Cropredy takes a step up

While I was packing up ready to go home this morning, some gentlemen were busy installing safety ladders at the end of some of the pontoons in the marina. It didn't take them long, just a few minutes in each spot. I don't know how many were installed in total, about one for every half dozen pontoons at a guess. I'll check next time I'm there.  Anyway they're a good idea. Anyone who has fallen off a boat knows how hard it is to get back out of the water.  I think the water depth is such that you could wade across to the nearest ladder if you were unable to swim although short people may struggle. I like the bright yellow for visibility.

There now follows a long bit of no interest to people who don't enjoy watching paint dry, but for those that might (and for the record) . . 

Over the last couple of days I have been taking advantage of our move to the other side of our pontoon and getting to grips with Herbie's port side handrail and the gutter inboard of it.  A lot of rust had gathered there and a fair bit of angle grinding and sanding was required to get rid of it before overpainting with some rust beater paint.  More coats will be needed, probably in the spring but it should hold it through the winter.

Once I had painted the handrail, shown above I set about the rusty patches you can see in the picture. That was taken after a preliminary 'grind' to remove all the flaky paint and loose rust. Then lots of sanding and wire brushing got it ready for a coat of the paint. 

What I don't have a photo of is all the dust I created with the angle grinder, but believe you me there was a heck of a lot of it.  The hoovering up and  washing down took longer than the grinding /sanding. Then a good wash with Sugar Soap, dry off, then wipe with a tack rag and finally a wipe over with white spirit to cut any grease, and on with the paint. Just a three inch strip down the side of the roof for now. Something I learned from Phil Speight's boat painting course years ago was that if you are just repairing a patch of paint, it looks much better if you mask off straight edges around it and paint within that. Hence the masking tape you see below.  I think the splodgy bits you can see at the far end are just where the paint was still wet.  This hammerite stuff actually dries pretty fast, even in the cool temperatures we had.

So not too bad to get to that from this:

in a couple of days, is quite satisfying.

Whilst I got into the pits with a wire brush on my drill, the pits have not yet been filled to get a flush surface.  That can be done later on top of this 'holding coat' before the undercoat and top coats. Time is short at this time of the year with only narrow windows of time to get the job done at the right sort of temperature and humidity. 

Interestingly I read that many paints require you to ensure the temperature is at least 2degC above the dew point. There are simple calulators on line to calculate the dew point. Here's the one I used

You have to know the air temperature and the relative humidity, both of which you can get with reasonable accuracy from the Met Office weather forcast for your area. So using that I knew I was well in the clear. Later in the autumn it could well be a problem.

Loads more to do of course, but it's all moving in the right direction.

 

Servicing stuff.

Not all tools have to be expensive.  This week a toothbrush was all I needed to fix Herbie's Morco gas water heater.  The heater was firing up when I turned the hot water tap on, but then cut out some seconds later. I had a good idea what to do about it as it has happened before.  I don't have a clue about the inner workings of the pressure switchs and wotnot that these things have, but fortunately I don't need to. If the Morco is left unused for some weeks there's a good chance that incy wincy spider will get in there, either through the open pilot light vent or perhaps down the chimney flue and start laying cobwebs. 

So it's off with the heater cover (don't look now if you are squeamish about naked gas heaters)

and out with the toothbrush. Couple of minutes brushing the pilot jet and the burner jets (a bit hard to get at) is all you need. And then comes the really hard bit, getting the flippin' cover back on again. Its held on by stupid little hooks at the back and they don't seem at all easy to re engage.  Anyhow I did it and now the Morco is back in action.  Regulations now forbid the installation of these heaters unless they are "room sealed", but those like ours already installed before the regulations came in are permitted. Despite making a rather alarming roar when the light up, they're super things, giving piping hot water on demand and lying idle the rest of the time. We don't normally need it when cruising though as the engine heats the calorifier tank "free of charge".

It seems to be a week for getting things serviced.  First the Morco, then our car is almost due for one, and Kath and I are about to be serviced by means of our twice a year Covid jabs and annual flu jab and on Tuesday my best guitar goes to the guitar doctor for a set up. The instrument seems to need this every tnow and then. last time was ten years ago.  Even the best wood moves about a little bit when it's under stress. Believe it or not, the strings on yer average guitar create a total tension of 150 lbs or more on the instrument and good guitars can be very lightly built in order to make them more responsive. Then if like me you keep torturing the thing by changing to different types of tuning which means slackening some strings and tightening others, the instrument eventually gets a bit out of kilter and needs an expert tweak to set it up so it's easy to play again. We're only talking a millimetre or so but it makes a huge difference. With solid electric guitars you can do it yourself because of the way they are engineered but acoustics are more of a dark art and an amateur can do more harm than good.

So because of the jabs and the guitar appointment I'm back home for a couple of days before returning to Herbie on Tuesday afternoon to carry on with the work on the roof and the handrail. I need to get a protective layer of paint over the newly exposed metal before all my grinding and sanding work is undone. Even after two days a thin film of rust is appearing over the bare metal so that'll have to come off before giving it a coat of rust treating paint.

See you next week with more on Herbie's refurb.

Off to a flying start - partly thanks to WD490

 At last being able to get at the port side roof of Herbie, I've got off to a good start in just over a day.

The first job was to remove the old wooden handrail like we did earlier this year on the starboard side. Because it was to be broken up and disposed of I was able to use brute force and a big screwdriver as a lever. Here it comes

I got the whole handrail off in about half an hour., slowed down by some gert big screws that had secured cleats on top of the rail.

Brute force tool number two, an impact screw driver swung into action and after some hefty coults with a hammer, out they came.  Lots of smaller screws still remained in the steel

Being rusty they snapped off with some pliers and then I cut them off flush with the rail using a cutting disc on my battery powered angle grinder. That made some lovely sparks, which was fun. I resisted having an angle grinder for many years but now I'm a big fan. It makes short work of otherwise onerous tasks.

Swapping the cutting disc for a grinding pad got rid of all the loose crusty flaky rust and got us back to this.  The dark colour you see is some of Herbie's original dark blue paint

By now the roof ( and a lot of me) was covered in brown dust and out came the next super tool, our little Dyson vacuum which got rid of most of it in a couple of minutes. These tools are best friends

It's not just the handrail that needs doing, there are quite a few places on this side of the roof that need work so while I had the angle grinder handy I made a start on them. Here are some, posing with my old bottle of Fertan rust converter which seems to last forever.

While I'm happy to use Fertan on the roof, and it does work,  I'm not going to use it on the handrail because of what happened on the starboard side when a shower of rain spread the residue all over the side of the boat.

It took a lot of elbow grease and cream cleaner to shift, and I was not a happy bunny.

So this time I'm going to rely on Hammerite No 1 Rust Beater primer which dries pretty fast and can be applied directly over non flaky rust. I was a bit concerned about starting with paint this late in the year, but according to the blurb the Hammerite can be painted at anything between 8 and 25 deg C, so Ill do that next week. Then pits will need filling with Isopon filler, which according to their blurb can be applied on top of paint providing the paint is given a coarse sanding first.  It certainly worked well when we did the other side.

Meanwhile my attention turned to another port side job that has been waiting for me to have access.  When we repainted the port cabin side before we moved pontoons eighteen months ago we used some posh masking tape which was supposed to, and did, give a really sharp edge. Well, I won't be using that stuff again because it left a sticky residue where it had been. Our move of pontoons came so suddenly after we had painted that we didn't have time to get rid of the goo, so It has sat until now picking up dust. I wasn't sure how to get it off either, until someone said to try good old WD40 and I'm here to tell you that it did indeed work a treat. Here's before

and after

It still needs a second go here and there but it works.

While I was using the WD40 I had a ghastly thought.  Does it contain silicone? Painters know that new paint wont stick to silicone, no matter how little there is of it and that light grey paint will need to be repainted soon.  In fear, I studied the spray can, and then let out a little cheer

Phew!  Good old WD40.  I also noticed on the can that it says you can use it to remove wax crayon marks, which might be a bit akin to what I was doing.  Here's a free of charge tip of mine for you. If you are sawing wood and it's hard going because the saw is sticking, spray the blade with some WD40 and it'll go much easier.

So after moving to the other side of our pontoon only yesterday morning we've made some good progress.  Another bite out of the elephant.

Saturday Monday and Tuesday are out due to previous engagements but hopefully I'll be a lot further on if I can get back to Herbie later next week.

Herbie on the move!

 After many months shackled to her berth in Cropredy, Herbie now lies in a new spot.  I was somewhat amazed when Herbie's trusty old BMC engine burst into life at the first turn of the key this morning.  That's the first time she's been started up in a good six months. 

So it was tiller on, and off we go!  50 feet in reverse, two feet to the right and 50 feet forward - to the other side of our pontoon.  Yes, sorry to get you all excited, but we were just swapping places with the boat next door so I can get to work on the port side of the roof and handrail. Now the work can begin. Having done most of the starboard side I'm somewhat more confident this time because it's just a repeat exercise.  How much we'll get done before the weather stops work we'll have to see. I'll try to keep up before and after photos this time. I won't get too much done before the weekend, then we have to leave the boat for other engagements.

Poor Gertie was confused and disturbed when we let her out because everthing was a bit like a mirror image of what she had got used to.  

Anyway here we are a few feet further west.  The climate is pretty similar here although we are a bit more sheltered from the wind that blows across the marina. Hopfully it will blow us on to the pontoon side rather than off it.

Stay tuned for pictures of the work.

CRT can't win

 I've just finished reading the report of an independent survey commissioned by Canal and River Trust, one in which I sent in my views along with 4000 odd other boaters some months back. I don't know whether to laugh or cry. I wouldn't want to be the new chief exec of CRT having to sort this lot out.

In a nutshell, 

1. Half of boaters think CRT is too zealous with licence and overstay enforcement and the other half think they are too lax

2. Every type of boater (those with home moorings, continuous cruisers, narrowboaters, widebeamers) think that what they pay is unfair compared with the other types

3. People want licencing to be less complicated but they agree that CRT should move away from to variable  rates to reflect the circumstances of different types of user

3. Everyone wants CRT to spend more on canal upkeep but everyone wants licences to be cheaper

4. Liveaboards want more moorings and facilities in urban areas and to be able to stay longer in one place but leisure boaters are annoyed with overstayers clogging up visitor moorings..

and so on.

This is all nothing new of course. Another example of consultants being paid to tell organisations what they already know.  Clearly whatever CRT does next will upset half the boaters.  We await their response with interest.

In other news, we are back aboard Herbie for a few days with some jobs to do. More on thet in the coming days. We are no longer sealed off from the canal but can't go anywhere because all the locks are shut. Ship's cat Gertie seems to be enjoying it though. Home from home.