Yeah, I’d probably not Google that. It was a short visit to the boat today. The first order of business was to ensure the mooring lines were suitable for Storm Ashley. The river as we already know is susceptible to flooding so I wanted to make sure the mooring lines could cope should the water level rise significantly, and conversely when the water level dropped again. Cue searching for a video on YouTube to teach me how to tie a non-slipping loop knot. You can see the result here:
The next job of the day was to go on a fender scavenger hunt. I only have one, and to say it is a litle inadequate in size is an understatement. I found two in the little shed near my boat. The reason I needed the fender is because after the flooding last time the tree the boat was mored to did a little bit of damage to the hull. Finding the fenders was not without incident. Of course it wasn’t. Whilst walking over some wooden planking to the shed, it gave way and my foot went straight through it. Risking life and limb in pursuit of the dream.
The to-do list from yesterday included washing the boat. Well, I didn’t get the whole boat done, just most of the hull. I say most of the hull, I cleaned all of port side, the transom and about a quarter of starboard side. Most of the starboard side is inaccessible. Unless I manage to acquire the skilll of walking on water. The hull looks a lot better than it was, that’s for sure.
I have an idea though, I’m going to drag some unsuspecting soul down to the boat with me at some point and see if we can get the boat turned around, just to get it cleaned, and then turn it back around again. Any takers? Zed? It’ll be fucking hysterical. Results of hull scrub below:
I cut off a bit of damaged rub-rail so I could set about finding a supplier to provide me with a brand new one. A little bit of destruction, but it’s constructo-destructo, so we’re all good. Remember when I removed the whole fucking thing from the old boat? The other reason I’m removing it, is because I ideally want a chrome, or white rub rail, depending on the cost. Here’s a reminder of what I did to the wooden rub rail on the old boat:
I scribbled on the boat with pencil. I wanted to mark out the area to bevel around Walkie Talkie. I am reliably informed by a stranger on the internet, that the bevel area should be 12 times the thickness of the existing fibreglass. Only I fucked it up didn’t I? Maths is usually my strong point. The thickness of the existing fibreglass is 0,5 cm and if you multiply that by 12 you get 6cm. I worked it out to 3cm in the video below. Go me! Thank god I didn’t use a Sharpie!
Looking at the to-do list from yesterday, I actually got quite a bit done. There are some notable “not dones”, namely bevelling the holes and sanding the cabin. There’s a perfectly legitimate reason for this. I ran out of time yesterday, I’m still a little nervous about hooking anything electrical to any power points in the yard on account they were submerged in water up until a week ago, and lastly I brought the sander and respirator home yesterday and forgot to take it with me today. Why did I bring them home? Well the little “at home” job for the week is to try and salvage the locker covers from the bed. No doubt I’ll post something later in the week.
That’s about it for today. The wind was picking up, so decided it was time to come home.