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! 

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

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.

Restoring the Beehive Hatch for the Aft Deck

(A guest post by the Cat’s Father)

My dad is a legend. In fact we could (and frequently do) go so far as to call him a Mantelpiece (i.e. a really big ledge). Here follows his account of how he restored our beautiful-but-quite-frankly-on the-brink-of-dereliction beehive hatch that lives atop the poop deck. It took him ALL SUMMER. Thanks, First Seahorse. X

‘I confess that although I knew restoring the hatch would be “a lot of work”, I did not realise how true that would turn out to be!

On 30th June, the Owl managed to get the hatch off its mountings on the aft deck and into the back of my car – a feat of great strength, as the hatch has no hand holds and is very heavy, and the back of the car is relatively narrow.

Once home, I muscled it through the garage, up the garden steps, and onto the table by my shed – surprisingly without damaging the beast or myself – and I made a detailed inspection of its condition. It was not good. The timber carcass was so discoloured that one could not tell what type of wood it was, and the varnish inside and out was peeling and had long since failed.
All the varnish would have to be removed and renewed, and the 8 glass panes replaced.

My first task was to remove all the glass so that I would be able to move the hatch more easily. I started with the circular panes in the vertical front and rear faces, and they came out quite easily without breaking because the mastic and putty were so degraded. I was relieved to find that the wood recesses had not rotted despite having leaked water for years.

Then I started on the 6 long rectangular panes that formed the curved lateral surfaces, and they were quite a different story. Despite the poor condition of the outer layers of sealing mastic and the many places where the seals had failed, the remaining sections of bond between glass and wood were (sadly) in good shape, and rendered it impossible to get the panes out without breaking the glass. I eventually got them all out, breaking every single one in the process.
The great advantage of removing the glass was that the hatch immediately became less heavy and much easier to handle, but that does not mean it was light!

The great disadvantage of having removed all the glass was the knowledge that it would all have to be renewed and replaced for full-time exposure to a marine environment… a prospect I found rather daunting. However, I could now proceed with stripping off the varnish and the mastic back to the bare wood, a welcome and rewarding change of occupation after all the glass.
Stripping off the old varnish was pretty straightforward once I had the right technique, and it simply required time and effort which, as a retired old codger, I could offer in shedloads. I started with an ordinary scraper to get the peeling layers off, and following that I decided (erroneously) that the corners and joints would be easier stripped using a patent liquid varnish stripper. The liquid stripper worked in rather a half-baked way and it was a very slow and messy process, but by far the most effective method proved to be a hot air gun combined with a sharp triangular scraper, followed by sanding off with coarse paper. I had to be careful not to scorch the wood surface with the hot air blower, but once I got the hang of it, not only did I make good progress, but after sanding down, the wood turned out to be a beautiful pale pink mahogany colour underneath and the whole job became a real delight.

Stripping and sanding was a very long job. Every groove, every angle, and every recess had to be dealt with until the entire carcass was bare wood. I did the work in the open air on our garden table, and during the summer of 2014 it was frequently too hot to work. Better that than pouring rain of course, but it did slow my progress which was breaking no speed records anyway.

Once stripped, the carcass was ready for structural repairs. One corner needed to be strengthened with dowels and glue, and the inner supporting frame of pinewood had rotted so badly it needed to be completely removed and replaced with new mahogany. I managed to buy new mahogany timbers cut and planed to size with remarkable ease, and I drilled and dowelled and screwed (using marine grade stainless steel screws and wooden dowel bar) to effect the essential repairs.

After that I bought some epoxy mahogany filler, and attempted with very limited success to fill all the holes, sanding scars and structural gaps tidily. It was technically the most difficult task, and I have to admit with some reluctance that I didn’t make a good job of it. The material was very difficult to handle, the colour match was poor, and every peccadillo of my efforts became obvious.

Slightly disheartened, I sanded down my poor efforts at filling, and started the varnishing; my morale was instantly lifted. I used International Clear Wood Sealer Fast Dry diluted 20% with International Thinners No.9 as first coat, followed by another 2 coats of the same with no thinners. It was a rewarding experience.

I followed the clear wood sealer with 2 coats of International Perfection + (plus), and with every coat the colour and shine of the mahogany became darker and richer. I needed to be careful to avoid getting varnish into the recesses for the glazing, and in that I was only partly successful.
I had therefore to return to sanding clean the glazing recesses ready to receive undercoat, a fiddly job made easy by my flexi-drive mini drill with a sander attachment. It was an absolutely indispensable tool for the job.

Once the recesses were all clean again, I applied a single coat of undercoat as advised by the glazier so that his seal and putty would bond properly to the structure.
I decided that the third and final coat of Perfection + would best be applied after the glazing had been done and the Hatch replaced on board the boat. This would enable any scratches during glazing or transportation to be varnished, thus making a much better finished job.

With a certain amount of inexplicable trepidation, I loaded the hatch into my car and drove off to the glazier’s workshop in Horsham, taking with me samples of the glass I had removed. There I was advised that the 5mm original glass was no longer available, so I would have to choose between 4 or 6mm glazing. After discussing the pros and cons I allowed myself to be persuaded that 4mm glass would do best and I placed the order.
Two weeks later I collected the newly glazed hatch…

(Lee the Glazier presenting the hatch NB: not my dad!)
… And the following day, the 6th September, I delivered it to the boat where the Owl gave a repeat performance of the Herculean feat to get it back on board the boat.
Although the hatch looked wonderful, there was still some finishing work to be done that I could not do, mainly colouring and varnishing the glazing putty after a 7 day drying off period, and applying the final coat of varnish inside and out after sanding down.

Unfortunately I do not have a picture of the completed hatch, but I am sure that either the Owl or the Pussy Cat will pick up the story from here.’

(Me again):
Ta daaa!
So we’ve now finished varnishing the putty, and the hatch is newly installed as of yesterday on the newly painted, nearly-finished-just-one-coat-left-isn’t-it-smart) aft deck, just in time to impress the parents/ in laws who are staying in our newly converted captains cabin for a couple of weeks (oh yes, we’ve been very busy…)

Unfortunately by the time I got to posting this it was dark and raining outside so I couldn’t take a photo, but I’ll update it tomorrow… (Just to make your Monday mornings that little bit brighter, you know… I’m such a giver).

Over and out x

Why I Live On A Boat

Various people have asked us in the past few months what we plan to do about living on a boat with a baby – especially given I’m due in the icy depths of winter – or if it’s a phase we might grow out of any time soon. The short answer is: we’re staying. It’s not a phase, people have raised kids on boats for many, many years before we came along, and we’re staying.

So although I can’t speak for the Owl, I thought I’d explain my side of it, given it was my big idea in the first place.

Remember when you were little and your parents said you could be anything in the world you wanted? And as you grew up you saw photos of rock stars, artists, astronauts in the media and each one struck a chord for the sheer fun and excitement of waking up every day and being that person and you thought: Maybe… And then after a few years you realised … Probably not, and modified your expectations in line with your A’ Level options and whatever your first forays into the dreaded “work experience” had taught you by then (tea, anyone?).

When the time came to face the real world in earnest, despite everyone around you’s best efforts you felt unprepared and vulnerable; you applied for anything and everything going – even the jobs the idea of which made a small piece of you die inside – and hell, maybe you even worked with pop stars and actors for a bit, and as a matter of fact it was quite fun and exciting… Until you realised that, actually, it was also quite shallow and phoney, and perhaps it was time to grow up. To accept the real world in all its tarnished glory, and hope you’d be rewarded with something perhaps less glittery but more substantial. To learn that basically life is about putting one foot in front of another, every day, come rain or shine.

So where does that leave you? You land a job you can actually see yourself making a career out of, and you try to make the best of every step, right?

Problem is, it’s tough to keep searching for the silver lining.

For me, it quickly descended into trudging to work every day on dirty grey pavements littered with chewing gum, wondering if the gas man was ever going to call back about fixing the oven because I’d really like another baked potato before I die; panicking because my boss suddenly had changes to the press release that was signed off to go out yesterday, wondering what it was I had to do next to make it a little further up the ladder of career comfort and stability. And then going home, watching an episode or two of something fun but forgettable with a glass of wine and a bite of supper, off to bed and do it all again the next day.

I hate pavements.

Given how much our daily happiness depends on it, the silver lining really shouldn’t be so hard to find.

And beside the fact that I just love being near water – any water – I find that waking up somewhere a little bit special every day lifts my soul, makes me smile, keeps me interested in the little daily mundanities which are an irrefutable fact of life.

There seems to be a trope doing the rounds at the moment about how happiness is the journey not the destination. I say “at the moment”: I think Buddha started it.

And in the last few years, I’ve taught myself to love those little mundanities; those big, “Are you seriously telling me that THIS is IT?!” questions that plagued my early twenties and saw me hellbent on a hedonistic quest for satisfaction of any kind no longer phase me. I can honestly say I love my life.

One of the major reasons for that is the fact that I have portholes and A MASSIVE ANCHOR.

Last night we slept to the sound of rain hammering down on the deck above our heads, and woke to a world washed clean: the river sparkled, the decks shone, the sky was high and clear and the swans were preening themselves on the upturned tub opposite.

I’m not saying the pavements aren’t still a daily part of my life, but my doorstep is a gunwale I have to step off over the river before I reach them (don’t get me started on the vocabulary. We have a foc’s’le for god’s sake: the only word I’ve ever come across with not one but TWO and occasionally, depending on who’s in charge, THREE apostrophes! It’s completely ridiculous. I can’t even begin to explain how happy this makes me.) One of my household chores comprises pushing the driftwood out from between ours and our neighbour’s boat with a long stick.

It’s FUN, and occasionally when the wind gets up, it’s even quite EXCITING. I don’t need to be a rock star, or an artist or an astronaut. Living on a boat does it for me.

Installing the New Water Tanks

Quite a few friends have been asking about the blog recently and all we can say is – yep, we’ve been totally sidetracked by my being pregnant (23 weeks and counting, in case you’re interested) and by busy work over the summer that didn’t let up the way it’s supposed to… But we are still here, and all our various jobs are still in progress – albeit at the speed of a sloth, a snail, and a giant tortoise respectively.*

Nevertheless: we persevere, and a two week holiday in Abruzzo (our first in years) definitely helped, so with the generous help of some good friends we’re hoping to get a few more things finished with renewed vigour before the cold sets in. Especially the stove, what with all its lovely ‘heating’ capabilities.

ANYWAY… In the meantime I thought I’d tell you the story of our new water tanks to try and get ourselves back into the blogging habit. I’ll make it snappy and it’ll be mainly pictures…

First job was to remove the stairs and hack into the suspicious-looking painted ply boxes between the bathroom and the engine room bulkheads, so off I went to pottery and the Owl got cracking.

Turned out they were still full of apparently clean water, and had been lined with some sort of fibreglass epoxy to keep them watertight – it was starting to go in one corner but was otherwise pretty much intact. “Suspicious-looking” became “actually quite ingenious” but it was too late and I still wasn’t going to drink from them so we drained them dry and out they came…

Leaving us with a cavernous hole to play with. The view into the hole:

The view back up out of the hole:

And the view from the far end of the hole into the bathroom (just for kicks):

Next it was time for the two shiny new amazing 650L custom-made medium density polyethylene resin tanks to go in on a clean base of recycled work top to protect their bottoms from wear…

(Minor drama when the Owl realised he’d forgotten to double-check the total length of both tanks would fit beneath the stairs when they went back in: they did, by about an inch.)
The final thing was to disconnect the existing water supply (from our trusty but let’s face it FUUUGLY IBC tank on the poopdeck):

And put the shiny new brass water input deck fitting in like this:

And we were done.
(Those last two photos are cheats off t’interweb incidentally as I have a filthy cold and haven’t ventured outside to take real ones for you. Sorry.)

Oh. Forgot to mention the drama of the hose tail: the tanks were made to measure by Tek Tanks who sent us hose tails to connect the flexible hose to the tanks. These were allegedly 13mm diameter fittings, so we obediently went and got lots of 13mm hose – only to discover that what they’d actually sent us were just 12.1mm.

Their response upon receipt of J’s ‘frustrated of Barking’ email?
“Blimey, you’re right. Do you know, we’ve been sending those out for years as 13mm and you’re the first person ever to say something?!”

They said they’d send us correct bits but guess what? They haven’t. So we have to be very careful when filling the tanks not to overflow, as currently the 0.9mm gap is packed with insulation tape while we come up with another more water-tight solution – and the overflow isn’t reliable either so WE MUST NOT LEAVE THE MAINS HOSE RUNNING!

Still – look at our lovely shiny clear poopdeck:

All we need to do now to get our drinking water situation 100% sorted and finished is install an in-line filter under the sink, and we’ll be tickety boo. (If anyone has any recommendations of good brands, let me know).

Next post will be on my dad’s EPIC job this summer restoring the beautiful old beehive hatch which will be the crowning of the back deck.

* Yes I really did just Google “slowest creatures in the world” for that one. That’s the kind of person I am.
It was actually surprisingly interesting – who’d have thought the seahorse would feature so prominently?! I rest my case. http://m.infobarrel.com/Slow_Animals_The_7_Slowest_Animals_in_the_World

Sorting out the Saloon and Other Bits and Pieces

Remember how hot it was 2 weeks ago? 29.5 degrees in the shade – we checked. We checked AFTER we had the excellent idea to take delivery of the most enormous piece of furniture it’s possible to fit – just – through the dog box hatch in the roof, and entertain ourselves by attempting to construct it in the midst of the most blood-boiling heat Barking has seen in recent memory.

Great idea. Let’s do that.


Actually it wasn’t that bad. We got it in easily (by “we” I obviously mean “he”). The delivery men were charming: “Now I can say I’ve delivered everywhere, ho ho. ”
All the pieces were there in all the right quantities.
And the wind picked up a delightful breeze just before the heavens opened, which dropped the temperature by a significant and much appreciated 0.5 degrees.

I don’t have many pics of ‘before’ because it was depressing me too much but here are a couple (me with god daughter in foreground):

So… Yep. You get the gist.
Here it is post construction. I need to paint the walls white (currently a grubby cream gloss) so the lamp casts less of a toxic sodium glow on proceedings, but we’re getting there…

Certainly the urgent objective of providing a reasonably comfortable place to sleep for J’s incoming parents was met, although it’s a shame we weren’t sufficiently organised to sort the captain’s cabin in time which would have been even better. Still, you try doing this on top of demanding full time jobs and see how you get on!

On top of which we recently discovered I’m pregnant (cue: astonishment/ confusion/ mass hysteria) which is awesome in many ways, but also means I can no longer wield toxic paint around the decks with gay – or indeed any – abandon at all. So that’s stalled too.

In other news, the tiles are coming along nicely. 55 cut ready for finishing:

Ready for firing:

Fired:

Now I’ve just got to work out how to glaze them.

Finally, my dad has been making amazing progress on our beautiful-but-parlously-neglected-to-the
-point-of-rotting beehive hatch on the back deck, so there will be a post on that soon as it’s the only project recently that has been started and – nearly – finished…

Oh, and we bought a dinghy! I’m in love. She needs a little bit of tlc but she came with a pair of oars and her own little outboard motor, and I cannot wait to take her for a spin and inspect the river from a swan’s eye view. We just need to work out how to get her off the (very high) quayside and into the (very low) water. Hmm.