Part 2
So we now had Riccall back at the boatyard and it was time to get stuck in.
The first job was to get all the old wooden floor out of the hold. It was too far gone to try to re-use so we got a 50 gallon steel drum, knocked holes in the sides and bottom and set it on a triangle of concrete blocks. Then bit by bit, we loaded all the old wooden floor and about a ton of coal, which had landed up under the floor, into our makeshift brazier, and then added to global warming and our own, as the September weather was particularly hot that year.
Having exposed all the bottom ribs we now decided that the one inch layer of puddle cement, that had been used to protect the steel, when these barges were built, would also have to be removed.
We hired a pneumatic chisel and started work. Occasionally bits of cement would break away and reveal virgin oxide primed steel with all the old rivets in pristine condition. At other times the cement had cracked and allowed the coal acids to attack the steel underneath.
At one point I was attacking the cement on the turn of the bilge about half way down the starboard side when I lost concentration for a second. The next thing I knew the pneumatic chisel had gone clean through the bottom of the boat and Bloody Hell, we had a one foot high fountain of water coming in! I put my foot over it to stem the flow and called to Louise, quite calmly I thought under the circumstances, “Please could you come and put your foot on this, while I think what to do?”!!! We have since been told that to sit on the deck with a bare bottom (preferably female!) is the best thing to stop the water ingress but sadly I did not know that at the time and Louise meekly put her FOOT over the hole. Meanwhile I dashed around in small circles gathering the wherewithal to effect a repair. In the end (I think rather ingeniously) I found a bit of soft, thick walled, rubber tube and fashioned a tapered wooden peg to go into it. We stuffed the hose through the hole then hammered the peg down the centre of the hose. The soft rubber was forced into the shape of the hole and the water stopped almost completely. Louise, released form hole-covering duty, dashed up to Smiths Do-It-All (as it then was) to hastily acquire quick setting cement, which was then mixed and set over the hole in a small upturned bucket. And we continued the removal of the rest of the cement with renewed care.
Finally, when all seemed revealed we set off for our first dry-docking and a proper survey at ‘Hargreaves’, the commercial boatyard just one and a half miles away at Castleford Junction.
The survey found that a 30ft section of the starboard turn of bilge required plating (including of course the bit my chisel had gone through) and all the front section forward of the first bulkhead. The rest of the bottom was 4.5mm or more. Also that the prop shaft was ‘necked’ and the rudderstock and chain operating system badly worn. I knew I would be replacing all that in due course so that was not a problem so we had the plating done and set off back to the boatyard.
Winter was drawing in now so I fashioned a temporary wooden structure over the hold with 3" x 2" joists covered with 8 x 4 ft sheets of sterling board and waterproofed it all with heavy duty polythene sheet, held down by the time-honoured method of wedges driven into the cleats all along the coamings.
Under this protection we established a temporary floor in the hold area by laying thick pieces of chipboard over the ribs and I created a doorway into the forecabin through the bulkhead. To maintain the integrity of the forward bulkhead I made a waterproof door that could be closed when necessary to create a sealed forward area. The woodwork and every thing else in the forecabin was un-rescueable and had to be cleared out.
I also created an opening into the engine room, which again maintained the integrity of the bulkhead by virtue of having a sealable waterproof door.
I now felt it was time to install some ballast. When I had fitted out the narrowboat some years before I had been advised to use poured concrete for this purpose and it had been very quick, easy and successful. I decided that the same answer would serve well for Riccall. The only difficulty was getting the concrete wagon near enough the boat to be able to offload straight into the hold through a section of removed ‘roof’.
I had noticed an old coal chute near by at Castleford which I thought would be ideal, but I also knew it was a listed structure. So I hired some large plastic tubes (as used on demolition sites), covered the chute in heavy duty plastic and set the tubes up down the coal chute early on Saturday morning, having sailed Riccall down the night before. The concrete wagon duly arrived and started to offload. I had employed the services of about 3 extra members of the boatyard, so with Louise and I, and them, we started to manoeuvre the pour of concrete evenly over the bottom of the boat, stopping the pour every so often to move the boat forward or backward to the next area. At one point we were all in a panic as the boat began to list to port and all the wet concrete started to drift over to that side as well, exacerbating the situation. We all had to shovel like crazy to get the concrete back to starboard to even it out again.
However, in the end we had it evenly spread, managed to remove all evidence that we had been using a historic monument to install the concrete and Louise and I were left trying to get a reasonable finish on the surface of 15 tons of concrete with trowel, tamper and air poker – this last the most exhausting, to me, of the lot.
Eventually we cruised back to the boatyard with Riccall on average 8" lower in the water than she had been, but by adjusting the ratio of concreted between front and rear of the hold I had reduced the draught a bit less at the rear than at the bow and thus levelled her up a bit. I wanted to end up with a front to rear differential of only about 12" (300mm) rather than the more than 18" (450mm) Riccall had had when we bought her unladen, and this I had achieved. (Part luck, part calculation)
For the next stage I decided that, as I could not do it by myself due to the weight of the sheets of steel, I would get Jeff and whoever was available at the boatyard, to roof out the hold to my specification while I continued to work to earn a crust to pay them! This worked reasonably well and each evening I would see how things had progressed and spend 2-3 hours welding in noggins and finishing off bits where I could. One of the members of this ‘gang’ was a strange creature called Rhianne. She had arrived in a large van some months previously and bought an abandoned sailing boat project in which she was living, and supposedly continuing the build. In the meantime Jeff occasionally offered her work and one such case was on the Riccall roof. Rhianne was about 6ft tall, built like a Rugby player, with a deep voice, very long red hair, bright red fingernails and a large pair of unsupported boobs! She also had very little physical strength. There was, of course, much conjecture in the boatyard as to whether she was a man trying to turn into a woman, a woman in a man’s body or what. Her welding was adequate - not good - but she claimed to have built several fibreglass catamarans. The members of the boatyard accepted her for what she might be as they do with all the misfits that turn up and live there for a few months, or years, before moving on.
Another one of the ‘gang’ was called ‘new-age’ Ray (to differentiate him from ‘Knottingly’ Ray). He lived in a mobile home which he had constructed himself by grafting the back end of one dilapidated motor home onto the back of a slightly better truck. He lived in this at the boatyard during the week but at weekends he would drive it off to Sheffield (to his ex-wifes drive I think), or to the coast or the countryside then be back on Monday. His welding was pretty good.
Finally the basic structure of the roof and wheelhouse was done and I could carry on with the rest of the construction knowing that we were properly protected from the weather. The only downside of this was that now that the whole roof was steel the condensation dripping off it made it feel as though it was raining inside when, in fact it was a fine crisp day outside. This gave me the incentive to press on as fast as possible to get the inside to a stage where it could be sprayed with expanded polystyrene (in my opinion the very best way to protect and insulate a steel boat)
Saturday, 9 April 2011
Tuesday, 8 February 2011
The Refurbishment of Riccall 1999-2006
Part 1
It all started nearly 20 years ago. I had separated from my wife and kids and was living with my parents near Hexham and working in Middlesbrough. I realised that until the marital home was sold I would have no capital but still needed somewhere to live and thought maybe a narrowboat might be the answer. By this time I had met Louise and she bought me a birthday present of a day hire of a narrowboat out of Skipton. Despite the appalling March weather, we had a great day and were hooked! Shortly after that Louise spotted an advert in the Yorkshire post for the sale of an unfinished narrowboat project in Hull – appropriately a bare hull! So I negotiated with the builder, a semi professional who had run out of time, money and space and, £4,000 lighter, was the proud owner of 45 ft of a lot of future effort.
We found a great boatyard at Methley Bridge near Castleford where the focus was on boat work, not spit and polish. It was a fascinating learning curve for me to use my existing experience in car and house refurbishment and add it to that required for boats. All the other guys in the boatyard were really helpful but if you asked for advice you got as many different suggestions as people you asked!
Just under two years later ‘The boat’ a fully fitted out 45ft narrow-boat was craned into the river and for the next few years we spent as much time as we could cruising in her.
But we also made a few trips to our friends, Gill and Brian who lived north of Carcassonne in France and of course the French canal system beckoned particularly the Canal du Midi, which we usually saw at its best, in spring or autumn.
We realised that to do the French and European canals the way we wanted to would require a bigger boat and so about 12 years ago we started to look for a suitable vessel.
I had a very limited budget for this enterprise and so anything which had already been converted was out of the question. Ideally a Dutch tjalk would have been great but there appeared to be none available at that time but this may have been due to poor research on my part.
There was a potential Leeds Liverpool short boat (60ft x 14ft) called Stanley laid up near Leeds which we bid for but not enough to beat the other sealed bids. We also looked at a barge called Misterton (70’ x 14’) which had lovely lines, but somebody warned us that it needed re-plating. (this subsequently turned out to be untrue) and the sale price at £15K was too high for me. I was also kicking myself because three years earlier I could have bought a Sheffield called ‘Hope’ for about £3K! Then we heard that a number of the Waddington’s fleet of Sheffields and bigger were being sold off.
Victor Waddington had been head of a water transport and timber enterprise and had spent years buying up redundant barges, convinced that water transport would make a comeback! But he would never sell any of them (except one – Dry Tan which Ann Cowling managed somehow to talk him into selling to her and Steve). Before the old man Victor died, he had been convinced that his two sons Steve and Tony were not nearly old enough to be entrusted with the running of the business. They were only in their early 40s at this time! So he left the business in the hands of trustees with Steve, salaried, to run the water transport side and Tony the timber operation. At the same time the trustees agreed to sell off some of the many barges that were scattered all around Yorkshire in various states of disrepair.
By the time I got to hear of this, quite a few had already been sold but there were still many left to choose from. A trip to the headquarters of the Waddington empire at the end of the disused Dove and Dearne canal followed and after a brief conversation with Steve, who explained where I might find some suitable barges, we started our search. So we looked at Sectan which had been bought by Stuart and work on it had started. I didn’t like what he had done so far, and felt he was asking too much for it.
There were lots of others to look at in various dead ends and river arms all over the place - some so full of water they were resting on the bottom, others with most of the superstructure rotted away, but eventually we found two side by side, at Sandal Lock near Doncaster, which looked promising, Riccall and Cambridge. On closer inspection Cambridge, although built more recently, had had half of its engine removed and wheelhouse partly dismantled. By this time I had narrowed down the aspects which I particularly liked about the various styles of build of the Sheffield barges which we had been looking at. Riccall seemed to tick all the boxes, i.e. riveted construction, hooped hold cover (rather than peaked) slightly smaller hold giving larger forecabin and engine room areas and a wheelhouse and engine which looked as though they were still operational.
I ascertained from Steve that the key to the engine-room hatch padlock was hidden in the wheelhouse and I asked Ray (who at that time owned a barge named Knottingley) who I knew had a lot of experience with barges, to come with me to suss out the engine. (I think at that time Ray thought I was a complete wanker but he agreed to come anyway!) The engine was a Lister JP3, hand start, with a dry sump and separate oil tank. Ray showed me how to check that the injectors were operating properly, by turning it over and listening for the ‘squeak’ and we drained all the water that had collected in the ‘dry’ sump. Then he showed me how to decompress the engine with the cylinder top levers and swing it over with the starting handle. We gave it a go - Ray turning the handle and when it got up to speed, me dropping the decompression levers one by one. And it started! Amazing !
So now it was time to do some negotiating with Waddingtons to buy it.
I went to see Steve Waddington at the boatyard at Swinton to try and haggle with him over the price. I found him mending the engine cowling on a mobile crane and while rather ineffectually ‘helping’ him by holding the odd bolt while he put the nut on the other end. I asked if he could move at all on the sale price. I had established by this time that this was £8,000, a bit more than I wanted to pay! I suggested perhaps that if he would agree a price of £6,000 as far as the office was concerned I would give him personally £1000 cash in hand. But he was not interested. He said he had tried that before and the idiot buyer had bought a boat then handed an envelope with the cash in it to the office saying that this is the cash for Steve! The trustees were furious so he couldn’t risk that again. So during the couple of hours I was with him I tried various other gambits but all to no avail. Then eventually Steve lost his temper and said to me (and you will have to close your eyes here if you are of a delicate disposition because Steve is a rough old bargee with little finesse). He said to me, “Look, if you fucking want it, it’s eight fucking grand, and if you fucking don’t you can fuck off”! Classic!
“Oh” said I, rather taken aback. “Oh, alright then” and I went meekly off to the office and paid a deposit of 10% - £800 – the balance to be paid in two weeks. (I think he thought I was a complete wanker too!)
Three weeks later or thereabouts Louise and I had arranged with Ray to collect Riccall and bring her back to Methley Bridge boatyard.
As it turned out Ray couldn’t help us on the day and as we had both taken a day’s holiday from work, we went without him. The first hurdle was a locked gate. Riccall was moored in an area which was fenced off from the land and on other occasions when we had looked at her a BW working barge had been moored straddling the end of the fence and we had just hopped on at one end , walked past the fence and hopped off at the other end of the barge. The BW boat had gone! So we went to the lockkeeper and explained: fortunately he had a key to the gate and he let us in.
The next problem was to get Riccall out from ‘inside’ Cambridge without losing either of them in the strong crosswind that there was that day. But first I had to see if I could even start the engine. Louise operated the decompression levers and I turned the handle to swing the engine. When I thought it was going fast enough Louise dropped the levers and thankfully it did start. So whilst the engine ticked over (I didn’t dare stop it in case I couldn’t get it going again) we slowly inched Riccall backwards and Cambridge forwards until eventually about an hour later we had secured Cambridge back onto land and we were ready to cast off Riccall.
We also had to fold down the roof of the wheelhouse because being empty she was going to be too high to get under some of the bridges on our journey back.
The lockkeeper must have been keeping an eye on us because, as we set off and were blown across the canal by the wind, he had the lock gates open for us to go straight in.
This we managed reasonably well considering that Riccall only had about 500mms of draught (being empty) and that I had never handled such a big boat before, let alone such a huge wheel, long gear change lever and separate rotating throttle lever.
So we passed through that lock with the lockkeeper’s help and then to our amazement and eternal gratitude the lockkeeper accompanied us by car and operated all the lift bridges, and the one other lock, to the end of the New Cut.
Now we were on the Aire and Calder Navigation and there was a chance of meeting some 300 ton sand or fuel barge. Jeff (co-operator of our moorings at Methley Bridge) had lent us a hand-held VNF radio but we were not familiar with the procedure of announcing our presence as we travelled. Then, as we entered the difficult tortuous section between Knottingley and Ferrybridge I heard a couple of announcements on the radio; so I knew something was somewhere, but not what or where! Round the next bend came Humber Renown empty, not hanging around. I nearly jumped out of my skin, Louise yelped and with a quick spin of the wheel we managed to pass each other with inches to spare!
Afterwards I heard the skipper complaining bitterly to one of the other barges, on his radio, that they had just met Riccall and the wanker was not using a radio!
We had been lucky with the locks up to this point as there had been BW staff operating all of them and the flood lock at Ferrybridge was open, so that was OK too. As we came up the River Calder towards Castleford we rang friends at the boatyard to say we were on our way and bless them, there they were at Bulholme Lock with it all prepared and the gates open as we approached. So eventually in the late afternoon, after a successful if tense day, we arrived at Methley Bridge Boat Club moorings.
Now the real work of conversion could begin!
It all started nearly 20 years ago. I had separated from my wife and kids and was living with my parents near Hexham and working in Middlesbrough. I realised that until the marital home was sold I would have no capital but still needed somewhere to live and thought maybe a narrowboat might be the answer. By this time I had met Louise and she bought me a birthday present of a day hire of a narrowboat out of Skipton. Despite the appalling March weather, we had a great day and were hooked! Shortly after that Louise spotted an advert in the Yorkshire post for the sale of an unfinished narrowboat project in Hull – appropriately a bare hull! So I negotiated with the builder, a semi professional who had run out of time, money and space and, £4,000 lighter, was the proud owner of 45 ft of a lot of future effort.
We found a great boatyard at Methley Bridge near Castleford where the focus was on boat work, not spit and polish. It was a fascinating learning curve for me to use my existing experience in car and house refurbishment and add it to that required for boats. All the other guys in the boatyard were really helpful but if you asked for advice you got as many different suggestions as people you asked!
Just under two years later ‘The boat’ a fully fitted out 45ft narrow-boat was craned into the river and for the next few years we spent as much time as we could cruising in her.
But we also made a few trips to our friends, Gill and Brian who lived north of Carcassonne in France and of course the French canal system beckoned particularly the Canal du Midi, which we usually saw at its best, in spring or autumn.
We realised that to do the French and European canals the way we wanted to would require a bigger boat and so about 12 years ago we started to look for a suitable vessel.
I had a very limited budget for this enterprise and so anything which had already been converted was out of the question. Ideally a Dutch tjalk would have been great but there appeared to be none available at that time but this may have been due to poor research on my part.
There was a potential Leeds Liverpool short boat (60ft x 14ft) called Stanley laid up near Leeds which we bid for but not enough to beat the other sealed bids. We also looked at a barge called Misterton (70’ x 14’) which had lovely lines, but somebody warned us that it needed re-plating. (this subsequently turned out to be untrue) and the sale price at £15K was too high for me. I was also kicking myself because three years earlier I could have bought a Sheffield called ‘Hope’ for about £3K! Then we heard that a number of the Waddington’s fleet of Sheffields and bigger were being sold off.
Victor Waddington had been head of a water transport and timber enterprise and had spent years buying up redundant barges, convinced that water transport would make a comeback! But he would never sell any of them (except one – Dry Tan which Ann Cowling managed somehow to talk him into selling to her and Steve). Before the old man Victor died, he had been convinced that his two sons Steve and Tony were not nearly old enough to be entrusted with the running of the business. They were only in their early 40s at this time! So he left the business in the hands of trustees with Steve, salaried, to run the water transport side and Tony the timber operation. At the same time the trustees agreed to sell off some of the many barges that were scattered all around Yorkshire in various states of disrepair.
By the time I got to hear of this, quite a few had already been sold but there were still many left to choose from. A trip to the headquarters of the Waddington empire at the end of the disused Dove and Dearne canal followed and after a brief conversation with Steve, who explained where I might find some suitable barges, we started our search. So we looked at Sectan which had been bought by Stuart and work on it had started. I didn’t like what he had done so far, and felt he was asking too much for it.
There were lots of others to look at in various dead ends and river arms all over the place - some so full of water they were resting on the bottom, others with most of the superstructure rotted away, but eventually we found two side by side, at Sandal Lock near Doncaster, which looked promising, Riccall and Cambridge. On closer inspection Cambridge, although built more recently, had had half of its engine removed and wheelhouse partly dismantled. By this time I had narrowed down the aspects which I particularly liked about the various styles of build of the Sheffield barges which we had been looking at. Riccall seemed to tick all the boxes, i.e. riveted construction, hooped hold cover (rather than peaked) slightly smaller hold giving larger forecabin and engine room areas and a wheelhouse and engine which looked as though they were still operational.
I ascertained from Steve that the key to the engine-room hatch padlock was hidden in the wheelhouse and I asked Ray (who at that time owned a barge named Knottingley) who I knew had a lot of experience with barges, to come with me to suss out the engine. (I think at that time Ray thought I was a complete wanker but he agreed to come anyway!) The engine was a Lister JP3, hand start, with a dry sump and separate oil tank. Ray showed me how to check that the injectors were operating properly, by turning it over and listening for the ‘squeak’ and we drained all the water that had collected in the ‘dry’ sump. Then he showed me how to decompress the engine with the cylinder top levers and swing it over with the starting handle. We gave it a go - Ray turning the handle and when it got up to speed, me dropping the decompression levers one by one. And it started! Amazing !
So now it was time to do some negotiating with Waddingtons to buy it.
I went to see Steve Waddington at the boatyard at Swinton to try and haggle with him over the price. I found him mending the engine cowling on a mobile crane and while rather ineffectually ‘helping’ him by holding the odd bolt while he put the nut on the other end. I asked if he could move at all on the sale price. I had established by this time that this was £8,000, a bit more than I wanted to pay! I suggested perhaps that if he would agree a price of £6,000 as far as the office was concerned I would give him personally £1000 cash in hand. But he was not interested. He said he had tried that before and the idiot buyer had bought a boat then handed an envelope with the cash in it to the office saying that this is the cash for Steve! The trustees were furious so he couldn’t risk that again. So during the couple of hours I was with him I tried various other gambits but all to no avail. Then eventually Steve lost his temper and said to me (and you will have to close your eyes here if you are of a delicate disposition because Steve is a rough old bargee with little finesse). He said to me, “Look, if you fucking want it, it’s eight fucking grand, and if you fucking don’t you can fuck off”! Classic!
“Oh” said I, rather taken aback. “Oh, alright then” and I went meekly off to the office and paid a deposit of 10% - £800 – the balance to be paid in two weeks. (I think he thought I was a complete wanker too!)
Three weeks later or thereabouts Louise and I had arranged with Ray to collect Riccall and bring her back to Methley Bridge boatyard.
As it turned out Ray couldn’t help us on the day and as we had both taken a day’s holiday from work, we went without him. The first hurdle was a locked gate. Riccall was moored in an area which was fenced off from the land and on other occasions when we had looked at her a BW working barge had been moored straddling the end of the fence and we had just hopped on at one end , walked past the fence and hopped off at the other end of the barge. The BW boat had gone! So we went to the lockkeeper and explained: fortunately he had a key to the gate and he let us in.
The next problem was to get Riccall out from ‘inside’ Cambridge without losing either of them in the strong crosswind that there was that day. But first I had to see if I could even start the engine. Louise operated the decompression levers and I turned the handle to swing the engine. When I thought it was going fast enough Louise dropped the levers and thankfully it did start. So whilst the engine ticked over (I didn’t dare stop it in case I couldn’t get it going again) we slowly inched Riccall backwards and Cambridge forwards until eventually about an hour later we had secured Cambridge back onto land and we were ready to cast off Riccall.
We also had to fold down the roof of the wheelhouse because being empty she was going to be too high to get under some of the bridges on our journey back.
The lockkeeper must have been keeping an eye on us because, as we set off and were blown across the canal by the wind, he had the lock gates open for us to go straight in.
This we managed reasonably well considering that Riccall only had about 500mms of draught (being empty) and that I had never handled such a big boat before, let alone such a huge wheel, long gear change lever and separate rotating throttle lever.
So we passed through that lock with the lockkeeper’s help and then to our amazement and eternal gratitude the lockkeeper accompanied us by car and operated all the lift bridges, and the one other lock, to the end of the New Cut.
Now we were on the Aire and Calder Navigation and there was a chance of meeting some 300 ton sand or fuel barge. Jeff (co-operator of our moorings at Methley Bridge) had lent us a hand-held VNF radio but we were not familiar with the procedure of announcing our presence as we travelled. Then, as we entered the difficult tortuous section between Knottingley and Ferrybridge I heard a couple of announcements on the radio; so I knew something was somewhere, but not what or where! Round the next bend came Humber Renown empty, not hanging around. I nearly jumped out of my skin, Louise yelped and with a quick spin of the wheel we managed to pass each other with inches to spare!
Afterwards I heard the skipper complaining bitterly to one of the other barges, on his radio, that they had just met Riccall and the wanker was not using a radio!
We had been lucky with the locks up to this point as there had been BW staff operating all of them and the flood lock at Ferrybridge was open, so that was OK too. As we came up the River Calder towards Castleford we rang friends at the boatyard to say we were on our way and bless them, there they were at Bulholme Lock with it all prepared and the gates open as we approached. So eventually in the late afternoon, after a successful if tense day, we arrived at Methley Bridge Boat Club moorings.
Now the real work of conversion could begin!
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