A sobering Sunday

Joyful nights bring sorrowful mornings, as I mentioned in yesterdays blog, we were off out for the night last night, I only wish I had only had two or three Guinness but when your in good company and it’s going down so easy- well what more can I say. I did not get breakfast on until turned 10.00am then we chucked a few things in the car and headed off down the moorings. Weather wise, the morning had started out promising but as the morning rolled on and into afternoon, the clouds started gathering and then about 4.00pm it started raining. It’s amazing, as I mentioned earlier, Minnow had been coated in lime by a farmer liming his fields up at Hoo Mill and at the time I said that what it needed was a good downpour of rain. Well it hasn’t for the last fortnight and so we had decided to wash the cloths down with a hard broom, a mop and a hose pipe, before taking them off for the Summer, we both set to scrubbing and swilling down until all was clean again. While we waited for the cloths to dry I filled a bowl with water and washing up liquid and washed down the off side of the cabin and scrubbed all the lime dust of that as well then swilled it off with the hose pipe. I was just coiling up the hose pipe to put it away when the first couple of rain drops fell – I don’t believe it-

This putting the cloths on, and taking the cloths off is an annual event for we fully cloth the boat in winter just to keep the rain out so we don’t have to pump out so often, then take them off at this time of the year for boating an empty boat fully clothed is not a method of boating to be enjoyed.

The only problem with clothing the empty hold up is it can lead to randomly storing allsorts under the cloths like “where shall I put this” “Oh just stick it under the cloths. Which while the hold is clothed up ain’t a problem, but when you take the cloths off and all is on view to every passing boat then this accounted for the afternoons work. Moving empty diesel containers, bags of coal, batteries, a sack truck/trolley, two generators, timber and a host of other various items. While I did this Dawn set about the bow cabin top with her plane blade and removed all the lifting varnish then scrubbed it all off with an old toothbrush. All in all another satisfying day getting lots done. Unfortunately the rain stopped us putting the first coat of varnish on the bow cabin and the second coat on the back cabin as well as some red oxiding I wanted to do, but, hey ho, there’s always next week and so as always till then’

Don’t bang ‘em about.

Blossom