Our trip to dry dock in Kent.

Now we've got the engine back in we're on our way to Kent to put Thomas in dry dock and do the wash and brush up thing.  It's a 2 day journey that will take us through the heart of London, out to sea and then back up the Swale into Faversham where we've found a dry dock that can take Thomas and where we can still live-aboard! Day 1 It was a lovely day out, with our fabulous helpers Phil and Mark, not to mention the younger clays who it turns out are naturals when it comes to barge steerage. Phil was excited. The kids too, in their own way. Mark spots another lovely lady in need of some Irish charm. On the way we encountered a Dunkirk memorial event, that is to say we found ourselves surrounded by lots of small highly polished wooden boats that had survived Dunkirk but were now all circulating in a very confined space, right next to a weir and were apparently piloted by enthusiastic skippers who hadn't quite grasped the downside of getting in the way of a 70 ton, flat bottomed, single prop, iron ship that doesn't have a bow thruster but does have awful prop walk. We've had this problem before with day trippers (especially narrow boaters) who come up to see us, get caught by the weir stream and don't understand that we can't just quickly chuck Thomas into reverse to avoid colliding with them when they cut across our bow! Bruno applauds our avoidance technique as yet another Dunkirk boat survives. Don't mess with the boys! The satnav confirms that we're still on course. The sun shone, we breathed in and out of locks, we gallently avoided sinking another Dunkirk boat full of Chelsea Pensioners, we waved and smiled at probably close to a thousand people, we cracked out the port & brandy as the evening crept in... We've only made it as far as Teddington so far and we've had to leave Thomas there under the watchful gaze of the lock-keepers, while we go to work in the West Country for a couple of days. We're off on the Tidal Thames and around to the Medway and the Swale on our return, Faversham here we come. It's all very exciting... tempered with the realisation that we may well have days of freshwater mussell wranging ahead of us... Wish us luck!

Day 2

...well actually it was nearly a week later, but with new crew members, Mac and Uncle Ted, we were off onto the tidal Thames. Hurrah!

Mac works at the dry dock in Faversham and he knows the water ways well (plus he's been working and sailing barges most of his life) so we were in safe hands and relinquished the wheel happily.

With a steady supply of black coffee and roll ups, Mac stoically piloted us through London, while we buzzed around like small children in a candy store with our cameras.

As Hammersmith bridge loomed, the tide still looked pretty high. We started to wonder if we were going to make it under. Would we have to hold off for a while?

Simon uses his handy stick to measure something.

Ted suffers a nervous moment...

...but we make it through with a foot to spare.

It was around here that we discovered that our brand new VHF radio was having a small glitch and was stuck on transmit so everyone on the tidal thames, including the Port of London Authority had been listening to us whitter on for hours.

Quite a serious matter when you've been jamming the frequencies for hours, but especially mortifying when you realise the rubbish that people must have been forced to listen to us spouting!

As night fell, we found a boey to tie up to mid stream near a place that I think was called Erris. (That was hillarious and terrifying at the same time. Simon and I hanging off the side of the ship, Ted holding my feet... next time we're going to get some kind of grappling hook set up in advance!)

Then Mac and Simon were off, litterally. They dropped into the tender, rowed in the pitch black to a nearby jetty and went to the pub to consume ale and sing sea shanties.

Ted and I bravely opted to stay on board to look after Thomas (mostly because we just didn't fancy all that climbing when there was a pasta dinner and a couple of bottles of wine with our names on them on board).

Simon and Mac appeared later, gamely climbing up the side of the ship and slurring nicely. Much port was then drunk.

Day 3 - the final push.

Up at dawn and we caste off (which is alot easier than tying on).

The view got distinctly less interesting for a while, so I decided to make the most of my time...

I was woken by Simon calling out distances to Mac and, when I looked up through the skylights, by the sight of a very low bridge passing overhead.

If we thought that Hammersmith was low, the bridge over to the Isle of Sheppy left us with only 4 inches to spare due the very high tide.

As the waterway became narrower and the land flatter, we crept and wiggled our way into the Swale and toward Faversham. Despite the very high tide, the waterway was quickly becoming very shallow and we passed various floundering pleasure boaters on our way in (feeling very guilty, but knowing that we couldn't help them without ending up aground ourselves).

Coming into Faversham, everyone seemed to be on the Thames barges and we quickly felt very outclassed by these great 19th century ships.

We tied up beside a Thames Barge called Henry, and Mac was in the pub within moments.

Very quickly the water was gone and we could see below the waterline, which was looking pretty good actually.

Getting over to Thomas proved to be more of a problem as she shifted on the mud and tipped away from us, but a strategically placed plank from Mike on Henry gave us a route onto the deck.

Our friends Richard and Marina came down to see us and their little boy Louis was eager to come aboard, but it just wasn't safe so he was pretty disappointed, but it's tricky enough with big legs.

That night, Richard and Marina made us chilli, gave us wine and let us use their shower. How great is it to have good friends! Now we just have to wait for the dry dock to be vacated and we're in. Hurray!

To see the little film I made of this trip, see the later post.