Job done!

It's finished! After seven weeks, Kantara was finally ready to leave by the end of last week. And she looks wonderful! She glows, she shines. And the signwriting, too. A compass on the sliding hatch at the back, another, smaller one on the gas locker hatch at the front, an "eye" motif each side of the bow, a scroll on each side, one across the side doors and the other on the port side, and her "Kantara" writ large each side of the rear of the cabin. Underneath each name, Jon has painted a white ellipse for Grace to paint castles on, suitably adorned with roses, and she'll add some roses further along the sides, as well.

Compass on the rear hatch

Moored outside the workshop

The colours have such depth, such lustre. It's a joy to behold. Kantara was taken out of the shed on Tuesday, and we moored up just outside it for a day. It's going to take four weeks or so for the paint to harden fully, so there's no cruising for us until the end of the month when we're to be joined by Michelle for a week. But of course we had to drive her back, so we did that yesterday, having spent Wednesday restoring to their places all the bits and bobs John had had to take out of lockers.

We did the journey back from Debdale in the one day. We'd normally spread it over two, but we wanted to get her off the cut as quickly as possible, to reduce her chances of getting scratched. There were few boats out, and we avoided damage to the paint.

Foxton Locks

Back at Yelvertoft, we finished tidying up, and waited for the rain to come, to wash the dust off Kantara. And that came today.

Watch this space!

You can see my reflection in it!

Compass on the gas locker hatch

The eye motif

When we got back to the marina, there was a new arrival on the horizon...

...installed by the marina owners. Perhaps we'll get free electricity!

On the subject of which, we've decided to bring in Simon to sort out some very basic but elusive problems with our domestic power. John isolated the batteries while he worked on Kantara, but it seems the isolators don't isolate, and the batteries may have been drained too low by several relatively low loads over the duration of the six or seven weeks spent there. Or the batteries are OK and the two year-old charger has developed a fault; whenever I switch it on, it just wants to charge at high voltage most of the time, and shows no inclination to decrease the charge over time.

Oh, and it may be that only one of our four solar panels is working. And it may be that that has been the case from the start. If that is the case, then we've been doing very well off just the one unit, and we'll have an amazing supply of electricity when the other three are restored.

We've got a lot of littlish jobs to do now, and the new carpet's going to be fitted next Wednesday. After that, we'll go back to the house to collect the rest of the stuff we need on the boat for the rest of the year.

And then, we cruise!