Thomas H - 1940 Humber Keel Background We are currently converting “Thomas H”, a 62’ Humber Keel Barge. Thomas was built for Hodgson’s Tannery in 1940 and paired with “Richard”. The barges were named after the Hodgson brothers. Thomas has a rough crew cabin in the bow (not original), but is otherwise unconverted. She has concrete ballast. Since buying her early in 2006, we have had the hold decked over and some railings put around, added some portholes and a winch, replaced the old JP3 engine with an Eveco and worked endless weekends on smartening her up. In the last few years of her working life, Thomas was used to pull concrete pilings out of the river bed, and so she has been modified for this purpose. The crane deck still exists and will eventually provide the footprint of an extended wheelhouse. In the beginning was a bucket full of bits... Thomas was bought via Alan Pease in Goole, Yorkshire. In fact it was Alan who decked her over, replaced the engine, etc and bought her down to the Thames for us (which was a saga I’ll explain at a later date). Alan, along with Nikki and his son John have done a huge amount of work to Thomas, as well as putting us up on our visits to Goole. When we got Thomas, she was full of old bits of metal and bit and pieces, as you can see. She also had a couple of very large tanks welding into her near the forward bulkhead. All of this had to emptied and cut out leaving an empty hold with which to work. The crew cabin at the front had no concrete in at the time, which meant she sat very high in the water at the bow. All the metal work had to be cleaned and treated before new concrete was poured in. This was a horrible job, which Simon decided to do during the hottest summer days on record, resulting in his brain getting cooked. He had a headache for about 2 weeks solid after that. We’ve put railings along the sides, a safety stipulation for her journey around the coast. The deck we’ve put onto the combing is largely arched, but we did put an area of flat deck toward the bow so we can eat and entertain on the deck once the weather improves! Thomas was bought and remained in Goole, East Yorkshire while Alan sorted out the structural steelwork and replaced the engine. But once the work was done, we needed to bring her down to the Thames where we have a mooring waiting for her near Chertsey. The plan was to bring her down the coast, but in order to do this we had to have low seas and winds of not more than force four. After more than two months of waiting for a window in the weather, two months of gales and shocking storms, a window arrived just a week before Christmas. Hurrah, we thought, we can get the boat down to the Thames in time for Christmas and prep it for a seasonal moment with the kids. So at 2am one morning, with much persuasion and a job lot of bacon and white sliced, Thomas H set off for London crewed by Simon, Alan, little John and a salty sea dog called Trevor set off for London. The sea conditions were ideal, although there was a chance of fog inland .................... ...and so we learned to love Teddington. Well sort of. The thing is, if you’re going to be stuck anywhere for two months, Teddington’s a pretty civilised choice. The trouble was, we had no electricity (no lights, etc.), no toilet, no washing facilities... So while Teddington was very civilised, we looked like something out of the dark ages and were shunned accordingly. It was very peaceful though, living by the woods, listening to the lapping of the water against the hull, and the sound of the birds singing (well except for those bloody geese!). To be honest, just a few minutes of Eastenders would have been lovely, but that’s just me. A moment at this point to mention just how lovely Sally Woodward is. Sally and Tony have a Humber Barge called Daybreak which they have moored at Staines. They restored and converted Daybreak from scratch, and have converted her to sail so they often take her out to sea and sail around the coast. Anyway, Sally came to visit early in January, bearing cake and words of encouragement. It wasn’t until she came that we realised just how much we needed those words, everyone’s been great but it takes someone like Sally who doesn’t look at you like you’ve lost the plot to bring back a sense of normality. Saturday 24th February So today we moved the boat up to Penton Hook Marina at last. Hurrah! The trip up river from Teddington all went very well really. Only bumped into a few things on the way into the locks (that’s why they put up those wooden barriers surely) and we managed to get into the marina almost perfectly with the help of some crib sheet copies of Edward Burrell’s drawings. We had some marvellous friends to help; Richard and Ray came along again to finish the trip they began with us at Grays on New Year’s Day. Also the Wood boys, Tom and Tom joined us on our adventure. It’s so lovely here. We have electricity (without the noise of a generator), water, showers, wifi internet access and the ability to curl up on the sofa together and watch a movie, which really helps to make it feel like home. We have a cooker, which we can’t actually use yet until we can get the gas plumbed properly, but we have one... donated (can you believe it) by Carla and Debbie who have a fabulous barge, “De Hoop Concordia”, moored just around the corner. We also have lovely neighbours and now we can start the process of sorting out the living accommodation, which was all a bit tricky at Teddington. Tuesday 20th January Been at the marina for a few weeks now and it’s all starting to look and feel a bit more like a home now. Simon’s been fantastic. My back’s been playing up and he’s been doing almost all the work. I’ve sorted out the wiring, but he’s been chipping and painting the walls, which is a huge, laborious, time consuming and really quite disgusting job. He’s painted part of the floor and created tarpaulin walls now to divide the hold into rooms after a fashion. We’ve got a lounge / bedroom area (which includes the old crew cabin and woodburner) with a sofabed and TV, a bathroom (chemical toilet in a tarpaulin tunnel), the main room (which holds all the kitchen stuff and a tent full of bedding and clothes) and down the back a final space where we keep all the dirty nasty detritus of the DIY process. The crew cabin still has it’s bunks, but Simon and I are sleeping on the sofa bed. The kids use the bunks when they come over, until we can sort out the big woodburner, at which point we can start to organise rooms for them to sleep in. The cold snap’s suddenly arrived. We’d been very lucky with the weather for people living in an un-insulated steel bucket, but now it’s snowy and pretty nasty. We’ve put up some loft lagging and polystyrene in the last couple of days to try to keep in some of the heat that our little woodburner generates. It seems to be making a difference. Also, I have Eastenders (hurrah!). It’s very bad reception at the moment but I’ll get a better aerial sorted out and maybe some sky eventually.