Bookends.

Regular readers of this blog will know that over the years of doing this boat restoration malarkey, Becky and I have been bigtime blessed by our various friends and their frankly humbling enthusiasm to get involved on board with our epic task. Indeed, we couldn’t have done most of it, or stayed relatively sane without them.

An old friend from my past life of cycling the city recently expressed an interest in coming along to see what all the fuss is about, so last weekend she did. I’d previously thought that she would be amongst the last people to come visit but boy, was I ever wrong. It turns out that Ranka has a fondness for doing woodwork, so amongst other things it seemed like a good time to install the floor in the cabin. Yep, we used those ‘some-kind-of-mahogany’ boards that I’ve been trying to find the right home for hmmm, shall we say, some time. The boards required their T&G scraping out, and ordering nicely but apart from that they just needed cut to size before they were good to go. We fitted them, screwed ‘em down and plugged the 36 screw holes in less than a day; all we had to do then was wait for the glue on the plugs to dry overnight before planing and sanding them flush. Another dear friend, Mark, bequeathed me the 1/2 inch plug cutter that we used for this some time ago and it’s still one of my favourite little toys.

The plywood ‘L’ shape that you can see round the back is where a fitted set of seating will be going one day soon, so there’s no point putting mahogany there and anyway, there wasn’t enough.
It’s very nice to have dealt with another pile of hardwood, very nice to have another finished floor to admire, and after getting some varnish onto it yesterday we can actually stand very nicely on it too.

The next day we faced the interesting issue of how to go about showering before work, as after two hardworking days on board we were feeling a wee bit sticky. Ranka suggested a novel solution for us both, which went as follows… Get up early, take towel and shower gel to beach, stand in surf soaping up and wave to the bemused local dog walkers, tuck shower gel into sarong wrapped around head, swim off suds, clamber out and wander back to boat feeling very relaxed and about three sizes smaller. Works a treat, although I wouldn’t like to do it in February.
I should probably say that Ranka is from Croatia and survived the civil war there, therefore there’s not much that fazes her, so industrial camping on board doesn’t seem to present any obstacle to her enjoyment. And I should also say that I have a feeling she’ll be back- and most welcome she will be too. As we grow older, old friends remind us of what it’s like to be young once again.