Roger barrington built hire boats from calcutt

[canalbuff]

He was always very helpful when we had a breakdown or two, had his number then and he would come out to us and repair alternators, replace batteries etc.

Remember there were these catches on the toilet/bathroom doors, might have seen something similar on a BR train...

They had a good fit out with tongue and groove to a decent standard

Couldn't always get the stick to stay in gear..

[canalbuff]

A "mooring" at Redhill circa 1981...

[canalbuff]

The art of "hands free arse steering" and not paying full attention whilst reading the " Canal Book" out on the Trent

[SteveT]

9 hours ago, Bigal10 said:

Saw Roger yesterday at his home in Shardlow.

 

Hey, cool!  How old would he be, now?  Do you know anything about his life post-Barrington Bashers?

8 hours ago, canalbuff said:

The art of "hands free arse steering" and not paying full attention whilst reading the " Canal Book" out on the Trent

 

Cracking set of pictures, @canalbuff!  I, too, became an expert at arse-crack steering.  ?

[SteveT]

Impulsive as ever, I decided to buy one of the Barrington Bashers without giving any serious consideration to the financial implications.  Houses were bought with a 25-year mortgage; my boat was bought with a 5-year "marine mortgage", which is just a fancy term for hire purchase.  The repayments were roughly twice what a 2.5-times-salary mortgage would have cost, and I was a single bloke at a very low rank in BT (a Tech 2A).  So, I was seriously, profoundly skint, which made for a very interesting period in my life as I got used to living with no heating (for the first winter).

 

Due to a lack of money I couldn't afford to heat the boat using the propane-powered central heating system.  I found a really cheap stove - a type known as "slow combustion" - which was intended for greenhouses and the like.  They had a highly insulated chamber so the burn rate could be pretty low without them losing too much heat and going out.  I think they were meant to burn garden rubbish, etc.  I vaguely remember the brand was "Arctic".

 

Making a hole in the steel roof for the 4 inch flue was a terrible job!  I had no mains electricity; I can't remember if I had a cordless drill back then, but I don't think so as I would have had to recharge it at work and I've no memory of that.  Anyway, I do recall using a hand drill to drill all round the circumference of the hole (1/8" steel plate), then joining them up with a hacksaw blade, then filing it vaguely smooth.  It took days.  I stood the stove on a paving slab inside the boat, fed some stainless steel flexible flue liner (totally the wrong stuff) up to the roof, and on the roof I mounted a hinging chimney made with a piece of steel pipe a mate had given me.

 

Fuel was the next challenge.  I couldn't really afford to buy any, so I foraged around in the woodland on the opposite bank from where I was moored, bringing back bits of fallen wood.  It was OK; better than nothing.

 

The Soar was frequently in flood during the winter, and all sorts of stuff came floating down past me from further upstream - various bits of people's sheds that had washed away, all sorts of other pieces of timber, several gang planks from other boats, even a complete door on one occasion.  These were like a bounty for me: at those times the supply was plentiful, and timber doesn't need seasoning like fallen wood does.  I quite enjoyed sawing it all up on the back deck, late into the evening, under the star light.

 

Edited April 25, 2021 by SteveT

[Derek R.]

Sounds familiar. We got through an entire winter salvaging flotsam and jetsum and anything that had fallen from trees. Had a 'Tortoise' stove (much the same as an 'Arctic') on the Dutchman. Talk about 'slow burner' - we left it three days on one occasion and it was still glowing in the bottom. They came in various sizes, the larger ones in Church halls and such.

 

 

 

 

[SteveT]

The Arctic stove was a bit of a bust, to be honest.  It was crudely made, which meant the burn rate was extremely difficult to control.  On windy days the chimney would draw harder, and the stove was so leaky I couldn't shut it down, so it got far too warm and feasted on fuel at a terrible rate.  On still days it was better.  The problem was, if the wind got stronger or weaker whilst it was burning, the damn thing would either go out or go mad, so constant messing about was required.

 

Back then narrowboats had minimal insulation, and the very large surface area to volume ratio meant that twenty minutes after the stove had gone out, it was pretty much down to ambient temperature.  It's amazing how adaptable you can be: I became comfortable in my shirt sleeves right down to 0C, provided there wasn't too much of a draught.  One night, though, it became exceedingly cold and I slept inside three sleeping bags, concerned I might die of hypothermia!  In the morning I found the washing up liquid had frozen (actually to a stiff slush, and a very beautiful pearlescent green).  I found out later that day that the temperature had dropped to -13C!

 

I couldn't keep any water in the normal plumbing system, because it just kept freezing and blowing out the pipes.  Same with the central heating: if it wasn't switched on (which it never was because of the cost) it just burst the pipes.  In the end I had to drain all of it.  So what did I do for water?  Well, my boat was moored at the edge of a field, nowhere near a water supply, so I used to take a five gallon plastic container to work, fill it up, and carry it back to the boat.  That's actually pretty heavy when you're tramping across a field!  

 

I had a plastic beer barrel from a previous hobby, which I put on the draining board with its tap overhanging the sink.  I would fill that from the five gallon container, and thus had "running" water at the kitchen sink.

 

I did use the gas, but only for cooking and the gas-powered fridge, which kept the cost manageable.

[canalbuff]

That whole experience sounds tough Steve...that particularly cold night was probably winter 81 into 82. We hadn't winterised Grey Poplar properly in our first year and had multiple burst (copper) pipes throughout the boat , including wrecking the Paloma water heater and a pump. That was a hard lesson. Many of the mattresses got wet/damp and we put them on the roof to dry out. Of course we secured them when we headed out onto the river and onto the Trent, but not well enough to prevent 2 of them heading off in the wind...

 

Your whole life in Redhill sounds like quite an adventure beside our visits for maintenance and short breaks. At the time many of my friends remarked that I had better heating and more radiators than the flats we lived in at the time! I had looked at several boats in London to live on at the time but I never took the plunge like you. Nowadays of course many young adults are choosing liveaboard status in London simple because housing is not affordable close to jobs.  That could have been me back in the day.

We also had a "marine mortgage" but I supplied a deposit from being made redundant from my first job. Probably should have spent it on a flat but I always followed the dream of having a boat.

"Peter" mentioned above was the guy who showed us round the "showboat" that they brought down to Little Venice. We then visited Stenson to see our prospective boat I remember they were all lined up alongside each other. (I will find those pictures). We didn't get a survey but were given a copy of one done by a chap I think was called "Greatwood" who was a surveyor advertised in the magazines at the time . We didn't see clearly down both sides and missed that she had a large "caved in" section of the hull about three quarters of the way down the port side. This looked like she had come off worst from a broadside from another boat or been swept into something hard and immovable by current/wind. We lived with that "feature" and from the off she also developed an increasing list which we later put down to the shifting brick rubble ballast we found in the bilge. Despite all this she was our boat. We kept and I still have a log of all the trips we made including a 3 week trip to Manchester and back where I was best man at a mates wedding and the couple spent the first week of their marriage in the "Captains cabin" otherwise known as centre dinette.

The 56fters (there were some other shorter ones at about 42ft, one of which also moored at Redhill and a full makeover by the owner) seemed to be designed for hire by 2 families with the rear cabin with 2 bunk beds(upper bunks on hinges), a forward cabin with 1 bunk bed and the 2 dinettes to convert to doubles for the parents. The toilets were the dump through type which needed pump outs eventually. How did you get on with that with living aboard and keeping costs down? We used to use bungee straps on the top bunks to help keep adults in their bunks!

We had an agile friend, (not the one below) whose party trick was to climb off the roof at the bow onto an accommodation bridge, cross the bridge and then drop back down onto the boat at the stern end. Many were the times we tried to leave him behind... 

 

[SteveT]

On 24/04/2021 at 10:50, canalbuff said:

A "mooring" at Redhill circa 1981...

 

Yes!  Calling it a "marina" was a bit optimistic, I think.

[SteveT]

11 hours ago, canalbuff said:

The toilets were the dump through type which needed pump outs eventually. How did you get on with that with living aboard and keeping costs down?

 

I decided not to use the recirculating toilet, for obvious reasons, and bought a Porta Potti.  These are a two-part device, with fresh water in the upper tank (plus some blue chemical), and the waste plus flushing water ends up in the lower tank.  When the lower tank is full, you split it into two separate halves, take it to a suitable drain point, empty the bottom tank and fill up the upper tank with water.  All done.  Having said that, it was a heck of a trek from my mooring to the sewage point through muddy fields and rough tracks, and aching arms resulted.

 

Now, lighting: as you'd expect, it had 12V fluorescent lighting throughout.  Trouble was, the battery was pretty well knackered, and the only way to charge it up was to run the engine.  I realised it was a terrible waste of diesel to keep running the engine just to charge the battery, and in any case the noise got a bit much after a while.  So I went with paraffin.  I bought a couple of those "storm lantern" things, because they were cheap, and found a second-hand Tilley lamp.  That was great, and gave off a useful amount of heat as well.

 

What's the cheapest way to eat?  Cabbage and offal.  I went to a market every week and came home with a couple of carrier bags of stuff.  I found that ox liver was particularly cheap, as were chicken hearts.  Also, sometimes there was extra-cheap sausage meat with, presumably, all the most disgusting bits of an animal, plus sawdust or whatever other bulking agent they had to hand.  Guys, I don't know about you, but chicken hearts are just too disgusting to describe.  Like eating a rubber ball, and all the time you know just what it is in your mouth.  Yuck!!

 

However, the cabbage and offal would make a stew that lasted most of the week.

 

Oh, lunches: lettuces were cheap, as was white bread.  So lunches were lettuce sandwiches, every day.