Lovely weather but not for painting.

 Phew what a scorcher.  Watching paint dry isn't the slow process implied by the well known saying.  The bl**dy stuff is drying on the brush and the meatl surfaces are hot to the touch. The other old adage about it never being the right weather to paint a boat certainly holds true this weekend.  I'm here at Herbie trying to get a bit done but coach painting is not on in this heat. Now the met office threatens thuderstorms with heavy rain tomorrow afternoon so there goes my plan of painting in the morining before it gets too hot. Heavy rain on wet paint doesn't sound like a good idea.

I've contented myself with rubbing down, spot derusting and a little bit of painting where a good finish is not required i.e. the rear deck drain channels and the rear door lintel. I couldn't get all of the crusty rust out of the channels, but a good wire brushing and a wash out followed by a good suck from our little Dyson got rid of all the loose stuff.  For once I remembered to take a photo before I finished. At this point I'd scrubbed and Fertan-ed the channel and rubbed back the step behind.

 Then it was out with the Hammerite rust beater paint layered on thickly and it was already looking better

Rear door lintel

Luckily I can get to nearly the whole of the foredeck from dry land! Since the reeds have been cut I can stand on the bank to get to much of it, so that's the next job for rubbing down and cleaning up. As to the roof, you could fry eggs on it at the moment so that'll have to wait. When I do actually get out the red topcoat it will be interesting because of the paint.  I hunted around to source tins of Hempel Bordeaux Red to match the existing red and Uxbridge Boat centre had some ,BUT the tins were dated 20017 so they were selling them at half price. According to Google, oil based paints ought to be alright for ten years or so unopened, but I might have to do a lot of stirring when I open the tin. The man at UBC did say he'd refund if the paint was unusable. While I was there I couldn't get into the drive for more than 15 minutes  because it was blocked by this

I don't know about you but I find those hearses with plumed white horses to be somewhat OTT. Now something like a brewers dray I wouldn't mind.

In a change of plan I now think I won't replace the wood topping on the handrails.  It's looking like with a bit of filler to level out the pitting on the metal it'll be good enough to paint as it is without all the expense and bother of the wood which does take a lot of maintenance. Once again the heat prevented me from doing any more than a short trial with the filler, it was setting much too fast.

Who knows what I'll get done tomorrow. I have lots of bits ready to paint but no chance to do it. Ho Hum.

Homework

 We're back home now after a mildly productuve couple of weeks on Herbie.  The worst of the roof rust is now removed, treated and overpainted.  Still plenty more to do of course but things look a lot better along the starboard side of the roof at least.

Then I did a trial of the fixing screws I bought to fix the wooden handrail to the steel beneath.  Here's what the screws look like

The pointy bit is supposed to act like a drill through the steel (in my case 4mm thick) then the thready bit self taps into the hole. All screwed in from the wood above. Well it didn't go as easily as I had hoped at first.  The pointy bit was very reluctant to make a hole in the steel, so instead I first drillled a pilot hole with a normal drill bit.  After that it all went rather well with the self tap working nicely and the countersink part nicely burying itself into the wood surface. All on an old piece of the old handrail of course. Then I unscrewed it apart to check it out.

So now I feel confident to order the timber. 

Meanwhile at home I can prepaint the new cratch window trim mouldings and then set about making the replacement rain diverters (see previous post).

I don't know if Gertie the cat is glad to be home or not.  She thoroughly enjoyed her time at the marina. 

I should stay away from home more often. Our garden has once again proven that it gets on far better without me.  Many would call it overgrown but I think of it as natural. At least 75% of the plants have arrived uninvited like the bluebells in the border.  There are some primroses in there too but they've got submerged in hellbores and pulmonaria and wotnot. Mostly I just let it get on with it.

 The clematis on our holly hedge is a complete mystery to me, I don't know where it comes out of the ground. Another half of it grows and flowers a good forty feet up a monster holly tree just outsid ethe fence.

While we were away our huge lime tree has burst into leaf (leaving bucketfuls of little bud husks everywhere). One of the few things I have actually planted is my little herb garden which threatens to outgrow itself.  How do you stop oregano from going berserk? It threatens to take over my parsely like Trump and Canada. I think I might try to freeze some of the mint leaves for use in winter.

Lastly our lilac tree has grown so tall that only the next door neighbours get a good view of the flowers but at least we can smell them.

 We'll be back for more Herbie work before too long I hope.

A bit of progress and an upcoming event

 We eventually got all the black Fertan streaks off the side of the boat (that was a couple of hours work I hadn't planned for) and at last I was able to bring out the paintbrush and a tin of Hammerite No1 Rustbeater and painted the top of the handrail. That was a quick job and felt good.  The surface is still pitted but it'll have a wooden rail glued and screwed on top of it so that doesn't matter.

You'll no doubt notice the scruffy band of red paint on the left hand side just below. We've rubbed that down ready for a fresh coat of red paint which will also be what we paint the wooden rails with.

Today I thoroughly cleaned the bits of roof I had sanded back and painted those bits too. Tomorrow, hopefully I'll paint a wide border along the front half of roof edge.  I quite like this hammerite paint, it goes on nicely and it is supposed to convert underlying rust although I hope I've got rid of 99% of it.

Another job is to replace the two rainwater divertors which stop the runoff from the roof reaching the rear deck. 

These cunning devices were put in place by Roy, Herbie's previous owner.  Roy didn't like metalwork so he made them out of wood and now they're past their sell by date.  I'm planning to make new ones out of aluminium angle which I will attempt to elegantly shape.  And there's more.  Tomorrow I hope to replace the beading on the cratch window and repaint the beam beneath.

It might turn out to be Sunday when I do it actually because tomorrow is the marina's Open Day with stalls and food, live music and (real) beer, so we hope to spend an hour or two showing our support.  I think the idea is to attract new moorers. I've no idea how many they hope will show up.

There is masses more to do but it feels good to have made a start. We'll be heading home after the weekend and I may well sit in the garden and watch the grass grow.  

Tonight we treated ourselves to a meal at the Old Auctioneer in Banbury. They do brilliant steak fajitas although they're not cheap when you add £6.80 (I know!) for a pint on Neck Oil and then add 10% service charge on top. Having said that, I doubt you'll get better anywhere.

A Setback! Plus Gertie falls in!!

 After my optimism of yesterday, fate had other ideas. My fault really, I should have remembered that Fertan when it is working produces a sooty deposit.   Well last night it rained heavily and made a good job of dribbling little rivers of sooty deposit all down the side of the boat.  

What made matters worse was that it wouldn't wash off by normal means.  In the end, after trying plain water then soapy water then white spirit, all to no avail, I had to resort to cream cleaner and a nylon scouring pad.  It took ages and left a white  deposit on the paint which I will try and remove with hot water tomorrow.  I suppose the saving grace is that we intend to repaint that side of the boat anyway, so as long as we get it properly clean, any damage to the paint surface won't matter. In fact it seemed to act a bit like T Cut, so it might be beneficial I suppose.  Hey ho, tomorrow's another day.

Meanwhile Gerttie has been practising acting as the ship's figurehead by sitting on the prow.

STOP PRESS

Just as I was finishing this post I looked out of the boat window to see Gertie peering in from the gunnel outside, then there was a loud splash as she slipped off and into the water.  We rushed out to see her swimming strongly for the bank and scrambling up over the newly cut rushes.  So now we know she's a strong swimmer which I suppose makes the event worthwhile.  She's bedraggled but none the worse for her first dip it seems.

An Easter treat and some progress on the roof.

 They say the sun shones on the righteous. Well they must have got that wrong because it shone all day on us yesterday, which was great as we had a short cruise with our daughter Claire and grandkids Grace and Jacob. Up 3 locks to the winding hole, then a nice picnic featturing a carribbean chicken thingy concocted by Jacob and then back to base.  Lovely. And after all his efforts Jacob didn't even get in the photo because he was the one who took it.  Lol.

The good thing was that the visiting crew did all the steering and locking so I had a very easy day.

However I have not been entirely idle since my last post. For one thing I tackled the somewhat yucky job of clearing out the lockers on the back deck that has got full of old oily and painty rags and tins of paint long past their use by date. Of course I also discovered a couple of long lost tools, so it was worth it.

Work on the roof paintwork continues in little bits and pieces. The whole handrail section on the starboard side is now stripped and painted with fertan as are the flaky bits in the paint on that side of the roof. Next, a coat of Hammerite rust beater primer/undercoat. Exciting.

The plan is to create a finished strip of good sound paint about 8 inches wide down the side of the roof , which was the area of most damage. Then bit by bit to spot fix and repaint the rest of the roof in manageable sections. Then I have a cunning plan for the handrails. I'm going to replace the old wood with new sapele and I've found a supplier who can supply just the right dimesions and profile. I think the new rails will cost about £300 including paint etc. Thanks to watching  clever people on YouTube, I've found some special self tapping screws for fixing wood to metal. I'm picking them up tomorrow to do a test on a bit of the old handrail.  And today I bought myself an impact screwdriver to shift the firmly stuck screws holding cleats to the old handrail and to my delight it worked just like it was supposed to, so that's another problem sorted. All in all I'm feeling a lot more positive than I did a month ago when it all seemsd a horrible and difficult job.

That will still leave plenty to do of course, we still need to repaint the dark grey panels on the starboard side of the cabin and the light grey borders on both sides.  Then the front and back decks need a good seeing to. Oh and the cratch too. I'm getting some new quadrant beading the the window trim tomorrow. Much easier to replace that rather than refurbing the old beading.

I reckon we should have it all finished by 2030. What do you think?

What I've been up to.

 It seems a few people were wondering what I've been up to between my two last post which were in January and then mid April. Well here's a quick photographic tour of some of the highlights. I don't normally do posts when we're not at the boat, but there are some boats shown below so you can't complain.

January

A visit to Portsmouth to drop off a guitar of mine to be refurbed by a specialist.  Having time to spare we went on to the D Day museum to look at the amazing D Day tapestry which stretches almost round the whole building. Well worth a visit.

and of course we had to get on a boat so here is Kath on the bridge of a landing craft

There's always something to see down by the harbour. Here's the Isle of Wight Ferry pulling in to it's berth. I hope the skipper is paying attention, there ain't much room for manoeuvre.

and February is the month when we get excited to see the first spring flowers in the churchyard behind our house

 

Who wouldn't want a back garden like this?

Then in March I drove all the way up to Blackburn for the funeral of an old friend Gordon and on the way back dropped in to see our grandson Jacob in West Didsbury, Manchester, so we went out to dinner at a lovely Persian restaurant called Pomegranate.  Who needs a photo of Jacob when you can feast your eyes on this instead?

 Our garden at home was waking up by March and ship's cat Gertie was exploring in the hellebores.  This is about as tidy as our garden gets.

Still in March we spent a weekend in Cambridge with our son Peter and once again a food photo shows the highlight. Turkish breakfast at our favourite Cafe Camtown hidden away on a back street well away from the city centre.

and so to April when we went (sort of) to the theatre to see Steve Coogan in Dr Strangelove - a belter.  When I say 'sort of' because we actually watched the National Theatre production from our local cinema.  It's a great way to see the theatre without the bother and expense of going to London and they do make you feel like you are there (and you get close ups)

The man took ages to fix my guitar (he did a great job though) and it was only last week that we went back to Portsmouth to pick it up, so we treated ourselves to lunch at our favourite pub in Old Portsmouth, first visited when I was a student there way back in the 1960s. It's a gem.  Here's Kath on the patio.

It's not every day you eat lunch whilst looking at an aircraft carrier. Here's a better view of it from our table inside the pub.

So you see I've been having quite a nice time in between doctors appointments, Covid jabs and clearing up the garden.  And now here we are back on Herbie.  The plan had been to go home today to see Jacob who is visiting his mum, our daughter Claire, then they had the bright idea to come up to us here on Sunday, so we're staying on and I can do a bit more on Herbie's roof. 

Like all these jobs it gets worse before it gets better, but I now feel I have the right tools for the job and bit by bit, we'll get there.

Meanwhile Gertie has overcome her fear of her new surroundings and is beginning to go off exploring for long periods. She comes back when she's hungry.

 More soon.

Eating the elephant

 A request has flooded in from our old pal Rainman asking me to do a blog post. I've almost forgotten how to do it, it's been so long.

Well we are back on Herbie at last, although not out cruising yet. After the long wet winter, floods and mud, I thought I'd better sort the garden out before boating, then we had a number of medical appointments etc etc.  Anywhere we're here now for a few days and of course the weather has got worse. It's really windy today.

Herbie has over wintered very well internally. We left a couple of cheap moisture trap thingies inside and the interior was dry as a bone.

Ship's cat Gertie has been refamiliarising herself with the boat and our corner of the marina.  Fun seeing her see a swan for the first time - a mixture of fascination and terror.

There's lots and lots to do on Herbies paintwork and you have to take the first bite of the elephant somewhere, so I've made a small start on the handrail.  You may recall I pulled of the old wooden handrail top last autumn.  Here's a pic to show how the wood sits on the metal.

of course in due respect to sods law many of the old retaining screws chose to break off rather than unscrew, leaving little studs or nibs or whatever you call 'em. I didn't count them but one every foot or so

so I decided to hand file them off before attacking the surface with a scratchy thing on the angle grinder. Here's before filing and after

Aquavista's Ts&Cs say that you're not supposed to use noisy dusty power tools at your berth, but the lady next door says that people do and no one has complained so the angle grinder is the next job.

It'll never come really smooth and flat with all that pitting, so then it'll be a choice if using a filler and painting over to finish, or just painting then putting new wood back on top.  The wood is a bit of a pain because although it looks and feels nice it seems to need repainting much more often than the metal. We'll see.

Then the whole roof needs rust spotting and repainting, which I've done a couple of times before, one section at a time. I think next time I'll use a harder surface paint than the raddle I used before.

So it feels like we're back on track a bit.  We have to go home on Friday but we'll be back soon.

Some time later.

I had an experimental go with a scratchy pad thingy on the angle grinder (never really used one before) and it looks like its easy to get rid of rust and flaky paint with it. I was back to bare metal in seconds.  Gertie didn't like it though.  Next job is to try an experimental go at putting filler in a sort section of the handrail to see how smooth I can get it. One step at a time. Rome wasn't built in a day (but probably quicker than HS2 ).

Dry January Wet January

This is supposed to be a blog about our boating but that doesn't seem very possible lately  (see below) but  it's also a diary for me so here is what you might call a note of the times.

Only three more days left of dry January and a nice bottle of Bordeaux Superior waits patiently until Saturday to accompany our once a month treat of a steak dinner. Outside however it is Wet Wet Wet (a popular beat combo m'lud).

Our so called lawn is like a field left after the battle of the Somme. We try to keep off it in the wet but the bird feeders have to be topped up and the washing has to be hung up on the rare occasions it's not actually raining.  In all my 78 years (Yes, I know! Shocking isn't it) I can't remember a wetter winter.  Not only that but the gales have brought down a ton of dead branches and twigs from our mighty lime tree and they all lay there on the so called grass.  Going out there to clear them will only make for more mud so they'll have to wait. Just like Herbie is having to wait for us to get going.

Going boating is hardly an option. Towpaths are a quagmire down the Oxford and some locks (notably Banbury) are impassable in an unpredictable fashion. If we went down there we might not be able to get back. As to our marina at Cropredy, the residents are up in arms about the state of the access roads and the car park. Cropredy lies at the bottom of a steep sided valley and the water table is quite high. On a number of occasions this winter, the facilities have been flooded and the roadway is full of wet potholes.  I think they are organising a working party this week to fill the worst potholes but a more permanent solution is needed.  Aquavista claim to be considering what to do.  We shall see.

Meanwhile we do have the first signs of spring. In the graveyard behind our house the first wild crocuses are emerging 

In a couple of weeks' time they'll be like they were in February last year.

If and when we get back to Herbie you can be sure I'll have something more to say.

In the meantime keep yer feet dry.  Toodle Pip.

A Herbie Christmas Message

Merry Christmas dear readers.  My, haven't I been neglecting you lately! Sorry about that, and sorry not to have got round to the usual Herbie Awards this year.  The only (feeble) excuse I have is that it's hard to type when a cat is sitting on your keyboard.

The only stay we had on Herbie recently was something of an adventure because it was during storm Darragh. Unsurprisingly we didn't leave our moorings. Well we did a bit, because the wind was blowing us off our pontoon as far as our mooring ropes would allow and the boat was rocking as if we were out at sea.  being on a pontoon at the end of a row means that we have open water on one side and it so happened that the wind direction was pushing us away.  Gertie the ship's cat was somewhat disturbed as were Kath and I. Here she is looking out of the window at the storm while hanging on for dear life.

I had to get up in the middle of the night to tie up the swan neck because the rudder was baning against its stops as the waves crashed into it. 

You probably can't make it out from the photo but one of the boats in tha backgrounsd is called Tranquil Waters.  Ha!!

I'd made a mock up of Herbie's name to try out on the side of the boat and stuck it on with little magnets.  In that wind it was not a trivial task so it's somewhat (ok, rather more than somewhat) skew whiff, but it gave me a better idea of the dimensions to aim for. 

I think it might be a bit too chunky. It's scaled up from Bookman Old Style font, but I think it was from the bold version. I might try it again without the bold.

The reason we were staying on the boat was that the  Marina had scheduled a moorers Christmas bash with mince pies, mulled wine, carol singing and boats decorated with fairy lights.  In event, no one was surprised (but many were relieved) when the  do was postponed because of the weather.

I popped back to Herbie yesterday to fit a safer way of tying up whilst allowing the boa=t to rise and fall in flood conditions.  The week before we were there the water had risen by over a foot and staff had to rush round loosening everyone's ropes.  That sounds like something worthy of a Herbie Award. For some reason the mooring ring on our pontoon seems to be positioned for a 40 foot boat even though the pontoon is about 56ft long.  Herbie is 50 ft. So here is my solution for now.  Not ideal but it should hold.

And so dear reader, we look forward trepidatiously to 2025.  This has to be the year when we get Herbie's exterior paint work back up to scratch (mm that's an inappropriate choice of word, but you know what I mean.) Another non trivial task but I've been assembling the right tools and have a plan of sorts.  Let's hope the weather allows it to go ahead.

In the meantime have a lovely Christmas and New Year and we'll see you on the other side.

Neil & Kath & Gertie

A new design for Herbie's name

 Following my signwriting course I've not only been practising brushwork at home but also thinking about repainting Herbie's name on the side of the boat.  From all the hundreds of typefaces /styles/fonts (call them what you will) available which one should I choose?  Well I haven't decided but over the winter I'll experiment with a few, drawing them up more or less full size.  The one below use three sheets of A3.  The first one of these uses Bookman Old Style font . I might have a go actually painting a couple of letters, maybe E and R, from it to see how hard it is. I'm still not all that good with brush control and this time I'm not using masking tape except maybe for top and bottom edges. 

Apologies for my shadow there and that it's a bit faint - it's just pencil. Perhaps I'll go over it with a black felt tip pen.   Here's a closer look at a part of it.

I quite like its chunkiness compared with what is on Herbie at the moment. I just noticed that I had omitted the blocking on the outside top half of the R. Doh!  

I was never happy with the letters E on the current one. Notice on the pencil one I have the 'blocking' on the right whereas on the boat I did it on the left. I think I prefer the right. The 'new' one also has deeper blocking.  

On the course, Joby Carter told us we'll never look at letters the same way again.  He was dead right; everywhere I go I'm looking at the detail of lettering.

As I try other styles I'll post them here in case anyone has an opinion to share.

A bit too much afloat

 Major problems at Cropredy Marina yesterday thanks to storm Bert.  The moorers' facebook group was showing alarming pictures of flooding all round the marina and in the village too. I don't think I can show them here because they are not my pictures. 

 The staff have been out slackening everyone's ropes to prevent the boats from being pulled over as the water rose so high. Now I read that there have been a lot of electrical problems because of shore line plugs being submerged.  I dare say that applies to ours.  There's not much we can do as we are at home where we've had some rain but not a lot.  We have to be so grateful to the marina staff who have worked through the night with the help of some resident moorers to attend to the safety of some 300 boats.  However they've found the time to keep us updated by regular emails.  We'll be going back to the boat in a couple of weeks so we'll see then if Herbie has been affected in any way.

On top of the boat issues the flooding has hit the facilities buildings and various bits are out of action and of course the car park has been under water.  The access road to the marina looked like a river.

I really can't understand why so many people deny the climate change science.  I would have thought it would be obvious by now that it's really happening.  I know there have always been floods, but not at the frequency they are coming nowadays.  I sue to have a dream of having a house by the river. I don't think I'd want one now.

Job's a Good'un

 The restoration of Herbie's hinged aft hatch lid is complete, no thanks to me. All the thanks go to my mate Rick who has lovingly and skilfully turned this

into this

Not a simple job because he had to cut away the old rotten plywood without damaging the 1mm thin fibreglass exterior wrapping and replace it with good solid hardwood, butting the new wood accurately against the remaining good old stuff. See where the old white bits meet thenew  brown bits at the side edges.

Tricky when working up against the outer skin.  I could never have done it so well. It'll see me out now, that's for sure. Future owners will appreciate the work wonder who RCB is

The hatch cover was originally made by Herbie's prevoius owner Roy, whose wife Val found the usual sliding type of hatch difficult so he came up with the hinged ideaI with built in props to hold it open, rather like the gas struts on a car boot. It's always been a good hatch cover, solid, (actually surprisingly heavy), secure and rainproof, but plywood always de-laminates eventually. The hatch has now had a good exterior repaint too so to do it justice I really have to work hard next spring when Kath and I are going to do a lot of Herbie's exterior paintwork which if you recall, we started earlier this year.

Thanks again Rick, you're a star!