Pop!

It was one degree out there at 9am this morning, when I heard the marina dwellers getting excited about something. It turns out that the bloke from the last boat in the chain had come back from the pub, and turned all his stuff on at once. The marina fuses did more than pop. The 'Big Baloo' electrics fused so badly they almost caught fire. He showed me the blackened twisted cable and switch he'd had to replace (forty quid). They weren't very happy with the culprit boat owner, who remained unseen all day.

I was relieved that it wasn't our kettle that had caused the trouble. It's such a high load item, that everything on the boat gets switched off, before it's used. Boats aren't houses, and everybody has just the equivalent of one electricity socket each. It's too easy to get carried away, start plugging stuff in, and overload it.


When I looked into the engine 'ole, it wasn't a job I fancied doing today. So I braved the wind, and worked on the roof again. The budgie sand stuff has worn out 3 wirebrush grinding heads (at 9 pounds a pop), but it is at last getting to the stage where there is more bare clean metal than rust, filler and paint bodges. It's not going to look perfect, but it will look much better than it did, once it's covered in some fresh anti-slip.



So, if it was rusty... it's all been ground back to bare metal, and painted with iron oxide. Theoretically, a grey undercoat should then go over that, but 'international' paints pride themselves on bonding straight to the oxide primer. We shall see.