Fareham Life. Barge Life

well we had a beautiful yacht my father had left me some money and I'd sailed all my childhood and then had got back in done some of my yachting exams later in life so we had a 44-foot sailing boat which we could have lived on we had friends in have done much smaller boats but we decided with children and our grandchildren eventually that was not going to be it for us we sailed into Island Harbor one day and there was a barge there already moored and it was for sale and that was sort of what got us thinking we actually looked at that barge and we we could see the potential and we didn't want to say around the world we didn't want a boat that moved necessarily if we brought a larger sailing boat to live on that have been the mask from the sails wasted people who advertise barges are slightly dishonest possibly the photographs of many barges were not what it was like when we actually got onboard this one on the other hand was we came on board it was dry it was spacious there was no furniture on board everything else it was the light wasn't it it was the light there's nothing else me I looked at it you climbed down the steep set of stairs because the conversion was right down in the bottom of the hull no this is Bissell a team built up the the light was incredible and we knew we didn't want someone that felt dark yeah you couldn't see out where it's here there are 20 windows and it just felt really really light and it felt solid as well it felt good the outside as he did it hadn't been painted wasn't you yes it wasn't in bad condition it just was dull yeah gray and miserable way they moved a four-bedroom house on board it was centered it's like buying a house you walk in you think this is this is the place we can live in and that's exactly what and for us we found a boat in Hampton Court and we had grown up in summary and Teddington and to killem so it was like going back to home territory having lived in Portsmouth for 28 years and we needed to survey done so we got to skipper and we took it down the river to Twickenham to Eel Pie Island where there is a boat yard that deals with barges they pulled her out of the water onto their dry slip and the surveyor who it turned out have been at school with Roger in the first hammer-blow he put on the hull went straight through it and we were not anticipating any difficulties with the hull the owner neither was the owner very upset about it but he'd actually turned out had saltwater sacrificial anodes put on the bottom of the hull and he kept in fresh water so the hull was eaten away because of the wrong piece of science but ELP Island is in the middle of a residential area there people live on it so they have no license do shop lasting which is what our mayor insisted on he wanted the hull completely cleaned so they arranged very speedily to have the boat taken down to the only functioning drydock on the Thames which is down at Greenwich so we then got the boat down to there put it in the dry dock where it was then we plated it was wonderful absolutely wonderful driving down the Thames through the centre of London in the rush hour on a beautiful July afternoon and driving under Westminster Bridge and looking up just to the left and seeing it was 10:00 to 5:00 a big bay and all the cars over Westminster Bridge in the embankment and everywhere ass completely at standstill and we were just meandering down through the middle it was glorious Greenwich was extraordinary it's the only working dry boatyard that's around that's what we were led to believe and it was like walking into a giant step tone some film set every piece of boat jumbled debris anything you can imagine was piled up great big puddles pools of oil the most scary metal walkways that we had to go up and down and the barge we realized how enormous that's the people looking up at the hull and the surveyor decided that rather than cut and paste bits of how he would have it replated so they had some very young polish welders who are probably the best in the world but they work they're a very very nice Foreman called wink who was human whereas the owner was absolutely scary and I think completely bonkers right in the life Attalus and was clearly not well in the head he was very erratic he shouted at us he he made all sorts of threats about throwing us out but then he delayed the work and it really but our engineer and I went up from Portsmouth it's a Greenwich a lot of times and he Bob oversaw the work for us but it was filthy because they shot blasted it so there was grey grey black sand over everything inside and outside and then they painted it with oxide paint and then they box at the bottom and then they put the little black tar coats on top so we were there for about a month and then finally the owner rang me up said right you've got to get out and we've seen but we've got organise a skipper and we need the weather to be right and we need to fuel it and we need to do the final checks on the engine they said no you've got to come here to come you've got to go out I've got another boat in so we head up there one early one morning not really prepared to do the journey and he just literally pushed us out as another boat was key and another boat was coming in as we were going out we sort of just edged our way around I'll be there to go up to Lyra to Tower Bridge to the fuel dock we'd have the windows all boarded up the server had insisted on that so we were virtually ready to go to sea it was very scary and there were moments when I just thought we are making such an enormous mistake how do we ever get back from this we haven't sold the house then had to get involved in getting a boat mortgage that involved all sorts of other stuff and paperwork and negotiations it was a very frightening process and once or twice we did wonder what on earth we were doing I would lie awake at night and wonder what if we do this what if you know what if we can't buy it what if it all falls apart but it didn't it didn't end we've never regretted it for say we were we were very clear we didn't want a project you didn't bother to go and buy a house that would have been really cheap and they had to do the conversion we just are not that creative and we're not very practical so some of the people that live here with with us have done that and are doing that and we're just full of admiration so we bought a completed and completed home in that sense ago I mean people kept saying you are brave and we didn't feel brave at all it was a life style choice it was something we really wanted to do all that you hear on the shipping forecast like North Foreland and so on we drove round and it was just great going out the Thames Estuary and just seeing those very strange Falls that were built up and all the towers during it in the Germans out during the war was just like something of some science fiction film the scariest moment of I think the entire history of owning the barge was in Ramsgate Harbor we were moored up to the field berth the wind had blown us and the fuel berth off the wall we really thought the chains were going to break and the other side of us was a a long road gin palaces and I just sat in the middle of the lobby with my head in my hands and I thought I'm gonna have to die because I can't work out what we're going to do if we smash the back of that road motorboats it was absolutely terrifying but the change didn't break and we didn't hit anything so it was completely misplaced fear in the end but when we were coming into Portsmouth Harbor the skipper was constantly on the radio to the Queen taro master and his Co he would call up as Dutch rajion Dutch bhajan and we thought in the end actually we like the sound of that so when we had the nameplates made we decided we wouldn't change the name of it but we'd call it Dutch boh-chan rather than just the three letters so on our name plate we've got a proper length of name and it was just because of the way he called up and he made all the fairies it made the cross-channel ferry wait for us the Isle of Wight ferries waiting touched by jams coming through and it was perfect sucked sadly we know very little about the history of the barge we know that the hull is may have riveted steel built in 1898 we don't know whether she would have sailed originally she's around about a hundred tons in weight hundred ten foot which said meters long it's about 20 foot wide and she only draws about a meter in depth and that's just about what we know there is a revival in Holland we understand where people are restoring them and I would love to go over and have a look and try and get some idea of what she might have looked like in her working days there are basically three types of Dutch barge hull and this one is a motor clipper so it's higher at the bow some of them look like a clog and some of them are narrower at the bow and lower so this is a major killer what we do know is that when she was a working bulge she would have been 20 feet longer than she is now actually been 135 feet is what often happens has happened here the people converting them think probably rightly and nobody is going to buy under than 35 foot so they chop off the middle bit and and weld it together so we have a weld around the middle of that we have a very unmeet lease own appendix scarf down the side of the hole when you when you know it's there I noticeable but if you don't you don't notice it but we do know because of the shape of the barge and the bulkheads is that it would be a grain carrier on the Ryan lots of people who have come on board and we have a lot of strangers we welcome on board wow this is interesting and mostly it's the men so I'd love to do this but the wife wouldn't like it oh and they say what do you move is a no we deliberately bought it as our home but I really would like to move it I would absolutely like to take it back across the channel on a nice calm day and I would like to drive it into Paris and I would like to cover a car on the front which they you see in France these barges have got smart cars also run which we could put all I'd like to go and explore the Dutch canals where these barges would be small compared to something like run up and down commercially the engineer is not prepared to come with me my husband's not meant to come with me so at the moment I've got no practical arrangements to do it but that really is a pipe dream I really would like to and I would actually like to find out what it would take to be qualified to drive it because I think it would be great fun to go out on the Simon to be able to drop a hook outside Osborne Bale we can't get anybody to define what a professional skipper is so the pit the the skipper of the person that we brought this off had no qualifications at all one people he just worked all his life on Dutch colleges awesome I have a sailing yacht master certificate which means technically I can drive stuff up to 200 tons this is only 100 but is it sail or would this count other people said no need to go do the MCA maritime exams so it's a complete mystery about what actually defines a professionally qualified skipper to drive this thing I think probably you just need balls of steel that's a lot of garbage a good number of the boats that we looked at were really in very very poor condition as an it said oh yeah we don't we didn't want a project and they were sold at Fame in great condition whereas this one was in good condition there's an opening but the hulls obviously a massive thing but apart from that I think everything was fine and it wasn't in that sense it wasn't a risk because in the survey pit had only picked that up everything else was fine any risk was that we might not like it and we burnt all our bridges yes we have no home there is nowhere else together and that's still a risk course because when it comes to it at some stage if we're going to sell it someone's got to bond to buy it from us and this is this is it we haven't got any we have there's a fallback there are people who think we've been Daffy because it's not really a financial investment that's true we're at a stage of life where we don't care about that if we didn't do it now when would we ever do it we haven't got a lot of money we hadn't got any spare money so investment for us is not as something of massive interest so this is what we've invested in this is our life it is the most wonderful life and I certainly we argue about this but no and if one of us died I would never want to live in a house again you know I would like to stay on this and I'm still they carry me off where I get shoved off the back but you're not so sure I you so we don't know what would happen in the future but actually you can't live wondering what if whatever it's just been brilliant for years I hope it will go it I think it is it is something to be shared I don't think I would like to live here just by myself I think you can popped her clogs and I probably would sell up I'm not quite sure whereas I'd like to go because this is just such a fabulous place to be I think I says now I would that you would definitely stay I don't I'm just not sure any not because I don't like it but because it is something to be shared

Channel: Fareham Life

Views: 57,580

Keywords: Fareham, Life, living, on a, barge, fareham, hants, wicor, marine, bob, aylott

Id: kFhcSuAOFK4

Length: 15min 26sec (926 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 29 2016