A gift for whoever is up first.
On most boats one person is awake before the rest. In winter that person lights the stove, fills the kettle and stands in the galley while the cabin slowly loses its chill. If that is her, the wall at the end of the galley is the one she looks at most, and it is where this gift belongs.
A print there does a different job from a present that disappears into a locker. She sees it with the first tea of the day and again while washing up at night. It needs three things from you: the name painted on her boat, the water she knows best, and a date she would choose herself, such as the day she first steered, the day she moved aboard or the day the boat was named.
Choose A4 for a galley bulkhead, or A3 if the wall is clear. Each one is made to order, so the lettering is set for her boat alone. A mug for the shelf by the hatch is there too, if that suits her better.
Search for boat gifts for women and the results are socks, tote bags and coasters with a narrowboat silhouette on them. None of it knows anything about her boat. The one detail no shop can copy is the name on the side of her boat. A typographic print sets that name with the water she cruises under it and a date beneath that, and nothing in a gift shop can do the same job.
Narrowboat gifts for her start with whose boat it is
Most boats on the network belong to two people, which is the thing gift pages for one half of a couple usually ignore. It matters here for a practical reason: a print carrying the boat's name is a gift to the boat as much as to the person, so it works whether she owns her outright, shares her, or crews on somebody else's every summer.
If she chose the name, say so in the date line: "named by her, 2019" is a better line than the year of purchase, and we have set stranger ones. If the boat is shared and you want the gift to be plainly hers, the route line is the place: the stretch she knows, not the stretch you both cruise.
Where it goes and what we skip.
Boats have little room, so this covers where a print can hang and which gifts we leave to other makers.
Where it hangs
A narrowboat is no wider than 6ft 10in inside. Nothing that stands on a floor or a shelf survives that for long, while a panelled wall will take a frame and never miss the room. Size follows from the wall, not from taste. A4 suits a galley bulkhead or the panel beside a bed. A3 is the one most boat walls take without the room shrinking around it. A2 and the two metric sizes are for a saloon end wall, or for the house rather than the boat.
Which matters more than it sounds, because a lot of these prints do not live afloat at all. Boats get sold, laid up for a winter, or kept for holidays, and the print carries on hanging in a hallway ashore. That is the case for putting the water and the date on it, not only the name: on a wall at home, the two lines underneath are what make it a record instead of a decoration.
What we do not make
Plenty of what people want for a boater we do not sell, and it is more useful to say where to look. Gloves that keep a hand warm and still turn a windlass, a head torch worth owning, waterproofs cut for locking, not for a hill: a chandlery or an outdoor shop, not us. Painted canal ware is commissioned from the artists who still do it, usually through a marina. We print, and printing is all we do. The gifts we do make are gathered on one page: narrowboat gifts.
One thing worth knowing if you are posting it to her instead of handing it over: a boat that is cruising has no address. A marina or mooring works if you add the berth number, and a tube will sit at a marina office for a fortnight quite happily. If she is on the move, send it to yourself and hand it over.
Occasions and photographs.
Some gifts mark a date and some start from a favourite picture, so both routes for her are below.
The occasions this one suits
- The day she moved aboard. The house sold, the boat became the address. Most liveaboards can give you that date to the day, and it is the one that belongs on the print.
- A birthday with a number on it. The one where the slow life stops being something she explains to people and starts being the point.
- An anniversary aboard. The first cruise together, or the year the boat came into it. Boats are frequently named after one anyway.
- Mother's Day. For the mum who taught you a heron from a coot and knows every lock between Stourport and Stratford by name.
- Selling up. The unsentimental one, and the one people are most glad of later: the boat goes, the name and the years do not have to.
If a photograph would land better
Not everyone wants type. If there is a good photograph of her boat (bow-on at the mooring, mid-lock, out on a summit pound), we print it exactly as it stands (we measure the pixels against each size first and switch off any size the file cannot fill) or turn it into art in one of five styles, with the result approved by you before anything is made. The name print is the one to pick when the boat is the subject; the photograph is the one to pick when a particular day is.
Related
- The full range: every format and size, in one place.
- Gifts for him: the same print, written for the other half of the boat.
- The names guide: the traditions boats are named out of, and how people choose.
- Liveaboard gifts: if she lives aboard all year instead of cruising in summer.
Buying for her at Christmas? Every print is made to order, so start early. The guide to narrowboat Christmas gifts sets out picks by budget and relationship, from a framed print for the cabin wall to a mug for the galley.
Choosing the format: the name print is the one for the galley wall, a name mug keeps the boat on the shelf by the hatch, and a canvas hangs without a frame.