The need for paint...
 
One sunny day, in a rare fit of enthusiasm (probably brought on from eating too much chocolate), I stretched out a few muscles, donned my very best lifejacket, dusted down the dinghy and proceeded to row across the Thames, intent on exploring. At the other side, I looked over at Fenrir expecting to see a glorious view. Instead, what I saw was green, very green... in fact the entire side of the barge was green. It appears some local algae had arranged a get-together, which had rapidly become a communal gathering, and was now a full blown riot. I suspected instantly that this had impromptu party had been fueled by the wake of passing boats splashing against the side. Whatever the cause, it looked bad.
 
I felt a kind of remorse... remorse that I had not noticed... remorse that our barge was deteriorating in front of my eyes, and remorse that the marina... having given us a mooring when no-one else would even return our calls, were being made to look like a scrap-yard. If I hadn’t noticed this... what else hadn’t I noticed?
 
I turned round and paddled back, and walked around the barge inspecting every inch. It turned out that I hadn’t noticed an awful lot. A scene of devastation was opening up in my mind. Paint was flaking off everywhere, rust was breaking out, and what paint was there was varied and patchy. Fenrir looked terrible from top to bottom. How could I not have seen this?
 
Now I was once told by a very intelligent business consultant, that if you put a frog in water, and slowly increased the temperature, it would not notice... at least, until the water boiled... which would be too late. The implication of his story was that I was the frog, not noticing the water was beginning to simmer. Well, right now, I was a frog with a whole lot of awareness.
 
I could see that a quick-fix wasn’t going to solve this problem. Not knowing how to paint a barge, I had no clue what it would need, but I knew one thing... this was going to be expensive. The words of the previous owners came to mind “we got our friends over, fed them some beer and gave them a paint brush”. Hmmm... that’s what had got us here. I wasn’t going to repeat the mistake.
 
As always, I threw myself in with gusto. But life very quickly begun to get very complicated... I finally got in contact with The Boss who when not crossing the North Sea in old barges, was running a boat yard servicing barges. As always his advice was direct and to the point. It was clear that paying someone to do this was going to cost us a fortune, so we elected to do it ourselves, and we just needed a place to do it. We were in luck, The Boss was in the process of re-basing his business next to a dry-dock at Hucks boatyard. We had passed the point of no-return. The ball was very much rolling.
 
I set to with plans, measurements, supplier choices, paint types, time-scales, project dependencies, graph paper and obtuse mathematical calculations. No. 1 decided she would choose the colours and proceeded to worry about the cost. Somewhere in that, there is a statement about the relative workings of male and female minds, but I would need an entire website just to explore that topic. When we eventually conceded that we couldn’t agree on a colour scheme, we spent a weekend in Amsterdam looking at barges and taking hundreds of pictures. It transpired that all of our favourite barges in Holland were actually quite straight in their choice of colour schemes and we conceived an idea for a smart, simple ‘art-deco’ style for Fenrir. Which in black and white terms, meant black and cream. Oh yes...!
 
The chaps from a local paint supplier popped down to the barge and recommended various paints for various aspects of the job. This was beginning to get very complicated. The big issue was that we didn’t know what paint was already on the barge, and it was clear from the dried up pots sitting in the bilge, that lots of different paints had been used over many years.
 
In the end, the prognosis was that in most places, we would need ‘single-pack’ paints capable of ‘going on’ without ‘kicking off’ with the existing paints. For the ‘gunnel’, we would use a ‘two-pack’ paint for a more durable, shiny finish.
 
Now, for those of you harbouring a secret passion for paint, the next two paragraphs are for your enjoyment. For those of you who prefer to focus your attentions elsewhere, please feel free to skip the next two paragraphs whereupon you’ll be able to pick up the story again.
 
We ended up with vast amounts of black bitumen for the hull (it seemed a safe choice). As bitumen can go a bit dull, we got more creative for the gunnel. It would be shot-blasted, an anti-electolyte paint called ‘Zinga’ would be used as a primer, which would then require a ‘ti-coat’ before a coltar-epoxy based paint could be applied to get a black shiny finish. And finally, some general purpose ‘Combi-Colour’ black paint would be provided for any miscellaneous areas.
 
Scotty put the feelers out, and after a chat with the very lovely Carl from the Environment Agency, we had settled on an obscure product called ‘Tractol’ for the super structure. There you go, all nice and easy! Unfortunately, while this, and the ‘Combi-Colour’ turned out to be good tips, I can’t say the same for the other paints that we bought. £600 later and my head was full of complex and confusing information about paints, while the wheelhouse was resembling a local hardware shop.
 
In retrospect... I’d made a serious error here, consulting ‘non-boating’ people before getting the advice of ‘boating’ experts... people who had been there and done it. As I explained my choices to The Boss, he was typically to the point... you’ve got the wrong paint. Anyway, we resolved to review the paint choices when the barge had reached dry-dock.
 
I set to purchasing a complicated array of equipment and painting bits n bobs which would all be required to prepare the surfaces and apply the paint. The dry dock had become an opportunity to do all manner of jobs... hence all manner of jobs started to appear... welding, repairs, new bollards etc.... It seemed that for weeks leading up to the event, my life was consumed with organising jobs, equipment, paints and people. As DD-Day approached, life became frantic. Paints were missing, colours were wrong, equipment was missing, people were unavailable. I was getting a little frazzled and we hadn’t even made it to the dry dock yet.
 
On one particularly fateful day, I found myself racing to Machine Mart to redeem a 10% off voucher before the 6.00 deadline and an essential evening work appointment I couldn’t miss. In my rush, I got a little over-zealous with a piece of urban street curbing. With a flat tyre and a lot of irate drivers stuck behind me, the only option was to push the car into a side-street... which happened to be in the congestion zone (£8). One taxi later (£12), I arrived at Machine Mart with seconds to spare and vouchers in hand (£-8). There followed a taxi to work (£20), another taxi back (£20), and finally a new tyre (£60). My vouchers had cost me £92 and several wasted hours.
 
And so, onto the dry-dock...
 
Well, we didn’t get off to a blinding start. Scotty’s meticulous pre-sail checklist has only one drawback... it takes time. Hence, and not entirely unsurprisingly, we set off a little late that morning, whereupon, No. 1 picks up the story:
 
The photo below is us before we left (the second time) for the dry dock where we were going to paint our boat.  I remember it clearly as we had just executed a perfect exit and I was really wishing that some one had witnessed it as it was brilliant.  We got 10 metres up stream when... our engine stopped.
 
 
Well, I thought, this has happened before so don’t panic.  Skips thought that Scotty had blown the Dilithium chambers and we’d never get to impulse let alone warp speed.  So we drift down stream and are about to drop anchor when a tug passes (unusually fortuitous timing).  Skips is yelling keep away as we’re drifting.  I’m yelling come back and tug us to the bank.  We throw them a line and we’re tugged up stream when the guy is yelling about a mooring space that he can see.  I’m shouting that its our space and its really very tight (half a metre to the bow and stern).
 
We’re being tugged at speed and as I’m closest, trying to communicate my concerns about the size and our current warp (9) to the tug men.  I think as we approached the space, this was dawning as their faces adopted a panicked expression.
 
“Fenders to the front” they shouted.  As I threw the ball fender onto the front, the Tug man leapt off his boat, onto the static white boat moored in front of us and ensured that we only kissed, the fender doing its job protecting us both.  I jumped off to secure the ropes.  Never have I been so relieved to get my line on first time.  So this was us heading to the boat yard.  
 
Great omen!
 
The story continues here...
 
Monday 2nd July 2007