The voyages of Aquabat....part 4

The last voyage

  Aquabat had already completed three long trips and many day trips just pottering about the Medway and Swale. A marine environment is hard on fittings and equipment and British air pollution soon makes a mess of decks and paintwork. Anti-foul loses its potency and weed and barnacles begin to attach to the hull. Although how marine life survived the oil slick staining the waterline is a mystery. A well used yacht delays the fouling process but eventually it becomes necessary for a seaborne vessel to become airborne by craning it onto terra firma.  
As well as general maintenance, my stout little vessel had a bent rudder shaft and a cabin interior which I was never happy with. The deck area next to the cockpit had also become spongy and needed investigating. We lived at Chertsey and Chertsey Meads Marine was five minutes away making it much easier to work on the boat.

  Andy joined me again for the long journey up the Thames. It was going to involve at least one night stop and much of the trip would need to be done under engine power. My little Volvo could only cruise at 5kts which made no difference above Teddington because that was the speed limit anyway. Below the lock however, it was legally possible to go much faster. The river Thames and estuary is a difficult waterway made so by traffic complexity and tides. I had to buy a full set of charts and even phone the Admiralty Hydographers Department to determine the vertical movement of Chart Datum. Those were the days when you could phone a government department and have a naval captain spend half an hour happily explaining.

  We departed the Gillingham mooring for the last time and nostalgically saw Chatham Docks recede into the distance.  As usual in England, the weather was bloody awful, full overcast and wind right on the nose, at least it wasn’t raining..yet. The sail down the Medway was good enough but once in the estuary, the fun began. We had to tack our way the full length of the estuary and when not on deck pulling bits of rope, I was below at the chart table plotting courses to avoid numerous obstacles. We’d had to battle the last of the flood tide out of the Medway in order to catch maximum benefit from the flood up the Thames but the westerly wind had negated most of that advantage and we’d only made Gallions Reach before the full effect of the ebb tide.

The Thames can be picturesque in places but this wasn’t one of them, an industrial wasteland that stank of old gas and nowhere to moor a yacht with a 1.5 metre draft. The river banks now prevented wind from powering the sails and the engine had to be started. The engine could achieve 6 kts and the tide was ebbing at 6 kts so we spent two hours motoring opposite the North Thames Gas pier. At one point we were even going backwards. Neptune really had it in for us and he made it rain cats and dogs just to make us more miserable.
Fuel then became a concern because I only had a 4 gallon tank. I had a jerry can with extra fuel and needed to use it before we escaped Hades-on-Thames. 

St.Katherines Dock

The ebb tide finally eased as did the rain and we proceeded upstream past Greenwich into central London. We moored against the pontoon outside St. Katherines Dock and while waiting for the lock gates to open, imbibed a couple of pints at the pub inside the dock. Once the gates opened we came alongside a Thames barge where we had previously arranged to lower the mast by crane. We’d planned to night stop inside St Kats but were surprised to learn that sleeping aboard was forbidden for visiting vessels. Hotels there were hugely expensive so we decided to lock out and find a mooring elsewhere. It was a sneaky way for the weasel dock owners to screw unsuspecting yachtsmen into paying for their hotel.

From the chart there seemed to be many good places to moor. I was totally wrong. All the piers had no mooring signs reinforced with spikes and razor wire. Anchoring was also forbidden. The navigation lights had come down with the mast and we needed to stop before dark.  We tried to go alongside the Tattershall Castle but some waiter shouted at us while we pleaded and offered a mooring fee. Within minutes a Metropolitan Police boat arrived so we explained our predicament. They kindly led the way to a pier we could use. It was disused with rusty bolts sticking out so we had to rig fenders with spinnaker pole to prevent hull damage. It was also fenced with an eight foot high steel gate but no razor wire. We were able to climb the gate just in time for a snack and a quick pint near Charing Cross before closing time, leaving us sober enough to climb that bloody gate again.

The following morning began in the expected way, overcast and drizzling. Regardless of weather, London is still an amazing city when viewed from the river and our spirits were recovering. From ashore though, a mastless yacht strewn with rigging wire and coiled  halyards must have looked a little strange.

Locking into Teddington began the fresh water part of the journey and from there the weather improved. An unwashed, scruffy pair of individuals were grudgingly permitted lunch at a Hampton Court restaurant and hunger satisfied we continued the leisurely cruise. Too leisurely because time became an issue. Thames locks closed at sunset and were chained and padlocked. The last lock to be negotiated was Shepperton and although not yet padlocked, it was unmanned. That was tricky because with a mast protruding from either end of the boat, only one of us could hold the yacht in position while the other had to operate the lock valves and gates. Once through the lock we had to walk back to empty it again, protocol demanding that they be left empty. We arrived at Chertsey Meads just on sunset having completed a yacht journey that few would have attempted. The draft of 1½ metres was close to the depth limit for the freshwater Thames and there were a couple of places where the keel was dragging along the mud bottom. 

Aquabat was craned ashore the following day and rudder and shaft removed while still airborne or there wouldn’t have been sufficient ground clearance. 
I later stripped the interior and rebuilt with a stainless steel galley, port saloon berth which converted to a double and the addition of quarter berths. I’d also solved the spongy deck. The previous owner had bolted on a cleat and omitted to seal the bolt holes. Water had penetrated and delaminated the ply sandwich. The worst possible job was grinding away the fibreglass and sodden plywood upside down in a confined space. 

Work on Aquabat had to be halted because I received a repair grant for our Victorian house and was given six months to complete.
Only a small job really. A new roof, 50x10 foot party wall in the loft and windows to be replaced or renovated but that’s another story.