A Herbie Christmas Message

Merry Christmas dear readers.  My, haven't I been neglecting you lately! Sorry about that, and sorry not to have got round to the usual Herbie Awards this year.  The only (feeble) excuse I have is that it's hard to type when a cat is sitting on your keyboard.

The only stay we had on Herbie recently was something of an adventure because it was during storm Darragh. Unsurprisingly we didn't leave our moorings. Well we did a bit, because the wind was blowing us off our pontoon as far as our mooring ropes would allow and the boat was rocking as if we were out at sea.  being on a pontoon at the end of a row means that we have open water on one side and it so happened that the wind direction was pushing us away.  Gertie the ship's cat was somewhat disturbed as were Kath and I. Here she is looking out of the window at the storm while hanging on for dear life.

I had to get up in the middle of the night to tie up the swan neck because the rudder was baning against its stops as the waves crashed into it. 

You probably can't make it out from the photo but one of the boats in tha backgrounsd is called Tranquil Waters.  Ha!!

I'd made a mock up of Herbie's name to try out on the side of the boat and stuck it on with little magnets.  In that wind it was not a trivial task so it's somewhat (ok, rather more than somewhat) skew whiff, but it gave me a better idea of the dimensions to aim for. 

I think it might be a bit too chunky. It's scaled up from Bookman Old Style font, but I think it was from the bold version. I might try it again without the bold.

The reason we were staying on the boat was that the  Marina had scheduled a moorers Christmas bash with mince pies, mulled wine, carol singing and boats decorated with fairy lights.  In event, no one was surprised (but many were relieved) when the  do was postponed because of the weather.

I popped back to Herbie yesterday to fit a safer way of tying up whilst allowing the boa=t to rise and fall in flood conditions.  The week before we were there the water had risen by over a foot and staff had to rush round loosening everyone's ropes.  That sounds like something worthy of a Herbie Award. For some reason the mooring ring on our pontoon seems to be positioned for a 40 foot boat even though the pontoon is about 56ft long.  Herbie is 50 ft. So here is my solution for now.  Not ideal but it should hold.

And so dear reader, we look forward trepidatiously to 2025.  This has to be the year when we get Herbie's exterior paint work back up to scratch (mm that's an inappropriate choice of word, but you know what I mean.) Another non trivial task but I've been assembling the right tools and have a plan of sorts.  Let's hope the weather allows it to go ahead.

In the meantime have a lovely Christmas and New Year and we'll see you on the other side.

Neil & Kath & Gertie

A new design for Herbie's name

 Following my signwriting course I've not only been practising brushwork at home but also thinking about repainting Herbie's name on the side of the boat.  From all the hundreds of typefaces /styles/fonts (call them what you will) available which one should I choose?  Well I haven't decided but over the winter I'll experiment with a few, drawing them up more or less full size.  The one below use three sheets of A3.  The first one of these uses Bookman Old Style font . I might have a go actually painting a couple of letters, maybe E and R, from it to see how hard it is. I'm still not all that good with brush control and this time I'm not using masking tape except maybe for top and bottom edges. 

Apologies for my shadow there and that it's a bit faint - it's just pencil. Perhaps I'll go over it with a black felt tip pen.   Here's a closer look at a part of it.

I quite like its chunkiness compared with what is on Herbie at the moment. I just noticed that I had omitted the blocking on the outside top half of the R. Doh!  

I was never happy with the letters E on the current one. Notice on the pencil one I have the 'blocking' on the right whereas on the boat I did it on the left. I think I prefer the right. The 'new' one also has deeper blocking.  

On the course, Joby Carter told us we'll never look at letters the same way again.  He was dead right; everywhere I go I'm looking at the detail of lettering.

As I try other styles I'll post them here in case anyone has an opinion to share.

A bit too much afloat

 Major problems at Cropredy Marina yesterday thanks to storm Bert.  The moorers' facebook group was showing alarming pictures of flooding all round the marina and in the village too. I don't think I can show them here because they are not my pictures. 

 The staff have been out slackening everyone's ropes to prevent the boats from being pulled over as the water rose so high. Now I read that there have been a lot of electrical problems because of shore line plugs being submerged.  I dare say that applies to ours.  There's not much we can do as we are at home where we've had some rain but not a lot.  We have to be so grateful to the marina staff who have worked through the night with the help of some resident moorers to attend to the safety of some 300 boats.  However they've found the time to keep us updated by regular emails.  We'll be going back to the boat in a couple of weeks so we'll see then if Herbie has been affected in any way.

On top of the boat issues the flooding has hit the facilities buildings and various bits are out of action and of course the car park has been under water.  The access road to the marina looked like a river.

I really can't understand why so many people deny the climate change science.  I would have thought it would be obvious by now that it's really happening.  I know there have always been floods, but not at the frequency they are coming nowadays.  I sue to have a dream of having a house by the river. I don't think I'd want one now.

Job's a Good'un

 The restoration of Herbie's hinged aft hatch lid is complete, no thanks to me. All the thanks go to my mate Rick who has lovingly and skilfully turned this

into this

Not a simple job because he had to cut away the old rotten plywood without damaging the 1mm thin fibreglass exterior wrapping and replace it with good solid hardwood, butting the new wood accurately against the remaining good old stuff. See where the old white bits meet thenew  brown bits at the side edges.

Tricky when working up against the outer skin.  I could never have done it so well. It'll see me out now, that's for sure. Future owners will appreciate the work wonder who RCB is

The hatch cover was originally made by Herbie's prevoius owner Roy, whose wife Val found the usual sliding type of hatch difficult so he came up with the hinged ideaI with built in props to hold it open, rather like the gas struts on a car boot. It's always been a good hatch cover, solid, (actually surprisingly heavy), secure and rainproof, but plywood always de-laminates eventually. The hatch has now had a good exterior repaint too so to do it justice I really have to work hard next spring when Kath and I are going to do a lot of Herbie's exterior paintwork which if you recall, we started earlier this year.

Thanks again Rick, you're a star!

Signwriting course - final two days

 On Thursday, we were all thinking about our final pieces to take home. Much planning and practising going on with Joby giving advice about letter spacing. I opted to stick with my TEA sign, hoping that I could get my straight lines straighter.  More arty people were dreaming up words with fancy fonts.

This time I got better with the pounce pad and managed to transfer my pattern in clearer dusty dots onto the board. It seems you have to rub rather than bash with the pad.  Joby did a lesson on how to draw shadows from your '3D' block letters.  This is not a simple thing to get right, and he showed us many examples of how professional signwriters have got it wrong.  As Joby usually does, he has worked out a simple method to get it right.  Sadly, simple though it is, you really need to see it, so don't expect me to duplicate it here. Sorry about that.

I did manage to get my lines straighter after another hour or so of practicing  boxes and by Friday morning I had my basic letters done and was ready to do the blocking. I decided to do this in two shades of green with the darker shades being where the light would not fall.  Here I am with the lighter shade on the sides

Then after waiting for that to dry, the underneath bits.

Its hard to put one colour accurately positioned against another so little gaps are visible on mine.  Partly it's just nervousness about making a mistake.  Something that can only be overcome with practice, which I why I bought enough stuff to take home and practice over the winter.

At the last minute on Friday afternoon I decided to put some little embellishments on the letters.  Little dots and lines on the pink bits.  Again being super cautious they are barely visible in the final photo - another example of needing to develop confidence in brush strokes.

So am I now a good signwriter?  Goodness gracious no!  This course is fascinating and thorough and you do by the end understand how to do it, but actually doing well it is a skill you have to develop over a lot of practice.  Everybody on the course learned loads of stuff and I think we'll all go on to develop better skills.  I would think about 70 percent of those attending want to go on to be able to earn money by writing signs or to do signs for their own businesses.  Others like me just wanted to learn and perhaps do some stuff for their own personal use.

So how would I sum up the course?  Is it enjoyable?  Yes. Is it thorough? Yes. Joby is a true master of his craft and he happily gives away all his trade secrets and tricks and tips, so I wouldn't think anyone teaches it better. And as he says, you will never look at lettering the same way again.  It's true, you do notice all sorts of detail you didn't see before.  You will by the end have a good understanding of letters, techniques, materials etc. It's not an easy (or cheap)  course and the days are long and quite tiring.  

Would anyone who completed the course be able to paint the name on their narrowboat?  Some would. If you want it to look reasonably professional you have all the information and tricks you need to do it.  With that knowledge, it's all about how good you are at handling a brush which is not as easy as you might think.. For the rest of us, with a bit more practice I don't see why not, as long as you don't expect to be anything like as good as the top guys like Phil Speight or Dave Moore etc.

Signwriting course days 2 & 3

 Day 3 was a bit depressing.  It started off well enough with me drawing out the name HERBIE in a font called Clarendon.

This I managed to do pretty well, while some others on the course struggled with scaling up their words.

Next we were asked to prick round the lines of our work and 'pounce' them onto our paint boards. Pouncing is a method whereby you used a powder filled pad to dab and wipe over your pricked holes which leaves a join the dots pattern on the board behind.  I found the result somewhat faint which didn't help at all when it came to painting on the board. My results were depressingly poor.

Not at all helped by the fact that Valentin sitting next to me did a fantastic job on his piece.

Valentin has come all the way from Brazil to do the course! As you can see, he's good!

We decided my main problem was using too large a brush for the size of the letters, and not pouncing strongly enough so I couldn't see where I was going.

So today I decided to choose a shorter word with larger scale letters - still in Clarendon and reverted to my TEA from earlier.  First of all though Joby showed us how to 'block' the letters with some neat tricks to get quick and accurate results.  He asked us to practice on the letters I A O and V to experience different shapes and angles.  Using Joby's tips and tricks I was able to knock this up quite quickly, although I'm not too sure about the O.

So then I set about blocking out and pricking TEA, then pouncing it onto the board ready for painting.

Joby suggested just painting the blocking first as an experiment, so using a smaller brush this time and having clearer pouncing I managed to produce this, which I rather like.

Then I did the letters without block, again not perfect but I'm improving every time.

You can just make out the block pouncing there.  It all gets a bit grubby but it all wipes clean quite easily. Far from perfect but quite an improvement from my earlier efforts.  Remember the actual painting is entirely freehand - no rulers or masking tape.

Tomorrow is the final day and the plan is to repaint the word (or words in some people's cases) with blocking and possibly shadows, which Joby will teach in the morning.  Some people are doing signs with smaller letters and different fonts.  I'm concentrating on larger chunkier lettes such as you m ight see on the side of a narrowboat.

Then we'll have a finished article to take away at the end, along with a copy of Joby's excellent and comprehensive signwriting book and three signwriting brushes (included in the cost of the course) - plus any signwriting materials and equipment we choose to buy.  I think most of us will be buying quite a few items to continue practicing at home.

Signwriting with Joby Carter

Today was day two of my introduction to proper sign writing, a course taught by Job Carter of the well known but now sadly defunct Carter's Steam Fair.  

The course is over five consecutive days and Joby teaches 15 students on each course. I think he said he will have done ten of these this year.

The workshop where the course is held has a lot of inspiration round the walls.

It's hard - very hard.  The first day was OK.  We had to study some different type faces then draw them up at three times the scale on the page.  This meant accurately measuring each part of the letters.  The idea is to get you to really look at the letters in fine detail.  At the end of the day I had produced this.

On day two we started to learn to paint -first how to look after brushes, how to manage paint viscosity, how to hold a palette and mahl stick, then how to paint a straight line and a circle. No masking tape, just chinagraph pencil lines to follow. Everybody was finding it surprisingly difficult, especially to get a square edge at the top and bottom of the vertical lines. We spent hours doing it and were somewhat better at the end but far from perfect.  Actually circles were not so hard as straight lines, which was unexpected. Here I am practicing (actually I should have been holding my palette at the time but another student asked me to pose and I forgot the palette.)

Those lines look deceptively OK from here, but believe me they are far from it. When we get to the end of the board, we wipe it clean and start again.

For a break from our struggles, Joby gave us a tour of the yard where what remains of the fairground stuff is stored, along with more art work.

This stair panel was painted by Job's mum.  What can you say other than Wow!

and how's this for a nice bit of coach painting?

Later in the day, we were asked to choose a short word and draw it out to help understand correct spacing between letters.  Here's what I did.

I think tomorrow will be more of the same.  We are promised that by the time we leave on Friday afternoon we will each have produced a creditable hand painted sign to take away.  Hard to imagine right now!!

After some months more practice I may tackle repainting Herbie's name panel.  That's the hope.

Stay tuned for further reports.  

Illustrated Post!

A picture's worth a thousand words, or so they say, but over the last week the internet signal here has been too slow to upload photos.  But today we have a brief window of clement weather so I got the job done.

First here's a shot of Herbies diesel spill rail rearing up like a cobra now it is removed from the engine and replaced by a shiny new one, which hopefully will not leak fuel. See the offending split in the cobra's head.

Next another jobette.  Rick has kindly offered to refurb our aft hatch cover which as some may recall is unusual being made of wood and hingeing rather than sliding.  The outer fibre glass skin is intact but the wooden sides within have rotted badly over the last twenty something years.   Here's the worst of it.

Replacing the wood without breaking the fibreglass skin will be a non trivial task, one I am not competent to carry out with any degree of finesse.  So while Rick does the refurb at his house, and it'll take quite a while, I've made a crude temporary cover  to hopefully keep the rain out. Here it is in its test fitting today.

It ought to keep out a modest amount of rain.  Whether it would survive in the sort of continuous deluge we've suffered this week, I'm not so sure.  In the background you can see the old hatch cover and its rotting sides.

And as if that wasn't enough, I've been prising off Herbie's wooden handrail tops which have also rotted in places.  I've repainted them on several occasions but in a number of places they are past that. The question now is, do I make and paint and fit new replacement rails or just clean up and repaint the steel beneath, which in truth are just the normal raised rails most other boats have.  I think it will all depend on how smooth I can get the steel which, although perfectly sound,  is somewhat pitted in places.  Getting a good surface on that might be more work than making new handrails.

Either way, cleaning up the steel will need some power tool work, which we're not supposed to do in the marina because of the noise and dust so I'll just take the boat out onto the canal towpath nearby.  Don't hold your breath for the finished job folks.  It'll be a while. Still, I've taken the first bite out of the elephant.  It always gets worse before it gets better.

Blimey, you must be thinking, poor old Herbie's in a state ain't she?  Well only in parts, and it's nothing that can't be fixed with some TLC and a lick of paint.  She's still a very sound boat with a reliable working engine, a decent hull and pretty decent inside.  The external problems are all weather related and might be expected in a twenty three year old boat.  How would you look if you stood out in all weathers for twenty three years?

During the Great Rains this week Herbie rose several inches towards the sky, but she's already back at a more typical level.  I guess CRT have been busy somehow getting rid of the excess water, although I daresay that might be at the expense of the river Cherwell which has burst its banks all over the place.  From what I can see from the weather maps, Cropredy has been pretty much  in the middle of it all.

Ill winds and banjo jokes

Well it's an ill wind that blows nobody any good, so they say, and that's true for us this week.  The rain has at times been biblical in its intensity. So it's fortunate that because of an engine problem we've not been out cruising. and stranded somewhere behind a flooded lock or some such.  Herbie is going nowhere at the moment and it's all the fault of a banjo.

Now orchestral musicians make viola player jokes -somebody has to be the butt of the professional humour,  but with musicians of a less highbrow nature, it's banjo jokes., the most common being "What do you call a man who can play banjo but doesn't?  A gentleman."  There are dozens of these, one of my favourites is about the man in the pub who suddenly rushed out realising  he had left his banjo on full view on the back seat of his unlocked car, but when he got to the vehicle it was already too late.  There were already four more banjos there.

Why am I writing this rubbish?  Because I have discovered the cause of Herbie's diesel leak from the top of the fuel filter.  I had thought it was just that copper washers needed replacing but on closer inspection, the union, called a banjo,  that returns unused diesel from the injectors via the spill rail is split open.  In fact me tightening the screw to try and compress the suspect washers only made it worse.

Fortunately we are not too far from Calcutt Boats who hold extensive stocks of parts for BMC diesels, so after a half hour car trip each way I now have a shiny new spill rail complete with all its five intact banjos.  £45, so not too bad as these things go. I'm not going to fit it myself partly because I'm not sure how tight to tighten the nuts without doing further damage, and because I have learned from experience that the first time you attempt a job like this you often discover it ain't as easy as it looks, but mostly because the new rail has to be bent into shape to reach to top of the filter and I don't want to break it in the process.  So a man called Martin who does such jobs here at the marina is going to do it. He tells me he's done the same job a few times before so that's reassuring.  Martin would have done the job by now, but who wants to stand in an engine bay open to the elements in a deluge?  He now says he'll be here tomorrow (Friday) when according to the meteorologists we should have a dry morning at least.

Meanwhile Gertie the kitten has been keeping us amused, or is it the other way round?  Anyhow we're glad to have her here.  I was worried about her jumping on the coal stove when it was lit, but she seems to have the common sense to keep her distance, so that's a good thing.

A frustrating day

 I'd rather not have too many days like today.  We got up at a reasonable (for us) hour and prepared to leave Banbury.  

Frustration number one:  

Just as we were unroping ready to set off, who should come gently cruising by but Adam and Adrian on Briar Rose.  We haven't spent time with them for ages and ages but neither of us had time to stop for a natter.  They were stopping for a quick bit of shopping before moving on and we were on our way to get to Cropredy for a planned lunch at the Mulberry Cafe in the village.  So quick greetings were exchanged but not much more.  Grrr!

We've been having trouble starting the engine in the mornings and by my brilliant deduction I could guess that it was that a diesel leak on top of the fuel filter was draining the fuel back overnight, so it was a bit like having to reprime the engine in the morning.  Anyway I had plans to fix it later.

Frustration number two:  

As we were rising in Slat Mill lock, I noticed that the red charging light was on.  What was more, all the gauges on the instrument panel has stopped working.  Maybe the alternator had failed, maybe the fan belt had broken.  Everything else was as normal - the engine was purring nicely, there was no smoke or steam from the engine 'ole.  Clearly an electrical fault.  We decide to limp on back to our berth at Cropredy marina which is a good place to be if you need work done. From our Smartgauge, it was clear that the alternator was working and the battery was charging.

Frustration number three: 

I noticed that the stern gland was letting in too much water despite me screwing down tight on the greaser.  Now I have a lot of water in the engine 'ole.  I made a mental note to tighten the packing bolts when we got back. (I did do it later)

Frustration number four.  

When we stopped, I could see diesel leaking ever more rapidly from the fuel pipe unions at the top of the filter. Tightening the bolt only seemed to make the matters worse.  I consulted my box of copper washers only to find I had none the right size.  A trip in the car to Halfords should deal with that in the morning. Hopefully by then the diesel will have drained back and I won't get a lot of spillage when I replace the washers.

Frustration number five:  

There was no one at the marina available to look at our electrical problem so they gave me the name and number of someone who could, but on the phone he said he was unlikely to get to us this week.  In desperation I looked at all the wiring connections and fuses that might cause the problem and found nothing.

Frustration number six:

I had another go at starting the engine and it fired up and lo and behold the problem of the charging light and the instrument panel had gone away.  It was all working fine! Don't you just hate it when electrics do that to you? No point calling out the man now.  Maybe me wiggling all the connections and fuses had settled something.  Too late to resume our cruise today and anyway I need to drive to Halfords in the morning and fix that leak before we go any further.  

So new plans have been drawn up for the rest of the week.  Stay tuned.

Out at last, and a real find in Banbury.

Herbie is in Banbury tonight.  We're out for a cruise with our son Peter. Want a good place to eat in Banbury?  Well we can really recommend The Old Auctioneer in Parsons Street.  We've walked past it many times over the years but only recently tried it out. Not only is the food and service really good, the atmosphere inside and the  set out of the garden yard at the back are a long way better than yer average boozer. It's now our favourite place in Banbury.

We ate fajitas which came out sizzling hot with steak or chicken and lashings of onions and peppers and little pots of sour cream, guacamole, salsa and grated cheese, and of course tortilla wraps.  There was well kept Timothy Taylors beer as well.  What's not to like? To cap it all, as the evening cooled at about eight o'clock someone flicked a switch and a roof slowly extended over the back yard area not unlike centre court at Wimbledon! I would show you  a video of it in action but that would take too many megawotsits so here is a still image

There were heaters over every table too so I guess it's an all season outdoor space.

Herbie is currently a boat of two halves, or should I say two sides.  The port side is the one where we recently repainted the dark grey panels and it looks very respectable.

Here it is just after painting 

 and here we are on our new berth where we can now access the starboard side

By the way do you like our new mooring spot at the end of the main basin?

As to that starboard side, I'm sorry to say it's looking incredibly scruffy. After fourteen years there isn't a lot of the old paint surface left. I hesitate to reveal it but here it is.

We haven't been able to get at that side of the boat until very recently and now we don't want to polish it because when we come to repaint it like the other side, we don't want wax on it, so it'll have to say looking scruffy until then.

Our new crew member Gertie the kitten has settled quite well inside the boat, but she's not used to the noise of engine yet so when we start up she runs and hides under the bed.  She's only just out of her pre vaccination quarantine and we've just started taking her outside, albeit on a lead until we are sure she knows where the boat is and won't get lost or run away.  Today in Spiceball park she has met her first squirrel, a baby rabbit and a number of bees.  All very exciting. one unfortunate habit she seems to have taken up is sitting on my laptop keyboard.

It's wonder I've got this post typed out without interruption.

Meet Gertie

 As I write, Herbie is getting a thorough internal inspection.  Behind the stove, inside the wardrobe, on the shelves and in the cupboards; it all seems very detailed, especially for a fourteen week old inspector!  Yes it's Gertie, the new ship's cat enjoying her first taste of life aboard.  Here she is in more familiar surroundings at home.

And like all cats she is ever curious.

She seems to have no complaints so far about boat life I'm happy to report, although she didn't especially enjoy the car journey here.  In preparation, Kath had already got Gertie used to wearing a harness, so she could sit on the back seat of the car, rather than in her cat carrier so she didn't complain too much.

We're not going anywhere in the boat this time, this is just a familiarisation visit to settle Gertie in new surroundings, although we may just do a circuit of the marina pool and put Herbie into her new berth twenty yards from where we are currently.

There's more exciting news, well exciting for me anyway.  I've booked myself onto a traditional signwriting course in October.  It's with renowned fairground artist Joby Carter of the famous but now sadly defunct Carter's Steam Fair.  Joby has been running these 5 day courses for some years, but this is the last one at his current location only twenty minutes drive from our house so I grabbed a place while I could..  What I've seen of his work is incredibly good, and he's real old school - no computer graphics, no masking tape, real freehand brushwork.  The videos advertising his course are very encouraging and I just know I'm going to love it.  Maybe, just maybe, I'll have a go at repainting Herbie's name panel after doing the course.  It's not going to turn me into a Phil Speight or a Dave Moore of course, but I reckon I might have a go at painting the name without a mile of masking tape next time.  Here's what it was like then 

Even then it turned out sort of reasonably, if somewhat, um, sterile. I never liked the way I did the E's

and if you could see it close up, the paint wasn't thinned enough and was pretty lumpy.  I'm hoping some hands on tuition from Joby will help me with all that.  And if I chicken out and don't repaint the name, I'll still enjoy the course and maybe knock up some other decorative bits somewhere.

For info in case anyone is interested, here's a link to his course details

https://jobycarter.com/courses/five-day-intensive-signwriting-course

Lastly an update report on our Brompton folding bikes.  When I bought our two (one at a time second hand on Facebook Market Place) I didn't realise that were so many subtle variations.  Now I see that one of the bikes is lower geared than the other due to the size of the chain wheel. I think the lower geared might be the best for us as it makes it easier to get up hills.  They do each have 6 gears anyway, but everything is a notch lower on the one bike.  I can replace the chainwheel on the other for £35 so I might do that. There are a number of other small differences that I won't bore you with here.  Suffice it to say that it's well worth looking at a few Brompton Youtubes before choosing one.  The other thing to say is that buying second hand can save you a ton of money as long as you are careful.  The second one I bought is pristine, practically like new and a little over half the price of a new one.  The other is a bit older but still very good.  These bikes are top quality and built to last a long time.  Nothing folds smaller, or more easily.  I think though that if you wanted to ride a lot on rough bumpy towpaths, they are not the best solution. They are a lot better on smooth surfaces. Despite buying them to use from the boat, I suspect they'll get a lot of use when we visit our Peter in Cambridge.  We can get the two in our car boot with room for luggage as well.