Narrowboat, narrow boat or nb

As I like to keep track of what everybody else is up to and I have to trawl round the blogsites to do it, I've decided to organise my own blogroll.

A large number of blogs from fellow boaters are now organised in chronological order of last post (those that blog most regularly come to the top) in the bottom left corner of Revelations.

They are identified by the name of the narrowboat which they concern and I've ignored any that haven't updated within the last month or carry the dreaded Google adverts.

Incidentally, what is the correct prefix abbreviation for a narrowboat ?

In my work, where I am in frequent contact with large ships, one uses prefix abbreviations like M/V for motor vessel, M/T for motor tanker, S/S for steamship (not used much anymore) and so on.

So, should narrowboat (or is it narrow boat) be abbreviated to NB, N/B, nb or n/b ??

Does it matter ??

Wikipedia lists all the abbreviations in use for floaty things and shows the prefix for narrow boat as nb.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_prefix

I note that the blog for the steam vessel Emily-Anne is prefixed with SNB (steam narrow boat ?).

Most dictionaries show NB or N.B as an abbreviation for the latin expression "nota bene" which means note well and is "used to direct attention to something particularly important".

So maybe it should be NB then :-)

How about a name for a new narrowboat; NB Nota Bene ???

Interestingly and in my humble opinion, wrongly, the Merriam-Webster dictionary refers to the definition of narrow boat as being "a barge with a beam of less than seven feet (2.1 meters)".

A narrow boat should never be referred to as a barge. The working boaters of old would spin in their engine 'ole.