soggy sunday

The weather lived up to the forecast, it was indeed wet and nasty, so we've been hiding down below with tea and cake , looking at the soggy canoeists going up and down the river in the rain.
I even saw one guy go past on a paddleboard!I have been working in the aft cabin, it's quite time consuming scraping away 50 years of paint.
Dad has started work on the chainlocker (the very front part of the boat, where the anchor chain goes) you can see him in the pic cutting some plywood to make a bottom board for it.

high tides!

There was a really high tide today, All the rain coming down the river met the spring tide which started to flood the road to the boatyard! We went down the river in my little tender to have a look at the bridges I have to pass under to get to the sea.
Somehow we managed to find a break in the rain, and get some more painting done.
I cleaned out the cuddy which hides the exhaust at the back of the wheelhouse,
then plugged a few more old bolt holes in the bottom of it, before painting the bottom part of it.
Hopefully if the weather is ok tomorrow I can paint the sides too, but the forecast isn't good.
Dad has been painting the locker on the foredeck, he gave it a coat of primer during the week, and now it's white again :)

too wet to paint :(

It was too wet to carry on painting today, so I did some maintenance down below. I changed the oil and filters on the generator, the fuel filter is really awkward as it's hidden behind the engine so you have to lean over the top to get to it!
Meanwhile Dad carried on cleaning the aft cabin, to prepare it for the new insulation. The generator is an old air cooled petter diesel, and it's our much needed source of electrical power, as the boat is currently moored in the middle of the river.

It must be about 2 months since I was handed the keys, we are now well into our third packet of tea bags!
Today I have been painting more of the starboard side of the wheel house, and re-sealed the hatch in the foredeck. To scare the rain away dad rigged a tarp over the bow, which did the trick. I had great fun getting everything covered in black sealant. Meanwhile Dad has been scraping more of the loose paint from the inside of the aft cabin.

fixing more holes

My plans of painting were scuppered by rain :( I had intended on painting the roof of the aft cabin, but it was too wet, so we did some jobs inside.
I started by fixing the engine water temperature gauge which was reading 120 c before I'd even started the engine! The sensor needed replacing, and luckily I found one amongst the bits and bobs in the engine room.
Dad had tidied up below deck and then gave me a hand to remove paint and unwanted woodwork from the aft cabin.
A fresh shower of rain brought to my attention some holes in the roof I'd missed yesterday.
In the locker above the front half of the cabin there were more old bolt holes, and they were dripping on us!
The previous owner's remedy to this had been to skim the bottom of the locker with about an inch of cement, which hid the holes nicely, however water find's it's way into all sorts of places.
So I bit the bullet and went outside to chip away the cement, then plug the holes properly.
Luckily it lifted off the steel without a fight, just a lot of mess.
Hopefully next week will be a drier one.

more welding

I started out welding up some old bolt holes in the roof of the aft cabin which leak when it rains.
After scraping away some flaky paint I ended up fixing a somewhat bigger hole, which had been hidden under filler. It must have been festering away for a while. I cut out the rust and welded in a new piece of metal, you can see the squared off hole in the centre of the picture.
After lunch I cleaned off the rust and flaky paint and painted the patches of bare metal.
Dad kept out of the cold wind, disassembling the front of the bed in the forward cabin

I can't beleive it's not january!

this year seems to be disappearing fast, it's febuary already!
Today I've been working on the 4th window in the aft cabin, which has proved the most difficult so far. When I removed the old perspex window (with Tom's help) we found the flange had rusted away at the bottom. I've cut out the rusty bits, and replaced them with fresh metal, using one of screwfix's finest cheapo welders. The pics below show the finished metalwork, painted my fav shade of grey. Dad painted the locker above with a second coat of waterproofing paint
so hopefully things will be much drier inside.