New year blues were banished as I hit the London Boat Show. I had initially intended just to have a poke around some super yachts but turns out the Massey Shaw, the sister boat to Beta III was going to be there.

While the Massey Shaw restoration is quite a different proposition to my project – they have restored it to its original state as a working fire boat – it was great to see the similarities between the two.

They also did a demonstration of the pumps in action – don’t stand downwind at this point.

They also let us take a poke around the engine room. The Massey Shaw still has the original twin engines – these were replaced by a single engine in Beta III at some point.

They look pretty good all polished up, particularly with the original merryweather dials.

We did also ponce around the super yachts…

The guys who have been restoring the Massey Shaw. While their budget was significantly bigger and they stuck to the original layout and used original techniques, there is a lot I can learn. Not least the paint choices and suppliers for different parts of the project.

One of the most encouraging bits was exploring the crew quarters and finding that it was really warm and cosy.

Charlie was the perfect buddy for this trip owing to her love of anything blue and white. There is a lot of blue and white at the Boat Show.

WHY WONT ANYONE LET ME HIRE A 250 CFM TRAILER COMPRESSOR??

I don’t have a company… I don’t have any trade references… ARGHHHHHHHHH

Went to Sugarloaf Cottage on Gingerbread Lane to look at some Shotblasting equipment. I jest not.

1- Shotblasting involves firing shot, glass, sand or lead at a metal surface to remove all paint and rust.

2 – it cannot be done in the rain, snow, damp, or when the shotblaster doesn’t fancy it or wants a fag.

3 – the shotblaster wears what looks like a diving hood and point a gun that fires the blasting material at the metal. It then bounces back all over the floor.

4- the surface revealed is dullish grey like zinc and needs to be covered immediately in shop primer (more on that world of hell later) to stop it re-rusting.

5 – it is heinously expensive

It is basically microdermabrasion for boats.

A little video of the work in progress. Can’t work out how to get the sound working so a little pointless. When the helmet is on and the compressor is running, you can’t hear him moan!!

The long task of scabbling and shotblasting the hull has been started.

The scabbling bit involves hitting the hull with a range of tools to crack off any bits of rust. This gets rid if most of the flakey crusty bits and allows the shot blaster to get at the harder to remove stuff underneath.

It also requires a hell of a lot of gear… And a lot of gear I never knew existed. Compressors? Air chisels? Needle guns? All powered by a generator that chugs through a lot of petrol.

I can also guarantee that I will either buy the slightly-not-powerful-enough tool to do the job or will not have bought the-crucial-connector-between-the-bits-that-I-didn’t-know-you-needed. Hence I have been to Rye Hire more times this week than I care to remember and have been ping ponging along the road of death to Hastings and back… What fun…

Next step is to get the boat shotblasted to remove as much rust as possible. However the deal is that as soon as you do this, you have to stick a shop primer on it to stop the rust creeping back.

But what kind of paint was required? There are tonnes of primers, marine and other kinds and not all work with other paints. And once you have put the wrong thing on, it is a complete bugger to get off. Lots of conflicting advice in what works in and out the water.

In these situations of complete dilemma, I would normally defer to the mothership. She has many talents (many ironing-based) but marine paint is not in her area of expertise. The second solution was to “ask twitter”. I had witnesses (as a twitter lurker) people find restaurants and teddies, and mend boilers all by the power of twitter.

So types in steel boat and tweeted the first person that came up…

Never met this guy before, he builds beautiful wooden boats in Devon. What a hero. I call up Dove this morning, have a long and very helpful consultation with the guy there and now the paint is arriving on site first thing tomorrow.

Truly amazeballs. #twitterwin

Smacking the absolute shit out of the rust on the boat with a hammer. Noisy, messy, stress relieving… Better than picking candle wax off your fingers or popping bubble wrap.

Apparently it is okay that I bashed a hole in the side.

In other news, also bought an air chisel. Bit like an air guitar but with potential to take your fingers off.

And blurry