Mary's View - part 12

Hot off the press, here.

Pumpin'

This weekend we started to clean out the bilges, fun fun fun. In reality it could be worse, I know others have had to cope with oil, grease etc. Ours are mainly just dirt and flakes of rust and paint that have fallen down. This would be relatively easy to sweep up if it wasn't for a small amount of water sloshing around, this had come through the holes in the deck before they were welded up. Mary managed to get quite a lot of it out with a small pump, about twenty buckets I think.

A start has been made on lowering the floor where it needs it (see the plans in the last blog entry), this also made cleaning out that bit easier. There is a thin layer of cement between the frames and in some cases this is a bit loose and I can see water squeezing out from underneath it. I know it'll probably need to be removed, but I'll check with Alan the boatbuilder first.

Finally, I saw this view of the barge next door and thought it looked like a good picture opportunity.

Progress

Mary and I went up to Goole to drop off some parts and catch up with people there. I was pleasantly surprised that Alan and his crew had been able to make a bit of progress since our last visit. The weather has been very bad, snow sleet etc., so I wasn't expecting too much.

In no particular order, we have the front buklhead welding done;

Some more battening has been done so that interior lining can be added (after the insulation is put in);

A couple of views of the new roof, taken from the bow of the barge next to us;

The welding of the coachroof to the coamings has been completed (its the rusty strip just below the handrail....) - the previous owners had only tack welded the roof on, then had filled the gap with mastic. This didn't work very well.......

In the engineroom the fuel tank has had a section removed (to make way for stairs down from the wheelhouse) and the remaining tank has been welded up. The thing that looks like a bin on the floor is the section of tank removed.

Finally, I've done a slightly more up to date version of the diagram for the floorplan thats in the interior section of the website. This has mainly been prompted because of our height, but makes the interior more interesting (and makes life more difficult for Alan the boatbuilder :).

Engine

Just added a video by Mike Askin about how to hand start a Lister engine.

Tripping over some fantastic lights

Yes, thats what Mary will be doing when she comes home from work and stumbles over these on the living room floor, as well as feeling nauseous at the title for this post (a reference to her love of music/dance). Its been a cold and bleak few months, so to keep the boat project moving forward, I've selflessly been collecting old ship lights for the interior of Misterton and squirreling them away in the flat. These have all come via eBay from various places.

I'm not sure where they would've been used originally, but the five big ones are very heavily constructed, they'll be used for room lighting. The small ones will be used in corridors.

The wires running into them have been used to test various low energy 12v bulbs, both CFL and LED. Mary has seen extensive demonstrations of this, bet she didn't know married life would be so much fun. :)