Getting there. Slowly but surely. Was scraping more shit from the bottom of the stern cabin today and also indulged in some extreme hoovering and finished raking out the deck.

The cross beam, filling in the gap between the raised part of the deck, is in place and painted.   

The new iroko margin planks were originally quite orangey in colour…  

They have now faded rather beautifully to grey and fit in much better with the rest of the deck.  

The deck is ready for some real attention and all the gaps and holes and random bits and pieces will soon be plugged and made right. Led has cleaned the engine room with the jizer and almost half of the inside has been painted. I am soon to be the proud owner of a Dremmel which should make things even more fun. Back later in the week for more scraping and painting! Only part of the long boat to do list below…

  
Now I just need operation stack to do one so I can get on with things!

I have found the consumer Mecca for all things boat related: Davey (www.Davey.co.uk). They have shiny things and stuff made in bronze and copper, they have vents, deck prisms… Basically if you want to pimp your boat with a bit of bling (which I very much do), it is all here in spades.

  
They have been operation since 1885 and were originally based in India dock, so I imagine it could even be where the original fittings came from. I could probably research this by going back to the metropolitan archives (conveniently across the road from my flat). Note to self to do this. I have the original dimensions for the railings that I want to reinstate so will dig both out at the same time.

  
In the meantime, I am lusting after these and composing a very long wish list!

 
They also sell these which, given their description is as follows, I think I need to bolt all over the boat!

“A star on board gives positive energy. It can make good things better and stop bad things getting worse. This bronze star is hand cast and finished to a full shine with a central fixing hole so that it can be secured to any part of the boat.”

More raking and the deck is pretty much prepped bar the bit round the wheel and under the tarps. Very pleased and we did actual find a couple of pieces of caulking cotton. No photos of the work in progress, nor documented evidence of the severe sunburn we got after a day on deck. Instead a picture of lunch on deck…   

Winchelsea beach after we’d finished (not quite warm enough for a swim).  

And the big tin of jizer that will get scrubbed into the engine room on Friday. 😁 

 
Credit to Second Mate, KSJ! 

A lot of the prep work on the deck is something I can do. Good news as saves a bit of the budget and moves things on a bit faster. Bad news as it is all a bit fiddly and tedious.

The seams on the deck (the gaps between each plank) would originally have been filled with caulking cotton hammered into the gap and then topped with tar to make it water tight. This has long gone with the seams now filled with a mixture of sand from the blasting and crumbly black gunk. This all needs raking out – you can get special tools for it but a screwdriver seems to be most effective. The seams then need hoovering to pick up any remaining debris. 

Lots of time spent crouched on the deck but not a bad job when the sun is shining.

   
In the whole of the front deck I probably found enough caulking cotton to roll a small cigarette. This would have originally been packed into every seam but has disintegrated over time.

Some tiny fragments of the original tar.
  The Hoover which is proving an absolute godsend as brushing the sand out of the seams doesn’t really work. I also treated myself to some serious knee pads which make it much easier.  
The screwdriver after a whole days raking. Pretty darn blunt.     

Sunshine over the site means that the tan is coming on fairly well!!

No, not diamonds but the loan of an industrial Hoover and a generator to power it. This will be invaluable in sucking the last of the grime and dust out of the hull and also the debris raked from out of the deck seams. Thank you Neil! Best of all it will stop my hands looking like this…

  
This picture gives you some idea of the work involved over the last couple of weeks…  

The right hand side is before, the left after…

In fact they went on a couple of weeks ago – I just never had the chance to post the photos. Just the front deck at the moment. They came to measure for the stern deck today and those will go on next week. The wood is iroko, a hardwood that has similar properties to teak but which is cheaper. Teak prices are astronomical at the moment (a good bit of wood chat, should you need it). It looks very orange but, like teak, fades down to a greyish hue after exposure to the elements. Looking pretty smart huh?

(any distraction to put off scraping more shit out of the bottom of the boat)