2006: 1 - Restoring Warrior

For anyone who hasn't ventured into the Warrior blog, this was where I started. Blogging, that is, not boating. Warrior was in fact my/our third boat in a three year whirlwind romance with the waterways, beginning with Helyn (22' fibreglass cruiser) in 2004, complemented by Andante (32' R&D) when I needed somewhere to live in Huddersfield, and culminating in 2005 with Warrior when we knew we were in this boating lark for the long haul.

Warrior was purchased in autumn 2005, but it was spring 2006 before we were able to think of moving her from the mooring at Golden Nook near Chester. Warrior is a beautiful and very solidly built tug, whose main attraction was a 1937 three-cylinder, marine, National engine. That needed a very expensive rebuild.

The summer of 2006 was spent working on an engineless boat on the bank, shotblasting, blacking, blacking some more (I still have scars), painting in temporary Craftmaster raddle all over, and completely ripping out the interior and doing amazing things with pitch pine, quarter-sawn oak and French enamel stoves, whilst the engine sat in Daventry and kept Russell Newbery solvent for one more year.

The trip from Goldon Nook to Stretton was enlivened by meeting a great many old boats going the other way, en route to Ellesmere Port for Easter, whilst nominally in control of a boat firing on about one and a half cylinders and with a very temperamental reverse gear; we followed up with what, with hindsight, was possibly the most momentous event of 2006: we went to Braunston. And so the seeds were sown of the obsession that led to the purchase and subsequent eleven-year (and counting) ownership of Chertsey.

(Fast-forwarding five years, I reckon we must be nearing the tenth anniversary of Adrian and Linda purchasing Warrior - I always felt less bad about abandoning her for a Big Woolwich knowing that she went into such good hands.)