Essex

A sneaky weekend at Steeple Bay in Essex.  I am always surprised how rural this part of the country is.  remote salt marshes and farmland just a stones throw from London.

Had to get my boat fix while in Maldon.

And a walk along Southend pier; the longest pleasure pier in the world at 1.3 miles.

Small boating

Last summer our contractors at work had some scrap pieces of 3.6mm ply that needed to go to a good home.  I was willing to offer one and they have been sitting in my lock up since then.  With the weather improving, I decided to see what I could make out of them.  Well, a boat obviously.

I gaffa taped the two longest pieces together and pushed and pulled them, then trimmed them until I got a shape I liked.

Added a temporary frame in the center.

Then covered the bottom with the other two large pieces of ply that I had.

Once trimmed, I glassed the bottom with 162 gsm cloth and epoxy.

Tied up

After two years of making do with some horrible lengths of knotted, frayed string on the boat, I have now treated myself to 25m of 14mm soft black mooring rope.

Currently watching Youtube videos on how to do splices.

Out from hibernation

With the lengthening of the days, I have crawled out from my cave with the beginnings of something akin to enthusiasm for doing stuff.  I have written a list - that's a start at least.  Hopefully we wont have too many more chilly days on the river now.

Tenerife

Managed to grab 10 days in Tenerife.  22-25 degrees while the Uk was being battered by storms.  Haha.  A beautiful island with some stunning places to visit if you are prepared to get away from the coastal resorts.  El Teide at over 3000m is amazing.

Cratch windows

With winter coming, its time to put the cratch cover back on.  I had removed the dirty and cracked perspex from the front board when I began painting the boat.  I've now had some proper window glass cut to replace it.

Fitting was easy,  I just masked the glass and stuck it in place with plenty of CT1.

On Wednesday, I was treated to a beautiful sky when I got home from work.

Jazzing up boring cupboards

The little passageway between bathroom and bedroom was rather dull with a plain piece of plywood for a wardrobe door on one side and some alarmingly yellow pine doors on the other.  A few lengths of architrave and some paint helped to jazz things up a bit.  Got some splendid coat hooks on ebay too.