Part 2. Adventure here we come…

So this is it, the beginning of our adventure…

It is 9am and we have been cruising for four hours since sunrise. The sun is playing across the rug and footstool as I write. The engine is purring away and the sea is calm and empty on a bright summers day. Zeeshan Khan – ship cat is fast asleep as we pass Walton-on-the-Nase. I calmed down quite a bit once we got going, my attention and excitement being drawn to sunbathing sleepy seals on sandbanks at the mouth of the Crouch.

Today is not the start of the story, that started some ten years ago. As we cruise up the coast, I’ll tell you everything from the beginning…

It all began when wildly in love, my now husband Phil and I wrote down all our dreams for the future together on a white board in our kitchen. We were renting in Southend-on-sea, a stunning open plan converted church. We had a lot of fun there, however gradually the surrounding intrusions from arguing neighbours, drunk teens and the constant sirens in the urban jungle began to grate… Living in France became our fantasy after many holidays in the South. So, let’s live on a boat and cruise through France!

I am a firm believer in making dreams come true, of making them real, of directing your own path in life. However, it does take determination, perseverance and guts to do it.

We began by researching everything we could about living on a boat, barges, moorings… We joined the DBA – The Barge Association, a fountain of knowledge and advice. One day I surprised Phil with a weekend away on a hotel barge ‘Baglady’ on the Thames. Sitting on the front deck, we decided that we could make this happen, now, not in years to come. Through the DBA we contacted a Dutchman who ‘found’ barges for people in the Netherlands. To us, it became an obvious choice to look where barges were plentiful and cheaper than in the U.K.

Hoogtij is rocking gently side to side as she steams through the shiny clear waters of the East coast.

We thought it might take several visits to the Netherlands to find our perfect floating home, it didn’t. We fell in love with Hoogtij, the first boat we were shown! She wasn’t a barge at all, but a converted launch boat built in Germany 1936 . She was a Hamburger Barkas with beautiful curvy lines, stolen by the Dutch after the Second World War. She was used as a troop carrier in the Dutch Navy until 1984. Her first owner then converted her into a live aboard ship filled with beautiful carpentry. The first moment we stepped aboard, we felt at home. There was a warmth, an imprint of the affection of previous owners and the ships history radiated from every original detail. You cannot describe to someone who lives in a house, the relationship you develop with a boat you live on. Every boat has a character, a personality, and old boats even more so. They will frustrate and anger you, yet you can feel such love and pride in them.

So began a tense time of purchasing Hoogtij, the survey, the boatyard and bringing her back to the U.K. Everything complicated by a foreign language, foreign country and our naivety. Nothing was easy, but the best things in life aren’t. To this day we celebrate the 11th June, the day we signed the contract that passed Hoogtij to our care…

We are just over a third of the way up the coast towards Great Yarmouth and about to cross a busy shipping lane at Harwich. what I thought was a town in the distance turned out to be huge container ship!

Just ahead we spy Sealand, a micro-nation on an off shore platform built by the British during World War 2. The decommissioned Roughs Tower was used as a pirate radio station base before being seized by Paddy Roy Bates in 1967 and declared a sovereign state in its own right.

Before we moved onto the boat I was beginning to feel frustrated by our casual use of resources in normal life. I felt as a society we had lost the fundamental skills of self-sufficiency and our relationship with nature. Living on a boat has given us much more respect for fresh water, fuel, waste, electricity and a closer understanding of nature.

It is midday now, having just survived two large bow waves from the container ships we passed. We held on tight as Hoogtij rolled dramatically. The cat is now sea-sick, has thrown up and hidden under the sofa in the hope that his world will feel more normal under there.

With the aid of a skipper we got Hoogtij through the Netherlands, Belgium and across the channel to our residential berth at Essex Marina on the River Crouch. We were so naive to what we had let ourselves in for! Phil was left in the Netherlands for several weeks preparing the ship for the sea crossing whilst I returned homeless to the U.K after a weeks annual leave (The time I thought it would take to bring back our ship!) I didn’t want to miss the sea passage so I took the Eurostar to Belgium to rejoin Phil and skipper for 16 hours of sea and sky.

The first 4 hours we had thick fog (we had no horn) and a Beaufont scale of 4 which meant we rocked and rolled, pounding up and down on the waves! It was an experience like no other yet we made it home in one piece! Hoogtij handled it beautifully with her Kromhout 6 cylinder heart beating steadily away! (Todays journey is much more peaceful).

There followed 8 years of work on her many aging and failing systems. We were both working full-time in our jobs and looking after family. It takes focused determination to make a dream come true. There were many times when everything was going wrong at once and the enormity of the work involved threatened to break us.

We didn’t buy Hoogtij only to live on, we chose her for the dimensions and ability to cruise the canals of France. The final part of the dream was to cruise with her. Working full-time I felt disjointed from my life on our little ship. It felt wrong to keep her tied up in a marina growing seaweed on her bottom. We did take her out for occasional cruises on the Crouch and Roach, which was challenging due to the strong tides and winds. There was constant maintenance and little by little improvements. At times the work needed was overwhelming, exhausting, always expensive. Many people just don’t make it this far, but we were both passionate and devoted to Hoogtij. We know intimately every inch of her hull, having sanded, ground and painted her ourselves, even sandblasting in 2020.

8 hours in and we are making excellent progress over the sparkly water, just passing Aldeburgh, following a lonely yacht ahead of us. We sight to our starboard the silhouette of a Lowestoft sailing trawler – the Excelsior.

Brexit tragically shattered our plans to reach France with Hoogtij. When your boat is your only home, it would be out of the question to leave it every 3 months. We can still hope that one day there will be a more conducive arrangement that enables a longer visa without substantial cost and complication. For now we head for new adventures on the beautiful Norfolk Broads.

Slowly all the obstacles and responsibilities that held us back from cruising with our little ship fell away. Finally we realised that it was time to take the plunge, Phil, Zee, Hoogtij and I , do it now or never do it at all! So I left my 19 year career in the NHS and Phil retired from his 40 year career in gardening. Time for a change, time to dance with the unknown.

It is 2.20pm and we are passing Southwold. Hoogtij is touching 10 knots, the tide running with us. It really is a glorious day for going to sea…