Boatman's Blog - the story so far

Keeping Afloat

Just over a year ago a mate rang and asked a simple question:
"Hey, Mike, do you want a boat?"
Maybe I hadn't heard him correctly.
"Yeah, you can have Flamenco. She's falling apart and I can't rent her out anymore. She was condemned to death a decade ago and there's no chance of getting a certificate of safety for her. I'll have to pay a couple of grand to get her scrapped and I thought you and Carlos would be keen to try and fix her. You'd be taking trouble off my hands."

That was that. Adam had given Carlos - engineer, sculptor and burly cannonball of human energy - and me his highly handsome houseboat.

A World War II hull shelled inside a pontoon supports a white wooden structure that together makes the boat. Flamenco is spacious - 45 feet by 10.5 - with a kitchen, large living-room, double bedroom and what was once a fully functional bath/shower room/ WC.

We were allowed to stay on Adam's Hammersmith mooring for a few months while he sorted out the purchase of his new barge and we stayed on the secure location in luxurious comfort - carpeted floors, hot water from the taps, electricity and a space to call our own. Yes, the days in Hammersmith were a breeze, but when Flamenco sank after some heavy storms, we knew it was time to start getting serious about fixing her.

The sinking had ripped the floor up, pulled parts of the roof off, smashed the windows and covered the whole interior with scum-smelling filth grease dirty river slime, not to mention drowning the majority of our possessions. And our days on the mooring were numbered.

In August we were told about an area of the river in Brentford that isn't owned by the Port of London Authority - the organisation who are in charge of the tidal Thames in London and who are the recipients of the costly mooring fees.

A centuries old by-law states that the stretch of river west of Kew bridge running up to near the entrance of the Grand Union Canal is owned by the crown, due to the royal palace in Kew Gardens opposite. Boats stay there without having to pay.

On visiting the area, a local told me about an island there - Lot's Ait- that's a disused boatyard. People have kept their boats on it for over a decade. It's industrial - the warehouses and mammoth steel machines still stand - but there's also plenty of nature there. In fact the island can't be developed because it's been named a Site of Special Scientific Interest due to the two species of rare snail that live there.

By the end of August we had towed Flamenco upriver and had her moored safely under asbestos roofs in one of the boatyard's trenches.

Being on an abandoned island we have no electricity or running water and, as we've only been able to buy a generator recently, we had to survive the winter with candles alone. Money's been tight and it took us until March until we had enough equipment to lay a floor. I spent October cleaning out the huge amount of rotten, sodden filth from the hull, before coating it with red oxide to delay rusting.

Since then we've welded steel ribs across the central steel beam, laid insulation between them and fixed down a plywood floor, making the space far warmer, more comfortable and somewhere that we don't mind inviting our friends to come and stay in. Over the coming months, as and when we have the resources, we'll be making the whole boat a whole lot more hospitable.