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Mike and Krystyna Woodings' boat No.8

Our home - a 71ft narrow built on the lines of a BCN tug

During a very enjoyable week on board Wa'Na'Nee'Che (our boat no.7, a 42ft Springer) at Stoke Bruerne Christmas 1997, we started to think about a longer boat and started enquiring after several second-hand boats we saw advertised in the various waterway magazines. Having missed a couple, due firstly to being too late and then secondly because Wa'Na'Nee'Che was not sold and consequently our equity was not enough, we decided to sell Wa'Na'Nee'Che first and go from there.

Wa'Na'Ne'Che was advertised in the April and May issues of a couple of magazines and within three weeks was surveyed, sold and the money was in our bank! What now? We re-assessed our funds and Krystyna persuaded me that perhaps we should buy the 'boat of our dreams', rather than keep looking at the second hand market. I was somewhat apprehensive, as the boat of our dreams would have to be a sailaway’ due to the amount of funds available, which of course meant that we would have to fit it out ourselves and I wasn't particularly looking forward to 'x' years of work! However, when I realised that the style of boat we were looking at meant a trad engine room, with a trad/vintage engine and all that goes with it, I was persuaded and we started talking to boat builders, asking such awkward questions as to delivery dates and prices!

Having now decided that we wanted a trad style 60 footer with trad engine room and boatmans cabin, I was away at a conference in Preston for the week and Krystyna spent I reckon just about every waking hour phoning and faxing all the boat builders she could find. It was quite suprising how many didn't even bother to reply! I even managed to call into Liverpool Boats on the way back from Preston for some info.

Krystyna finally managed to whittle the possible builders down to two, one at Long Buckby and one at Aldridge. Both offered excellent delivery dates, so the final choice was to actual style. The Long Buckby based builder offered us his version of a Josher styled hull, although he had not built that style for years. The Aldridge builder offered us a BCN tug styled hull, of which he has built a few, and was actually his favourite (in fact our boat appears to be his dream too!).

We chose Ken Field of Aldridge Marina and on March 28th 1998 the order was placed and the deposit paid. Delivery was hoped for end July 1998 - but now the 60 footer has become a 70 (but actualluy ended up 71ft)! We had a short list of names for the new boat: Wowser, Draco, Rinty and Amaiyenehi.

Wowser: apart from coming from the kid's cartoon series, has always been a name we associated with a tug we might someday own.

Draco: is a name we came across not too long ago and comes from the Latin root for dragon - again a good name for a tug.

Rinty: was Krystyna's late father's nick-name, being a shortened form of his surname - Rydzinski - which his workmates couldn't pronounce - hence Rinty.

Amaiyenehi: another name in our 'tradition' of using Native American words. Amaiyenehi is a Cherokee word meaning 'Dwellers in the Water'. We enlisted the help of our friends on uk.rec.waterways in choosing the name, Krystyna's first choice was Amaiyenehi, though I like the name I thought it rather long, maybe too long for a tug style boat, but I happily went for what has been decided - who's going to paint the name on the side!!! However, after seeing the shell taking shape we decided that the boat was taking on a different personality to Amaiyenehi and is definitely more of a DRACO so......