New hybrid for Old Nick

During the first lockdown in March 2020, my wife, Kay, and I began musing about the possibility of trying to be a bit greener in the forthcoming build of our 58ft 6in narrowboat Old Nick. The boatbuilder we had chosen – Ortomarine, based in the Droitwich area – already had experience of building electric narrowboats, and were very encouraging.

Making the choice of which type of electric boat was the first hurdle. We knew we wanted Old Nick to be electric but, as with all things in life, there were a number of different types of electric engine designs and we had to decide which one would be best for us.

The simplest is the ‘all-electric’ design, where you have a single electric engine, a big bank of batteries and a means of charging them.

This design works well for vessels that are doing short trips and always returning to base at the end of the day, where they can plug in to the shore supply, ready for the next day’s cruising. A lot of day boats operated by hire companies are moving to this type of design and Ortomarine had already built two large all-electric trip boats.

For vessels that are cruising for longer periods, over greater distances, such as private holiday boats or continuous cruisers – boaters who cruise year-round – a different design is required. One of the first commercially successful designs was the Parallel