{"id":245,"date":"2010-02-23T18:04:27","date_gmt":"2010-02-23T17:04:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.onaboat.co.uk\/?page_id=245"},"modified":"2015-03-06T10:26:44","modified_gmt":"2015-03-06T09:26:44","slug":"what-we-are-doing","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.onaboat.co.uk\/?page_id=245","title":{"rendered":"How it began"},"content":{"rendered":"

In January 2010 Patrick and Simone (me) acquired a handsome dutch barge after selling our much loved canal boat Pennie. \u00a0The new boat is on the river and has big windows with beautiful views. \u00a0Buying the boat was a stressful thing, we had started looking at bigger boats in June 2009 and saw many we didn’t like, one we loved but couldn’t afford and then the one we now own- which we kind of loved but which smelt weird and had very bad curtains.<\/p>\n

We put in an offer and it was accepted and then we had to deal with the separate issue of the mooring and securing that. Oh, and then of course we had to sell our old boat and get a ‘marine mortgage’ for the new one which involved lots of form filling, a lovely broker who helped us a lot (www.londontideway.com<\/a>) and a nice long chat with the owner of the finance company about how we (me and Pat, not me and the man on the phone) would one day sail to france (but that’s a long story).<\/p>\n

The Survey:<\/strong><\/p>\n

The major part of the sale process was having the survey done.\u00a0 This happened in late November and was expensive and eye-opening.\u00a0 The first major discovery was that the tanks underneath the main living space were horribly rotten and rusty.\u00a0 So there was water leaking down into the bilges (that’s the bottom of the boat (the hull) on the inside).\u00a0 And of course this is a terrible thing for a boat.\u00a0 And it’s also nasty because the leaking stuff can be water, black water, diesel and all of that gets mixed with rust and makes this beautiful orange coloured goo- which you can see pictures of in earlier posts.\u00a0 As well as that the survey outlined lots of other possible problems with the engine, electrics, plumbing and, in general, everything really.\u00a0 The good news however was that it had been fitted out to a high standard and had a very good hull, which had been overplated so it was hopefully not going to sink anytime soon. Fingers crossed.<\/p>\n

Doing the work:<\/strong><\/p>\n

PHASE ONE- removing the tanks and cleaning the bilge<\/p>\n

The first phase of the renovation process is getting the tanks out, cleaning the horrid bilge and painting over it with rust converter.\u00a0 This is a big horrible job that many people will not do.\u00a0 You do it for love or money- but in some cases even money isn’t enough.\u00a0 We thought at first this might take months and months, but got good advice from various people and slowly slowly got cleaning.<\/p>\n

PHASE TWO- re-fitting the interior living area<\/p>\n