Boaterversary
Yesterday was my birthday, which means that it’s also been exactly two years since Hendrik arrived in London from her perilous journey across the North Sea. Two years sounds like such a short time when you say it aloud, but it feels so much longer when we think about how much it feels like home, both on the boat and the moorings.
We’re not anywhere near as far along with the renovations as we hoped to be, but we’re taking things at our own paces and doing things right, replacing dying systems with quality that should last us for a very long time. We’re still looking at a rough ten year estimate to fully finish everything and rename her back to the original “Tijdgeest” (“zeitgeist” in English), though.
And it also means we’re only three years away from paying her off now, which should accelerate matters. :)
Ketchup
An awful lot has been going on around Chez Hendrik in the past few weeks, but we’ve been terrible bloggers about actually reporting on it.
First up was the snow back on 2 February! We woke up to a FULL FOOT of snow on deck! We’re not really prepared for such amounts here, so we had to break out our rambling boots and use our squeegee to clear a path to the door (to actually get the saloon door open, too).
(More of our snowy London photos here)
So the cold and wet have obviously slowed all our exterior work, so we’ve been pushing hard the past few weekends to finally finish up the Captain’s Cabin for rental as well as convert what’s now James’s temporary wardrobe (1 1/2 hotel rooms) into a temporary bedroom for us. I think we can safely say we’ve bought all the supplies now (save the worktop for the kitchenette) so what’s left is just putting it all together.
James has been putting his new tools to good use (at some point he’s going to show them off to you, he says) and has been busy installing the new plinth heaters in the Captain’s Cabin. One is going into the base of the sofa in the lounge there:
And the other is going at the foot of the bed in the bedroom, into a plinth being purpose-made for it:
These hook into the boiler (via a new pump that’s on order so both sides of the boat will be independently heated) like a normal radiator, but have inverted fans to blow the warm air into the room. Since we were upheaving so much to get these in, we quickly borrowed a sheet of Celotex off Steve and Lorna to put down on the floorboards to minimise heat loss, then a bunch of pegboard on top of that in the sofa base to minimise damage to the Celotex (as the base will still be a useful storage spot). James has also run the Hep20 to all the right spots and drilled the holes, ready to hook everything up…
The other biggie is that we went out and bought new carpet (remnants) for the entire Captain’s Cabin, wheelhouse, and probably enough to make our temporary bedroom a bit cozier, too. The carpets were cheap, but we went for the super-insulating, draft-proof underlay after having cold feet all winter, which wasn’t. But the more winters you live on a boat, the most you come to value good insulation, so we think it’s worth it.
Here’s our new additions in the saloon, while we wait for the wheelhouse floor to dry and our hairball-prone cat to stop going back there:
And myself? Well, I’ve been concentrating mostly on getting the old wardrobe into working order as a bedroom, so I’ve been hacking away at old radiator and cold water pipes. The latter aren’t too bad, but the old radiator pipes are gross – lots of viscous black stuff pouring out of them despite draining the system and there never being any radiators down in the hotel rooms anyway (arrrgh)!
So hopefully with a few more weekends we’ll have a few Completed rather than In Progress shots to show off…
Winter is here...
It snowed here on Tuesday night. Apparently this is the first October snowfall here in London for over 70 years. Lucky us to get snow in October after two cold, wet “summers” in a row, and a winter that lasted (complete with flurries) through April. Lucky, lucky us.
Anyway, this has given us a long time to contemplate our heating systems and what we’d like to improve for the future. What we’ve learned is:
- The electric blanket is the best money we’ve ever spent. Yes, this single item has increased our quality of life more than anything else, and it means that we don’t need to turn the heating on until way, way after all our friends have. For £20 you, too, can have blissful nights of sleep. Just don’t think about emerging in the cold morning, okay? NB: As pointed out to us by our friends who experienced a house fire caused by an electric blanket, these things are very dangerous, and you should treat them with extreme caution as we do – Just like we’d never leave the gas on or an open flame unattended, we also never, ever have the electric blanket on if we’re not right in the room with it!
- The diesel stove in the captain’s cabin absolutely drinks diesel and is therefore, really expensive to run. When we were running it on low last winter (and “low” is hot enough to almost be too hot back there!) we were going through 200 liters of diesel every 4-6 weeks. By point of comparison, the last 200 liters has lasted us 7 months with just the diesel boiler running. So as much as we love the aesthetics of it back there, it’s fiddly to light, has problems with excessive rain and high winds, and is expensive to boot. So we’re looking for another heating option that won’t disturb the woodwork in the back (so no big ugly radiators!) and, since we’re looking to rent it soon, something that is easy to operate. Right now the lead contender is these 12v plinth heaters. They’re low profile, fit into existing cupboards, plumb into our existing boiler like a radiator would, and because these are designed for high moisture areas, the fans are 12v (with a supplied 240v transformer that we just won’t use). The plan now is to put one in the kitchenette area and another in the bedroom, near floor level. Anyone care to poke holes in our plan before we spend £500?
- The deck outside gets incredibly slippery when frozen, even when it looks matte. Bosco has already slid sideways down the back deck, we came home Tuesday night to find our BBQ table an inch away from being in the river, and I myself slipped and took a high-paced rocket slide down the low tide tilted front deck just last night. What we really need is a week of warmish weather to paint the deck with the grippy stuff, but with the current below-freezing temps, it’d never dry.
- Oh yeah – and I need to sew a lot more jumpers and mittens! Gloves and mittens have a tendency to get wet immediately after touching cold railings and need to be swapped out in rotation as they dry…
Oh, and I just realised we never posted about painting our front deck railings – we’re making them all black because the many different shades of blue was just gross…
This one’s only got the first coat on, but you get the idea.
How in the...
The garden barges always have a lot of snails out after a rainstorm, and I take great delight in chucking them into the river with that satisfying “plop” sound (far better than the sickening “crunch” under your boots).
Somehow, one intrepid explorer snail managed to not only get onto our boat but actually inside it:
It also appears to be eating fluff of some sort. But that’s not the mindblowing part. Have a look at where I found him…
That’s right, on the ceiling inside the bathroom off the saloon!! Somehow, this snail managed to crawl off the gardens onto the garden barge’s sidedecks, jump a several foot gap onto our boat (or perhaps climbed a mooring rope?) onto our side decks, over to the bathroom, climb up the exterior wall to the porthole (which is at head height!), through the open porthole, then further up the interior wall to the ceiling, and then several feet across the ceiling to where I found him. Even more surprising is that we’re still not even using this shower yet, so it’s not like the moisture would draw him in – it’s still full of plaster and building stuff while we wait for Nikolaj to diagnose our mysterious drip…
Happy Birthday Hendrik!
On Saturday we celebrated Hendrik’s 75th birthday. She rolled out of the yard on 21 June 1933 (as “Tijdgeest” then!) and we wanted to mark the occasion with a big party.
So out came the balloons, crisps & dip, beers, and barbecues and we invited some friends round to celebrate. Hendrik’s “This Is Your Life!”-style photobook was a big hit, too, and James and I opted to dress 1930s-style to mark the occasion.
It was really sweet when it was time to bring out the retro birthday cake (chocolate cake with vanilla icing and hundreds & thousands on top!) and sing Happy Birthday – it was quite windy so we had a hard time lighting the candles, but they stayed lit throughout the entire song right up until the part where we started clapping at the end… And then suddenly, with a big gust both candles blew out at once! It was like Hendrik was blowing them out himself. Awww!
As it turned out, Saturday was cause for more celebration than just the birthday… For one, we were celebrating having running water again after our new old hotness water pump died on Tuesday night. I left work for a few hours on Wednesday to run to Machine Mart, load up my credit card with a similar new pump, drag it home on a luggage dolly, and hoof it back to the office. Only to discover that the pumps were not so similar that we could just use the old fitting as-is. Cue a frantic call to Nikolaj, who saved our bacon (pump) yet again by creating a new flexible hookup that will work with either pump. The old one is still under warranty, so we’ll get the replacement impeller for it and then have that in reserve for when this new pump fails, and just cycle them out.
But it was touch and go on Saturday morning, knowing we had people coming at 3 and we needed water to flush the toilets for them and we really needed showers before everyone arrived… And voila, the pump started making pressure at 2:30!! And in retrospect, this new model is actually MUCH quieter and quicker to make pressure than the old one, so it’s not really such a bad thing.
And finally, our other cause for celebration is that James proposed on Thursday night!
We’d picked out the ring in February when we were in Dublin, but Thursday night was definitely a surprise after all that waiting! We’re looking to get married next fall at Bletchley Park, with a smaller reception in Pennsylvania shortly afterwards.
A stomp in the puddles
Just in case you were in any doubt that boat people are crazy… Melissa ran 10k today for the RNLI. In the pouring rain, wind, and cold!
Really, as it turned out, the rain wasn’t as big a hindrance as the sight of thousands of runners overtaking you even when you know you’re running way faster than usual! 54 minutes was the target time – but Melissa ended up finishing in 51:13, a whopping 2 minutes faster than her previous personal best!!
The Lifeboats cheering crew were great support out in front of their central London station, and James braved the wet weather to get some nice photos, too.
If you haven’t had a chance to donate to the RNLI yet, you’ve still got a few more days! Thanks very much to everyone who’s already given!
The first charity dinner
On Saturday evening we hosted the first charity dinner aboard Hendrik in aid of the RNLI (Royal Lifeboats). Luckily we had an easy start as it was only a seating for one, Alex, who was helping us out all weekend anyway, and didn’t mind sharing the table with the hired help!
The dinner consisted of three courses and drinks, and he was very pleased with the standards of cuisine (the plates were literally licked clean!).
The Menu!
Bistro Hendrik in support of RNLI
Dinner seating
Saturday 26 April 2008
Starter
Salad of freshly smoked halloumi cheese, wild Thames rocket, and organic Sicillian blood oranges
Main
Alphonso mango chicken
Canadian wild rice
Pan fried organic bok choi
Drinks
Casillero de Diablo cabernet sauvignon
Australian Pino Grigio
San Miguel, Staropramen, Ales
Bottled cider
Still or sparkling water
A selection of juices and soft drinks
Dessert
Geleé of fresh lemon and Thames lavender
English breakfast or Lady Grey tea
A selection of herbal teas
Coffee
A selection of liqeurs
Pedro Ximinez dessert wine
We’ll be open for seatings until May 26, so there’s still time to book (via the comments) or just donate using the widget on the right. All the donations go directly to volunteer training at our local centre, which is the one on the Embankment in central London.
Snow Way!
The first indication that anything was out of the ordinary was when we woke up on Sunday morning to see the skylight above our bed was covered in snow. For the first time in several years, central London had snow that actually stuck, even though it was under an inch in our area. Bad luck it had to happen in April, though, after the coldest, wettest summer on record and a very long, cold winter.
This wasn’t the first time we’ve seen snow settle on Hendrik, though – last January we had to drive a carload of navigational gear to Hendrik’s old mooring in Holland in advance of the crossing, and our one night spent on the saloon floor coincided with a near blizzard in eastern Holland!
It may be snow in April but still, at least it covers up the rust spots! (No, really, the exterior paint job is one of the big reasons we really want it to warm up soon!)
One year on
Exactly one year ago today, Hendrik arrived in London after a 36 hour journey from The Netherlands over the North Sea. This was after a month and a half of watching the shipping forecast every day, living out of suitcases in James’s parents’ house, and hoping against hope that we’d be in our boat in time for Melissa’s birthday.
It arrived in time, on the evening of her 28th birthday.
I’d love to say we celebrated the anniversary this weekend, but we were treated to the worst, coldest weather possible. On Friday we had a massive hail storm:
Then throughout Saturday, Sunday, and Monday we had snow flurries:
(it was much more impressive in person!) So with the freezing cold, we pretty much took it easy and stayed snuggled up in the captain’s cabin, hoping for warmth and sunshine this summer. The funny thing is, what with the date of Easter moving around, the anniversary of our moving in actually happened before the anniversary of the boat arriving!
Running (on solid ground)
You may have noticed a new addition to our sidebar on the right, flashing and moving and generally getting your attention in a (hopefully) not too obtrusive way. I’m running the Bupa London 10,000 10k race in May, and I’m putting myself through all the training, sweat, and aches and pains in aid of the Royal Lifeboats (RNLI).
For obvious reasons, this is a charity very close to our daily lives, as they’re the search and rescue team that would come to our aid if anything should happen to us on the tidal Thames or in UK coastal waters. They’re entirely staffed by volunteers and don’t chug or bother you on the streets and are in general just a very nice charity. The funds I raise will go directly to training the volunteers at our local base, as they’ve got to have very specialised (and expensive) training to carry out their duties.
So if you have any spare cash you’d like to send the RNLI’s way, please use the shiny widget on the right, or this-here donation button:
We’re also contemplating opening up Hendrik for some charity dinners for a few very limited seatings in April to help raise funds for the RNLI. We’re both very keen cooks and can cook to a multitude of dietary restrictions, so if you’re interesting in dining on deck (weather permitting, otherwise in the saloon) for a minimum donation to the RNLI, please leave a comment below so we can judge interest and arrange a date for you to come dine on the Thames.