Hull servicing, FINISHED and the final countdown

Hull servicing, FINISHED and the final countdown

Email this entry | Print this entry Mar 27 2007, 03:42 PM

At last, the anodes have been welded on and we are due back in the water on thursday.
The Bottom is FINISHED!!!

To say i am fairly ecstatic would be an understatement.



Cleaning the tar dust and fragments from our faces has been part and parcel of the job and now I must be short of a few layers of skin, so im planning on letting it grow back before i need to go scrubbing it away again.

the total cost of this little adventure is listed below:

Boat lift out of the water : £313
4 cup brushes at £7 each : £28 ( bought from Turtles in Croydon, chertsey tool hire and Uxbridge boat centre)
protective goggles : £5 (turtles)
face masks : £6 (turtles)
paint brushes and rollers :£15 (turtles)
new shackles for
bull nosed fenders : £2.50 ( uxbridge boat centre)
4 anodes at £30 each : £120 ( uxbridge boat centre)
Vactan rust inhibiter 1 litre :£14 (ebay)
premium bitumen paint
17.5 litres :£59 ( uxbridge boat centre)
welding the anodes on : £50 ( penton hook marine services)
2 weeks on hardstanding: £0
lift back into the water : £313

£925.50

(We borrowed a variety of scrapers and scaffold platforms to assist with the job. Insulation board is better than planking to lay on under the boat so we found some of that too)

Now imagine if we were at more reasonably priced marina and our lift out costs were halved then it might look more reasonable.
however, we could never had got the job done so thoroughly by anyone else without paying extra for sand blasting and that would have been at the end of the year and cost us lots.

So all in all, i feel satisfied with what we have and now we dont have to worry about blacking or anodes for at least a couple of years.

next stop, Grand Union canal... but not before ive added a few locks to our lockers and engine room.

Entry we must be barking... Part 4

we must be barking... Part 4

Email this entry | Print this entry Mar 26 2007, 02:18 PM

Thats the royal we, Yann and myself have spent our 3rd and final weekend scraping and painting.

Step 56:
don't fear the reaper
The finale is in sight, the fanfare and the trumpets will play loudly sometime soon, but not just yet.
The base plate was the object of our affections this weekend. With myself doing the "shit" bit at the back around the swim, prop and rudder yann got on with the scraping and cup-brushing with his angle grinder on the base plate.

we were well ahead of schedule on Saturday with one coat of vactan over the base plate, then a coat of bitumen, a 3rd coat on the sides.. the weed hatch was out and scrubbed down, vactanned and also had a coat of bitumen on the hull facing side.
So we have a bit of time to go shopping and in between taking the dog to the vet, picking up some stuff from my old flat we managed to nip into a sofa shop and buy a sofa.

Sunday the final coat of bitumen went on the base plate but not before fetching the sofa from croydon.
I measured it, measured it again before committing to buy.

what I failed to account for was the mental way our kitchen is laid out with a kink in the middle. this meant we had to slide the sofa on the work surfaces. The distance from work surface to the ceiling = 101cm... the depth of the sofa coming through = 101cm.
the only little snag was the downlighters 5mm protrusion which meant plenty of heaving, pushing and pulling to get around them.
oh and the moment where i knocked the fireblanket and the resident Big Bertha spider jumped out annoyed. I shouted to yann that I had a small problem and I wasnt moving until I sorted it out... holding the sofa in one hand I searched around for something to catch it in... I hate killing anything so I prefer the "catch it and move it method". However when a flipflop was handed to me through the 3cm gap between the sofa and the back door Im afraid Bertha became a little less tall a fair bit wider.

Sorry bertie... wrong time, wrong place.

So the sofa was in and back to the bottom blacking. the second coat went on with a roller and was finished fairly quickly. my stick like arms crying with pain having to do the "shit" bit at the back. our sloping swims are a real arse of a job because you can neither sit, stand or kneel. you have to bend sideways with head to one side.

meanwhile Yann was attempting to learn how to weld using bits of old anode strap. Every few minutes I heard cursing in French followed shortly by him coming to show me the latest attempt at joining two pieces of metal. Needless to say, it takes a bit longer than a day to learn to weld. I tried to tell him not to expect too much at a first attempt. His foray into the world of the welder was abruptly cut short when the neighbours complained that their Television and lights were flickering and dimming as we were sucking all the power from the system!
one of the residents of the affected boat complained that welding should be done on the maintenance pontoon... SO er, how exactly would you weld anodes on underwater? dippy woman.

SO, finally all we are waiting for is the "professional" welder to put our anodes on and we should be craned back in on Thursday.

once this is done I will have a recap on the total costs of our do-it-yourself Hull servicing.

pics to follow of finished bottom and new sofa.

Im off for a lay down this coming weekend while Yann services the engine.

Our Marina departure has been delayed a week so we plan to leave on Good friday sometime.
Thats T-minus 11 days. Barring any flooding on that damned river thames of course.

Entry Idiots guide - part 3

honey ryder

Idiots guide - part 3

Email this entry | Print this entry Mar 20 2007, 12:28 PM

So, we've been out of the water for 12 days now, work has been hampered a bit with the freezing conditions.

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.

Entry the idiots guide, part 2

the idiots guide, part 2

Email this entry | Print this entry Mar 15 2007, 06:03 PM

The second in my series of how to service a hull.

step 8
take a couple of days off work while the weather is good.
having taken some time off ive managed to make good progress on the hull and now all that is left to scrape and angle grind is the bow section, the stern section and around the swims as well as scrape the bottom.



step 9
Be cool with mental neighbours
The power supply to the maintenance area of the marina where our boat is, is on a shared basis. however most of our neighbours dont like sharing. in fact they will do anything possible NOT to share, NOT speak to you, NOT be civil to you, NOT acknowledge you are alive etc.
we have struggled to find a power point at which to plug our angle grinder into, since we are in a maintenance area people seem to think that watching the tv or running a fridge is a far more important use of a power point than actually doing any real maintenance.



Step 10
Find a welder
wandering around the yard this morning I was looking for someone who could do me a spot of welding. Just so happened that someone on a boat knew someone else who could do the job for us.
We plan to weld another set of anode studs onto the areas next to the current set of anode studs.
this way we can drill the anode strap and bolt replacements on as and when we like, even in the water if we so choose.
we plan to put 8 anodes on, 4 are already 50% used and then a set of nice brand spanking ones on as well on the new studs.

quote for this job, which includes welding a railing on the back of the boat as well, £80. we shall see if its more or less on monday.

Entry the idiots guide to hull servicing

the idiots guide to hull servicing

Email this entry | Print this entry Mar 12 2007, 05:06 PM

Ive searched the world wide web for information on what you are supposed to do with narrowboats when they need their bottom looking at.

i came up with a wealth of hit and miss information, so ive decided to do a "how to" of my own for the benefit of all those "new to steel boats" out there.
ive got plenty of ideas on what to do if it was a plastic boat, its so simple i could do it with one arm behind my back.

steel hulls, especially ones that have been a bit neglected are entirely another matter.
SO

Step 1 in my idiots guide:
Find someone to do it for you.
fat chance, I called around plenty of boat yards and the prices they were quoting me for a simple pull it out on a trolley, jet wash down and re-black the sides was in the region of £750
and the soonest they could fit us in was between July and October.

our boat needs doing NOW! its not going to do us any favours if we wait several more months.
Watching the thames water levels rising we could see our departure date of the end of march slipping into april and when the time comes, we want to be able to GTFOT (get the f**K outta there) without worrying about heading to another boatyard to get the boat taken out.

The answer to step one, if you want a job doing properly and you wont it done NOW, then do it your bloody self!
cost for crane lift out: £313 (storage on side near to an electric point is included in moorings already paid for.)

Step 1b
Call a shop for advice
Sometime around getting her out of the water I called Uxbridge boat centre, a very helpful fella on the phone explained the options of paint available to use on narrowboat bottoms.
its a far cry from VC tar, or red antifouling ive been used to in the past.
We have a choice of the following
cheap bog standard bitumen: £12 (5ltr tin)
premium bitumen:£16
bodied bitumen:£25
Coflex: £40

Apparently the Coflex is the most highly recommended and most protective, ( no f**kin kiddin at that price) but it must be applied to abraded bare metal....
which may be a little tricky, we are leaving our options open for the moment, but there is another alternative to give us some good rust protection, and that is called vactan, at £7 for 500mls, this might be our choice of hull protection before we slap the bitumen on.

we are still undecided and need more advice.

Step 2
get her out of the water and have a look
Friday morning I put anything that can fall over on the floor and anything loose on the roof inside. The boat looks like a bomb hit it from the inside and remarkably tidy from the outside.
I already had an idea of what we would find after seeing the bottom at the survey in November last year. It wasnt pretty but I think ive seen worse.
The build up of weed was fairly minimal after it was jet washed down last time it was out and hadnt had a chance for much weed to grow back. Most of the muscles that were attached and rudely detached with a shovel last time hadnt bothered to come back either.
The main concern really was the amount of electrolysis action eating away at the sides. The base plate seems in remarkably good condition.

Step 3
TOOL UP
The right tools make any hard job bearable, so Yanns current job on a building site bore the fruit of a massive scraper on a pole, a ladder and a scaffold platform, along with a bountiful supply of ear plugs..
My heavy tool bag that yann is forever complaining about taking up too much space and being full of shit finally came into its own. It provided a full set of chisels, a hammer, a wire brush, a face mask and goggles, a scraper and gloves.
The rest I bought from the local hardware shop, a metal wire Cup brush that attaches to an angle grinder and some paint trays/rollers and massive brushes.
I would quite like to have a mary poppins type tool bag so next time we have to do a job like this I might be able to pull a grit blaster and a belt sander out of my bag too. I bet you can find mary poppins bags comeplete with hat stand on Ebay...

cost of tools: £27

Step 4
get the beer in
this should be listed amongst the tools, it is a fairly important part of the job. Also Mars bars and other high energy confectionery are suggested

Step 5
Put overalls on and do some grafting
Now all the above steps pale in to insignificance as pain in muscles i forgot i had kicks in.
The scraping began in earnest at around 7am on Saturday morning, by 9.30am I had had my first beer and Yann had returned from the internet shop.
Two people on the job made much better progress.
First we started with the big scraper on a pole, we removed most of the loose stuff this way, it created a lot of dust, face mask and goggles are a must for this job.
Then came the chisels. Yann got the big (!) 1inch chisel, I opted for a two chisel combo, a 19mm and a 11mm.
Gladiators, choose your weapons....
We chiseled and I hammered of the loose stuff along the waterline, we chiseled some more... and yann did some angle grinding with the cup brush.
We discovered finding bare metal was akin to finding the holy grail.
The cup brush melts the small amount of remaining tar and coats the bare metal nicely with a very fine layer. stopping it going orange over night

You can see here, this is the surface we started with, after being scraped with the big scraper. The orange blobs are the signs of electrolysis and were blisters of rusty liquified metal, these blisters eat away into the metal plating, ours are thankfully very shallow at maybe 0.25mm deep on average. We will try adding new anodes and when we are away from the marina and not plugged into shore power all the time this should hopefully sort out the problem. ( shore power is the menace of marina living, everyone stays plugged in all the time and when boats are moored so closely together, everyone becomes one huge electro conductor, the weakest link cops it, in our case.. it was us)


Step 6
get a good nights sleep
Its been a long time since i felt this tired after a days grafting, ive definitely got soft these past few years working in an office. I was in bed by 8.45pm on Saturday night, I really know how to party! My muscles dont realise ive stopped scraping and I find I keep twitching in a "scrape" style way as Im trying to relax.
I fell asleep to Superman, ( the original and best film)

Step 7
dont be disappointed
when you wake up the next day feeling like youve been in a mass brawl and see that less than a quarter of the boat is ready to paint you may feel a little disheartened.

Much to my dismay my super"wo"man laser vision doesnt work when Im conscious and my jedi light sabre seems to be missing, I recon banjo's been secretly been practicing the ways of the force while Im away at work, I bet if I look in his bed I might find it, but I dont want to invade his privacy so I must pick up my two chisels ( and a wire brush) and carry on scraping the bottom of this never-ending hell on boat props.

I discovered that wetting the sides of the boat helps to reduce the dust plus make it easier to scrape clean and the tendons in my hand have developed a chisel shaped memory. If I put the chisel down and relax my hand it forms a perfect shape of an invisible chisel handle.

you can see in this pic the orange line where i hammered off the loose rust ( loose when I pummeled it to death) I exposed bare metal which oxidates rapidly. its easy to see when you have bare metal. hammering your own home with all your energy and force is quite a satisfying thing, the sound and the sensation was very pleasing, almost kinky. ( try doing that with a plastic boat and see where you get)


the dark sections have been scraped, scraped some more, then scrubbed with the metal cup brush. these areas are basically bare metal but covered with a fine film of tar, melted from existing remnants left behind after scraping.


------------------------------------------

After two days of 11 hours work, totalling 22 hours, mostly with 2 people working at the same time we have scraped clean around half of the hull. There is still much to do, including scraping the base plate, cleaning all the detailed areas and welding on some bolt studs for some new anodes.
Not to mention the simple job of applying the paint.

the story continues....

Steady away...

Steady away...

Email this entry | Print this entry Mar 8 2007, 04:47 PM

I discovered one of the very few advantages of being the UK's most expensive marina today.

Ive been looking around for somewhere to take our boat to get the bottom blacked since January. The bottom of our boat is suffering from 3 years of neglect and virtually no cruising, but gentle vegetation moored up constantly connected to shore power.
The cleaning frenzy we had a couple of weeks ago revealed to us the fact that electrolosis ( for me, the equivalent of osmosis for a metal boat) is munching away at our port side. We are moored closely to another boat along that side and also a small finger pontoon. When we took it out for surveying before we bought it last year the final remnants of the hull paint were pressure washed off so the bottom is in dire need of some TLC.

SO the advantage of an expensive marina? No bugger wants to pay so much for the facilities so they are always available when you want them. I called today to find out about craning her out, yes, how will tomorrow do you? put on hard standing near an electric point?
Dandy, yes please.

I had previously called Pyrford marina on the River Wey to enquire about their dry dock. their soonest available slot, October. now thats what I call a popular place.

So now its time to get down and dirty and scrape her bottom clean. We've got 3 weeks before our moorings run out, but the way the river is looking at the moment, I dont think it will matter if we are in or out of the water, we aint going anywhere for a while.

The river Thames in the Chertsey area today has reached a new highest level so far this winter. Its not reached nose bleed levels of summit but its pretty high, too high to use the river for sure.