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 ).