Narrowboat Just Heaven

The Epimastic needs at least 48 hours from the final coat before immersion, so we have no more painting to do. On Saturday we drove down to Bristol to see Heddi’s dad in hospital. Then back again in the evening.
On Sunday we went for a walk around Hartlebury Common then, in the afternoon, moved all our stuff out of the apartment and back onto the boat as we have to be ready for re-floating in the morning.

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Third and final coat today.

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Working with a whole tin in one session meant that we were taking nearly the whole 4 hours workable time to complete the task. So we decided to only mix half a can at a time and to the second coat in two goes, one per day.
So on Wednesday we did just one side with blacking and spent the rest of the time doing other jobs such as the stern flashes. On Thursday we did the second coat on the other side and also touched up some of the other paintwork.

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Today we put the first coat on one side and part of the other side. We are using a two part epoxy product called “Epimastic”. The two parts have to be mixed before use, then there is about 4 hours of working time before it begins to set. This means that we cant stop until a whole batch has been used up as any left in the tin wont be any good the next day.

Most of the paint is put on with a roller, the edges and fiddly bits with a brush. We started with an ordinary roller, but the epoxy product was dissolving the hairy bits of the roller! I went over the Limekiln chandlers and they told me that you need special rollers, which luckily they stocked, so a bought a couple.

We were glad to be able to go back to Andrew & Sheila’s in the evenings to get away from the smell of paint and the noise of the fun fair which is alongside the dry dock.

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We were up fairly early as they re-fill the dry dock at 8:00, were were told to be ready to go in by 9:00. We moved round to the pontoon above the first staircase to await instructions.

© A Goodland

There was a bit of boat shuffling as two have to come out and two go in. Also a hire boat arrived during the maneuvers and wanted to go down onto the river. By ten o’clock the lock was drained and we were high and dry. It’s an odd feeling walking around on the boat when it doesn’t move.

David from Limekiln then did a really good job of pressure washing the boats. He used a big industrial pressure washer which removed all the mud, barnacles & crud.

It was a warm sunny day and the hull dried off fairly quickly. After it had dried we started wire-brushing. We spent the rest of the day cleaning scraping and wire brushing the whole hull.

With tired and aching arms we retired to Andrew & Sheila’s apartment which they had kindly lent us for the duration of our stay in the dry dock.

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We drove up in two cars yesterday, left one at Stourport then went on to Kinver. We are booked into the dry dock at Stourport next week. We didn’t want to be stuck there without a car as Heddi’s dad is in hospital and we wanted to be able to go back to Bristol if needed.

There was a heavy frost this morning, but it was a pleasant cruise down in Autumn sunshine. We arrived about 4 o’clock. Andrew & Sheila (Capt & Mrs Beeky) came aboard for a cup of tea and a chat. In the evening we joined them for a meal in their lovely apartment overlooking the basin.

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