Painting trials and tribulations while we break from cruising.

When it comes to difficult situations for boat painting, what I have just been doing takes the biscuit.

Since Monday we've been at Hartford marina near Huntingdon, moored up against Richard's boat Bankside. Kath has gone home for baby sitting duties and I'm passing the time by practising boat painting skills using Bankside as a guinea pig.

We decided to have a go at the cabing sides, because the pigment in the red paint has washed out leaving it very streaky.
I'm told that red is particularly prone to this because they're not allowed to put enough red pigment in because it is toxic.

Anyway after much washing and scrubbing and attending to a few rust spots we chose some paint in a sort of deep claret colour. Bankside is moored on a short pontoon, so after reaching the ned of the pontoon I was forced to complete painting the side by squatting on the gunwales while hanging on to the handrail with one and and painting with the other. Now I ache all over.

The first coat wasn't too bad, but it wasn't opaque enough to cover so I started a second one today. A few minutes into the job and the local willow trees decided to shed a load of their fluffy seeds, a bit like dandelion seeds. Not wanting a furry boat I stopped and waited a few hours. All seemed clear so aching even more now, I resumed the painting and finished the side in less than an hour. That's when the plague of insects arrived.

So Bankside has one nice shiny side with the bodies of a considerable number of insects sticking to it ike fly paper. We'll just have to get them off when the paint has dried. Anyway that side of the boat now looks a lot better. From a distance.



I fear the other side may have to wait until my next visit.

Internet connectivity has been nearly non existent but I seem to be able to get a couple of pictures up today (thanks largely to Simon's suggestion of reducing the number of pixels) so here are a couple more.

First a poor shot of the Earith seal which we saw again on Monday morning. I would have got a good picture had the camera not been deep inside the boat when it first appeared.

Then a typical shot of the old West River which is a narrow section of the use navigation below the tidal lock at Hermitage and going down as far as the mouth of the river Cam.

And lastly the bridge at St Ives.

We mistakenly moored in some nice public moorings round the back of an island after the bridge. I say mistakenly because we didn't realise we'd have to back out about 100 yards through the narrow entrance with other boats moored up and a cross wind! Anyway we did it unscathed.