Risky business

“What would you do chums? Do it and chance your luck or not do it and chance your luck that was the exact size of it. I've got to do it haven't I”.

Captain George Winn, 'Story of a Victorian Bargeman'*

It's a risky business, for sure. If not exactly embrace that on the Raybel restoration, we’ve at least come to accept it – no doubt in line with all the other brave boat builders and restorers out there. Sure, good planning helps, but risk is never completely avoided.

Sometimes funding comes up short of what you hope for. Or skilled people aren’t easily available. There’s headaches with material costs, sourcing problems, even just getting the stuff on site once you've bought it is tougher than you'd ever expected.

We commit, hold faith in our intent, trust in the preparations we’ve made, and deal with conditions as they arise…..

Six months ago our Heritage Fund project had just finished and we were wondering, what next for Raybel?

A huge amount had been achieved – frames secured, bow section reconstructed, decking replaced, new hull planking. But – as long anticipated – it hadn’t been possible to do everything needed to bring the barge back into sailing condition.

So we took a deep breath and worked through the options, talking to the shipwrights, a maritime surveyor, the volunteers, funders, supporters.

One idea was to bring Raybel out of the dry dock, giving the timbers a good soak to stop them drying out further. Under this plan we would run Raybel as a static venue before resuming work once we had long-term financing in place.

Option B was to press on, and pull together a smaller funding application that would see us through to the completion of all the work needed to get Raybel sailing again. But this was a risk. Next job on the to-do list was to remove all the bolts that fasten the bottom of the barge. Without these, the barge sinks. So pressing on meant completely losing the option to take Raybel out of the dry dock.

If the extra funding didn’t come through, Raybel would be stuck in the dock for ….how long? We didn’t know. But the longer it was, the more the timbers would decay, leading to much higher costs further down the line."What would you do chums?".

In the end we decided we’d built up such momentum with the volunteers and shipwrights that we should press on and take the risk – and so spent a frantic few weeks putting together a follow-on bid to the Heritage Fund, with supporting applications to the Swires’ Trust and Charles Burnett Charity Trust.

We’re super grateful that all three of these came through and we were able to resume work in June, after just a brief two month pause.

The next set of tasks are difficult and dirty, with the shipwrights working beneath the barge, to strip off the old ‘doublers’ – the outside planks which act as a protective screen. On the port and starboard edges, the ‘chine doublers’ will be replaced, in opepe: whilst at the forward end, elm – versatile and pliable – is being used to double the bottom section of the bow, with the planks first twisted one way and then back.

Then there’ll be the doubling at the back, or aft, of the barge to be done.

Meanwhile, the old chine and keel bolts are still being removed in a valiant effort by volunteers Jim and Ken. The final job on the bottom of the barge will be replace all 200+ of these.

Working in somewhat easier conditions, the regular Monday volunteer crew, under watchful eye of Roger, have begun painting rails, coamings and hatches – all starting to look spick and span now.**

Gareth on Raybel

*From 'The Victorian Bargeman" (Chaffcutter Books) - George Winn’s account of his life on Thames barges. Here, George’s employers, Smeed Dean & Co, have given him 24 hours to decide whether to give up skippering the Esther to take on a bigger barge, the Persevere. George decides yes (of course) and spends the next decade sailing Persevere on the 'Channel trade' between Sittingbourne and south coast ports including Penzance, Plymouth, Poole and Southampton.

**On historic shipyards, a spick (or spike) was another word for nail. Span was wooden shavings. On a new ship, the nails would still be shiny and wooden shavings would still be lying around. So a new ship would be all spick and span.