The sun is shining and the wind blowing and all is progressing nicely with the good ship Beta III. We are motoring ahead with the floor. And by “we”, I mean Ian the carpenter. The beam sections that the ply boards sit in are in three main section. The central section is done – a straight run. Making it easier to complete the two side sections as there is actually something flat to work on. 

Ian has bookmatched all the ply so that the grain runs from one piece to another and it all looks proper lovely. We don’t have a picture of this as it was all covered up. Will show you later.

I can’t tell you what a MASSIVE MASSIVE transformation it is to actually have a floor. The number of times I have twisted my ankle, or cracked it against the metal, or stepped into a puddle of water. This won’t happen again. Rather than hopping from beam to beam (usually with a big bucket of crud from the bilge) I can literally skip across the floor of the boat. This my friends represents significant progress.

Meanwhile in the galley…. for some reason we had missed Shotblasting the underside of the deck here so needed to knock off the flakey paint with a heat gun and wire brush. 

This was manfully done by Tom. It’s a pretty awful job as it basically involves standing with your arms above your head for hours while flakes of paint rain down on you. The metal beams are all prepped and now being painted. The underside of the deck is a bit patchy as it isn’t possible to get it back to plain wood without sandblasting it. It may be that we end up painting it again which would bring some more light into the galley which is definitely the darkest room by some way.
Next up are those pesky square windows. Not found some brass ones in three years of searching so time for Ian to make a wooden version.

Tom has discoverer the joys of jotamastic…