Tuesday, August 13, 2013

Painting finished!

With the weather forecasters apparently more confused than we are about the weather, we took our chances with it yesterday, and set out to Bridge 27 to finish painting the starboard side of the hull. Strangely, although it still had the patches of undercoat which we applied last year, there was very little new damage to the paint – not nearly as much as on the port side.

We arrived in time to do all of the preparatory work before lunch, then applied the paint in the afternoon. At least, Grace did. I've got a bad back - goodness knows how - so wasn't able to do too much bending or kneeling. I was able to get on with a few jobs, however, so didn't get to feel too useless. I even prepared supper!


With our all-but-dead domestic batteries, any attempt to use the inverter to generate 240v would have undoubtedly drained them in no time, as happened last week. They did support the 12v TV and DVD player however, and we spent the evening under a single light, watching "The skin I live in" – very odd!

We returned to the marina this morning, very glad that we got the job done, since the weather is now very windy and looking increasingly as if it will rain.

On the way back, I had to get off the boat to help out a guy in a hire boat with his small son. We had just passed a boat coming in the opposite direction whose crew had just helped this man to get his boat back to the bank. A mooring had come adrift, and the bow had swung out into the middle of the canal. He was struggling to get it back on his own. As we arrived alongside him, we saw why it had happened; he was using the mooring hooks completely wrongly, and it was no wonder that he had had problems. I showed him how to use them correctly, and walked briskly to catch up with Grace and Kantara at the next bridge.

Mooring hook

Now it's back to the little jobs around the boat, with the batteries being fitted on Friday.


No comments:

Post a Comment

I'd love to hear from you!