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About this blog

a narrowboat in a white bikini

Entries in this blog

A life Extraordinare

fail to prepare, prepare to fail.   yet I had prepared so much, I couldnt possibly think of failure. failure was not an option.   it was all booked, a merry go round of people, flights, cars, car hire, marinas and phrase books.   My boat, Varekai, a rather saltier version than my previous narrowboat Honey Ryder, was based in Gibraltar and I wanted to bring it to the UK, to the River Crouch to be more precise. A quick look on google maps will tell you that its not just around the cor
honey ryder

honey ryder

2

Wigged out with the neighbours

Mooring in Limehouse for the past week has been most entertaining. we arrived on a Sunday evening, and squeezed into a spot a meter too short. So having knocked on the neighbours boat without a response, we shuffled the boat along a little bit so we could fit along the wall. Just as Mr X was about to tie the boat on again, a bald mans head popped out of the boat wondering what was happening. We explained, he shrugged and left us to it.   thereafter, for the remainder of the week we listened to
honey ryder

honey ryder

1

Travel Power and electric toothbrushes

Honey Ryder is fitted with the best system I've ever known for supplying power. It's got electrical power coming out of its ears, not literally, but metaphorically.   2kw Inverter, Charger, shore power, comprehensive battery management, small suit case gennie for just in case, solar panel awaiting fitment, ELECTROLUX TRAVEL POWER...   When I bought the boat I didn't know what IT was or how it worked. after asking the questions on the canal forum I got answers for how to make it work,  
honey ryder

honey ryder

0

Hull servicing, FINISHED and the final countdown

At last, the anodes have been welded on and we are due back in the water on thursday. The Bottom is FINISHED!!!   To say i am fairly ecstatic would be an understatement.     Cleaning the tar dust and fragments from our faces has been part and parcel of the job and now I must be short of a few layers of skin, so im planning on letting it grow back before i need to go scrubbing it away again.   the total cost of this little adventure is listed below:   Boat lift out of the water : £
honey ryder

honey ryder

0

She's back!

So she's back folks! the Honey Ryder story ended in August 2009.   the new life, the new boat search commenced in July, just before I said ta ta to the floating caravan cigar box (aherm narrowboat)   what started as an adventure turned into a saga and a whole new world of material, er materialised as the saga unfolded and is being added to the next book. The Honey Ryder blog is currently being turned into a novel (semi fiction)   I travelled to Poole, Ipswich, Burnham on Crouch, Brighto
honey ryder

honey ryder

5

the inner workings and lethargical enterprise

Now then, I seem to recall us being in and trying to get out of a recession. You'd think that this would spark off a little urgency in the working people, those who run small businesses and so on.   Well, ive been trying to get someone to come and have a look at a p bracket that needs 'a fixin' and blow me if they all can't be bloody arsed. Ive been told its because marine engineers dont take women seriously. I find thid hard to belive. My money and boat is no different to anyone elses is it
honey ryder

honey ryder

0

I see a dry dock and I want to paint it black

Two and a bit years have passed since the last mammoth effort of stripping the hull back to bare metal and sorting out a loppy looking bottom.   it took three weeks of very very hard work back in March 2007. first Hull service part 1 first hull service part 2 first hull service part 3 first hull service part 4 first hull service part 5   Ive been holding back from booking the drydock for fear of the hard work to come, but there is only so long you can do that before you really do have
honey ryder

honey ryder

0

pages of waffle

I received a letter from British Waterways. Three pages of waffle about how London boaters shouldn't empty their toilets into the canals and waterways around London and how inspections will be made on boats to make sure they comply.   Three pages of single sided, single minded drivel.   one page would have been plenty, in fact four sentences would suffice. ---- Dear Customers,   We have removed elsan, rubbish and water points along Grand Union and Rivers Lee and Stort because they we
honey ryder

honey ryder

1

You couldnt make this stuff up

(( Copied from other blog for anyone who is interested in following on from the Honey Ryder experience. ))   As if taking five months to complete the sale of my new boat wasnt enough of a mission and a story in itself, the mission continues.   I completed the sale of my SY Varekai in February, I drove to Gibraltar (where it currently lies) on a mini mission to get it prepared for sailing back at the end of May. During the mission I faffed around moving stuff out before I could move in. Th
honey ryder

honey ryder

1

the idiots guide to hull servicing

Ive searched the world wide web for information on what you are supposed to do with narrowboats when they need their bottom looking at.   i came up with a wealth of hit and miss information, so ive decided to do a "how to" of my own for the benefit of all those "new to steel boats" out there. ive got plenty of ideas on what to do if it was a plastic boat, its so simple i could do it with one arm behind my back.   steel hulls, especially ones that have been a bit neglected are entirely an
honey ryder

honey ryder

2

Marching on an empty stomach

It was a turbulent day yesterday for both body and mind.   The wind was pretty magnificent in its force and I watched with interest from my 10th floor office window. The view I have is of the A23 running south towards Brighton and there was a couple of huge cranes swaying to and fro on the nearby building site. I watched the guys in the yellow jackets and hard hats trying to get some work done as I was so busy trying to do the opposite. My thoughts fleetingly going back to the boat and wonde
honey ryder

honey ryder

0

A life extraordinaire... Varekai

My new blog is finally being made public.   its growing from both ends at the moment. All of my notes and diary taking over the past year is being added at the same time as the new stuff. if you are interested in finding out how my boat search and buying process went or simply to know what its like to live on a yacht, female, alone, in the middle of a river, and still holding down a day job in London... then this is for you.   http://sy-varekai.livejournal.com/   or   http://syvarek
honey ryder

honey ryder

0

Cheshunt to Limehouse Basin

After two and a bit weeks of mooring alongside a friend the time came for us to move on to pastures new.   The kind gentleman Cliff (and his frequently visiting lady friend Dianne) on his boat Axe looked after Honey Ryder while I was on holiday and kept me company while I was home alone , he even lent me his axe, labelled Axe should anyone want to know what it was or what boat it came from...   Axe has ventured north up the river lee and Honey Ryder has ventured south of Cheshunt for the f
honey ryder

honey ryder

0

sunshine 38

A few days trolling around harbours in France, along the Brittany west coast has wet my appetite further for the next boat. I was on holiday and couldnt help myself, I always end up near water.   I already have a good idea about what I want and where I want to put it and where Id like to go with it, it seems its a buyers market out there.   Honey Ryder is still for sale, I should probably do a bit more effort to sell her before the summer is over, but for every month I live on her, I save l
honey ryder

honey ryder

0

Idiots guide - part 3

So, we've been out of the water for 12 days now, work has been hampered a bit with the freezing conditions.   we spent the second weekend out of the water finishing off the scraping and on Sunday we finally cracked open a tin of paint! Hurray. Step 11 Find a good supplier One of our neighbours told us about Uxbridge boat centre being a decent place to buy anything for the boat. A quick www.yell.co.uk search and Uxbridge was found, not far from us. I already called them mid week to find ou
honey ryder

honey ryder

0

the brighter side to life

It seems the media is a worry wart, doom and gloom surround us. What is there worth getting up for when all around us the bank are losing our money, the companies we work for are ditching us to stay in business, our savings gather no interest, pensions are worthless and house prices are falling through the floor... yada yada yada..   well, quite frankly, I don't pay any mind to this endless attack on my sensibilities. Ive got far better things to think about, Im a positive thinker, a survivor
honey ryder

honey ryder

3

we must be barking... Part 4

Thats the royal we, Mr X and myself have spent our 3rd and final weekend scraping and painting.   Step 56: don't fear the reaper The finale is in sight, the fanfare and the trumpets will play loudly sometime soon, but not just yet. The base plate was the object of our affections this weekend. With myself doing the "shit" bit at the back around the swim, prop and rudder yann got on with the scraping and cup-brushing with his angle grinder on the base plate.   we were well ahead of schedu
honey ryder

honey ryder

0

the idiots guide, part 2

The second in my series of how to service a hull.   step 8 take a couple of days off work while the weather is good. having taken some time off ive managed to make good progress on the hull and now all that is left to scrape and angle grind is the bow section, the stern section and around the swims as well as scrape the bottom.     step 9 Be cool with mental neighbours The power supply to the maintenance area of the marina where our boat is, is on a shared basis. however most of ou
honey ryder

honey ryder

0

the magic sponge

As with most modifications, they come about because of an urgent necessity through breakage.   Our travel power has been out of action for just over a week now, ok, it's 2 weeks but I was trying to think positive.   The first symptoms of something wrong happened, er, last year on our maiden voyage away from our marina at Easter. squeaking ( read squealing) bearings in a jockey pulley that stops the large travel power belt from flapping about.   We changed the travel power belt because i
honey ryder

honey ryder

1

doggies got a brand new bag

so on the theme of bags and how people of the south wear theirs...   papas got a brand new bag.. or more precisely Mr B.   ok, its pink and feminine but Mr B is an effeminate dog and doesn't much care.   I shall be parading like a proper prissy dog owner now. actually he will be more secure in his car when he's in my car... thats the main point of it.  
honey ryder

honey ryder

0

And there she was

Gone   Honey Ryder cruised away from me, leaving Limehouse basin under new ownership at 1.30pm on Monday the 17th August 2009.   It was a sad weekend, finally packing all my things into the storage cupboard, packing my bare essentials and setting up camp in a friends spare box room. Seeing Honey Ryder with a completely clear roof and an empty insides made my tummy go all flippety flop.   Now I am homeless, Honey Ryder has gone, Mr X is in France, my dog is on holiday at my mums and so i
honey ryder

honey ryder

2

14 days

How is it possible I can have so much stuff?   I surely dont need it all. packing away the contents of the cupboards and drawers has revealed that I am infact less of a minimalist than I fooled myself into believing and more of a creative-tucker-away-of-things-out-of-sight. This will be rectified as soon as I have a moment to contemplate such ruthless skimming of "Schtuff". Most of my possessions are now tucked away in boxes, stacked 1.5 meters high by 1.5 meters square. each of these bo
honey ryder

honey ryder

0

room for a chicken?

With a little less than one month left aboard Honey Ryder, time seems to have gone into warp drive.   My mental packing has started, helped along by the booking of a small self-storage cupboard.   I'm currently looking at suitable floors to sleep on as an interim measure of avoiding sleeping out under a bridge, although I do have the advantage that after nearly three years on the canals, I know quite a lot of suitable bridges.   I've looked at four very different boats so far, but all wit
honey ryder

honey ryder

1

bike 1 - thieves 0

It was around 3am, when I awoke to a very suspicious sound. This is not unusual as even the merest leaf falling on the roof can wake me up. It was not a fox like the previous night skipping along the roof, it was the sound of someone trying to remove my bike. It was the sound of scooter engines ticking over right next to my boat on the towpath. As realisation dawned on me at what was happening just a few feet from my head, Mr X sprang out of bed, running to the side hatch. My mind was still
honey ryder

honey ryder

0

welcome to the zoo

I am fed up of being treated like a freak show, I think I shall put a message for all to read upon my roof ( apart from a for sale sign that is)     If you want to have your picture taken on someone's boat, first make friends with the owner. Don't just climb on while Im having my breakfast and let you mate snap away from the towpath. Cheeky bastard.   If you want to have a look around my boat, my home, then get to know me first and wait to be invited. Don't peer through the windows and
honey ryder

honey ryder

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