retirement adventure - Travels with Verne and Roy

Down the Thames to Bourne End from Thames & Kennet Marina

After several exploratory trips both upstream and downstream from our long-term berth at Thames & Kennet Marina, it was time to venture a longer voyage: downstream, we decided, heading for Marlow.

Monday morning’s warm and sunny July weather made for an auspicious start, but only after we’d headed up to the top of the marina for our virgin pump-out – i.e., clearing our black-water tanks (see previous blog titled “Pump-out”). Feeling virtuously clean on the inside, too, we finally set off at 10am.

Somehow, I thought we might stop off along the way for elevenses at Sonning, a bit of sight-seeing at Henley-on-Thames, an ice-cream at Hurley or Hambledon, or a spot of shopping at Marlowe. Silly of me, really. Even if mooring had been easy to find on such a popular stretch of the Thames on such a beautiful summer’s day, it’s not in Roy’s nature to stop. He hates to stop for photographs or bursting bladders when he’s driving a car, so why would this boat-driving business be any different?

Some stupendous property lines the river, as you can see:

Or how about something in black and white?

And, for good measure, some classic scenes of Henley-on-Thames:

Post-Henley Regatta tents still to be taken down

What a beautiful, wide stretch of river – perfect for the annual Henley Regatta

Temple Island, just downstream of Henley-on-Thames

Six hours and seven locks later – Sonning, Shiplake, Marsh, Hambledon, Hurley, Temple and Marlowe – it seemed that all available mooring had been taken by earlier birds. With relief, we spotted a gap to port just before Bourne End, between a barge and a cruiser. “I can get in there,” declared the optimistic Roy, and so he did. It helped that both of our putative neighbours kindly rushed out to grab ropes, move their own vessels a bit and help ease us in – their hospitality possibly motivated just a tiny bit by fear of imminent collision.

Neighbours at Bourne End

The new canopy is fairly easy to erect, provides welcome shade on the deck, and, importantly, didn't blow away in the wind — The new canopy is fairly easy to erect, provides welcome shade on the deck, and, importantly, didn’t blow away in the wind

Speaking of hospitable neighbours, Bill, Maria and their wholly lovable golden retriever have been living on their barge for four years. This week, they also had with them two primary school-age grandsons, whose parents would be picking them up on Friday. Were the kids enjoying the trip?, I asked him.

“I think so,” he said uncertainly. “It’s hard to tell. They’re a right couple of little sods at the best of times. I reckon we’ll be swigging gin out of the bottle by Thursday.”

Apart from The Spade Oak pub a few hundred metres up the road, and the long stretch of Thames Path for hikers, runners, dog-walkers and fishermen, our Bourne End mooring had one attraction irresistible not only to Bill’s grandsons but to everyone else, too: a soft-serve ice cream van stationed in one corner from nine to five. You don’t get to bond with all your neighbours at a mooring, but Mr Whippy is something different.

On the hottest day of the year, Mr Whippy is everyone's favourite neighbour — On the hottest day of the year, Mr Whippy is everyone’s favourite neighbour

How We Got Here

As luck would have it, I’m terribly prone to seasickness

Why a boat?

It’s a long story, but now that my husband is retired – and I’m doing a lot less writing and editing work – I have some time to tell it.

Three or four years ago, I gently hinted to Roy that perhaps he should find a hobby to occupy himself with after retirement. This was mostly with a view to his future happiness, but also with the idea of keeping him busy when he no longer had minions to boss around. Perhaps he could take up pottery, or macramé – or we could join a choir together once again (in preparation for the inevitable).

To my surprise and alarm, he started Googling boats. Surprise because he’d shown zero interest in boating of any sort since we met in 1992, discounting the odd cruise on a floating five-star hotel. Alarm because the boat-builder he had in mind was Nordhavn, purveyor of ocean-going, trawler-style motor yachts that start from around a million-and-a-half US dollars. (Everyone knows that there are two happy days in the life of a boat-owner – the day you buy it and the day you sell it.)

As luck would have it, I’m terribly prone to seasickness. His Nordhavn file was already a couple of inches thick with brochures, and Roy’s customised wheelhouse design almost complete, when the cruise we did on the lovely Silver Shadow from Singapore to Hong Kong proved conclusively that I was not a suitable mate with whom to cross the ocean on 40 to 120 feet of vessel. Phew!

Which boat?

I married a tenacious man, it must be said. When he came up with the idea of a canal barge – a Dutch barge, specifically – designed to ply rivers and canals, I thought: why not? It would at the very least keep him busy. Roy is a man who needs a project; and his most recent one, the gutting and redesign of our Singapore apartment, was finally complete.

If you ask Roy, he’ll tell you he’s been interested in barges ever since he was a boy growing up in in the English Midlands. He even recalls doing a detailed barge design in his early teens. (Who’d have guessed?)

And what an absorbing project it has been! To test the waters (so to speak), we hired a wide-beam barge called the Serenity for a ridiculously warm and sunny week in September 2014, and tootled up and down the Grand Union Canal between Milton Keynes and the charming old canal village of Stoke Bruerne. After some trepidation I mastered the windlass and conquered the locks, together with any doubts I may have had.

(Read more about our week on Serenity in this article, published in Expat Living Singapore in April 2014: Serenity Trip April 14)

Finding the right boat-builder (Simon Piper of Piper Boats in Stoke-on-Trent) was the next step. Debating the size (49 feet, rather than the physically daunting 75 feet that Roy was inclined to go for) and the number of bedrooms (just one, so as to maximise living space) took several visits to Piper’s offices and quite a lot of verbal stamina on my part.

I’ve always wanted a TV that disappears from view

Traditionalists might regard the Karanja with perturbation. For one thing, we dispensed with the traditional stove in the corner of the saloon. Instead, we have a concealed TV that glides up and down at the touch of a button on the remote.

Is life without a bath worth living?

For another, I have a full-size bath. What’s more, we’ve maximised the deck space by shifting the dog-box (ceiling hatch) as far aft as possible, surrounded the deck with stainless steel yacht stanchions and covered it with gorgeous flexi-teak. Perfect for my sun-lounger!

And here are a couple more great photos, courtesy of Piper Boats:

Why Karanja?

Karanja was the ship Roy remembers most fondly from his nine years with BI (The British India Steam Navigation Co.) – a passenger cargo vessel that plied the Indian Ocean with stops at Bombay, Karachi, the Seychelles, Mombasa, Dar Es Salaam, Beira, Lourenço Marques (now Maputo) and Durban. A picture of the original ship now hangs in her namesake’s saloon, and the engraved silver mug that was a 21st birthday gift from his fellow officers gleams from a nearby shelf. (How long it will continue to gleam in the absence of domestic help is a question.)

The original Karanja, which Roy sailed on during the early 70s

As for her black-and-white exterior, every BI ship had a black funnel painted with two white bands, and our baby Karanja’s paintwork is a sort of homage to that.

The flags tell their own story: the one at the back is the Singapore ensign, showing that we’re registered in Singapore. The small one at the front is the house flag: fairly quirkily, Roy chose the flag of the old British East India Company, which would have been flown by Stamford Raffles as he sailed into Singapore in January 1819.