Tenerife

Managed to grab 10 days in Tenerife.  22-25 degrees while the Uk was being battered by storms.  Haha.  A beautiful island with some stunning places to visit if you are prepared to get away from the coastal resorts.  El Teide at over 3000m is amazing.

Cratch windows

With winter coming, its time to put the cratch cover back on.  I had removed the dirty and cracked perspex from the front board when I began painting the boat.  I've now had some proper window glass cut to replace it.

Fitting was easy,  I just masked the glass and stuck it in place with plenty of CT1.

On Wednesday, I was treated to a beautiful sky when I got home from work.

Jazzing up boring cupboards

The little passageway between bathroom and bedroom was rather dull with a plain piece of plywood for a wardrobe door on one side and some alarmingly yellow pine doors on the other.  A few lengths of architrave and some paint helped to jazz things up a bit.  Got some splendid coat hooks on ebay too.

Chilly misty morning

Its getting cooler but so far I have resisted lighting the fire.  I did notice that B&M Homestores have got their 'Blaze' smokeless fuel in stock now, still at the same price of £3.99 for 10 kg bags.  I'll get a load next week.

Cool it might be but the mornings are stunning.

Update

I am a bit sneaky and rely on using my office internet for these blog posts.  The mobile internet that I get from EE is limited to 2GB a month; fine for checking emails and googling the odd thing but posting pictures and writing on here hammers the allowance somewhat.  Unfortunately, due to a mistake in the finance department, I have been without internet at work for the last few months - hence the lack of blogging!

Painting is almost finished now; A task I wanted complete before winter.

I finally managed to get rid of the dreadful roses and castles on the doors.  Got a couple of Old Spot pigs instead.

The name is stick on vinyl from The Graphics Boat.  At £63 for both sides, I think it was money well spent.

Early summer break

Ten days in Gulluk Turkey.  Our visit coincided with a central European heat wave meaning temperatures in excess of 40*.  Very nice.

Oh and while in Bodrum, I found my next boat!

A little colour

With a couple of days off work and a reasonable forecast, we moved ten minutes out of the marina and set up camp in a quiet spot for some serious painting.

The first day saw some action with the grinder, removing all the flaky paint and rust.  I found that the twisted wire brush worked well on the paint, while 24 grit discs were the weapon of choice on the rust.  All exposed rust patches were coated in Vactan then primed.

The colour scheme will be cream with black panels on the sides so the next step was to get two coats of black gloss on below the gunnel and lay on some cream for the edges on the sides

There is still a lot to do but all the nasty dirty work is completed.  The Tractol paint is going on really well.  Its not the glossiest paint in the world but is easy to use and has a good depth of colour.  It would be difficult to get a showroom finish on this old boat without a huge amount of work so I'll happily settle for a 'ten yard' finish.  My main objective was to treat the rusty bits and give her a few more years on the water.

A bit more toilet

Its not finished but its up and running!

A little more on the bathroom

Work is progressing slowly on in the bathroom.  The poo tank is gone.  This was a surprisingly easy task.  I simply gaffa taped up all the holes, up ended it and dragged it out.  The lower walls have been covered with the red sparkly panels left over from the shower and the floor is down.

I am using a cut down kitchen base unit to sit the sink on and have ordered a waterless/composting toilet kit from Off Grid Designs

Alone once more

It looks as if I am alone on the boat once more.  There have been no mouse visits for a couple of weeks.  One of them fell victim to the apricot trap but I guess the others have either fled or died due to the poison.  There havn't been any nasty smells, so if they have died, I suppose they have dried out quickly before any decomposition can happen.

It is time to finish the bathroom which means getting rid of the pumpout tank.  This is something that has been causing me a bit of a headache since I got the boat.  At least I have managed to almost empty the thing which is the first hurdle overcome.  The hand basin and the old toilet are out, so its now just a question of moving the tank.

Unwelcome guests and a table

Some uninvited guests have arrived on board.  Mice have found their way into the space between the roof and the ceiling.  I reckon they came in via one of the mushroom vents.  They are having a wonderful time running around chewing all night.  I can't get a trap up there as there is only about 30mm room.  I did manage to slide a little foil tray of rodent bait into the gap but as yet they don't seem to have touched it.

I like to sit at a table to eat my dinner and have for a while been trying to work out a way of using an off cut of the worktop to make a fold out one.  Its not quite right yet, but the principle seems to work ok.  I'd really like to round the end off but for that I'll need a high quality (expensive) router bit and at the moment I can think of better things to spend my budget on.

Bathroom is the next project.  First job is to get rid of the old pump-out toilet that doesn't pump-out.  I made a start by removing the toilet itself.  The tank remains half full and I will at some point need to don protective clothing and do that by hand. Yuk.

I had planned a weekend cruise but the weather put a stop to that.  I did manage a sneaky half hour before the sun went down on Friday.

Worktop repair

The wood I used for my worktop was, in a previous life a kitchen island.  As such it was made up of several sections glued together with biscuit joiners.  Sadly, the piece that over hangs the fire has distorted with the heat and has parted company with the rest of the worktop.

I have, for a while been wondering how to fix this as now that it is all in place, I have no way of clamping it.  In the end, I drilled a hole about three quarters of the way into the wood from beneath and screwed a bolt in to act as an anchor for a ratchet strap.

I'll leave it for a few days and hopefully it will all remain glued where it should be.

In other news, I have at long last started running again.  I'm taking it very slow, following the Couch to 5k program.  Three runs in and I am still alive so I'm doing well.