Onwards and Upwards: creating “more space” on a boat

This may be more frustrating than continued silence as I’m probably going to write this and then disappear for another 2 years, but hey ho – it’s my blog, so…

I delivered our second Bun just over a month ago – a beautiful little boy called Sasha who we are all entirely in love with.  How’s that for a status update?! 

He arrived reluctantly, 15 days overdue and with copious persuasion – the only merit to which was the extra time it afforded the Owl and I to complete this summer’s hugely ambitious DIY project.  Silver linings… 

But first a little catch-up:

Life at Kew is as beautiful as we’d dreamed – not for us any wistful glances back to Barking sunsets over Tesco carpark, oh no.

These days we have a beautiful Siberian larch deck made by the Owl’s own fair hand (last summer’s hugely ambitious DIY project), that faces West into a sunset over an uninterrupted skyline of river and the trees of Lots Ait (apparently built by “Princess Augusta” when she took up residence in Kew Palace, to save her Royal sensibilities from having to confront the realities of life in Brentford. We learned from one of the passing tour boats this summer that Brentford was the biggest slum in Europe at one point. Fact.) 

Anyway: the upshot is a view the likes of which I suspect you’d be pressed to find  anywhere else in London.   We love our neighbours, the local area is ridiculously pretty (like a scene from JP Hartley’s The Go-Between (1953) which has one of the best opening lines for a novel ever: “The past is a different place; they do things differently there,”) and we’ve been slowly building on the advantage of a slightly older Bun to get on with more boat improvement jobs in the last year or so, after a hiatus of about 18months.   We are ridiculously lucky.

So: onto today’s post. Obviously “more space” on a boat is something of an oxymoron, so curb your expectations accordingly please, before I begin…
It was the subject of much hilarity when I gave the Owl a joinery course of all things for his 40th in December last year. Despite my protestations that it was his own request (and for the record, I gave him a wine course too – with strict instructions that they were not to be practiced concurrently) we have yet to find anyone who doesn’t collapse into gales of laughter at the self serving nature of my present… But whatever, I Am Not Sorry.  Check out the acoustic-insulated stud wall and cabin bed he’s just built! 

A bit more back story quickly first: 

It was something of a surprise to discover at the start of the year that I was pregnant again.  Cue: wondrous amazement all round, after which the Owl immediately began worrying about his sanity/ sleep potential.  He concluded that the only solution was to build a new bedroom for Sadie so she didn’t wake up every time the new baby so much as squawked and expedite our conversion back into zombies. 

Roll on 9+ months – 41+5 to be precise – and I find myself urgently painting new walls around my vast belly, perched perilously on one of Sadie’s miniature chairs, listening to This American Life with a hot water bottle strapped to my lower back. I love these walls.  I didn’t know it was possible to love a wall but these walls are fantastic. 
The plan was to build an identical wall to our existing bedroom wall 2m into the living room, creating a box room and an alcove between the two, and that’s exactly what we did. The impact on the living room has been minimal as the sofa was already pulled “forward” to create a play space for Sadie behind it, so we’ve only really lost a couple more feet and the daylight from the port lights – but look at our new spaces! And look how nice and shiny white/ freshly painted they are – after four years of hideous stained yellow/ cream high gloss, it finally feels like this is a grown up space to enjoy being in (rather than suffer the usual low levels of angst every time I looked up).

So without further ado, here’s the latest project in photos.   Enjoy – and hopefully see you in less than another couple of years! 

Constructing the wall (the Owl’s bit):
‘Before’ shot – so light! So roomy! I think this was before even the stove went in, so before Bun #1 even…

Partially constructed main wall from the doorway to the Bun’s new room.

Completed wall awaiting half its ply topcoat before painting.

The acoustic rockwool insulation packed between both chipboard and ply layers on either side of the wall  (it pays at times like this to be married to a sometime sound engineer…). 

Clever right?! He got the curve of the ceiling so neat by clipping the metal frame at regular intervals so that it could follow the line. It looked very neat and impressive. 
Build done, it was on to the fun bit (for me) – decorating.

Saloon side decor:

Primed, painted and ready for hanging (and stories with H in the meantime)

I’ve long had one of those invisible book shelves and been desperate to use it. This is my chance! So here is the weight of books it can take (titles to be confirmed but these are all helpfully of a theme (from my Old Icelandic/ Anglo Saxon/ Middle English degree modules. Happy memories…!)

Painted living room wall with first gallery pics hung (a Josephine Baker print from one of those left bank street vendors in Paris, and our stunning Ansel Adams wedding present from the Owl’s mum&dad, in case you’re wondering…)

And finally, all finished. Still no invisible bookshelf, you will note. Despite excellent layout planning (with paper templates for all my frames and everything), I somehow managed to forget about the bloody thing. O well. Its time will come.

On to the other side: Sadie’s New Room.

The original inspiration for Sadie’s cabin bed was something like this.  Then I found an Ikea hack ‘how to’ using a £250 chest of drawers, which we hacked again (META) to use a couple of chests we found at a charity shop in Brentford. Win!

Bed build complete (ish) – mid paint on the cabin bed and wall

Rainbow WIP. I was originally going to go for the full spectrum, then simply blue and yellow (oddly too cold) but these colours are just me all over, I love them. Simultaneously warm and cool… The paint is all Little Greene, the blue is their Juniper Ash. I Heart It.

 The client inspects work in progress

From the saloon doorway facing our cabins and the bow… 

 

Trying out her new bed, which the Owl cleverly made to be the exact same size of an Ikea kids standard mattress

Completed: craft corner

Finished! 

Man Overboard

In stark contrast to my last post about the hottest days of last summer, it’s currently the coldest it’s been all winter. Which admittedly isn’t saying much, but putting it into context, it’s now 7.40am and 0 degrees (“feels like -4”).
Imagine then my shock, when I nipped out onto the pontoon at 6pm last night to turn the water off to hear a quiet, “help” from the river.  I barely heard it but I peered into the icy gloom and was horrified to spot an upturned scull (thank god it was white) with a woman holding on for grim life as the tide whisked her out towards the sea. Man, that river can move. 

To be honest, I didn’t know what to do for a second – I was so surprised. It was FREEZING. It was a seriously serious situation. I yelled down the pontoon to the guys who thankfully were still on the marina working on the black water pump/tank installation, who stationed themselves on the outside of boats further downstream to try to catch her. 
The life ring at our end was tied on against the wind – “textbook fail”, I thought – it was like being in a thriller – but fortunately it was just hitched and I got it to the first guy on Volharding before she went past. We missed. 
The next guy was already on Seahorse waiting, so a couple of us grabbed another ring and ran down to the very stern, shouting for an ambulance and to call ahead to Kew Pier in case we missed her again. Thankfully Stuart caught her from his position on Seahorse and pulled her onto the roof. 

She only had one oar – we later learned the other had snapped up by Brentford lock and she had been stuck in her boat caught in branches for half an hour as the sun went down before something gave (tide or branch) and released her, and she tipped over into the river and started moving – we estimated she must have been in the river for half an hour or so. Fortunately she is 17 and super fit, and pragmatic enough to keep her head and as much of her body out of the water as she could, holding onto her upturned boat. She didn’t even get her hair wet!  I was humbled by her dignity – she very nearly died. 
We quickly decided our boat was the warmest and helped her back up along the pontoon and inside Maria Elisabeth. Thank god our friend J was here and doing a sterling job entertaining Sadie, who by this point should have been in her bath and on her way to bed but instead was still in her highchair eating blueberries and yoghurt and giggling. 
Meg was shivering so hard she could barely speak, but she knew what she was about and knew her mum’s mobile which we called as we got her out of her icy things and into dry warm clothes, made her hottie bottles and hot sweet tea, and installed her as close to the open door of the fire as we could without singeing her. 
Her coach arrived – the poor guy had been scouring the river trying to find her since he’d seen her boat was missing from the clubhouse, and finally found it empty on our mooring and thought the worst. He must have gone past her a couple of times in the dark which is a scary thought. Her mum had called him, demonstrating the value of a crisis comms plan (as my BBC days drummed into me!)
The RNLI arrived, who were as great as ever. She warmed up, the club’s safety officer turned up. The Bun’s bath was cancelled. 
It was all incredibly dramatic, and not in a fun way: once everyone had finally gone their ways and I’d got the Bun to bed, I acknowledged my headache and descended into a migraine. I haven’t had one since the junior doctor tried to make me go cold turkey on the dihydrocodene in hospital when I had Sadie: Not. Good.  
I have no photos – obviously, but a pity for you as it was v dramatic – so you are dependent on my powers of description. Go crazy. I’ve been up since 4am so I’m going back to bed. 

Barging up the River Thames DAY ONE: BARKING TO GRAVESEND

Well that was quite the cliff hanger, wasn’t it?! 

I would say I’m sorry, but I’ve been enjoying every moment with the Bun and it’s been heavenly, so… 
Casting my mind back with a wrench to those halcyon days of summer, and the 1st July which was if you remember, the hottest day of the year. 

  
Because Life is a little tinker who never misses an opportunity to make a point, not only did she introduce us to one of our favourite new families of 2015 two months before we left Barking; but they turned up to wave us off bringing The World’s Best pastel de nata from a glorious little Portuguese cafe around the corner that we never knew existed. Still, the cakes were nice.

  

After an ever-so-slightly anxious moment leaving Fresh Wharf where we cast off before the tide was high enough to open the barrier and had to hover midstream against a minor current until the gates parted (don’t know if you’ve ever tried to do that but it’s almost impossible), we were off. 

   

  
    
 
  
 
   

  

  

  

            
I couldn’t quite believe it, to be honest.

 There was an amazing moment of stillness as we meandered down Barking Creek through slack water towards the Thames, basking in the sun as we left the industrial estates, scrap yards and sewage works behind us and all those niggling little weights that had accumulated over the past two years slipped gently one by one from my shoulders and plopped into the water.  It was a glorious feeling to be under way – in our very own boat, heading for an incredible mooring, on such a beautiful day, with two fantastic days of boating on the finest river in the world ahead of us. I’m sorry if that reads as smug – it’s not intended. We couldn’t believe our luck. 

On board were: 

– Us and the Bun

– My mum (who’s been with us all the way since that first trip to Holland and wasn’t going to miss this for anything)

– Our skipper Edward and his wife Pamela, and their friend and engineer Carlo

– Our good friends and longtime partners-in-mischief Tom and Sophie joined us for day 2

         
 

We turned left at the Thames and headed out into the estuary and the commercial reach of the river. My god but it’s wide. Obviously – but you don’t often get to see it from the middle like that… And bumpy! 
The Bun wasn’t phased however – she proved her mettle as a true-born boat baby and slept solidly all the way down to Gravesend. 

         

 

After two peaceful, uneventful and wholly satisfying hours, it felt as if Gravesend came upon us rather quickly.  But there we were, and as we all cooed and marvelled at the swans (“Swans! Loads of them! In the sea!”), our skipper expertly manoeuvred us into the place he’d reserved on the pontoon at the end of the pier as the last of the tide ebbed away, and we gathered ourselves to go to the pub. 

 
  
 

Except it wasn’t the right pier. 
It looked a bit grubby and neglected  I grant you, but we only really started to smell a rat when there appeared to be no way off the pier except by pre-approved vandalism (is vandalism still vandalism if you’re given permission?)

 
  

Sure enough, it soon transpired that the PLA pier was the next one upstream, and we were going to have to try and get ourselves off our now distinctly shallow berth and onto the right one. Which in its favour had a very nice-looking pub easily accessible just at the top of it. 
In our excitement we had failed to realise the following useful fact:  to contact the PLA whilst navigating the Thames, use call sign LONDON VTS and vhf channel 14 (West of Crayfordness) OR vhf channel 68 (East of Crayfordness). All that time we’d been patting ourselves on the back on the wrong pier, they had been trying to reach us on VHF68 to no avail… Awkward.
To cut a long story short, it culminated not only in a snapped jackstaff and the PLA having to rescue us with a very powerful tug, but further in a sternly worded letter of reprimand which we received just last week (I take some small consolation in the knowledge that the PLA are evidently as inefficient at admin as I am). The nice harbourmaster did give us a useful map though which is now stuck to the bathroom wall for us to memorise while we’re brushing our teeth:

 

So. Live and learn. Duly chastened, we did eventually make it off the pier and into the pub, before bunking down ahead of our Big Day still to come. Hopefully I’ll get to that bit a bit faster, because it was genuinely EPIC. 

Catastrophe

As you know, I have a six month old baby. She is the best Bun in the world – she sleeps like a dream, she eats like a horse, she beams at everyone she comes across but especially at me: she’s great. I do have the odd moment of feeling completely knackered and ever so slightly over it, but by and large my life feels pretty perfect these days – I am actually Living the Dream and I think I might be the happiest I have ever been. 

So imagine my regret when I recently started to feel the odd twinge of nausea. 

Then I felt a bit dizzy. I had a bit of a headache. Over the course of a few days and a few more symptoms, I realised I might have a Situation. Hmmm.

The first pregnancy test was negative. I weighed the fact that it was impossible to tell whether I definitely had several other symptoms as they are also symptoms of / absent during breastfeeding (sore breasts, missed period, sore back), so I waited a week while the nausea and dizziness persisted and the Owl suffered a bout of my ill-humour, and did another one. 

Still negative. Hmmm. 

I reviewed the facts and checked my calendar. It started about three weeks ago. My main symptoms are occasional waves of nausea and dizziness. 

The dates coincide with our move up the Thames to our new mooring. It’s a busy stretch of the river, and fully tidal – I’ve really enjoyed spending so much time on board watching all the activity and being rocked about by the wind and the wake of the bigger boats going by, and by our own boat as she bottoms out twice a day. 

I have a mild case of sea sickness. 

Ha! 

Passage Plan up the Thames from Gravesend to Kew Bridge

This is the plan for tomorrow. I may regret saying this, but if you’re in Central London and free at lunchtime, come on down. I’ll post bridge updates as we pass them on Instagram @minkypink – proviso being, our boat has a whole load of gubbins on it so don’t judge us for being scruffy, we’re working on it and we’re in a better state than we were.  Also – photos please! 

WEDNESDAY 1st JULY 2015

06.30 Run engine and check systems.

LW G’End at 07.00

In slack water ease the barge out of berth. 

dep G’End by 08.00

G’End to Kew Bridge 34 m = 6 hrs @ 6 kts.
Tower Bridge c12.00

Hammersmith Bridge c13.30 (1.5 hrs before HW)
HW Kew Bridge 15.00

arr 14.00

Turn barge upstream of mooring and ease down into berth using the last of the rising tide to manouevre.

all secure by 15.00 (slack water)

A Burgee and a Jackstaff

Don’t worry, I had to Google them too. And I live here. 

Today’s the day!  I’ve got through the last week by trying to do a new thing every day. Yesterday I made a new burgee. 

To quote our lovely new skipper: 

“A small jackstaff (goes) at the bow with a small burgee, flag or anything that flutters – it shows the helmsman what the wind is doing to the bow. Ideally the jackstaff should be a fraction taller than the highest point of the ship. It allows you to approach a bridge with caution and shows whether you will get through. A broomstick will suffice.”

Don’t you worry Edward. We own both these items. We just didn’t know what they were called.  Also the burgee (or “burger” as predictive text would have it) was in a terrible state having been whipped to shreds by the wind over the last two years.  Anyone remember the punishing gales of winter 2013/14? You didn’t want to be our jackstaff in them, let me tell you. 

  

Our boat in profile, where you may or may not be able to see that the jackstaff is taller than the wheelhouse.

The Owl suggested a tea towel. I don’t want to sound petty but I am not motoring past the Houses of Parliament with a frigging tea towel flapping in the wind.  I may not know one end of an alternator from another, but I can sew a straight line on a sewing machine like you wouldn’t believe, so off I went. 
  Our embarrassingly tatty burgee

Do flags warrant dedicating? They feel like semi-official type things, so with that spurious link established, this one is dedicated to our friend Kacey who had never been on a boat before ours, and who got married two weeks ago to the equally marvellous Amy. 
Turns out that despite having fallen to shreds at one end, the other end of our old burgee was really well made. The fabric itself was 100% pure class plastic. I own a lot of fabric, but none as plastic as that. The first thing that came to hand was this 100% cotton Dutch batik I bought for Kacey and Amy’s wedding two weeks ago, so I traced out the flag with chalk, gave it an extra 2cm depth for the hem, and set to with the pinking shears. 
  I love this fabric
  

Here is the original burgee, mid-dissection. 

The fabric is sewn onto the string, and then the binding is sewn up and down it twice, with a neat little arrow formation at one end for luck. (I’m making that up. Presumably to stop it from tearing – in which case it was v effective, so I copied it.) 
 The string having been sewn onto the flag,  I sewed the flag into the binding

 My trusty Janome at approx 11pm last night
  Here it is finished (the sewing part)

  

Here it is being waxed.  

Being 100% cotton, I’m not expecting it to last long – but obviously the longer the better, and waxing will help.  

  
And here it is up on its jackstaff.
And with that, with any luck, we’re off at 11.30am today, riding against the top of the tide down to the Thames and hanging left to overnight at Gravesend, practicing some manoeuvres on the way.  
If anyone is in central London around lunchtime tomorrow, come and give us a wave!  I’ll post our estimated timings tonight or first thing tomorrow, once the skipper has a feel for the boat and has revised his original guess.  

Today is our third wedding anniversary, and the Bun was 5 months old yesterday. The times, they are a’changin…

A new-ish Alternator and Slippery Crew

After the crushing disappointment of Sunday, this has been the longest week I can remember.  The Owl has been working hell for leather to get the engine part we needed in time to leave Barking on Monday, when our skipper and crew have said they’re next free. 
It turns out our lovely Volvo Penta engine is not as doddery as initially suspected – thankfully the ‘dodgy’ fuel pump is in fact fine, it was just an air lock.  After two hours of expert tinkering on Sunday night by our friend T and engine man P however, the alternator was still screwed: putting out waaaay too much voltage.  Something needed doing.  To be fair, it is over 30 years old.  
As such, they don’t make them like they used to, so Plan B of getting it reconditioned wasn’t going to work out as the parts were likely to be so hard to get hold of, so back to Plan A we went to find a replacement. 

By Tuesday, the Owl had found a knowledgeable man called Steve from London Essex Auto Electrics who had another more recent Penta alternator that would probably do. 

By Thursday night, he’d been to Steve’s (armed with photos of all the connections to make sure the new one would fit and he’d know how to reconnect it), swapped the alternators, and run the engine for the requisite 2 hours without stalling. What a hero – we were ready to go, two days early. 

Here is what success looked like from the outside: 

 

 
And from the inside: 

Sadly our jubilation was short lived – precisely two hours in fact – before we checked our email to discover that our skipper had decided he could not now afford us 24 hours on Monday/ Tuesday after all.  He might be able to manage Friday… Or maybe (we’re away on Friday) mid July…?
I deleted the email quickly to prevent myself from causing an unfortunate occurrence.  First thing Friday morning we started looking for a new skipper. 
We have now found a skipper who will not only get us where we need to go when we need to get there, but will also teach us how to drive her so that we don’t find ourselves in this pickle again. All we need then is a VHF radio and license, and we’ll be golden.  Maybe being let down (twice) by our original crew is no bad thing in the end…  

#keeponlookingforthesilverlining

Oh.

And… Oh. We’re not going anywhere, today at least. 

Turns out the engine’s alternator and fuel pump are screwed – WHO KNEW?!? Not us, sadly. 20/20 hindsight is a glorious thing. 
Will have to see what exactly is wrong and how long it’ll take to fix/ replace before we can make a new plan. 
In the meantime I might try swimming to Kew wth the Bun strapped to my back you know, just for kicks

Bye bye, Barking

And we’re off! In approximately 2 hours, aiming to document our progress as we go on Instagram, if anyone is interested: @minkypink.
But first, a word on Barking, our home for the last 2 years, before we leave it behind forever.  (Dumper’s remorse? Maybe).

If we had the money, we’d buy a place in Barking. Somewhere nice near the river to rent out and hold onto until we decide to retire and live either off it or in it. In a few years’ time, my bet is that Barking is going to be smoking hot property – Dalston East, if you will. They’re thinking Big, and all those stupid Fresh Wharf shenanigans aside, I kind of love it.   It’s got a fantastic sense of community, and aspirations in the creative industries that I wish I could be a part of.   

A few things I appreciate, in no particular order: 

– the crazy-good history! Barking Abbey was built in the 10th century by Saint Erkenwald for his sister Saint Ethelburga (evidently a family of high achievers). It was so rich and beautiful that William the Conqueror couldn’t shoot Harold’s eye out fast enough, so keen was he to move in and made all the kings of England eat humble pie off the nuns’ flagstones.

– Captain Cook got married in St Margaret’s church.  Fact. 

 

– The new Abbey Leisure Centre’s soft play area The Idol received £100,000 Arts Council funding (of an annual £0.5million Barking/ Arts Council pot) and was designed by Turner prize nominee Marvin Gaye Chetwynd. 

Admittedly it’s all black, but conceptually it’s great. And apparently the black is to create a sense of danger, which is rare in council soft play areas, so I applaud it. 

Also it was designed by a Turner prize nominee, which is super cool and inspiring, so who cares.  

– The Granary development right opposite our boat is positioning itself at the heart of a new “artistic quarter” which if the existing building is anything to go by will be really quite beautiful. Especially once someone gets around to sorting our poor, neglected river out. (Don’t all leap up at once – rumour has it that Ilford Film used to dump all their processing waste into the river, so the silt is full of nasties. If true, no self-respecting dredging company will want to touch it with a barge pole. This is hearsay incidentally, so hopefully  it’s not true. , because this river area deserves to be bloody lovely one of these days.

  The Ice House/ Granary development, from the road 

  And from our roof (riverside) when we first arrived in 2013, before they filled in all the blue with tower blocks  

  
  
 The turning pool at Town Quay; in need of a good dredging 

– The scraggy Fresh Wharf industrial estate that overlooks us has already been contracted to developers. I haven’t seen the plans but it can’t possibly be worse than it is already. And frankly the sooner the owners hand it over and the mooring residents can try to build a cordial new neighbourly relationship not riven with petty arguments and historical resentment, the better. (See: the arrival of Concrete Singh below). 

  Our next door plot two weeks ago

   

 Our next door plot now
– Barking has an arboretum! A proper one, with loads of different trees in it. It’s lush. Also next to it the Creative Square outside the beautiful Town Hall puts on occasional light shows and concerts. In two weeks there’s a Folk Festival with Dagenham son Billy Bragg headlining. 

  
   The arboretum

  Random ‘fake ruin’ art installation by the Town Hall   

  Barking Town Hall

   Creative Barking & Dagenham

– There are a couple of great little cafes, notably: 
1) EzO Bistro within the Barking station concourse, open since summer last year and lined with second hand books and original art. They serve great fresh coffee, crepes and sandwiches. The Owl gets his second caffeine hit there every morning (they remember how he takes it) and the owners work their butts off to make it a genuinely nice place to spend time, which if you’ve seen Barking station is something of an accomplishment. 

   
     

2) Relish, the council run community cafe in the Barking Learning Centre (home to the library, the Barking Bath House and a gallery, amongst others). The food comes in abundant portions and is really very good. The Bun and I take ourselves out for lunch there at any excuse really… Which is easy as the GP is right opposite and our Children’s Centre is just over the road. 

  

– the Gascoigne Childrens Centre is deservedly OFSTED rated Outstanding. I’m really going to miss it.
– they have sex ed posters like this hanging from the lampposts: 

  (This makes me giggle like a teenager every time I pass by)

– the Queen is coming to visit next month. Apparently it’s the 50th anniversary of the borough but whatever – THE QUEEN! I love the Queen.

 

– Finally: the transport infrastructure is really good. The C2C, the Overground and two underground lines run from Barking station so you can be at Kings Cross in half an hour. Not bad for zone 4…

So things are Happening in Barking. I like it.  And in a way – family proximity and a beautiful stretch of river notwithstanding – it’s more “us” than Kew is (which has a Society specifically dedicated to making sure NOTHING EVER CHANGES).

But we have no investment in the area; even once the development is completed (assuming there are any boats left), the mooring fees will just go up in line with the improved local area and facilities…  All hope lies with a few brave boaters and their community mooring aspirations.

In the meantime, the situation at Fresh Wharf is as precarious and frustrating as ever.  The latest word is that mooring licenses won’t be renewed after October, and in our immediate area, living conditions are actually worse since PMC Soil Solutions packed up all their lorries and left.  The estate managers in their eternal social compassion and wisdom moved the friendly but very noisy and excessively hardworking Concrete Singh into the plot next door.  (highlights so far have included clouds of cement dust billowing over our decks and through our portholes, and all-day Sundays and 10pm week night finishes, bless their grubby cotton socks.)

All in all we’re over it, and we’re off. We’ve met some truly lovely people who we hope we’ll see again, and we wish the best of luck and fair winds to all the friends and acquaintances who are staying on to fight another day.  If they can stay the course and emerge triumphant, it will be so worth it – Barking Riverside is truly a diamond in the rough. 

So, with a song in our hearts and smiles on our faces, we wave goodbye and turn our backs on Barking, heading south through the barrage and down the River Roding, to sail up through London Town and into the sunset. 
It’s the summer solstice, so with any luck it’ll be a good one. 

Installing a boiler stove on a boat

So, the stove. 
You may have noticed I’ve been procrastinating on writing this post for quite some time… Truth to tell, it was probably the most painful project we have completed so far. Not least because so much was riding on it – having barely survived our first winter with the temperamental 25 year old diesel-guzzling monster boiler we inherited (rusted chimney and all), a good new multifuel stove installation was always going to be essential this time around – especially as our little bun was due deep in the darkest depths of January. 

First, we had to insulate the hull behind where the stove would go, as we wouldn’t have such easy access once the new stove and its gravity fed system went in. 

 The silver bubble wrap that was there (and still is throughout Most of the boat – HOW DID THEY SURVIVE?!)

  

 Exposing bare hull beneath the bubble wrap

The waterline. This freaked the Owl out to such an extent that he destroyed his hands on a particularly aggressive wire brush and oxide mission to achieve this:

  

Pretty hunh? Still fricking freezing though. Also note the late night lighting. Last winter was fun in so many ways! 

    The celotex going in between the ribs, panel by panel

 All the saloon walls propped up in our bedroom. Note the baby basket and surrounding mess – next post: our new bedroom / nursery shelves!

Cue: much cursing as the Owl mastered the dark art of spray foam and got it all over the floor in the process (no photos here as I was too busy being annoyed…)

Our next ‘interesting’ (read: MAD) decision was to make the tiles for the hearth. We made them, but they took about two months longer than anticipated (squeezing in evenings and weekends around full time jobs and being pregnant) and didn’t all turn out amazingly (sadly I’m even worse at glazing than I thought I was).  

  The Owl, helping out one Saturday afternoon.

  Checking how many tiles fit on a top loader kiln shelf 

The start of the process: cutting and finishing new tiles

   Some trial layouts at the greenware stage 

Still, we got there, and found these great tilers on Check-a-Trade to come and install them. They thought the tiles were so great that one of them subsequently went and did an introductory pottery class at my old studio, Turning Earth in Hoxton! So that made me happy. 

   
   
Sadly there is no check-a-trade for boats. God, how I wish there was.  Instead, of the 16 boat yards we emailed last summer about installing the superduper-all-singing-all-dancing stove we’d chosen, only two got back to us. And only one of them wanted to do it.  And they rinsed us.

I still don’t know where we went wrong here, and I’ve been chewing over it for months now. We probably shouldn’t have bought the stove until we’d found an installer who knew what they were doing, and we should have allowed a (now standard for all our outsourced boat work) 3 month contingency for any setbacks, delays and let downs. 

The stove we chose is a Charnwood Cove 2B (model: Cove, size: 2, B = with a back boiler). 

Here it is on its plinth at Christmas, awaiting insulation and installation:

   

The Charnwood Cove 2B is, according to the lovely and knowledgable guy at the Kings Worthy foundry whose idea it was in the first place*, the “Rolls Royce of stoves” – which unfortunately meant that having bought it, we couldn’t find anyone who knew how to install it on a boat. 

Not that that stopped the guys we ended up with giving it a go. Normally you’d find a load of local corgi(?) registered installation engineers and pick one. But because we live on a boat, house rules do not apply and these guys wouldn’t touch it – we needed someone who could install it to the BSSC standard instead. 
So to cut a long story short, a installation job that started in October was finally completed in the first week of January to dubious standard, and destroyed all that remained of our renovation budget.  Suffice it to say we did not part on the best of terms with our contractors – BUT at least we got it installed, it’s still working despite a few frustrating hiccups that we think we’ve mostly mastered, and the boat was toasty and warm by the time I went into labour.  

Look, here it is!  And this makes us so happy it makes up for all the preceding hullabaloo: 

  Note: my beautiful new Christmas coal scuttle and fire irons 

So, we got there eventually, and we love it – it’s transformed our home in winter into a cosy den we don’t want to leave.  And it’s such a great, dry heat that our port lights don’t drop condensation any more, even in the depths of winter when we’re drying washable nappies on the rack overnight. 

#winningatlife

* NB: We didn’t buy it from him – on his recommendation – so I believe him,and will forever think kindly of him.