Wednesday, July 24, 2019

Well, this is fun!

Our car seems to know the route from our house to Steve and Karolina's now, and Grace and I have spent several days there over the past month. There's been wallpaper stripping and Polyfilling and sanding and washing of bedroom walls and ceilings. S and K have been working hard, too, but they have less time to spare than us, so it's good that we can put in the hours, and it shouldn't be long before the coving and lining paper go up. We'll let them and volunteer friends do the painting!

An added complication has been Karolina moving out of her St Albans flat, and the living room of the new house is now full of furniture and other belongings from there. Steve was able to make use of his work Transit van to shift the stuff, and he and I did the lot in just a few evenings. Now they just have to sort it out!

Karolina's parents came over from Poland a couple of weeks ago for a few days. They did a lot to help in the new house. Marik in particular worked many hours plastering walls. It was lovely to meet them, and we got on really well together, despite the acute language barrier. The only Polish we know is Ogรณrki Konserwowe, though Marik and Yolande (may not be spelled correctly) knew rather more English than that.

On the Sunday, we took them to the lovely 400 year-old Rose and Crown not far from our house, and we all enjoyed a traditional English Sunday Roast and English desserts, none of which they'd had before.




Then we drove on to Luton's Stockwood Discovery Centre for a leisurely stroll around the gardens and the transport museum. It was also the occasion of Steve and Karolina's official engagement, complete with a kneeling Steve and a beautiful ring.




It  was a great day all round!

We returned to Kantara today. It's one of those record-breaking hot days, and the energy's been sapped out of us. The temperature was 30° in the boat when we arrived, and it's still the same six hours later. The maximum since we were here last was 33°. Minimum was 15°. It's feeling very stormy now. There were thunderstorms in St Albans last night - here tonight?



We're here to do some more little jobs. The wooden draining board needs routine oiling, the silicon seal between it and the sink needs to be replaced. We'll spin the boat around to expose the other side of the paintwork to the sun in an attempt to avoid one side fading more than the other, and I'll wash her all over when the heat allows me to! The well-deck bilges are a lot drier now, but we need to find out how we can get rust converter applied all over the area. The only solution I can think of  is to get a hole cut in the hull. Hmmmm!



So it's busyness as usual. Fun!




Wednesday, July 03, 2019

A brief return

There were things that needed to be done on board the good boat Kantara. We'd been so busy serving the demands of our house - and they were demands, not polite requests - that she must have been feeling very neglected. We sought permission of the millstone that weighs heavily around our necks, and hurried off to the marina. It looked almost empty. Everyone else was out there enjoying the waterways. Sigh.

We'd chosen the hottest day in human history to drive to the marina to see how far the melting process had advanced, but Kantara wasn't nor had been anything like as hot as we had feared she might. Max/min thermometers indicated that 30° had been the hottest. Nothing had melted. Large jars of pickled gherkins and olives had died of heatstroke, but the one majorish annoyance was a leak under the well-deck. We had removed the water pump to take it away to fix it where seams in the casing had been leaking. The pipe from the water tank was now unusually unattached. Naturally, we'd turned off the stopcock from the tank, but we'd never before had the occasion to notice that it doesn't actually totally stop water from leaving. There was a slow but steady leak from the open-ended pipe which, over the weeks of our absence, had soaked the floor the tank stands on, the bilges below that, the saloon floor outside of the cupboard it all stands in, the carpet, and the step down from the deck to the cabin, which stands on the carpet. A couple of nights of using the dehumidifier dried it all out, though the bilges still need some attention, and we're considering spraying all of that area with rust-converter to protect the steel in future.

The step, which doubles as a storage box, has come back to the house with us to have remedial works done.

The wind across the marina was strong to very strong for the whole of the two days we were there. Seriously, I walked the length of a pontoon to take photos, a pontoon with no boat either side, and there was a real risk of me getting blown off into the water. But it was pleasantly sunny and warm in the wind - a mere 26°. A trough of neglected Nasturtiums had somehow survived the heat under the cratch cover without water. I think we've grown a new strain!








The day we arrived it was heat-wave hot, and we wilted. Then, of course, the temperature plummeted overnight and we, covered only by a sheet, got cold. But neither extreme stopped us from getting the jobs done. I changed the oil and filter, we replaced the cooker hood we'd serviced, Grace fitted and tested the water pump, then hung the bedside shelf unit she'd made. We vacced up the myriad insect carcasses dropped by the countless spiders of all sizes, generally cleaned and tidied throughout in hopeful anticipation of cruising again one day in the not-too-distant future. Sunday lunch was enjoyed at The Wheatsheaf - where else?

Back in St Albans, the jobs seem to multiply. My early hard pruning of the privet hedge (through which ash, spiraea, rose, bramble, cotoneaster and berberis were thrusting their weedy heads) turned into an attempt at cutting them down to ground level, which turned into hiring a professional to do the whole flipping lot. The attempts to stop the central-heating boiler from cutting out have progressed to arranging for a new boiler to be installed. As I write, we're still awaiting notification of when the professionals will do the jobs.

We spent a few hours at Steve and Karolina's house one day, waiting for the visit of an asbestos surveyor. S and K were at work. This gave me time to give their overgrown lawn a first pass, and to do a bit of weeding, too. I like gardening. I find it very therapeutic.

The return to Kantara had been, too.