Music Maestro

"Pantone One Hundred and Eighty!"

Well, I went to Fairport Convention this weekend just because I have always done it. I went the "pretty way" via Braunston to pick up some zinc phosphate primer. Some good music on, but mostly it seems to be the only time in the year I have any time off work. Note to Self. Must get a life sometime.


Once the tent was up at Cropredy, it was time for a pint, so a quick walk down the canal to the Red Lion. I noticed Saddleworth on the side of a boat, and after a chat with the owner, learned that the Huddersfield canal goes all the way up to Saddleworth. The number of times I have driven through there and never realised that there was a canal there.


Friday morning got a coffee & sat by the canal waiting for the pub to open for breakfast (You can get a bad name for yourself sitting outside a pub at 7.00 am waiting for it to open). Saw a tug & butty coming down the canal carrying roofing materials. Interesting to watch it going through the locks.

I went into Banbury, first time I had been into the town for several years, and was very impressed by the Quay area redevelopment. I had a wander and looked at all the boats to get some idea of a colour scheme. I liked the blue and maroon, then again I like the Green. The Green and Red looks good. So does the Red. Ditto the red & gold. The green and blue looks good. So does the very dark green.


Sod it, I'm going to put all the pictures on a dartboard and pick the colour scheme the Eric Bristow Method.



Saturday Left the pub as it was getting a bit manic and sat by the lock drinking beer (it's a hobby i suppose). Saw a hire boat with a very direct means of opening lock gates. You just ram them!

Back to Work

"Get back on your horse and get the hell outa town!"

Start of August - definitely working on the boat. Friday night went out for a meal with Lady P & co. Well, I have to keep my strength up for the job in hand you know. Awful meal. Why do people think that Microwaving a wholesalers pie constitutes a good restaurant meal just because you cut the carrots chunky.

Had a strange dream. Don't get me wrong, I often get strange dreams, but this one seemed to be a happy dream. Normally I just get nightmares. Good portent possibly ?

Got myself a notebook and made a list of the snags that need sorting out on the shell. Getting organised at last. So now when the welder has some time free I have two full pages of snags for him to have a go at. Simple things like Welding the rubbing strakes on, rather than just tacking them and filling the gaps with silicon. Perhaps Mr Stilton doing a runner has been a good thing, as now I can get a professional job done.

In the meantime, I have spent the weekend shifting bricks about in the boat. By Saturday evening I have Eight "bays" bitumined ready for the bricks to go in their final resting place.

Sunday morning. Had breakfast with Lady P at a new farm shop we discovered. Good field mushrooms and nice sausages, but the usual mistake of using cheap sliced bread, and not cooking the tomatoes enough. We should start work on the definitive guide to where not to breakfast. Breakfast Nightmares ? No I don't think I could swear that much, besides I'm a better cook than Ramsey.

Put the bricks on the newly painted (or should that be bitumined ?) floor, and cleared the next few bays ready for the bitumin. Tried different patterns of laying the bricks but ended up with them on edge as the easiest way to fit them all in. This means that the bricks are resting on the floor, not on spacers, but I havent the clearance for the spacers. Never mind.

Bridge over the River Kwai time again as there have been sunflakes belting down on the shell all afternoon. Cleaned the new floor area, but I have had too much time in the sweat box, so I am legging it and leaving the bitumin until next weekend.

Interesting Times

"Jeez, I thought you guys were going to follow some kinda footpath...".

Well, I have finally got back to adding something to this blog, after an 'interesting' couple of months. A few years ago my life turned upside down. I called this interesting times after the Chinese curse "May you live in interesting times". Well, I suppose the last month or two has been interesting as well.

June:

Started putting the battens on the floor. This was then interrupted by a weekend at a medieval fayre. We're the beer tent, not the medievals. They are the sane ones.

Following a long weekend of drinking beer, setting up a bar, drinking beer, selling beer, drinking beer, taking down the bar, and drinking beer, I had a week off, then boat. Over the next week I managed to get some of the battening done in the evenings after work. This got a bit much, working 7:30 to 18:00, 40 mins driving, two hours working on the boat, then 40 mins driving to bed ready for the next day at work.

I decided to spend a full weekend working on the boat and booked into the Travellodge at Stilton for the weekend. Finished off most of the battening, just the back half of the ceiling to do, but I ran out of wood. It is amazing how much wood it takes! Anyway, retire to the Bell at Stilton for an amazing meal and one or two pints of superb Fools Nook Ale from Digfield Brewery. If you are ever in Stilton, just off What used to be the Norman Cross roundabout on the A1, the Bell at Stilton cannot be recommended highly enough.

I have decided to use Engineering bricks for the ballast as they are easy to adjust, plus at £60 per tonne they are a bargain. Measured up the wood I needed to finish off the battening, and counted up 1200 bricks for the ballast.

July:

Well, I arrived at the boat to find that the remaining battens had been delivered together with three pallets of bricks, so far so good, and also the news that the Bailiffs had been around taking stock of what shells were there because the shell builder had "done a runner".

Wonderful.

It was Lady P's Birthday, so I had to go up North for a couple of days, calming down, but also wondering whether the shell would be there when I got back. Never mind - have a good couple of days at this barbeque/birthday party and leave sorting this out the following week because i am well and truly p****d off.

Monday. Back into work and loads of pointless hassle at work stops me doing anything for a few days. Probably as well because dealing with the mind-numbing tedium gets me riled into a solution.

Tuesday. Following various phone calls, I have found only one person I know with a trombone trailer needed to shift the shell. The wagon isn't the problem, but 58'6" needs a special 'extendable' trailer. Finally got in touch with him, and found he had sold it. Bugger. Rang Botony Bay, they had DIY bays available, and put me in touch with a narrowboat transport firm.

Wednesday Evening. Persuaded three blokes from work to come up to Stilton for a small amount of excercise. I removed one of the windows for easy access, and with two of us inside and two outside, one hour later there are three tons of bricks are inside the shell. Just time for a quick trip to treat these guys to a pint at the Bell at Stilton. the Fools Nook was even better than I remember, or is that just because of the brick shifting ? Anyway a fantastic meal and a few pints later, we returned home.

Thursday. £250 poorer a crane is booked.

Friday. A huge crane arrived at Stilton, and, during a thunderstorm no less, lifted the shell onto the waiting trailer. £450 poorer the trailer disapears with the shell on board, due to arrive at Botony bay on Monday.

Monday. Shell is craned off at Botony bay. I am now another £250 poorer for the crane off, making a total of £950.

Sod it I am off to the pub.

Following weekend I thought I might go to the lakes. Waited all Morning, but Luke had Flu & decided not to go. Set off late, but the roads were terrible. Turns out there was a 15 mile queue on the M6. Thought it was much easier popping up to the Lakes when I used to have a motorbike. Might consider getting another.

I went to the boat instead, but just outside the boatyard a Range Rover and a motorbike collided. Stuck for ages while the police & ambulance arrived, closed the road. the motorcylist didn't make it.

I hate days like this, I'm going to the Pub.

Last weekend in July I went up to the lakes with Luke. His sister is engaged to a great bloke from New York, so we decided to show him the Lake District the Hard Way. After we dragged him up Ravens Crag, Pavey Ark, Mill Gyll and part of the Dungeon Ghyll (I have never heard so much swearing from him), followed by the obligatory one or two pints in the 'Old', he slept for a week.

Maybe get back to the boat in August.

Timber....

If a man says something in the forest, and there is no woman to hear him, is he still wrong?

Well, what can I say ? There seems to be an awful lot of wood to batten the boat out. Not sure about the colour scheme though - red primer on grey primer - hmm.

Still got the first batten down, only 21 to go then I start on the walls....

Michelle

People say "One day all your dreams will come true". Bloody hope not, otherwise I really will be naked in the queue at Tesco.

The shell is now taking shape. Apparently it is unlucky to rename a boat, so I am resisting the urge to call it Michelle at the moment.

It is amazing to see how quickly a 10mm sheet of steel floor turns into a hull. Right at the moment the boat looks huge, although I'm not used to seeing them out of the water, so it is a lot taller.

I must also say that I am impressed by the techniques used to create quite a complex shape from sheet steel. Now I have something to see, I can start thinking about how to use every single cubic inch of space within the shell.

Horizontigo

"Does any of your family suffer from insanity ?"

"No we've always really enjoyed it!"

Well, that's it. Deposit paid, fag packet sketches handed over, and the steel is ordered. Last chance as a free man to go and do stupid things in the lakes for a weekend. Far easier the weekend before easter though...


This is Stickle Tarn as viewed from half way up Pavey Ark at 7pm The Sat before easter. The pubs are open and we are on our way...

Horizontigo is the fear of lack of heights, and a great song from the superb scottish folk band LAU - see them at http://www.lau-music.co.uk/

Taking a dive

"It's not Impossible! You're only saying that because nobody has ever done it before!"

One step I took was to draw up a wish list. This would then be a guide to the design of the boat. It also drew my attention to what I thought I wanted, but wasn't really bothered about after all, such as the bath. Any way the list is :

• Will go anywhere. Technically this means 55, or 57 foot, however looking at various websites, 58'6" seems to be about right, so that is what I will go for.
• Wet room rather than shower tray. Initially I thought that I would have liked a bath, however... They take a lot of water and a lot of room. I like a bath however, being 6'2" laid out, I also like a big bath, and I would rather 'spend' the room elsewhere in the boat. Remember that you are budgeting length when laying out a boat. We don't all spend all of our time in the bathroom. I have decided on the wet room approach because I find them far more pleasing than a shower cubicle.
• Storage for everything. Whatever I can't store (and whatever I haven't used for the last year, brain excepted) is going on eBay. If it doesn't sell on eBay, it's going in the skip.
• King sized bed. Well, I am having some luxuries.
• Trad Stern. This gives me an "engine room" area for running the boat, and psychologically separates the living areas into a separate living area. If that doesn't make sense to you, don't worry, I am not sure it makes sense to me either. I won't miss the open rear deck of a cruiser, as I will have a forward lounge area and front deck for "entertaining".
• Dining Area. I don't like eating with a plate on my knee. So we will have a dining table and seating, which can convert into a bed.
• Optimal use of space. This is easier these days with flat screen TVs and miniature electronics. However a lot of planning will go into where to hide the hide-able bits (water tanks, etc) and maximise the storage areas.
• A Kitchen (sorry, galley) built around me. I like to cook, but I like to be ordered in the kitchen. That is 'ordered' as in 'a tidy sort of organised' as opposed to 'ordered to cook the tea and cook it now'.
• A nice comfortable settee that I can slob out on of an evening, and would turn into another double berth for guests.
• A washing machine and possibly a tumble drier would be nice for our lovely summer weather.
  

I've also bought a new digital camera. Now all I need is something to photograph...

The name of the boat came about by listing names as i thought of them. It was then just a case of picking 1. The sequence of chosen names went something like this...

• Plan B - Everybody should have a plan B
• Fotheringay - Prison Castle and fantastic music by Sandy Denny.
• Scylla - Look at Scylla and Charybdis in your classical mythology (between a rock and a hard place)
• Hard Place - see above. Also a bit of a play with words on my name (which means 'the rock')
• A Walk in the Rain - Loads of experience here.
• Duck N Dive - Need I say more... Well, actually, yes. I am a scuba diver, and a brewer, and have run various bars, pubs beer tents and beer festivals in the past, and I like ducks, both as the most amazingly belligerent cute little animals and as crispy Chinese appetisers. I always said that if I won the lottery, I would buy a property in Grand Cayman (Which, incidentally, is tax free UK) and build a microbrewery/pub/restaurant/hotel on the beach with a jetty and scuba diving school (BSAC not PADI). I was going to call it the 'Duck and Dive'. I haven't won the lottery and it seems a shame to waste the name so....

Right, I'll drink to that. A vague plan and a good name. What can possibly go wrong...