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?
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