Well, it's official; the Oxford canal from Claydon to Aynho is now shut. All the locks will be padlocked shut and boats will stay where they are. The reason of course is lack of water in the feeder reservoirs. There are quite a few boats moored around Cropredy for next week's Fairport festival, so they'll be worried about getting home afterwards. I think there's some talk of a short window to let a few boats escape around festival time.
Meanwhile Herbie is lucky to be on her home berth here in the marina, while we potter about tidying her up inside and out. It's too hot for painting a lot of the time, but I have got a few bits done, most notably the rear deck port side handrail. After removing most of the wooden handrails earlier this year, I opted to keep the wooden rail by the aft deck as it was in better condition and it's nice not to handle very hot or cold steel when climbing on and off the boat. It still needs stripping and repainting of course.
So I sanded it down and undercoated it and now it waits for the right temperature to put the red top coats on.
I've also made a small start on the port name panel which wasn't included when we repainted that side of the boat a couple of years ago, the main reason being what to do about the sign writing. I don't want to strip the panel right down because the existing paint is mostly sound but has gone chalky and there are some rusty spots on the coach line and the border. I have already prepped the upper border and that's ready for a topcoat.
One bite at a time I'm slowly eating the elephant!
So the plan is to overpaint it all in the dark grey. Then hopefully I will still be able to detect enough of the signwriting to repaint it over the top. It might work and it might not! I won't use so much masking tape this time and do it a bit more freehand as taught on the signwriting course I did last year.
Anyhow Mikron Theatre are in Cropredy tonight, so that's our evening entertainment sorted.
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