Far From The Madding Crowd….

That’s where we try to get on Bank Holiday weekends. But I think we’ve excelled ourselves this time….

High and Dry!

It wasn’t planned, this. We were moored nearby and I was walking Meg when I stopped to chat to Tony of Red Bull Services while he was blacking another boat. It turned out he had a slot available if the weather was amenable, starting Thursday.

Well, the forecast was OK, so first thing Thursday morning Seyella revealed her underwear…

Out she comes….

While the hull was still wet Tony and I set to with scrapers, removing the accumulation of grime and weed. What we didn’t reckon on removing was pretty well all the previous blacking, but that’s what came off, revealing some disappointing rust pits along the sides.

Not good.

It appears that the previous two blacking jobs had not been thorough as I might have hoped. The weed hatch box had obviously never been touched.

Pitting in the weed hatch.
Although they’re not pretty, none of them are more than maybe ½mm deep, so it’s not the end of the world.

After scraping, the hull was pressure washed to remove any remaining crud and the rest of the old paint.

Tony wields the pressure washer

It’s now been treated to three substantial coats of Intertuf, properly applied. That should hold her for the next couple of years.

Looking better

Tony has been putting the blacking on, I’ve been busy internally….

The stern swim, uxter plate and weed hatch painted out.
I also repainted the tunnel bands (the red and white bands on the counter), but I’m not happy with them so I’ll have to do them again.

Being up on a slipway is not ideal, I have to carry Meg up and down a ladder. She wasn’t impressed at first but she’s getting used to the idea now. But the opportunity was too good to miss, and I’m glad I’ve been here to watch the job done. Not that I didn’t trust Tony to do it properly, but the last twice we’ve left the boat with the marina…. I don’t think we’ll be going there again.

We’re getting wet again on Monday morning, so the blacking will have had plenty of time to dry. Then we’ll be heading north up towards Macclesfield. There’s been a lot of boats about this weekend, so I reckon we’ll leave Bosley Locks till after next weekend.

On Wednesday we had a trip up the canal to the winding hole near Ramsdell Hall. Yes, Wednesday. The day that we had gale force winds, snow, sleet and rain. In fact the only day of bad weather in the last month. We needed to be facing the other way around to make it easier to get onto the slipway, and I wanted to fill the water tank and get some paint from the chandlery at Sherborne Wharf.

It’ll be good to get away, there’re some goods walks around here but we could do with a change of scenery. Looking forward to getting on up the Macclesfield.

Locks 2 (same one twice on Wednesday), miles 4.