Nikki and Stu met me at the boat on Saturday for a poke around Betty and to see exactly what I have got myself into. Turns out Stu was a potholer (not potholder as my autocorrect is suggesting!) in a former life. Unlike Nikki and I, he was keen to pull up every hatch and go exploring in the bowels of
the boat.

We did eventually let him out of there.

Look what the Barnababy found in his picture boat!

All credit to Al Rothwell. Fabulous job.

Naomi and Al came across to visit Betty. Al brought all his video equipment so a rather fabulous art house styled video of Betty is now in the making. Will be posting soon!

Things have gone ominously quiet here. Turns out that lifting a boat out of the water isn’t anywhere as easy as I had hoped. You don’t just hoik it out and there are no quick fixes.

I seem to have the crane and tides fixed, and a wharf to lift it out on. The problem is now with the lorry that it will then be put upon. If the boat is as big and heavy as suggested, it won’t be able to carry it and there will be a big mess of squished lorry and boat. While I stand there in my hard hat with my bottle of champers looking like right plum.

This leads on to some careful calculations which were completed – literally, see above – on the back on an envelope in order to work out how much exactly Betty weights.

She is stamped on the engine room with 25.75 tonnes gross weight (thanks Neil for pointing this out). But the London Fire Brigade Museum suggest that is the weight with the two original engines which would have weighed 3 tonnes. They have been replaced by a Gardiner engine which is 3.5 tonnes bringing it up to 26.25 tonnes. On top of this there is the weird conservatory-shack structure which is guestimated to come in at around 2 tonnes…. so 28.25 tonnes total. This is probably a generous estimation as a lot of the other bells and whistles have been removed.

At about the weight of seven adult elephants, Betty’s not light…

There ain’t no party like an open day at the London Fire Brigade Museum. I dragged my self along last Saturday to hear a talk about the Massey Shaw, the sister ship of Beta III. Was pretty interesting with lots of pictures and footage of fire officers and fires. Turns out they spent 1.2 million to refurb it. I am going to be much more reliant on gaffa tape and spit and polish!

The Massey Shaw will be well worth a visit once it gets to London – apparently lots of original detailing.

This shows the different tenders received by the London Fire Brigade. The boat was built by Merryweathers so I assume the cost was £10,850.

In today’s money, inflation calculators suggest it would be £558,341.04. Which seems a bit low.

Sorry, bit of a boring post. Too early to be up on a Sunday morning.

Good thing I found these this morning. All that swimming in pyjamas was worth it!

The file also suggested that the fireman regularly used semaphore to signal to the fire boats.

That looks like a quite camp demonstration of second position in ballet to me. I am sure mummykins can whip me up a pair of quilted appliqué semaphore flags for the good ship Betty.

Anyway, here goes…

Can you tell what it is?!