We are moored right next to the car park for Sainsbury's but it is very quiet at night, and even during the day come to that. There is an entry from the car park to the tow path and the majority of folk walk the other way towards the new housing further along the tow path so the foot fall passed the boat isn't that bad.
'Holderness' moored right close by the super market car park.
Just ahead and behind the trees on the off side is St Mary's and All Saints Church that over looks the lock. It is very nice to hear the hours pass through the day with the bells ringing. In fact there is often a peel played. I think the bells were replaced or rehung in 2004 or so. It seems there is still a bit of work to do as there is one bell not ringing! This makes the chimes and peels slightly odd. Luckily the chimes are not set to ring through the night.
Last year I started spot de-rusting the after end of the boat. There were little spots of rust where there had been little dinks breaking the paint cover and some areas that had obviously come through from an imperfect paint job in the first place. I sanded down and rust treated the spots and then covered all the paint work with an anti-rust undercoat. Unfortunately I never did get round to applying more undercoats or a top coat before we went home. I had years of painting and chipping when I was an apprentice and it is something that I never relish. I will never paint the boat over all as I know what hard work it is and that you need immense patients to get the preparation right so that the top coat looks the best it can.
This is one area that shows what has happened. There are small areas of rust that have broken out. You can just about see the original green gloss coat under the anti-rust undercoat of black.
I am not really bothered about the paint finish at the moment for two reasons. The first is that the green top coat comes off on a cloth as I think it was put on using too large a proportion of thinners so it would mean completely re painting the green. The second reason is that the make of paint used no longer exists. Hempel's were bought out. As we went around after buying the boat I did manage to buy a few tins of our colours as I found them but I haven't seen any for a while now. I have enough for a touch up.
I don't have any electric tool for sanding down which means it is even a more boring job that it might be. After getting the spot down to bare metal and graduating the edges so that it blends in better with the rest of the surface. I have then covered the bare metal with Kurust that converts any remaining rust particles and stops them developing under the paint later.
You can see that after a coat of anti-rust undercoat you can still see the area that was sanded down as the edges are still proud. Hopefully this will be less obvious after a couple more coats of undercoat. This is one reason that I hate this job as it is always difficult to get it looking good.
The black was just the colour of the anit-rust undercoat but it turns out that Helen likes it so I have bought some black top coat and will finish it off in black. It certainly makes the 'cockpit' warmer. Helen and I have discussed when we do get the boat painted what colour we would have the roof. The colour does make a difference to the heat it absorbs and therefore the heat inside the boat. We see lots of white and cream decks which seem a nightmare to keep clean. It seems to us that having a darker roof makes for less cleaning and also absorbs the heat more. We think that there is more requirement to keep the boat warm rather than cool as if it is so warm inside the boat due to the conduction of the heat from the roof then you would just find somewhere cooler outside. However if the inside of the boat is too cool you have to light the fire or put the heating on. (Or put on my clothes etc). We think that the number of times we have been too hot we can count on one hand and not using the thumb where as the number of times we have had to put the heating on, or a jumper are much more numerous. Therefore when we do get a paint job we will be having a darker roof colour.
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