Sunday, 11 April 2010
A Question
This is going to be a short post for now, we just need a little question answered. We're about to order the wood for the floor in the bedroom/bathroom area, and someone suggested that instead of using WBP Ply we could use P5 Moisture Resistant Chipboard. Now this appeals to us as this chipboard is half the price of WBP Ply but even though it's suitable for use in Bathrooms etc is it suitable for a houseboat. Any ideas or experience will be gratefully received.
Tuesday, 26 January 2010
Time flies like an arrow;…..
Fruit flies like a banana.
I was doing my regular tour of the blogs that I’ve been following, when I thought it must be a while since I’ve updated ours. That was a surprise, our last update was May 2009! It’s not that nothing has happened, it’s because I’m not very good at keeping a diary. I enjoy reading other blogs, however small the detail, but I can’t do it myself. I love notebooks and have several, but after the first couple of pages I forget them. I really want to put all my thoughts in a notebook because I have so many ideas in my head but for some reason I don’t write them down. This means that those thoughts disappear after a while or I end up working it all out in my head. When I had a brief, but enjoyable, career change and studied garden design there were a lot of art projects and we were encouraged to keep a notebook but all I ended up doing was writing down the brief, doing all the design and then filling in the notebook afterwards. A bit like maths really, I’d have the question, I’d produce the answer and then get marked down for not showing all my working out. It was all in my head. So when I thought it was about time I updated this blog my head then overflowed with all the things I needed to write down and by the time I’ve finished writing this I will probably have forgotten half of it. I think I’ll buy a nice big shiny notebook today and try again to write everything down.
So, here goes, what have we been doing since May.
After getting back from dry dock and settling down into our new mooring and getting on with enjoying life aboard we set about painting the deck. This involved much rust busting, Vactaning (if that is a verb), priming and top coating. This went well and we used different colours for each coat so we could see were we’d been, but life kept on getting in the way. So for this year we're left with the foredeck, aftdeck and gunwale and the fiddly upright bits between deck and roof (I have no idea of the correct nautical term). Inside we’ve got the current living space more or less right, but it’s still just a huge bedsit and started work on the other half. This will be the bedrooms, proper bathroom and study/office. So far in there we’ve removed a ton of scrap metal and sold that (we still have about the same again to remove), scraped about half the bilges and cleaned and Vactanned (is that a word?) half the hull. The plan is to lay half the floor to give us a working space and then clean up the rest. Well that gives you an idea of where we are, sorry about the lack of detail, I will try harder this year.
Whilst rambling on about notebooks I took a look at one in my collection and found a piece I intended to write last year. It was about waste, not the most interesting subject, but something I’ve grown not quite passionate about but more a case of a little heated. We try to recycle and make regular trips to the local tip. But if you spend any time at a tip/recycling centre you’ll see an enormous amount of waste. I know there are problems with recyling mountains where no one really knows either what to do with it or the cost is prohibitive, but some of the things I’ve seen thrown into the landfill bin when the appropriate recycling bin is yards away winds me up. Probably the most extreme was when I saw someone throw a mini-moto motorcycle into landfill, I’m sure it no longer worked but to throw it like that is… is… Grrrrr! Anyway rant over, I’ll still get wound up when we go there but what can you do, we do our bit and hopefully the majority of other people do too.
I had to take away the ability to leave anonymous comments on our blog after we received loads in Mandarin. After getting them translated in Google I found that these were basically ads for things that included rubber women. So if you want to leave a comment you’ll have to have an account etc. I did check Google Analytics and was surprised to find that even though we hadn’t posted anything for nearly a year we were still getting quite a few visits.
OK, I’d better go now.
Now, what was it I was going to buy……………..
Friday, 29 May 2009
Thursday, 21 May 2009
Sunday, 17 May 2009
31 Days
Well, that was an interesting 5 weeks. Real went into dry dock to be cleaned up, have a bit of welding done and a new coat of paint. This was originally intended to take two weeks and during that time we went to stay with my Mum. The work did indeed take two weeks, with a couple of days added to take into account the Easter Bank holiday, but…
When she went back into the water she sprung a leak and had to go back up the slip to have it fixed. Unfortunately no one called us to let us know and when Maureen called to check that everything was OK we got the bad news. By this time Maureen was staying with friends as it was much easier for her to get to work and I stayed on at my Mums, but this made communication both between us and the shipyard a little difficult and complicated.
A few days later having had her little leakage problem sorted out Real was ready to go back into the water and once the tides were right she did. But the old lady decided she didn’t want to go back and sprung another leak. So it was back up the slip again and lots of conversations about not only fixing the new leak but what we could do to prevent any more problems. It turns out that as she came down slip the stern began to float earlier than expected which meant she was basically balanced on the stern and bow and was flexing in the middle, something she was never designed for, as there is no real strength end to end. But there wasn’t really an answer on how to prevent this happening.
By this time we were both beginning to feel a bit stressed and checking on the prices of scrap steel. Seriously, we were.
The tides weren’t going to be right again for another week and a half, which not only meant we were basically homeless but there was a queue forming for the slip with other boats moored in various places waiting for Real to leave. We moved home again and stayed at an empty houseboat that belonged to a neighbour at the marina. Together again at last!
Two days before launch day we were let down by the towing company who wouldn’t be able to tow us back to the marina, so after discussing the problem with various people we came up with a plan. I’d take the day off and armed with broom handles and quick setting concrete Real would go back into the water however much she protested. The broom handles would be used to plug any new leaks (although judging by the previous holes pencils may have been better) and then concreted in, and we’d deal with the problem later. As far as towing was concerned after many frantic phone calls and favour asking, a tug was found that could do the job. But not cheap by any means. The tug was big, too big to get us into the marina, so we were going to be assisted in by a couple of small workboats.
Launch Day III. I arrived at the shipyard armed with hole plugging equipment and waited for the tide.
The tug arrived, it was huge, probably about two-thirds the length of Real.
Paul arrived with workboat number one.
The tide came in.
Real moved slowly down the slip and into the water.
She didn’t leak. It must have been the good talking to that I gave her, or that fact that the previous two launches had found all the weak spots.
We were on our way. Backwards. As the tug was so big it didn’t really matter which way we were towed and it meant less manoeuvring if we were tied up along side and taken as we were.
So I had a river trip in our home, checking for any leaks along the way.
As we’d left the slip at high tide time was now against us to make it back to our berth in the marina. The tug made good time, very good time, I think we may have arrived before we left. Now came the tricky bit, towing her in with two little workboats against the tide. This is where I felt particularly useless, people were running around with ropes, shouting instructions and getting the job done and all I could do was watch. I was given a tyre on a bit of rope to use as a fender, and as chief tyre on a bit of rope holder I did a brilliant job. Maybe not so good using it as a fender, but excellent at holding it and then being told to run down the other end and hang it over the side. Real was finally stuffed into to her new berth and the workboats took off at high speed whilst I helped get her tied up. I later found out that there was actually quite a lot of panicking going on, the tide was going out fast and there was a serious risk of everything getting stuck on the mud. Hence the rapid stuffing into the berth.
Our home was back.
The following day she was turned around, as all our waste outlets were facing the pontoon. This would have meant a bit of re-plumbing, which I was OK dealing with but the offer to turn her was made so we took it.
During all of this I had no real opportunity to take any photos but fortunately one of our neighbours did, and took a series of Real pirouetting into place.
We’re now in the process of unpacking everything again, and getting back to life aboard and the rest of the work we need to do.
photos will follow shortly, as soon as I've worked out how to get them in the right order etc etc etc.
When she went back into the water she sprung a leak and had to go back up the slip to have it fixed. Unfortunately no one called us to let us know and when Maureen called to check that everything was OK we got the bad news. By this time Maureen was staying with friends as it was much easier for her to get to work and I stayed on at my Mums, but this made communication both between us and the shipyard a little difficult and complicated.
A few days later having had her little leakage problem sorted out Real was ready to go back into the water and once the tides were right she did. But the old lady decided she didn’t want to go back and sprung another leak. So it was back up the slip again and lots of conversations about not only fixing the new leak but what we could do to prevent any more problems. It turns out that as she came down slip the stern began to float earlier than expected which meant she was basically balanced on the stern and bow and was flexing in the middle, something she was never designed for, as there is no real strength end to end. But there wasn’t really an answer on how to prevent this happening.
By this time we were both beginning to feel a bit stressed and checking on the prices of scrap steel. Seriously, we were.
The tides weren’t going to be right again for another week and a half, which not only meant we were basically homeless but there was a queue forming for the slip with other boats moored in various places waiting for Real to leave. We moved home again and stayed at an empty houseboat that belonged to a neighbour at the marina. Together again at last!
Two days before launch day we were let down by the towing company who wouldn’t be able to tow us back to the marina, so after discussing the problem with various people we came up with a plan. I’d take the day off and armed with broom handles and quick setting concrete Real would go back into the water however much she protested. The broom handles would be used to plug any new leaks (although judging by the previous holes pencils may have been better) and then concreted in, and we’d deal with the problem later. As far as towing was concerned after many frantic phone calls and favour asking, a tug was found that could do the job. But not cheap by any means. The tug was big, too big to get us into the marina, so we were going to be assisted in by a couple of small workboats.
Launch Day III. I arrived at the shipyard armed with hole plugging equipment and waited for the tide.
The tug arrived, it was huge, probably about two-thirds the length of Real.
Paul arrived with workboat number one.
The tide came in.
Real moved slowly down the slip and into the water.
She didn’t leak. It must have been the good talking to that I gave her, or that fact that the previous two launches had found all the weak spots.
We were on our way. Backwards. As the tug was so big it didn’t really matter which way we were towed and it meant less manoeuvring if we were tied up along side and taken as we were.
So I had a river trip in our home, checking for any leaks along the way.
As we’d left the slip at high tide time was now against us to make it back to our berth in the marina. The tug made good time, very good time, I think we may have arrived before we left. Now came the tricky bit, towing her in with two little workboats against the tide. This is where I felt particularly useless, people were running around with ropes, shouting instructions and getting the job done and all I could do was watch. I was given a tyre on a bit of rope to use as a fender, and as chief tyre on a bit of rope holder I did a brilliant job. Maybe not so good using it as a fender, but excellent at holding it and then being told to run down the other end and hang it over the side. Real was finally stuffed into to her new berth and the workboats took off at high speed whilst I helped get her tied up. I later found out that there was actually quite a lot of panicking going on, the tide was going out fast and there was a serious risk of everything getting stuck on the mud. Hence the rapid stuffing into the berth.
Our home was back.
The following day she was turned around, as all our waste outlets were facing the pontoon. This would have meant a bit of re-plumbing, which I was OK dealing with but the offer to turn her was made so we took it.
During all of this I had no real opportunity to take any photos but fortunately one of our neighbours did, and took a series of Real pirouetting into place.
We’re now in the process of unpacking everything again, and getting back to life aboard and the rest of the work we need to do.
photos will follow shortly, as soon as I've worked out how to get them in the right order etc etc etc.
Thursday, 23 April 2009
Painted Lady
Not the best picture in the world, but I only had my phone on me. She's all clean, welded and painted, ready to go back in tomorrow and, all being well, back home in time for tea.
Saturday 25th April
I knew I shouldn't have said anything! Due to some minor technical problems she's not back yet. Due on Monday now, but as we've found out with boats anything could happen.
Friday, 10 April 2009
High 'n' Dry
Not much to say at the moment apart from 'She's out and having her bottom washed and painted'.
We still can't fit her all in one photo!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
