The Unexpected Sofa.

Erm, yes. Well, it was the birthday weekend after all. For various inexplicable reasons it seems that acquiring Elton John’s sofa* seemed to be the best way to celebrate.
We long tired of our only choice of seating being either fold up camping chairs, with us folded up uncomfortably within, or on toolboxes, or as a frequent last resort the floor. Little did we know that a visit to the local (and reliably quite good actually) car boot sale would present us with the ideal opportunity to do something silly about it.
Obviously we spotted our new sofa a mile off; well, wouldn’t you?
Sat on it and politely enquired the price. Remained poker-faced and wandered off to engage in heated debate once safely out of earshot, walked as slowly as possible round rest of boot sale twice, buying other random objects before going back to discover it hadn’t been sold and make an insultingly poor offer. Fair enough, the seller didn’t bite, but instead came up with a more sensible figure, as these things go, somewhere in the middle. Deal done we grabbed one end each and marched the thing straight out of there, into the car (sort of- didn’t quite fit), out of the car, over the footbridge and into the boat, stopping on the after deck for these frankly scary pictures. Sometime about this point a passing rambler shouted “well, you just don’t expect to see THAT!” which is about right. I mean, it’s so bad it’s good really. And comfy enough to sleep on convincingly, once the bits of dead vegetation had been vacuumed out of all the crevices.


Becky has developed some mad plan to reupholster the thing and spruce up the bonkers faux Louis XIV carving, which I wholly approve of, but also figure that it can stay red crushed velvet for a bit, as for a while at least it’s only going to get covered in dust while we cut more bits of wood up all over the place.
I love it, it’s ridiculous aesthetic crashes horribly into the whole tugboat-tough thing. Also being able to lounge about in front of the fire when I should be sanding something down or wrestling electrics instead is a very gratifying thing indeed, which is a bit of a first.

*A lie.

More Fiddly bits of Woodwork.

It took a few weekends of careful joinery, some logistical headaches, a little help from my friends and one almighty hangover- but the deckhead is now fully lined in the forward compartment of the hull.
Being me I couldn’t just go to the timber merchants could I? That would be far too dull. Instead this ceiling was made from some extremely knackered old pine floorboards that’ve have been cut down to a new width, planed, thicknessed, and chucked through the router table to make new tongue and grooved edges. That little lot added up to about ten hours of evenings in the workshop and to start with the stock was in such bad condition that I doubted the sanity of going through the process at all. Obviously, I decided to be bloody-minded and carry on and I’m well pleased with the results. Actually getting the ceiling up wasn’t without it’s challenges either but let’s face it, that’s the reason we like doing this sort of thing. The finished lining follows the original sheer and camber of the deck fairly well I reckon, and that was the aim of the game. The scarfed joins in the planks have come up nice too and all she needs now is a bunch of edge beading, the ones visible in the pics are only temporary ‘registration’ beads. The real ones are supposed to be teak or something else dark and contrasty, no doubt I’ll come up with some ridiculous profile that I’ll have to make them all to as well. Back to the workshop I go, luckily I’ve got plenty more crappy looking stock to play with…

Laissez Faire.

Yes, bad and naughty Seb. I’ve just had another can’t-be-arsed-blogging-few-months.
But trust me the biggest excuse for this is that we’ve been stupidly, insanely busy. Regular readers will be relieved to know that, as always, there’s far more to it than that.
The last blog entry I did was a deliberate and extremely oblique reference to the fact that I’d just had a significant industrial accident, and let’s just be clear it was my own fault. Quite interestingly I smacked myself in the face with a small angle grinder fitted with a cutting disc. It was like being kicked in the head by a fairly large horse, and it very definitely knocked me off my perch. A mere seven stitches across my upper lip and nose seemed like a lucky escape at the time. But I still have little sensation in the area beyond the cold, numb, been up all year doing cocaine sort of weirdness that once upon a time I was used to for entirely different and very wrong reasons. And the scar hasn’t even the grace to be cool either, I regret to report that it’s come up more Wonky Hitler than Heroic Swashbuckler. No you bunch of bloodlusting oddballs, I haven’t got any photographs, being alternately too shocked and then too ready to beat senseless the entirely undeserving and quite fit nurse who gave me the six local anaesthetic injections, the bitch.

Anyway, you don’t want to read this sort of thing, you want to know about progress aboard the vessel ‘Wendy Ann 2’ don’t you? Right then. Over the next few days I hope to tell you all about the following, at the very least:
An unexpected sofa.
And fridge.
First battery lighting and it’s effects.
Forward accommodation deckhead joy.
Why I love diesel, even though I shouldn’t.
Engine room ballasting and working floor at last.
What’s wrong with chemical toilets anyway?
My Da, and the meaning of the word ‘love’.
Moving that bloody propeller.
Guess the Flag.

So, tune in for words and pictures again soon folks.