One Week

Last week was half term holidays in the UK, so Mary had some time off to recover from the stresses of her job at an inner London comprehensive. As a caring husband, I thought what could rest and relax her more than slaving away on a cold rusty barge.

Misterton seems to be at the stage where you can work on her for days at a time and she still looks largely the same. We did however clear out both the rear and the front crews cabins. These were each full of junk including items such as rusty oil lamps, lengths of greasy rope and rotting wood. There was even a small marquee in the front one.

Here are a couple of pics of us clearing out the rear one.

The pale blue cylinder in the picture above is a second seacock for water for the engine. According to Alan (boatbuilder) this is for use in shallow water when the main one might not be effective, as its on the bottom of the hull.

The front cabin was more of the same, you can see my technique for creating an 'ant hill' of rubbish around the hatch opening which Mary would then cart to the recycling center (up to trip 51 now).

One very suprising discovery was a brightly coloured butterfly in all the dross. I've no idea how it got there, but I was pleased to see it all the same (I'll let you draw the obvious symbolism yourself).

My mum and dad came up to visit, and while dad removed 100s of screws from the ceiling battens, mum and Mary cleaned and painted some iron and steel implements such as mooring anchors and spikes.

The only problem with this was that they insisted on having a paintbrush each. I suggested they could do the job with just one, but this then kicked off a lengthy 'discussion' which I resolved by the masterstroke of giving them each their own brush.

Finally, as someone who has come from the narrowboat world, this shows how things are on the canals up north.

Friends

We've had some friends come up and help us over the last few weeks with rust scraping and general boat clearing. I'm not sure why they've left the cosy embrace of the M25 to come to East Yorkshire, but we're very greatful!

First up are Piran and Loretta. They arrived with Mary one saturday afternoon (I'd already gone up as Mary was working on the saturday morning) and despite seeing Misterton for the first time on a gloomy October evening, stayed to help us on the sunday. Possibly as we were providing them with a lift home - nothing like motivated workers is there?

We began with the task to move my pile of 'useful' wood from the inside to store it on the roof. I'm not a big fan of storing stuff on boat roofs, but needs must and all that. Once the wood had been moved, I could now think about getting rid of the floor that I'd fallen through about three times....

Piran and Loretta both helped with this, as it was a very windy day. Once this was done, they diligently scraped rust off the workshop wall and I have to say made an excellent job of it!

As Mary and I know (mainly Mary....) this is a thankless task, but will pay off in the end.

Piran and Loretta had also bought us these rather spiffing hats as part of our wedding present. I'm wearing Mary's as I type this....

Next to enjoy the pleasures of the barge were Helen and Greg. Note how happy and clean they look here, I think they thought this was just a quick visit and then off to the pub.

Helen and Mary chipped away at some rust and flaking paint (there is an endless supply of it...) while Greg and I removed the old chipboard floor from the front of the boat. Greg also noted that the steps were a bit ropy and so I 'volunteered' him to fix them. That'll teach him to knock the fine craftmanship of the previous owners.

The results will keep things much safer until we get rid of them all together and replace them with something else, but for now they're the main way into the cabin. Greg had better hope cousin Will in New York is not reading this, or that cheery 'thumbs-up' might not be so cheery..... ;-)

In both cases our friends reported increased sleep and muscle soreness. Beyond that I don't really know, but I'm sure once they start returning our calls and emails again I'll be able to provide an update.

Some more progress

Back up to Goole this weekend for more rust removal. Its been a couple of weeks since we were last there and Alan's team have made some good progress. The wheelhouse now has three sides on, and now we've decided to go for hydraulic steering (in order to move the steering wheel forward) they should be able to finish the back soon too.

The mast has been reinstated at the front and some handrails have been installed on the coachroof. These are just tack welded in place for now, but should be finished soon.

Thats Hope still moored next to us, they're still planning to take her down to London soon.

Anyhoo, back to the interior work. There is some flaking paint and rust that comes off easily, and there is some that needs more persistent attention. We tackled the rest of the main living area and in addition I had to remove some wood that had been bolted at the edge of the coaming, where we need to weld. Here is Mary with a lovely bucket (one of many....) full of rust. There is/was no wine, but I told here there would be if she kept working (I lied...).

Earlier during the week, inspired by the current economic situation and the complete lack of anything else on, I watched the 'Good Life'. As well as the novely of 70's fashion and seeing people smoking freely on TV, Tom and Barbara rescued an old range from the rag and bone man and then set to cleaning it up. Well, Barbra did, while Tom generally faffed around on other 'projects'. In a spooky life imitating art situation, Mary did an initial clean of the Stanley range on Misterton while I went outside and chatted to some passers by.

Mary also tidied up (several times in fact) while I continued to then mess things up again. She won in the end though. :)

We were going to have a test fire in it, but we forgot to buy matches. Maybe next week.

There was a bit of activity over the weekend. The museum's barge #58 was taken away for a survey (we think) on saturday.

Also we saw a converted Dutch shrimper called 'Ben Harvey' that left on sunday. This was one of the boats that caught our eye when we were looking, although we never went and saw her. Probably a bit small for both of us, but looked and sounded nice going past on sunday.

Finally, as Mary made the last run to the local tip, I took a picture of Misterton from the side. Red Oxide is the new black.

Wheelhouse

Alan and Lynn Pease sent us some pictures of recent work on Misterton, looks like things are progressing well with the wheelhouse!

Some more theory

Lets see how much of this comes to pass.