The Sumpners Afloat

We could not let today pass without celebrating December 12th 2020. Today is the second anniversary of Old Nick’s launch. We launched and went straight into the second Covid lockdown, meaning that we were unable to go anywhere until April. Very frustrating, but we soon made up for it!

But what a wonderful two years they have been. We are eternally grateful to good old Ortomarine for building the boat of our dreams. These two years have been a couple of the happiest ever. We love our new life as boaters.

We have travelled many miles, done countless locks and traversed quite a few tunnels. And all in the wonderful silence afforded by our Vetus E-Line 10Kw electric engine.

Old Nick has been universally admired and people we have met along the cut have been genuinely excited by the fact that Old Nick is an Electric Serial Hybrid. We quite often hear cries of “Well done you” and “Good on you, mate”. They are often surprised by our range, thinking of it in terms of hours rather than days. And we enjoy spreading the word that electric boating is here and that it is eminently do-able.

We are still very much in the minority but we are starting to see more and more electric boats on our travels. Ortomarine alone have now built a total of 10 Parallel Hybrids, 7 Serial Hybrids and 3 All Electric trip boats.

The Ortomarine fleet has now generated over 31MWh of solar power. To put that into context, that is enough electricity to toast 2.75 million slices of toast!

We’ll end with a few of the hundreds of photos we have taken of our two years afloat. Looking forward to our 2023 travels!