At the same time as we were repainting the hull we thought we’d get it surveyed, just in case it needed to be over-plated anywhere.  It was pretty clear from looking at her that Ordu’s hull had already been extensively over-plated.  I had gathered from various scraps of information that I’d picked up that Ordu had spent some years partially submerged, so the overplating didn’t surprise me.  When she had been out of the water at Shepperton I could see that there were a great many spots of rust on the hull, but I didn’t know whether these were serious or not.  Once she was on the hard-standing at The Marina we found that most of this rust was superficial and could be removed with a wire brush.  Still, I wanted to be sure.

Before we bought Ordu we had looked at several narrow boats as alternative purchases, including a couple in The Marina.  I was put in touch with a marine surveyor called John Polley by the owner of one of these boats and he had given me very good and comprehensive advice so I asked him to survey Ordu for me.  It helped that we were stripping and painting her hull anyway because John used an ultrasonic sensor to determine the thickness of the hull at any given point, and in order to do this properly he needed to sand down to the bare metal to make good contact.

One thing that you very quickly learn about marinas is that the people in them are never short of opinion (or five), particularly – but not exclusively – when it comes to boats.  Ordu was on the hard standing next to one of the main gates and we were new to The Marina so lots of people stopped to say ‘hello’ and talk to us about her.  I mentioned to one passer-by that John Polley was surveying her in a few days time and was met with a grimace.  This surprised me, so I asked whether there was something wrong with John.  ‘Yes’, I was told, ‘John Polley is really thorough – he checks everything‘.  This was said as though checking everything is bad.  Funny, because I was rather hoping that he would check everything (twice, if possible!) but this approach is apparently not to everyone’s taste.  Ah well, it takes all sorts.

John turned up on a sunny afternoon and spent a couple of hours grinding small areas of paint off Ordu’s hull and offering up his probe (stop sniggering – this is engineering).  He took a good look at her and gave me a quick summary of his findings.  He wasn’t exactly bubbling with enthusiasm in his assessment of her condition (he thought we would get a good ten years out of her yet – I’m hoping for considerably more than that) but he didn’t identify any major issues.  I suspect John is the sort of person who it takes a lot to impress, so I took his relative indifference to the condition of Ordu’s hull as meaning that she was in reasonably good nick.

The most important thing he told us was that she shouldn’t be taken out to sea any more.  Apparently, the overplating on her was sound but was rather like a ‘soap dish’ that had been attached to the original hull from underneath.  We could see that the ‘new’ hull had been welded to the original hull around the top but there was no way of knowing whether it had been fixed to it at any other points.  If we took her out to sea the action of the waves could cause fatigue in the weld between the overplating and the original hull which, in turn, could cause the overplating to fall off!  OK, so no offshore trips in the near future (I’ve since found out that it is possible to fix this by ring-welding the overplating to the hull at various points but since we don’t intend to take her onto open water this won’t be necessary).

Something about JP’s report

John found three areas on Ordu’s hull that needed attention:

• the starboard bow
• the forward part of the keel, also on starboard
• the struts stabilising the propeller shaft in the skeg

The fix to the bow and the prop shaft supports was quite simple, but the fix to the keel required slightly more work.  In order to ensure that welding here didn’t set fire to the hull (by igniting the interior wood lining) I was going to have to take up a section of the deck.  This was a matter of concern to me, partly as I didn’t know exactly how the interior was constructed and partly because it was a terrifying prospect to have to rip open the interior of the boat when I had no experience of doing something like that.  I now realise that there was something else at the back of my mind at this point, and it was the worry that if I started to look ‘under the surface’ I might find more and more things that were wrong with Ordu and which needed fixing.

We found Felix the welder through friends of friends.  He was an absolute godsend, not least because the way he approached the repairs was very straightforward and gave me confidence that he could easily do what needed to be done.  This, in turn, made me feel that I could also do what needed to be done, so I started removing the deck.  I couldn’t take up the whole deck without demolishing most of the interior (which was very bad design on the part of the person who restored Ordu – the deck should always be made in sections that can be easily removed to facilitate situations just like this) but luckily I could take up everything I needed.

The deck was made of strips of tongue-and-groove mahogony screwed directly into a plywood sub-layer (very, very poor design for many reasons all of which will be covered in later posts).  I spent a day removing the screws and carefully labelling and lifting the planks (I labelled them so that I could ensure I put them back where they came from).  It took a day to remove the screws for two reasons.  The first is that the deck had been varnished and most of the screw-heads were clogged up with a thick layer of varnish that I had to remove before I could fit a screwdriver into them.  The second is that many of the screws were extremely difficult to turn and I didn’t want to strip the screw heads.

In the end all of the screws came out, but in hindsight I would have used an impact driver to get them out rather than doing the job ‘by hand’. At the time, however, I didn’t know what an impact driver was and I certainly didn’t have one.  Once I’d removed the floorboards I had to saw through the plywood sub-layer in order to get to the bilge.  The bilge pump is located at the lowest point of the hull as one would expect, but when I lifted the deck I discovered that it was supported by a series of ‘mini’ bulkheads about 50cm apart which didn’t drain into one another.  This meant that bilge pump was successfully draining the engine compartment it was having no effect at all at draining the forward part of the boat – yet another piece of bad design, as each of the under-floor sections that I could see turned out to be full of water!

Once I’d removed the floor Felix could do the work on the keel without risking destroying the boat.  He did a fantastic job.  We painted the new plating and I replaced the deck.  This turned out to be harder than removing it, because I had to fit all of the tongues back into the grooves and screw them down again and it was rather like trying to complete a spring-loaded jigsaw puzzle.  I managed it, though, and we felt good that we had fixed the hull and made her river-worthy.  I had, however, picked up a few new concerns about the design of the interior that would prove to be well founded a couple of years later (that is to say, last year).

Background, Ordu, Painting, Welding

When Ordu was delivered to Shepperton in January 2006 we had called the marina of our choice and asked if we could put our boat on hard standing.  Our theory was that if we could get her into the marina we stood a chance of getting a mooring there by dint of hanging around long enough.  We were somewhat astonished when we were told that, yes, there was space on hard standing and when did we want to deliver our boat!  This led to a moment of slight panic from me when I thought that we’d used up our luck in this respect and we weren’t ready to move her yet.  Fortunately, when we called back in mid-June 2006 and asked the same question the answer was the same.

Wow, we still stood a chance of getting her where we wanted her!  The next problem was how to get her there.  Despite replacing the gearbox we still didn’t have a working engine and without selling a kidney I couldn’t afford for LL to fix it, so we had to get her to East London by other means.  The only logical route was road freight but this cost thousands of pounds… didn’t it?  To my pleasant surprise and everlasting relief I found that to road freight a boat of approximately 6 tons displacement and 28 feet in length a distance of about 30 miles cost approximately £400.00.  Compared to what everything had cost me so far this was a positive bargain!

This happened four years ago so I don’t quite remember how I found Ray Loveland Boat Transport who eventually delivered Ordu for me.  I do know that I spent some time trawling the internet to find boat transporters.  I think that Ray was recommended to me by the surveyor (of whom more later).  However I got his details, Ray was very straightforward and efficient.  I didn’t actually see Ordu being delivered which is a shame, as it would have been quite a sight to see her on the back of a lorry.  If I were to have her moved again I’d definitely make sure I was there for the duration, not least because when she was delivered she suffered some minor damage and I’d have liked to be there to know how it happened. I   didn’t discover the damage for some time after she had been delivered and moved by the Marina so I couldn’t say for sure when it happened.  It was only a bit of trim that was knocked off, but it was still a pain.

The marina was actually very helpful in the event of her delivery, not least because I had to find a way to pay Ray even though I wasn’t going to be there when Ordu arrived.  The Marina offered to pay him on my behalf (as long as I paid them first, of course).  This worked out really well.  Imagine our excitement when, on the 5th of July 2006 Selena and I went to the Marina and saw Ordu on hard standing for the first time.  It’s really, really odd seeing your boat standing on oil drums 3 feet off the ground, and even odder going on board when she’s in this position!

We had been thinking about painting and anti-fouling the hull while she was on hard standing.  The marina had made it clear that if we wanted to keep Ordu there we had to demonstrably maintain her upkeep.  This is because for some years previously (probably for decades, truth be told) people had been using the marina as a kind of dumping ground for boats that they never visited and which never moved but simply rotted on the moorings (quite literally in some cases).  Only a few years before we arrived a significant number of boats had been towed away and scrapped by the Marina for this very reason.  If we were to be welcome and to continue our stay at the Marina we had to engage in visible activity of one sort or another on Ordu.  This was fine by me, as I was itching to get my hands on her.

The first thought on my mind was to get her surveyed and painted.  I’ll talk about the survey in the next post.  Fortunately I have a friend whose brother works for Akzo Nobel, producers of International Yacht Paint.  He was able to put me in touch with Paul Cleverly at Vitesse Marine who put together my order for the following:

• Primocon primer (7.5ltr)
• Waterways Plus Antifoul (5ltr)
• PreKote Undercoat (4ltr)
• Toplac (4ltr)
• Brightside (1.5ltr)
• Interdeck (1.5ltr)

That’s a lot of paint, even for a moderately sized motor cruiser.  It came to about £450.00 all together.  I worked out how much I would need by first estimating the area to be covered.  Blakes (now Hempel) Paints provide a handy online calculator which allows you to estimate the area using the dimensions of your craft.  Using this estimate together with coverage information for the individual paints from the International website, and allowing for the number of coats I needed, I was able to calculate how much paint was required.  I’m happy to say that I got it pretty much right.

Before we could paint her we had to prepare her.  This took several long weekends using a heavy-duty orbital sander.  Whoever had painted her previously had obviously used an angle grinder for the same purpose and had carved lots of very shallow but visible crescent-shaped craters in the hull as a result (remember, Ordu has a steel hull).  For this reason, speaking as someone who has had to sand these craters out, I would beg you never to use an angle grinder to prepare your hull no matter how convenient it may seem!  It’s hard work using an orbital sander (my elbow ached for months afterwards) but well worth it.  Prior to painting her we used quite a lot of Jenolite to treat visible areas of rust.

Click on the picture at left to see how the painting progressed.  We didn’t manage to get the hull completely repainted before the winter of 2006 arrived so she spent several months with her new antifouling out of the water.  Fortunately, modern antifoul paints are designed to withstand significant periods out of the water.  This, combined with the fact that we would be keeping her in freshwater, meant that it wasn’t a problem that we didn’t finish painting her until April 2007.  The final touch was to paint the boot top.  This is a stripe of paint applied to the hull at the waterline which looks pleasing to the eye (not least because the underwater hull is often painted a different color from the topsides).  Fortunately, I had plenty of photographs of Ordu in the water to show me roughly where the boot top should go.  This is the only part of the hull that I painted with household paint, and it was a mistake – household paint might be OK for boat parts that are above the waterline but it peels off when in contact with the water as I have found out to my cost.

Background, Ordu, Painting

OK, so we’ve bought Ordu.  She’s in west London, and we live in east London.  Now we need to find a place to keep her and a means of getting her there, because her gearbox is broken and she can’t move without being towed.  I ask the woman I’ve bought her from if she will organise the replacement of the gearbox (for which I will pay her).  This is Mistake #1.

We bought Ordu in December 2005 and spent Xmas and New Year excitedly planning how we were going to get her from Thames Ditton to east London.  This meant choosing whether we would take her onto the Grand Union Canal at Brentford and then across London via the Regents Canal, or whether we should just go for it – wait for the right tide and take her down the Thames.  Either option would be scary but exhilarating.

So, what would these two options involve?  Well, taking her via the Regents Canal would mean a trip of several days as there are quite a few locks to be negotiated, but it would be safe.  In my excitement at the thought of getting Ordu I had already visited the marina and bought a windlass for opening manual locks, and a British Waterways key for operating electric locks (I can’t remember how much they cost exactly, but it was of the order of £10).  Most marinas sell these items, or can get them for you if you ask. I’d also requested a copy of the Thames Tideway Guide so that I could see what travelling down the Thames would involve. All we had to do now was plan our trip and wait for Maggie (the previous owner) to let me know when she’d replaced the gearbox.

So we waited.  And we waited.  And we waited some more.  Looking back, I can laugh knowingly at the naive faith in human nature that led me to assume that Maggie had any intention whatsoever of trying to replace the gearbox.  Mistake #2 would have been letting her do it, but fortunately we managed to avoid that by getting really fed up with the delay and telling her to forget the whole gearbox thing.  Don’t worry though, the real Mistake #2 is not far away.  In my frustration with the situation (which was really of my own making – what was I doing buying a boat with a broken gearbox?) I decided to take affirmative action.  This meant finding somewhere to put Ordu while I managed the replacement of the gearbox myself.

I went to the internet and searched for suitable marinas in west London to serve as a temporary home for Ordu while the gearbox was changed, and while we looked for a permanent mooring.  Mistakes #2 & #3 came in quick succession as a result of this decision. Mistake #2 was choosing a marina that was some 20 miles away from my home.  This meant that my access to Ordu to check on anything at all was ridiculously limited (I don’t have a car – who needs a car in London?).

Mistake #2 compounded and amplified the effect of Mistake #3, which was choosing Shepperton Marina as her temporary home.  Shepperton is a lovely marina, and it is also home to the financial black hole that is Linden Lewis Marine.  Unfortunately I was both ignorant and panicked, what with a new boat and nowhere to put her, so I took what seemed like the best course of action.

Background, Gearbox, Ordu

Originally, the idea was to look for, buy and move onto a Dutch Barge.  After having looked at some barges and spoken to their owners it seemed that the ideal course of action was actually to get a barge built to order.  Neither of us wants to live on a floating museum, so the idea of buying an original Dutch Barge and renovating it to its former glory has never appealed.  Quite the opposite, in fact.  I, more than Selena, am very keen on the idea of building a modern boat that uses the most appropriate technology to create a new kind of living space.  Plus, converting an existing boat that was designed for carrying freight means that there are unwanted bulkheads and anchor wells in all the wrong places.  With a new build there is less necessity for compromise.

Whilst it is all very well for me to extoll the virtues of modern boats and materials there remains a single, seemingly insurmountable problem – where will we keep the bloody thing?  We live in east London, and want to continue living there.  We had already chosen Springfield Marina as the destination of choice, and we knew full well that there was no chance of turning up there with a 70ft boat and asking for a place to stay.  So, we thought, why not buy a smaller boat, one that we can get lots of use out of and which can familiarise us with boats and their ways (and they do have their own ways!).

The best way to get a boat is to buy one that is already on a mooring so we started looking for a barge (a narrowboat, that is), 30-40ft long, for sale in the marina.  We also looked elsewhere since it was much more likely that we would find something we wanted that didn’t come with a mooring – we could worry about that when the time came.  The best place to look for boats is on the internet, with Apollo Duck and Boats and Outboards being the best sites.  Personally, and in contrast to my opening statements about new boats, I wanted to get something classic.  Something, that is, with a bit of character and not some plastic monstrosity.  I was also looking for other boats besides narrowboats.

In December of 2005 I saw this advert on Apollo Duck: “27ft/8ft converted WW2 Dutch Patrol Boat (1941). Steel Hull. Double Bedroom, incredible use of space with decent storage. Fully equipped bathroom with shower/sink/toilet. Spacious wheelhouse/kitchen. Beautiful carpentry. No other boat like this on the Thames. Reluctant sale after very happy time living aboard due to pregnancy.”

Hmmm….. I thought, that sounds more like it.  I went to see the boat in Kingston.  ‘Ordu’ was moored behind Marks & Spencer for the day, and I loved her as soon as I saw her.  I now committed the cardinal sin of buying boats – I wanted to get it without having a survey done.  And this in spite of the fact that I knew that the gearbox needed replacing and that the boat didn’t have a safety certificate (or, therefore, insurance)! Well, I just felt that it was right and that it was an adventure and that the best thing to do was to go with it and have some fun.

Anyway, Selena came to visit the next weekend and she fell in love with her too.  We brought a chequebook with us so that we could put a deposit on her immediately, which we did.  Rather than being moored in central Kingston, this time she was moored at the bottom of the garden of an abandoned house in Thames Ditton along with a motley collection of narrowboats.  This was not a good sign, but we went with it anyway.  The deposit was given on condition that the current owner replaced the gearbox for us.  We tentatively arranged to pick the boat up on Boxing Day.

When we got home we looked up ‘Ordu’ on Google.  We found this advert from the previous owner: “1927 Dutch steel cruiser,`ORDU’, really lovley little craft, 15,000 pound overhaul 2 years ago, change of situation means quick sale required, this little boat is a huge bargain. Shower room, fridge, electric central heating, solid fuel stove, etc.”

She now appeared to have been built in 1927 (the correct date, as we subsequently discovered).  We also found that we were paying somewhat more than the current owner had paid, but since we were happy with that price we couldn’t complain.  We had, after all, found ourselves a boat!

Background, Ordu

Selena and I bought ‘Ordu’ in December 2005.  We had been thinking about living on a Dutch Barge for several years in a fairly abstract sort of way, but during the course of 2005 we started getting serious.  We scoured the rivers and canals of east London to see what sort of residential moorings were available and how we could get hold of one.  Anyone who has ever undertaken this quest will tell you at the start that it is a lost cause, but I guess we just had to see for ourselves.  Well, we saw. There are plenty of tiny moorings on the Regents Canal but the chances of actually getting a Dutch Barge that far up the canal are slim (no pun intended!), let alone the chances of actually securing a mooring there.

There are plenty of moorings on the Thames but very few of them are residential. Boat people will tell you not to worry about whether they are residential or not  because British Waterways turn a blind eye, but they have started cracking down on unofficial residential moorings and are turning people away for staying where they shouldn’t.

Neither Selena nor I want the uncertainty of being kicked off our unofficial residential mooring with nowhere to go and a 70ft boat to house, so we looked at the ‘official’ residential marinas.  These are Poplar Dock Marina on the Isle of Dogs and Limehouse Marina in Wapping (at this point you might be asking why we haven’t considered the Thames in West London – the answer is that we live in, work in and like east London). Having looked at these marinas we crossed Poplar Dock off the list immediately, even though we looked at several barges there that were for sale (have you ever been to Poplar? Perhaps a more pertinent question is would you ever go back?).  We loved Limehouse, but the chances of getting a mooring there are roughly the same as of me being asked to captain the England football team.

What, then, were we to do?  There is a marina in east London that just happens to be 25 minutes walk from our flat.  In the summer we spent most of our time in park opposite and we had fallen in love with the marina years ago, so it made perfect sense to look for a mooring there.  Incidentally, I’m not going to tell you exactly where it is because one of the best things about it is that very few people know about it (although, given that no-one is likely to read this perhaps this isn’t too much of a problem)

OK, so now we have decided where we want to put our boat how do we go about getting a mooring?  Um… we don’t!  When we asked at the marina office about putting ourselves on the waiting list we were cheerfully told that the waiting list had been scrapped some time ago when it had reached a wait of 20 years!  This, unfortunately, is the problem with all residential moorings in London.  There are so many people like us who want a boat that once someone gets a mooring they don’t tend to part with it.  Even if they are getting rid of a mooring, the chances of it being advertised outside of the marina are miniscule. The only way you can get into the marina to hear about such opportunities, however, is to have a boat there because the marina is only accessible to berth holders.  Hmmm, catch 22.

It seemed as though there were only two options: buy a boat that is already on a mooring in the marina of your choice and risk having to wait years, or maybe even decades, until that boat comes up for sale (and then have to bid against several other hungry potential boat owners for the privilege) or buy a boat that you like and wait until a mooring becomes available.  The second option is risky, because you may spend years moving the boat every two weeks (you can’t stay longer than 14 days on a temporary mooring) until a mooring becomes available.  That is the option we took, though, and it paid off as we now have a permanent mooring  just where we wanted it.

Background, Ordu