making progress

Well, I've put the first top coat on the rear cants and rubbed down and primed the front ones. Its hard not to get heavy brush marks in the paint, even with the paint thinned down with Owatrol. More rubbing down before the next coat. The photo makes the colour look more pinkish than it really is. I think it'll look good. Ive also undercoated the rear doors. Now this is significant because they are the same colour as the side walls of the boat, so they will be an indicator of whether I will dare to paint the sides myself.

My gangplank /pole rest is finished and in place on the boat and fits really well. I forgot to take a pic for the blog. I'll do it next week.

Herbie is unusual, if not unique, in having wooden grab handles on the side of the boat to help you when you swing off the front deck to walk up the gunwales at the side. These handles were looking sorry for themselves. Where the varnish had worn away the wood had gone grey. Well, a few minutes with some sandpaper and a few coats of varnish and they are now looking pretty good again. Varnishing is a lot easier than painting.

Working on the boat is quite pleasant this time of year, you can see the fish swimming around the boat and there are dragonflies buzzing around the lily pads.

A chap came to view Lady Elgar, the boat next to us which is for sale at an asking price of £65,000. He seemed a nice bloke, but knew practically nothing about boats so I went round the boat with him. Lady Elgar is a very good boat, but I was interested to see that some aspects weren't as good as Herbie. She has bunk beds rather thjana double, and her loo was just a porta potti. If I could have Lady Elgar's shell (classy)and her engine room (which was perfect) and Herbie's internal woodwork, I'd be happy. Not that Lady E' s fitout isn't OK but I still prefer our all wooden cupboards to LE's chipboard carcasses etc. Anyway, the prospective buyer was so green that I advised him to go and look at a lot of other boats before taking the plunge. We looked at about 50 before buying Herbie. The more you look, the more you learn.

One reason LE has a high asking price is that it comes with a residential mooring, which is like gold dust these days. The general advice is first find and secure your mooring and only then go and buy a boat.