 Mar 20 2007, 12:28 PM |
we spent the second weekend out of the water finishing off the scraping and on Sunday we finally cracked open a tin of paint! Hurray.
Step 11
Find a good supplier
One of our neighbours told us about Uxbridge boat centre being a decent place to buy anything for the boat. A quick www.yell.co.uk search and Uxbridge was found, not far from us. I already called them mid week to find out what they had in stock and as the weekend approached my debit card was twitching at the thought of entering a well stocked chandlery.
I needed to be disciplined as those places can be like aladdins caves, you go in for a screw and come out with enough to fit a new boat out.
what did we need,
Paint, bitumen, black stuff, hull blacking, call it what you want. yes that was priority one A. 15litres of premium bitumen at £16 for 5 litres.
we also needed four new anodes, thats priority one B, £30 each
plus some mini shackles to re-attach our bullnose fenders, thats number 2 on the list - 42p each (x6)
thats all we needed in fact.
but while i was there i picked up a 12V adapter that plugs into a small 3pin socket and converts it to cigarette lighter style, VERY handy little gadget. (£7)
and some pink chemical toilet flush so we smell fresh as a daisy in the throne room. (£6)
back to the boat and it was time to paint the vactan on. I had bought the vactan via ebay and its been applied to the waterline to help with resisting corrosion. Its not exactly cheap at £14 per litre, but we only needed 500mls to do the whole boat waterline so it goes a long way.
Step 12
Slap some paint on
up at 6am sunday morning, woken by the sound of banging and crashing outside, my water jerry can flew off the roof, we couldnt sleep so decided to get to work.
First hosing and scrubbing the sides to remove the dust.
It dried very fast, in just 5 or 10 minutes so finally we opened a can of bitumen to paint the bottom. I would have felt very excited had it not been for the fact we had freezing gale force winds howling around our ears.
I put some overalls on, my wellies on with 2 pairs of socks, a jumper and a polo-neck long-sleeved top under my overalls, a jumper over my overalls plus a fleecy gillet... and some waterproof over-trousers to try to stop the wind going through. plus some leather work gloves to keep my hands warm. and a scarf. and a hat..... and then i decided I needed a wee
As the bitumen was cold and we had to do the first coat by brush it was bloody hard work. The wind was blowing fine streams of the sticky black stuff off the brush as I dipped it in the bitumen, it made it a bit of a messy job but quite satisfying seeing the hard work of the previous week pay off.
since we got up early this meant that if the weather held out we could get a second coat on in the same day. (which we did)
the third coat will have to wait because we have run out of daylight time and have no lights or energy to continue.
now we have to finish scraping the swim area and the base plate. our enthusiasm is waning a little during this cold snap.
we plan to be back in the water next week.
Addendum:
our welder never turned up on Monday... we have to source another.
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