Category: Narrowboat

Boat painting at Canal Cruising, Stone

For the next few days, we’ll be painting Bonny Lady, my new temporary home.

It’s a 45ft, wide berth narrowboat, built in 1991.

Having stripped it to metal, it looks as if the previous paint job was 1 coat primer, 2 coats undercoat and one topcoat.

We’ll be doing 2 primer, 2 undercoat 2 top.

Over the next few days, I’ll be recording aspects of this narrowboat painting job on the blog.

Canal Cruising – Stone

This is where the boat is being painted. They have covered sheds we can work under.

Stripped decksThis is the finish we have to achieve for today, Monday 1st August.

Once we’ve got all the metal on the hull to this finish we can begin painting.

1st Days work in dry dock

The first day consisted of

  • Stripping the paint from the gunwales to the water-line

The rims you walk on around the side of the boat are called the ‘gunwales’, the idea of the dry-dock was to allow us to paint these.

Painting from here to the water-line is not possible.

The first job is to remove the paint from this section of boat.

Here are two before and after pictures of the stripping job. Continue reading “Boat painting at Canal Cruising, Stone”

The story of Bad Duck….

Once upon a time, in Barton Marina, there lived a little duck.

Bad duck was the noisiest duck on the pond.

Bad duck formed convoys and patrolled round the boats.

Bad duck and her duck convoy chased off rival ducks. Bad duck would attack them from underwater, like a great white shark.

Whilst I was doing laundry, Bad Duck landed on the roof of my narrowboat, and dug up the plants in my planter.

When I got back, there were 2 eggs in place of the rosemary….

Bad duck's eggs

Mint, duck eggs, Chives, Coriander.

No sign of any ducks or anything, I carried on working.

Soon Bad Duck appeared with her mate and let out a loud and nasty “QUAK! QUAAAAAK!” her eyes flashing with feral duck hate.

Bad duck rose into the air and began circling me like a vulture. All the boaters and people in the Waterfront restaurant could see this spectacle of the duck circling.

Next morning, Bad Duck landed on my roof.

I could hear her webbed feet pattering across the roof…. Suddenly, Bad Duck peeked in through the open hatch!

Bad Duck was staring straight at me!

At the end of my narrowboat, perched on top of the hatch staring in at me on the bed.

I got up and shooed Bad Duck off.

Bad Duck went off, I haven’t seen her again.

She was playing duck chase in front of the boaters this afternoon, she pretended to ignore me.

Really, her eggs didn’t stand a chance on the top of my boat in the planter.

I can’t believe how crazy ducks are. Maybe their funny shape and noise makes them prone to outbreaks of behaviour of  a similarly strange nature.

Anyway, that’s the story of Bad Duck.

All trues.

Job of the Day: Prepping and priming the decks

The decks on the boat are particularly damaged, and require completely stripping.

Today, the weather was good enough to get a full day in.

At 9 o’clock in the morning, I set out with screwdriver in hand and scrubbing brush in other, 1st job – to remove the fittings and sugar-soap the existing paintwork.

Prepping

Sugar-soaping gets rid of the film of grime and makes the surface more adherent to future paint.

It also revealed the full extent of the rust.

Narrowboat - cruiser stern
Cruiser stern before

Here’s what the stern looked like.

It’s quite heavily corroded, the brown areas are areas of rust.

Rather than mess around with this in any way, I decided to simply get rid of all the paint and start from scratch. Continue reading “Job of the Day: Prepping and priming the decks”

ZTE MF730M Dongle

Internet Dongle for Narrowboat users

Getting slightly bored of only being able to use the internet in one room, I’ve invested in this THREE dongle.

It basically allows me to connect anywhere, at least anywhere where there is THREE network.

Currently, it allows me to connect at 3G speeds, which are fairly good, THREE have the best 3G network in the UK. I did some research on the subject, and it seems that they invested heavily in it. Whilst EE rushed out the 4G.

EE 4g Claims

Although EE claim to offer 4G here, I purchased a SIM to try out these claims.

Turns out their service was patchy at best, nothing like what their website claimed, (full coverage at 4G speeds), as pictured.

ee coverage
This is what it says for DE13 8DZ….

Continue reading “ZTE MF730M Dongle”