The end of an era! A final walk-through of Thomas H before we move out.

With just a couple of days left until we hand Thomas over to her new owners we have now moved most of our belongings out and are trying not to think about it too much. A mourning period will begin after the weekend.

The Trip To Kent; taking Thomas to dry dock in Faversham.

A very rough cut of our 3 day trip to from Chertsey on the Thames, around the coast, to Faversham on the Swale.  

For the full story of our trip, see the earlier post on this blog.

Another boat trip on the Thames.

A quick trip down river past Chertsey bridge.

New flooring for the kitchen

Simon's put a new floor in the kitchen and main living area.  He's a good man!    He was given all these weathered scaffolding boards which had been left unwanted and uncared for under a massive bramble.    They were completely green with algae when found and he's sanded them all back and fitted them on the boat.   It was a lot of work, but he's justifiably proud of himself right now.    Beer o'clock then.

The trip back from dry dock; Home again, home again clickety click!

We're back home in Surrey and, much as we've loved our stay in Faversham, it's so good to be back. We finally floated out of the dry dock and said our goodbyes to new friends and old... as well as maybe to the Faversham dock that we've come to know so well as it looks like the Standard Quay may be closing for good in the near future leaving many people without work and traditional boat owners without a great resource of talented crafts people. To see more about this tragic loss of infrastructure and heritage, see Richard Fleury's film "The Quay" http://vimeo.com/43394451

The wonderful Colin Frake oversees our relaunch.  

Overnight mooring at the mouth of the Thames.

On our way home, we stopped for a couple of days to see some other boaty friends, Steve and Lorna, who live aboard their beautiful barge in an amazing floating community that we've taken to calling "Water-World", just down river from Tower Bridge.  

They have gorgeous garden barges, community events, all mod cons and even have their own little outdoor cinema set-up.

I took this photo of Tower Bridge from the wheel-house when we were moored up.  

Cool huh!

The only down side of water-world is that, when you're moored on the outside of the pack, every passing ship sounds like a turbine right by your head and every stupidly skippered pleasure boat speeding past creates a huge rocking motion.  

It's charms however easily out weigh these minor drawbacks, and seeing seals outside the port holes in the morning makes everything better.

Refloating Thomas - the work is finished, hurray!

We're all done, Thomas looks all shiney and new and we're ready to go. The tide is coming in, the valves are open and the dry dock is starting to fill up. We'll be afloat again by 2pm. Can't wait, it's felt so strange for Thomas not to be in the water.

No time to post all the photos or cation them so I'll just put up a selection. Ooo, it's all so exciting (how pathetic am I?!).

The work begins in dry dock but starts well with a glowing report from the surveyor.

The fabulous Chris Holmes has just left us with a glowing survey report for Thomas. Hurrah!


On the whole it seems that the tales were true and she's been really well doubled, with 10mm steel. The anodes were in really good nick and there's just very little damage so we're so happy.

There are a couple of bits to do, but really nothing too unexpected. It's our first time in dry dock, so all those scare stories people like to tell were repeating themselves in our heads but, as ever, Thomas has held herself high.
Simon spent most of the previous day pressure washing the hull down. He and Richard had already had the horrible job of scraping off the weed and mussels that were stuck on (luckily, the slat water had persuaded most of the mussels to fall off on their own).
Your caption here....

Think we might just head off to the pub now to celebrate.
But soon enough it was time to get back to work, so while Simon got to work with the angle grinder cleaning back along the waterline, I set to with the big power washer on the underneath of the boat.

I've never felt more glamerous.

On the plus side, Simon wasn't much better himself.

While Simon fixed a weld on the whisker, I started with the Bitumen, which seems like a much better job once you've done the pressure washing. Suddenly she started to look all shiney and new(ish). Linden is currently burning off some spots on the underside with the OA where they're going to put a plate (it's a spot unbetween two plates that has some pits so it's safer to plate it). Then we're pretty much there. I feel like I know every inch of Thomas inside and out now. It's enough to make a girl proud.
Really should add that Colin Frakes at standard wharf has been a star, as have Linden and Mac. The dry dock is really easy to use, once I calmed my vertigo down anyway, so we're really happy right now (although we're still not sleeping too well, perhaps it's a Feng Shui connection to the water type thing...?). Back to the Bitumen. Will keep posting when I'm clean enough to use the laptop, in the hope that people are interested in our labours...

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.