The first open weekend of 2022 has sailing barge “Will” here, fresh from dry dock, winter repairs and maintenance.
The vessel is available for visitors to look at close up, as well as tour round the deck (with care). She is a working charter barge, taking groups of people on private charters now, rather than the commercial trade of decades ago, when Thames sailing barges were the mainstay of shipment of goods in and around the Thames and the estuary, up the east coast and sometimes across the channel. Fully rigged and able to sail, the Will is the largest such barge built. Constructed 1925, measuring 97.6ft long (almost 30m).
