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.

Marina unsealed!

 It's official! The stop planks sealing Cropredy marina from the canal are to be removed this week.  Don't get excited though because the canal itself outside the marina is only navigable between Cropredy lock and Broadmoor lock, a distance of about 800 metres, and even then there's nowhere to turn a boat round, so we won't be venturing out yet awhile.

However many boaters in ther marina will be glad because they will also remove the stop planks between the three basins, so those who have been sealed off from the service pontoon in the main basin will at last be able to visit the diesel pump and the toilet pump out machine. Deep joy I imagine.

The irony is that as far as I can tell, the stop planks haven't done any good anyway as very time I've looked at them the water has been at the same height on either side. In fairness to CRT though, it might have been a different story if the canal pound outside the marina had drained or dried out.

In about three weeks time CRT plans a temporaty reopening of the whole canal to let those poor folk stranded away from their base to get back to their home mooring. It will be only temporay though as the feeder reservoirs are still extremely low.  At least one of the reservoirs feeding our bit of canal is still so low that the water doesn't even reach the spillway into the canal.  What's more the recent rainy spell seems to have stopped now and we're not due any serious rasin in the next couple of weeks at least.

Nevertheless we do plan to go and stay on Herbie later this week to get a couple of jobs done, one of which is to measure up a template for the tonneau cover we intend to make.  I now have a cunning plan for the hoops we need to give the cover a rain shedding arched profile.  Some bendy wooden slats held in an arch like an archer's bow.  Instead of a bow string there will be nylon straps with a buckle in the middle.

This sort of thing:

Using these, we can adjust the length and tension and also release the strap to let the slats lie straight for storage.  That's the plan anyway. We'll do a trial run this week. Wish us luck.

Hoop La

 The best ideas are always stolen. Adam has given me food for thought about shedding rain off the rear deck tonneau cover we plan to make. Thanks Adam.  Of course he knows more than most of us about narrowboat designs, having been Canal Boat magazine's boat reviewer for a long time. He says some boats support their tonneau covers using a system of curved slats.  Of course. Doh! There's me thinking about a tent ridge pole when at home I have a couple of tents that use fibreglass hoops to support the roof. In fact nearly all modern tents do that. Ridge poles went out of fashion a long time ago.

Hoops do require two things to be effective.

1. a firm anchor at their ends and

2. the fabric to be stretched reasonably tightly between the hoops i.e. at right angles to them

We would I suppose need two or three hoops to do the job and I would need to make some sort of brackets to hold their ends firmly, Thinking about our tents, which have quite flimsy but strong fabric, the lightness of the fabric is a help in avoiding puddles forming as it flaps a little bit in the wind.

Val Poore (Hi Val)  asks about the fabric we use. Its a finely woven fabric with some sort of waterproof impregnation on one side.   Its light but strong and comes in a range of colours.We got ours on Amazon, where there are several suppliers. Just search for waterproof canvas. Here's a screen shot of one of them

In other news: Our " little" grand daughter Grace is 18 years old tomorrow.  Where did all that time go?

Here she is at her last years birthday with big brother Jacob

Grand Designs mark II

Sometimes it takes two goes to get something right. Just ask Spacex!

Three years ago we made a rain cover for Herbie's side hatch doors. Here it is:

Good quality waterproof fabric with the cunning ruse of sewing magnets into the border seams.  

It worked a treat and cured the leaks of rainwater we were previously getting from the edges of the doors. It was simple to attach and remove too.

Then in sometime in the winter of 2023 it disappeared, presumably ripped off by one of the winter gales. So we're going to make another, still using magnets on the sides and at the bottom, but this time Ime going to use eyelets and turn buttons at the top.

The water proof fabric did what it said on the tin and was not expensive so we'll use the same.

This is all a pretty simple job, but we fancy having a crack at another, more ambitious, mark II.

The tonneau cover over the rear deck.

We did inherit one when we bought Herbie and it stood in good stead for some years. However it had one crucial fault. Puddles of rain would collect on top of it. Then in the winter of 2019 the puddle got so big that when I baled it out with a saucepan I calculated that the water weighed a hundredweight!

As you can see the poor old tonneau cover was stretched mightily and not long after that, after more heavy rain, it catastrophically tore apart. I vowed at the time that if we got or made another, we would rig up some sort of ridge pole so that the water would run off the sides rather than collect in the middle.  We still have hooks on the side of the boat to secure the bungee chords and there are some turn buttons on the roof just forward of the rear hatch, so that's our starting point.  

The difficult bit is going to be getting the geometry right and our plan is to bodge up a template using an old sheet which we can drape in situ and then tailor to fit.  I can put a bracket on the hatch lid to hold one end of the ridge pole but I'm not sure yet about supporting the other end. maybe some supporting A frame or simply a 'tent pole' standing on the deck. Hmmm, I could I suppose make a slat across the rear deck with a hole in it to locate the foot of the tent pole.  (I'm thinking as I write here folks!).  Actually I have a few old tent poles in the shed at home. I'll have a rummage and see what I can find.  See, this is one benefit of writing things down in a blog post; it gives you ideas.

Kath of course will be the sewmeister with her trusty sewing machine. One problem is that the fabric can't be bought wide enough to do the job without a seam, but having been campers for many years, we now about seam sealants so I'm sure we can amange that.

Stay tuned, but don't hold your breath. This looks like a non trivial task and could take some time.  There might well end up being a mark III before we get it right.

Is a shiny roof a good thing?

Is a glossy boat roof a bad thing because of the sun's reflections dazzling the helmsman?  I'd be glad if anyone can enlighten me.  

We've always gone for a matt or satin surface, mostly raddle, but I have a suspicion that it might not be so hard wearing and is more susceptible to grime.  I do notice that when we wash Herbie's roof that the run off water takes on some of the raddle colour. I don't know, but I imagine a gloss surface might not do that so much.

The gentleman a few boats across from Herbie has just repainted his roof with International Toplac Plus which is a more modern formulation with the advantage that you can just roller it on withouth having to lay it off with a brush.  He certainly made short work of it and got a good finish with just a foam roller.  It does however produce a gloss finish.

I know some hire fleets use gloss paint on their roofs, Wyvern and Heyford spring to mind.  These folks would go for hard wearing I suppose.

If anyone can venture an informed opinion, I'm all ears.

It would take a great deal of persuasion for me to change from Craftmaster paints on the cabin sides, which are of course gloss. It's such lovely stuff to paint with and goes on easier and covers better than anything else I have tried.  However, I have a problem because they no longer offer the Light Grey colour we previously used, and I don't have sufficient left of the old paint to complete the job. I suspect they might have abandoned that shade because it did change colour after a while, presumambly from the action of UV light.  Our old Light Grey has taken on a distinctly blue hue.  

I some lights it can look extraordinarily blue like here:

That was at our lovely mooring spot at Ventnor marina, which wasn't so lovely in that that flippin' weeping willow tree draped wet leaves all over the roof in winter and played havoc with the paintwork.  Which brings me back to my earlier question. Would a hard gloss finish survive that sort of thing better?

Remembering what we did and when we did it.

I knew I had something to write about when I opened Blogger to create this post but I can't remember what it was.  

Oh yes, Memory.

For the blogger, it's not the fame and the adulation that keeps us going. It's not the millions we make from endorsing boat shampoo or the prospect of a Nobel prize for Literature. It's a couple of simple things.

1. To let family, friends and followers know what we are up to, and sometimes pass on useful information or sometimes simply to entertain,

and

2. To keep a diary so we can remember what we did and how and when (and sometimes why!).

Some years ago I had a number of printed books made from the hundreds of blog posts I had written. I used  a service called Blog2Print, now sadly out of business but competitors offering the same service remain. (e.g Pixxibook) It's dead simple, you just send them your blog /instagram/ wordpress etc link and the required start and end dates and pay them a lot of money( at my current rate of posting an A4 colour hardback book covering four years would cost £75! Bloggers who post more often and longer posts would probablly only get a years worth for that),  and they create and print the book.  It's only money. You could spend that on a meal out for two.

So when some fiendish Russian hackers delete the internet, or Google gets fed up and cancels Blogger, you still have hard copy.  You can see it's not cheap but I think mine have been worth it.

This week I've been re-reading the 2010 Herbie blog book. 177 posts, 232  A4ish pages! Here it is.

To save costs at the time, I had this one done in soft cover and black and white photos. The first one I had done in hardback and colour and it was twice the price as far as I recall but is was nicer.

I could of course have just read through all the posts on screen using the dated links on the right hand side of the blog page (if you are reading on a tablet of computer rather than a phone), but the book is so much handier and browse-able.

When did we last install new batteries? (2019 apparently, actually that's not too bad), How old is our first solar panel? (15 years!)  Which was that other year when the canal reservoirs were very low? (It was 2012). When did we move to Crick marina?  etc

You get the idea.  Of course the blog page has a handy little search box to help with finding the answers, but what about the non specific stuff you have just forgotten.  The reminiscences and all that. Browsing the pages of a book brings it all back.

We're back at home now and reading through the 2010 book I was astonished to discover how much thought and preparation -and angst - I had put into planning the repaint of Herbie - the infamous Paintfest of April 2010.  I had remembered all the work we did in the wet dock but I had completely forgotten about all the lead up plans and preparations. I'm doing more paint planning now so lessons learned back then are coming in handy.

Then of course I browsed on past the Paintfest, remembering the Little Venice cavalcade, past boat journeys, seeing photos of toddler Grace, remembering seeing the Severn bore . . . Aah those were the days.

Hmmm, I think I might look into getting some more books done of more recent times.

What the ******! is going on?

 When we woke up this morning our boat was heeling over a bit, but not because the water level had dropped but because it had risen by a further 5 inches (my estimate) overnight! I had to go out and loosen off our ropes - not easy when they're stretched really tight.

Two days ago we were stepping UP from the boat to the pontoon, now we're stepping DOWN. Look-

We have to assume that CRT are letting more water down the lock flight for some good reason, but it's a puzzle. Huge stretches of canal are closing all over the land because of low water levels.  I wandered up to the canal entrance to the marina where we have had stop planks installed. Fat lot of good they have done, the water levels either side have been equal all the time.  Anyhow last week it was like this

see the metal Arnco rail a couple of inches above the water level on the far bank?  Well today it's under water

Stupidly I took this photo from the other side, but they're the same.

Looking at the far canal bank, I would say the water is a little above the normal 'good' level.

The canal is of course still closed to boating for a good number of miles around here and I'm sure this rise is very local.

It did rain for something like an hour this afternoon, but that can be nothing to do with it. I doubt if it was more than a milimetre's worth.

Hey ho. I was going to write 'Ours not to reason why', but I can't help reasoning why.

Toodle pip.

The Waters Rise!!

 We awoke this morning to find the marina water level had risen by nigh on three inches. This tells us two things:

1. CRT have been letting some water down the Claydon flight, probably to stop lock gates shrinking and also to facilitate some work boats around Broadmoor lock where they are installing new sheet piling

2. The stop planks separating the marina from the canal must be letting water through

Anyhow we're all pretty pleased. I reckon the water depth at Herbie's stern is now 4ft which should gove us a 2ft clearance.

Rain is coming tomorrow so after top coating the side hatch doors this morning, I've suspended all painting work for the time being. It took me a good 40 minutes to clear all the tools, accumulated rags, spent abrasives, bottles and cans of various painting related substances from the deck locker tops.  Finding somewhere to put it all is a bit of a challenge but its done.

I was a bit disappointed in the finish on the hatch doors at first as they look very brush marky, but coach paint is amazing stuff and as it dried out it has flattened to a decent finish. 

Here's before and after. Ignore the scruffy surround, that's a job for another day. A lot of the brown stuff is just Fertan rust treatment.

Those doors haven't looked that good for probably ten years. You can see how much the old paint has changed colour over time. The new paint on the doors is exactly the same paint as the pale blue looking either side. Craftmaster Light Grey.

Although there is a huge amount still to do, Herbie is looking radically better then she did 6 months ago. Quite frankly she was looking a bit of a wreck then. I think one of the biggest factors in getting this done has been the use of a good cordless orbital sander and  a cordless angle grinder. They make relatively easy work of getting rid of old flaky paint and pitted rust and not having to worry about trailing power leads makes quite a difference.

Now I'm putting my feet up for a short while.

An easy job for me, but no work for boatyards

 The grass cutting contractors are busy around the marina today.  I suspect they have some sort of regular booking because in truth there ain't much length to cut what with all the dry weather.  Interesting too that they at work on a Bank Holiday.  Anyway I shall not be doing a lot of work today because it's too hot for painting. 

Yesterday I had the onerous job of watching paint dry. I laid the side hatch doors on one of the marina's picnic tables and gave them a layer of undercoat, which only took about ten minutes.  Then in order to make sure any of the local cats, including our Gertie, didn't walk all over them I sat on guard until they were touch dry.  A tough job but somebody has to do it.

No they're not all blotchy, that's just the shadow of the bushes.  In fact they came up really well especially considering how scabby they were before I started.  After the top coat they should look spiffing. That's probably a job for tomorrow.  Meanwhile I might do some more rubbing down of the side door surround and hinges.

It's a pleasant spot to sit in with this view in front of you, so I wasn't complaining.

Our basin at Cropredy has an unusually wide expanse of open water. Most marinas have a far smaller space between the rows of boats either side.

The water level continues to fall and some boats with low to the water gunnels are in danger of having the gunnels trapped under the pontoon when eventually the water rises.  We're keeping an eye on Herbie for that.  The word is that local canal related businesses are really suffering.  No boats cruising, so no diesel sales, no breakdown call outs,  no blacking customers can reach them, hire companies unable to provide routes etc etc.

Apparently CRT are occasionally letting some water down lock flights to stop the gates from shrinking as they dry out, but there are definately no boat movements for miles either side of us.

We are expecting some proper rain for a couple of hours on Wednesday and some light showers the rest of the week. If it raises Herbie by an inch I'll be pleasantly surprised.