Painting and fitting
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Spot the barge!!! – seems like the boat has disappeared, but look a bit closer and there it is.
<— All masked up and getting painted.
I wasn’t sure what to expect knowing that the painting was ready to start. The base coats are on and David showed me that we were already 200-250 microns thick, which apparently is quite good, verging on super yacht quality. The two part paint system should give a high quality, high gloss finish.
The wheelhouse roof has been constructed and I’m annoyed that I did not take any pics of that, still looking good. I also picked up the ‘blue board’ (used in Europe to declare your intentions to move to pass oncoming vessels, starboard to starboard). This had been delivered to a company nearby, in fact just 200 meters from our favourite pub, The Wharf. So obviously when we collected the board, we had to go off for a good lunch at the pub. As it turned out, I’m glad we got the board when we did because the fitting was not as straightforward as I had imagined, not having seen the design of the board or the wheelhouse roof. However, Martyn took the challenge on-board and hopefully there will be a successful outcome.
The exhaust is looking quite good; this is a small cowl exhaust, not particularly cheap but very compact. The engine was being tested whilst we were there and it really is quite quiet even in the confines of the engine room. Since this is not a particularly small engine (6 cylinder, 170hp) I was extremely pleased with this. There is also a dedicated air intake for the engine so that it does not suck in too much warm air from the engine room, and an extractor in the corner to remove hot air if it does get too warm. I could sense a bit of vibration through the wheelhouse floor but we will have to wait and see if that is still the case when it is afloat.
Internally, all the lighting is in place with strip LED lights in various locations – they seem to be in every conceivable location, and every time lights were mentioned or a suggestion made, we seemed to have signed up for even more. We may have overdone it a bit but you can always turn them off I suppose.
