Charleroi to Boom

So, Monday morning dawned bright and clear at Vankerkoven, but there was no sign of Sandrine Vankerkoven, nor of her brother Vincent, so nobody who spoke any English to help us understand the Eastern-European French that was being spouted by the Chef du Port, Osman.

However, it appeared we were to be side-slipped onto the dock area after lunch.  Osman wasn’t interested in the fact that we have a small keel running the whole length of the boat, but he did take account of the keel cooling pipes and marked up the side of Riccall for two trolleys – one just behind the keel cooling pipes and the other 12m forward, just aft of the front bulkhead.  So that was OK and we came out with a bit of rocking from side to side, but apart from that, OK.  They then put some supports under us that could be jacked up in a crude way, but were unable to get enough lift to remove the trolleys (into which our small keel had formed a deep groove in the wood).

The following day, Riccall was jetwashed up to the waterline and late that evening at 11pm our surveyor Stefan Fritz arrived.  So after a quick drink and some scratch food, we said goodnight and went to bed worrying about the morning.

At first the survey seemed pretty good: decent thicknesses on the sides, along the waterline and round the turn of the bilge, then after lunch came the underside.  Exclamations of horror and regret

From under the boat followed one another with awful regularity.  It appeared that many of the rivets had ‘pulled through’ and would need welding - 100 in all - and although the general thickness was not too bad, there were several actual holes in the plates!  These holes would have occurred where deep pitting on the inside coincided with deep pitting on the outside.  The safest answer was to double plate the whole bottom!

(At this stage our surveyor said that an ultra high pressure washer was essential in order to take the hull back to rust-free steel to give a good base for the welding and an epoxy based paint job. Vincent was not prepared to consider hiring in such a machine, even at our cost.)

Now we knew we were going to be in trouble, because the yard would know that they had us in a cleft stick and could charge pretty much what they liked to do the job.  However! Riccall had been dragged out after an 80m barge which had to go back into the water within a few days and we were in the way.  So the yard decided that they would have to make us waterproof at least, put us back in the water, re-launch the 80m commercial then pull us out again for the remainder of the work.

So we let them do the minimum amount of work possible to make us watertight then told them that we simply couldn’t afford to have the whole job done at their quote of circa €25k: we would just leave it at that.  We had also in the meantime asked two other yards in Belgium for quotes to do the job and also to use an ultra high pressure jet wash on the hull.  One yard offered all this at about half Vanks’ quote so we planned to set off for them as soon as we were re-floated.

We had taken the opportunity during the weekend when nothing was happening in the yard to visit Namur by car as we had not had time to even stop when we passed it by boat.  It seemed like a clean pleasant place with good quays and a decent range of shops and it was nice to get away from the boatyard scene for a few hours.

On the other hand Charleroi, which Louise visited briefly while Alex returned to Toul for the car, was a dreadful place: dirty, run-down, graffiti everywhere, highly industrialised with filthy, noisy steelworks and recycling plants now that the coat mines have all closed.  Sightseeing tours include trips up some of the slag heaps, as being the best thing on offer!

In the meantime Sandrine and brother Vincent had made out a bill for what they had done so far.  The cost for the plating was not unreasonable (in their terms) but their original quote had included a paint job which we had later said would not be necessary.  They tried to reduce the overall price by just a paltry €250 for not having the paint applied, and at that point Alex drew the line.  So very reluctantly Vincent gave us another €250 off the bill, which still came to around €6,000.  But even at that, going to a different yard was going to be cost-effective.  

Having milked our bank accounts at hole-in-the-wall dispensers over two days, thus accumulating about half the bill in cash, we then did an internet transfer of the remainder from our French bank account, and Sandrine was satisfied that we could leave.

So, a two and a half day journey to Boom on the River Rupel near Antwerp, our next destination.  Regular checks for water ingress satisfied us that we weren’t actually going to sink and we arrived quite comfortably, passing through Brussels (forgettable from the water) on the way.  We used the Ronquières Inclined Plane on this journey, which was quite an experience, and we think because the Belgian commercial ships were on strike and moored up in every little nook and cranny, we had no opposition and no wait for the lift – it can take hours in a busy season.

Dave, the main man at Boom, who speaks perfect English, had understood exactly what we were looking for and had given us a very competitive quote.  This dock is a tidal one, and we had to ferry our way in against a pretty strong flow just before the top of the tide.  Once moored in position we watched Lechaim, a 105m barge which was also coming into the dock, trying to manoeuvre a small workboat into the dock.  This workboat had its ‘legs’ down too far to enable Lechaim to get it over the sill of the dock.  So Lechaim took it back to its mooring out on the river then came back in itself.  We spoke to Reyer, the captain, afterwards and expressed our amazement at how he had handled his 105m barge as a tug for the little workboat and he said that after a lifetime with boats it was just all in a day’s work!  But the tide was still running pretty strongly and even though he had a 180 degree bow thruster you would have thought he was just 20m like us and not a 105m leviathan.

The next day he and Corrie his wife invited us for what we assumed would be aperos at about 6.30-7pm but it actually turned out to be after-supper tea and cakes!  But what the hell, we were given a guided tour of one of these €4m commercial vessels.  The living quarters were immaculate with three double bedrooms, fully fitted bathroom, en suite and a large open plan dining/kitchen/living room.  The wheelhouse was just state of the art: the whole thing lifted about 5 metres on a hydraulic lift system and the top part of the wheel house could be lowered if necessary to get under low bridges with a roof hatch for the captain to stick his head out of pro-tem.  Up at the front was another set of living accommodation for the crew!

The main engine room had three engines in it – the power house, 1700bhp with triple turbos, the generator, 15kva and the hydraulics.  In the forward compartment were another three engines - 300 bhp for the bow thruster and two generators as back up for the rear ones.  At least I think that’s how it was set up: I definitely did see 6 engines in all!  They don’t bother with a big bank of domestic batteries: they just run the gennies all the time until they are hooked up to shore power.  In fact their Victron inverter was only rated at 1200kw.

Anyway, the reason they are in dry dock is for a survey because Reyer, at 70 years old, has decided it is time to retire and he is selling his barge.  The guy who is buying it is a 32 year old Frenchman and he is going to revamp the whole interior of the living accommodation!!

The other day was Bank Holiday in Belgium so we had a quiet day in the yard – quiet from the point of view of boatyard noise, but extremely busy as Alex used the lovely weather to fit the new solar panels to the wheelhouse roof.

Retrieving the car after each stage of the journey from Vankerkovens was interesting, if a perfect nuisance, but we felt it was important to have transport while in dry dock, and so it has turned out, enabling us to drive hither and thither for spare parts, new ropes, everyday shopping and the inevitable bank!

The new bottom is being installed as we write this, but not without a certain degree of angst/excitement and unexpected happenings!  More details to come in due course.