The design brief given to Fernwood Craft's Ken Warriner  was about as brief as they come. "We want a boat that has the feel of those grand ocean liners of the 1920s,"said owners-to-be Jan and Graham Finch.

A brief brief, then, but a tough one: re-create the art deco extravagance of a 30,000 ton ocean liner in a 62ft by 6ft 10in narrowboat. It could have been a recipe for a disaster of, well, titanic proportions but it's clear from just a glance at the picture below that it has been a triumph.

Huff 'n' Puff is a visual feast and rightly wowed the crowds at last year's Crick Show but we wanted to do more in  this test than simply savour the skills of its designers and builders. We wanted to see how a boat so individual and so carefully crafted could stand up to the rigours of life as a live-aboard.