Painting session 1

As can be seen from this picture of Mind Like Water moored outside the museum at Etruria, her paintwork is a bit tired...

The blotches at the front end are from a little scraping and rust treatment done last summer but winter arrived before we could get any top coat on and the rust is re-appearing.

The green section at the stern is from an exploratory session earlier in the year when Andrew tried scraping, priming and glossing. This went reasonably smoothly except for stupid insects landing on the wet gloss and the vagaries of British weather leaving the surface rather rough after an unexpected rain shower.

With the end of the summer break fast approaching, Andrew decided to keep a close eye on the weather forecast and do as much painting as possible to avoid Mind Like Water spending another winter with rust nibbling away at her sides...

Bought a couple of additional batteries for the cordless drill to facilitate use of a sanding wheel where possible.

A hectic 24 hours this week saw the whole port side scraped, primed and a first coat of gloss applied. Have taken a bit of a gamble by not applying Fertan to the scraped areas. (Fertan is a strange chemical which smells like a mix of soy sauce and molasses and converts any remaining rust to an inert substance). Not using it here means that patches of rust may come through but at least we will go into the winter with the surface protected and can treat any spots next year.

Is that a shiny boat I see?

The painting makes quite a difference to the look. Have gone for plain green at this stage just to get a covering on and will review the decoration next year. The red name panels are self-adhesive vinyl graphics which we bought last June to cover the previous name. They seem to have lasted very well so far with no fading of the red. Was even able to use white spirit to remove splashes of green gloss from the surface.

I did the work out on the cut since the marina does not allow sanding etc.

The simple act of turning the boat to come back turned into a more drawn out operation when I picked up a load of chicken wire round the propeller in the winding hole...

There were some wry comments from our kids when Alison gave me a pair of pond gloves for last Christmas. However, in this first use they were fantastic! Protected my hands and arms very well from the cold and mucky water. Even remembered to put some string on my wire cutters to avoid dropping them in the cut.