but boats aren't supposed to be on wheels?

The two previous posts were assembled this morning while waiting to be craned out at Uxbridge; both of course overdue, but I catch up eventually. I'm sitting in the Uxbridge Wetherspoons using their wifi - the fact that they sell beer is completely coincidental.



This was the scene early this afternoon - after being hoiked out of the water, she sat in the yard for a bit while I attacked the slime with a pressure washer - messy fun, you could say. After that I got shunted into the shed, where we'll spend most of the next week together, me tending to her nether regions, as it were.

Spent the latter part of this afternoon with a wire brush fitting on the angle grinder taking off a very fine layer of rust from the (v-) bottom; interestingly no evidence of bitumen on there at all, and I'd expect at least a little. Fairly tedious work as I'm holding the angle grinder up and pushing upwards - I hope my arms don't ache too much tomorrow, as I've got to do the other side of the boat in the morning. ;-) If all goes to plan (and this is a boat, remember) I'll get a coat of bitumen on later tomorrow, then coats on Tues & Thurs, to be dry before going back in to the water next Sat.

The boat really is a long way up - standing on the back deck I'm pretty much in the roof of the shed you can see in the background of the picture. It's odd - there's a little bit of movement within the boat, but being on pneumatic tyres is very different to being on water. I may or may not get used too it, and I just hope I don't have a dream where the wooden chocks propping up the boat fall away...