WATER WORKS

from Absolutely London Chiswick, West & Richmond July 2023

Smarter Rent’s

Words

Most young couples with a baby on the way would baulk at the idea of moving house, never mind renovating a 1960s Dutch barge from bare-hull condition into a contemporary threebedroom family home. Yet that’s exactly what Christina Miles and her partner Rohan Tully did in 18 months. So successful was the result that they have since established their own business, Isla Yachts, to help others bring their living-aﬂoat dreams to life.

‘It can be daunting, so we wanted to make it possible for people to take that leap of faith,’ Christina explains. Not that they were absolute beginners at the restoration game, or indeed boats: Rohan, an established property developer who is currently managing a development of 12 ﬂats, grew up around them and has plenty of experience with both boats and refurbishments. ‘There is no way we could have done this without his expertise,’ she adds. ‘There’s a huge di erence between building boats and building houses. With boats, you have to accommodate the moving tide, expanding and retracting steel.’ Of course, the upside is not having to deal with the building and planning restrictions that come with bricks and mortar, so there is plenty of scope to get creative. And this turned out to be one heck of a creative project, not least thanks to Christina’s ﬂair for interior design, replete with bold colours and patterns that are a sophisticated change from the usual ‘homely’ barge style.

But first, the backstory: desperate to move out of their cramped flat in central London, but not wanting to drift too far from friends, family and work, Christina and Rohan had spent a couple of years looking for the right vessel to convert. With the clock ticking down to the birth of daughter Elara, now two, they discovered a hulking 1965 Belgian Spitz, a former container ship that had once plied Europe’s waterways and is now home to their small family, including an Alaskan Klee Kai – a smaller version of the Siberian husky – named Aluki. ‘We’d driven out to Ghent to see it,’ remembers Christina. ‘As we opened up some of the steel on the roof, it was so exciting to see the big, dark space become flooded with light. It was a blank canvas, and a big one – we could build whatever crazy designs we wanted, with no building restrictions.’ Purchase completed, Rohan spent ten days sailing the barge from Ghent to a shipyard in Harlingen for some radical surgery. ‘Finding a sizeable mooring in London was a killer,’ he muses, ruefully. ‘So much so that it was easier and cheaper to buy a boat, snip a chunk out the middle and stick it back together. Luckily, that’s no biggie for the Dutch shipyards.’ A couple of months later, in the depths of winter, Rohan, his dad and a few friends finally brought the barge home across the Channel, delayed only slightly by being arrested early in the voyage. Luckily, after a ‘brief discussion’ and production of the appropriate paperwork, they were allowed to continue their journey in what was then little more than a tank. ‘No running water, no heating, half a loo and half of Belgium’s beer supply,’ laughs Christina. ‘I cannot describe the smell when I met them on the other side, as they moored at slack tide on the River Medway.’

An intensive period of renovation ensued, including a painful 24 hour wait to see if the new cement ballast – vital for keeping the boat stable and lower in the water – had set evenly. A series of setbacks, coupled with frustration over temporary living arrangements, led the family to move in before the electrics and plumbing were resolved. ‘We made do with extension cables and portable heaters for a while,’ she says. ‘We were happy to do that for the thrill of waking up that ﬁrst morning and looking out the window. The views we get of the wildlife blow us away,’ Christina adds. ‘To go back to living on land again … ,’ she pauses. ‘It would have to be something pretty special. I’m not sure if we could ever live next to a road again.’