Oh dear, it’s February and London’s river Thames was recovering from serious flooding. Still, we sat on the train towards West London to view a dutch barge, a shell. We did find the location and the barge, the owner a tough cookie, a lady living on boats for a long time. The barge was in a desolate condition, would have needed quite a big financial investment to make it liveable. Worst of all, Adnan couldn’t stand upright in pretty much all the areas, but he still considered buying it! Antonios, a friend and already living on a boat, and myself had a hard time talking Adnan out of his excitement… but we did, eventually.
Oh dear, again, here we are on the road on a rather sunny Saturday towards some place outside London in order to view boats. Of course we got stuck in heavy traffic jam & we wondered if we are ever going to arrive on time. We did & we found the location relatively easy. The boat was rather big, the interior was shabby, old carpet every where, the wood work would have needed a good clean and a lick of paint, basically quite a lot of renovation was needed to make it comfy. We got the folder with all the specs and headed out to a Cafe near by. To discuss, at least so we thought. Antonios was with us again, Adnan’s enthusiasm was flying high and we couldn’t stop him. We headed back, the hands were shaken, Adnan owned a narrow boat. Natascha wanted to have another look around, as there was this wooden bed frame she didn’t like, pulled out the drawers and there it was: wet and rotten wood, mould everywhere. We lifted the carpet and all the wood floor was wet. We opened the hatch to access the bottom of the hull, there was water every where… The handshake was reversed, Adnan owned a boat for 20 minutes only. We left.
Our next stop was Harefield Marina, Natascha’s morale to view more boats was, well, low. Another stinking, rotten boat and she’ll have had a hissy fit! The first boat there for us to see was opposite the Marina, it looked like some floating S&M dungeon, fitted in black and purple, fake black leather L-shaped sofa. Not even Adnan could be persuaded that this is THE boat.
Next. We went to the Marina itself, asked the people there, if there are boats for sale. We got the keys to a boat called ‘Quintessence’. We entered and we found a boat smelling of engine/machine oil and had an interior fitting which resembled…. well, Nat’s design sense was profoundly hurt.
But Adnan…
