title: Linq Greater and Less Than operator on string containing date
body: <p>I am writing a linq query in my application that I want to use a "less than" operator on.  However column I am trying to apply it to is of type string (which we can't change) and is causing intellisense to throw an error as the "&lt;" operator cannot be used on string type.</p>
  
  <p>My question is how else can I do this?  Here is the part of my code that the error occurs on.</p>
  
  <pre><code>public ActionResult Index()
  {
      var results = Mapper.Map&lt;IEnumerable&lt;VesselViewModel&gt;&gt;(db.tbl_vessels
      .Where(p =&gt; 
            (p.vessel_type.Contains("AHTS")) &amp;&amp;
            (p.spotlist_id == 2) &amp;&amp;
            (p.fixture_start &lt;= System.DateTime.Now.Date)
       )
      .ToList());
      return View(results);
  }
  </code></pre>
  
  <p><code>fixture_start</code> is a string, we can't change it due to complications elsewhere. Is there anyway around this problem?</p>