Chimney's, boat poles and mending holes.

What a fantastic day weather wise. No sooner I opened my eyes, I could see the sunshine pouring through the pigeon box port holes. The heat was already up when I took Paddy for his walk, which was most enjoyable, I even got my sunglasses out, which is a first this year.

After breakfast Keith and I worked out what boat jobs we were going to tackle. My first job of the day was to rub down the cratch board with our new electric sander. With the sander connected up and the generator on to charge the batteries, I got on with the job in hand and soon discovered that when the flaking paint came off it revealed rotten wood.

The sight of an ever growing hole was not what I wanted, but the rotten wood had to go, so I kept working away at it with a chisel until I got to some decent wood. Keith then cut me a piece of wood to plug the hole, which will do until we can buy some wood to make a new piece. Before filling the hole with the new piece of wood and filler I left it to dry in the sunshine and got on with rubbing down the front locker hatch, which then got a coat of undercoat. Whilst I did those jobs Keith rubbed down our mop handles ready for undercoating and our Summer and Winter chimney's which needed a new coat of black paint.

After he had completed the rubbing down we got on with painting them.

We hung them in the trees to dry, whilst we sat down and had our lunch and a much needed break.

Having sat under the trees for a while it was then time to take the hold strings off and give them a darn good scrub, because they had gone green over the Winter. We took off the two Winter cratch ropes at the front and replaced them the white Summer ones.

I then filled one bucket with hot soapy water and another with canal water. I scrubbed each string in the hot soapy water and then dunked them into the bucket with canal water to get rid of the soap suds. Keith then laid them out on the top plank to dry. With all the strings washed we then had to restring the hold.

By the time we had completed re-stringing the hold it was 4pm, I was beginning to feel the heat and tired after a busy old day, but it has been very rewarding to see what we had got done.

With the cratch board dried out, I put in the new piece of wood to fill the hole and then finished it off with some flexible filler, which will dry over night. It may not look pretty but it will do the job until we can get some tongue and grove to make a new board. The boat poles, Kebb and boat hook handles got rubbed down and were given a rub down with Teak Oil, giving them a protecting coating. I was then done for the day, we just had to put things away for the evening.

Hopefully tomorrow I will be able to rub it all down and get some paint on it. All in all it has been a fantastic day, what with the weather and the work we have got done. It has also been a day of lots of boats on the move, I think I can safely say we had at least thirty boats come past us throughout the day.

With the days hard work over with, I have dinner to cook and tonight we are having Ravioli with Garlic Bread. Marmite and Paddy have been fed, after their very busy day of laying in the sun. I know I am going to sleep well tonight.