invited us aboard. Flush Toilet, not like out thing full of blue, carpets on the floor, not vinyl like ours, comfy chairs, need I go on, it was a share boat, we paid £800 a week for the thing we were on, for twice that they were getting 3 weeks a year of luxury. I was sold. 8 years of shared ownership and I bought a hull, an engine and set to fitting out Harnser taking early retirement just after I started it and we have boated on her whenever we can ever since.
That’s the boaty bit. Now me.
To say I didn’t do well at school was an understatement. My daughter says that today I would be diagnosed as dyslexic, word processors saved my life, so I left school at 15 with no qualifications. Went to the local Tech college for almost a year and got a chance of a job as an apprentice electrician, back to college and got my City and Guilds, finished my time and became a house-bashing sparky but a slightly wider field covering agriculture, hospitals and industry. Eventually went to work for Birds Eye foods as a maintenance electrician. While there I was moonlighting working on the supply vessels that berthed in Gt. Yarmouth and Lowestoft.
I really didn’t want to spend all my life in a factory so I applied for a job as an electrical production technician with Shell and spent 18 years Offshore working on gas platforms and a couple of years as shift supervisor at the Bacton gas terminal. While off shore I went from tech to shift supervisor on gas compression platforms and the Installation Manager on the smaller platforms. I ended my day in the position of Company Representative on un-manned platforms that were still having wells drilled on them until I took early retirement at 52 I think it was, a long time ago. Now I am a pensioner and rapidly approaching 77.
NB Harnser – Barby Moorings
Linda Gifford-Hull – Secretary
I came into narrow boating late in life! I had been sailing just about all my life, crewing or being a nuisance to yacht owners. In 2007 my sister and brother-in-law had a narrow boat built and my love of the canals started then.
In 2009 I met my second husband, Richard, who just happened to have a sailing yacht as well as a narrow boat! Richard retired in May 2010, and we set off on a 3 month cruise of the canals on Mary H with our cat, Millie. I was working as a virtual secretary at the time and managed to keep up with my work but retired the following year.
In 2013 we were joined on the boat by a Cockapoo puppy, Muffin, who became a wonderful companion and lock keeper!
In 2014 Richard and I moved to Hayling Island as we both love the sea and at that stage, we sold the yacht as we were hardly using her and my sea sickness was getting worse.
I joined Cutweb in 2016 and volunteered for the post of Secretary in 2017.
In 2023 Muffin sadly died suddenly. Last year we were joined by a new boating dog, a Cavapoo, Rio. He has taken to it like a duck to water and, thankfully, hasn’t fallen in yet!
We have now spent 15 summers on the boat and have covered about 95% of the canal system, however I feel as if there are so many other places to explore in the UK (and Europe) so we bought a motorhome last year.
We have plans to go up north in Mary H this summer, but whether we can manage boating and motorhoming is only to be seen.
NB Mary H – Dunchurch Pools Marina
Julie Henderson
Boating
Messed around on dinghy as a child, progressed onto merchant vessels from school as a navigational office cadet, working for BP Shipping on all sizes of oil tankers worldwide, gaining seamanship skills and some enjoyable trips on the college’s tall ship. Returned to water with the purchase of a narrowboat in 2008 and I now single hand motor boat and butty, overall length 70’.
Work
Other work across the years has included community work, paid & voluntary in a variety of geographical areas, settings and roles. Working both within charities & voluntary sector agencies, local authorities, nhs/pct and government agencies; seeing the world from all sides of the table. Delivered workplace and university training & teaching throughout. Always being rather maverick and a little anarchistic but entrepreneurial in approach, I established and ran a social care organisation that was part of the movement across the country advocating better services and care of looked after children. The agency grew in three years to a turnover of £2.5m and a staff team of 65. This movement eventually cemented changes in practice and guidance for looked after children, their carers and parents in England. Final roles manifesting as poacher turned gamekeeper; the consultant that’s parachuted in to change and improve local authority services; resolve, pick up and stabilise collapsing and failing projects & services and teams.
Sidelines included managing property & tenants, specialising in HMO’s and student accommodation becoming the first accredited student accommodation supplier in Peterborough.
Now
Going slowly, happily plodding around the system following the pointy end while doing a bit of trade as a roving trader mending and upcycling; primarily mending boat covers. Occasionally delivering off grid sewing workshops at festivals with friends.
Don’t be limited by others’ horizons; always ask ‘Are you sure?’ and there is only this moment we are in now; tomorrow is not guaranteed.
Nb Barnacle Bill and butty Lily Limpet
Debbi Figueiredo
I was mostly blissfully unaware of the canal network until I moved to Berkhamsted in the 90’s. That said, my first experience of a narrowboat was the Bristol Packetboat from the harbour to Hanham in the mid 80’s as a fresher at the University. Fast forward to the year 2000 and a complete change of life and lifestyle when I met a man with a narrowboat shortly after my marriage had ended. The rest as they say is history. We have been floating around the Grand Union since then and have been very lucky with long term moorings and also boaty friends hence our membership of Cutweb. When work has allowed, we have travelled quite a lot of the network including the Lee & Stort, along the Thames to Lechlade, to Llangollen, Anderton, Alrewas, Stratford on Avon, Stafford, Wolverhampton and Birmingham, Market Harborough, and all the way along the Ashby. One year we hired a boat to cruise the eastern part of the Rochdale canal from Sowerby Bridge to the summit and back. That was quite an adventure. Age and various infirmities have been slowing us down and in recent years we haven’t done enough boating but we are hoping to put that right once we’ve got a few essential boat jobs sorted. Currently a committee member. Previously the organiser of two “Save Our Waterways” rallies in 2006/7. Supporter of Fund Britain’s Waterways and also a member of Aylesbury Canal Society.
Julian Tether
Let’s start near the beginning:
Whilst I was at school I discovered a love for Sailing and pretty much anything to do with water, I bought my first boat in 1971 a small plywood cuddy day boat that I kept for the next ten years despite owning other boats during that period.
Spent the first part of my working life swanning around the world doing very little work and getting paid well for it.
Come 1982 I went into a bit of a lean time with boats for a few years as work and other hobbies (Amateur Radio) got in the way. Bought my first steel narrowboat in 1991 it was a Springer after all we do have to start somewhere. That lasted until 1993 when I bought Idleness, I stopped full time touring and decided that home life was not for me so moved onto Idleness and took a mooring at Berkhamsted on the GU which I kept until 2019 when we moved the boat to the Nene.
At the same time I landed a design and maintenance job at the largest UK stage lighting company so apart from one tour a year with a very old client I became office bound.
1997 I bought a second Narrowboat (Slow Motion) as I was finding it difficult to keep Idleness within striking distance of work and get some decent cruising in. I travelled most of the system over the next five years and in late 1998 founded CIBC.
Early 2002 I decided I needed a bigger boat and bought Parglena, soon after my partner and I separated leading to the sale of Slow Motion which meant I then had no small canal sized boat to go cruising in. Later that year I met Caro who in 2004 became my wife.
Parglena was extended in 2005 and about this time we decided to go down the multiple boat ownership path again, These varied from a 7.47m sailboat to a day boat and a couple in between based in various locations from the fens to the east coast rivers.
2012 saw me being made redundant and another change of boat to Loddon, my last narrowboat. After being made redundant I went back to being self employed designing and building power distribution for the entertainment industry until I retired in 2018. After retirement we moved to Nth Devon and sold Loddon and I have come full circle and the only boat I now own is a kayak.