And the winner is......

....well, both of us really. Ain't love (and compromise...) a beautiful thing. Mary and I had our design-a-thon on sunday night over several G&Ts and basically ended up with something of a mix of all our ideas. More detail here.

Almost there

Mary and I were only up at Misterton for saturday last week, but we managed to get the last of the interior rip-out done. In contrast to the rest of the construction, the ceiling in the living area was screwed, glued and nailed in place. It took all day, and the use of two crowbars, a lump hammer and a shovel (!) to prise them all loose. All the while rust and fibreglass dust rained gently down upon us.

Now we just need to scrape all the loose rust off and treat it. Alan's team are busy welding up all the holes that have appeared after needle gunning the decks clean. We had a little chuckle when we thought back to how we planned to bring Misterton down to London this summer, how optimistic were we?

After we finished and got cleaned up as best we could, we had a BBQ on the front deck while the sun set, quite a nice way to end what had been a pretty hard days work.

Right now we're re-evaluating our proposed interior design in light of the fact that there is nothing left of the old fitout to work around, apart from the Stanley range, and even that can be moved if needed.

How much more?

....of the old fitout is left? Not too much after this last weekend. We got rid of all the remaining cabin lining on the side and most of the ceiling in the workshop. Next weekend will hopefully see the end of fibreglass removal. I think we're up to trip 30 in Mary's car to the local tip.

Here is the view mid way through the day.

Later on in the day we (well Mary really....) tidied up.

There is more rust than we'd all hoped, but Alan's team are working on it and she'll get fixed properly this time. Most of the rusting is down to letting things go, with deck leaks not being fixed and then rusting out just above the rubbing strakes. We need to think about insulation types, and given that we've now stripped the interior out, sprayfoam might be a good option. Anyone care to comment from personal experience?

There is a nice little tug moored behind us at the moment.

Along with a quite impressive sailing boat.

My friend Dave and his wife Marg of narrowboat 'Sleepy Hollow' popped by to see how we were doing. Richard dropped by and we've been chatting to the people at the local waterways museum where we tend to eat every time we're there now (my personal favorite is a 'Tom Pudding' - a giant Yorkshire pudding full of mash, vegtables and sausages). Its all becoming quite social and it feels like a safe place for Misterton to be for a while.

One of the guys from the museum found an old picture of her in her working days. Nice.

August

....was quite a busy month. Mary and I got married in Crouch End, North London on the 9th (now I have those rust scraping skills locked in....)

Here we are outside the church with my mum and dad. Let me just state again for the record, I had no idea what her dress would be like and was absolutely stunned on the day. My brother (best man) said my eyes were out on stalks when Mary walked down the aisle.

It rained of course, but what do you expect for the UK in summer. The reception was on the Battersea Barge, a converted barge about 140 feet long that is moored down near Vauxhall. It doesn't go anywhere, but floats with the tide, leading our guests to think they'd over done the refreshements about halfway through the evening.

We had our honeymoon in New Zealand as Mary had never been. Of course, as thats where I'm from, I got to look like a legend as I knew where everything was. I'll spare people the nigh on 600 pictures we took, and just concentrate on a few boat related ones.

This is a tugboat in Wellington harbour.....

....and here is Mary freezing on the ferry over to the South Island.....

In Queenstown we went on a jetboat (-8 degrees on the river...) and then a gentle evening cruise on the TSS Earnslaw, a coal fired steamer from about 1912.

The engine room was the warmest place, so we stayed there for a while.....

Although its not a boat, we took a helicopter ride from Franz Josef glacier around Mt. Cook.

finally, back in Wellington, we saw the Hikita, a crane barge built in Scotland and sailed over to NZ many years ago.

In the meantime, Alan and his team have been working on Misterton. Lynn Pease sent me these pictures. There is more rust that we'd all hoped, but if we can divert some steel plate away from China I think things will be ok. This will cost us more than we hoped, but we're both happy to get this fixed correctly now, even if it means the interior fitout will not be quite so elaborate to start with (I'm secrelty rubbing my hands with glee as I'm a big fan of minimalism anyway, in fact as Mat said, if it wasn't for Mary I'd probably be living on Misterton now in a cardboard box, and he's got a point). Here are a range of pictures showing rust and then re-plating.

They've also made a start on the new wheelhouse. We're back up there next weekend to continue removing the old interior lining. More pictures to follow.

More of the same

With Misterton safely at Goole, it was time for some more work - hooray! Mary and I were joined for the weekend by my brother Nick and his girlfriend Sally, both over from New Zealand for our wedding. In the Week that had passed since moving to Goole, Alan Pease and his crew had removed the old wheelhouse. It now resides on the back of this truck waiting to go to the scrapyard.

The grey structure in the foreground is the new wheelhouse on Hope.

Removal of the rail around the back of Misterton revealed a few more holes than we would have liked...

Nothing that can't be fixed though. Glad that we're finding this all now anyway. The wheel has been left exposed, but not for long as construction on the new wheelhouse will start soon.

So after looking at all this, we thought we'd better crack on with the interior work. After talking to Alan, it was deemed a good idea to take the roof lining off the front section and I'm glad we did. The previous owner obviously thought paint an unnecessary luxury, and we were confronted with a ceiling of rust. So it was more scraping, chipping and treating, all carried out by Mary and Sally. Nick and I concentrated on taking stuff to the local tip and we quickly got rid of the old materials. Once this was done, we were at a bit of a loose end and so decided to de-clutter the interior some more. My brother's enthusiasm for destruction was quite refreshing as shown by the results here.

My original plan had been to compete the front third of the boat, and then move on to the next section. Well, thats gone out the window now. Mary and I independently came to the conclusion that we're better off stripping the whole interior back in one go and getting all the mess out of the way at once. It'll be a a lot of work, but with all the built in fittings such as kitchen etc. now removed there is no going back.

We had a few visitors over the weekend, Richard and Steven who helped us move to Goole both popped by at different times. We also were graced with the presence of our mum and dad who had made the trip up from Norfolk. Was great to see them and I'm glad they could see Misterton before too much more work had been done.

In the meantime, Mary and Sally were still getting high on paint fumes.

The results look great, just a little bit more to go.

Thats about it. We got a lot done in three days and a big thanks to Nick and Sally for their efforts.