On Deck

The first stage of our "big push" with the boat's renovation is the deck.  It has been left in the same condition for approximately a year and in a sense has remained unchanged since Dad's passing.  Things have literally frozen in time - a couple of toolkits have rusted under the elements and various lengths of wood are going green.  We are never short of wood here, as not only is Glad Tidings a wooden boat, it is festooned with chunks of it of all sizes.  These are used for everything from propping open hatches to propping up a wonky section of the floor below deck.

Here are a couple of views from the quayside:

Note the clear expanse of coach roof after many months of being buried under a mass of ladders, oars, sailcloth, bags of cat litter (we have two felines aboard) and various decidedly-orange implements and bits of machinery that used to be some sort of metal.  I intend
to post pictures of some of these on the blog sometime as I really have no idea what they are.

At the bottom of the picture, you will see stones and pebbles.  This is the ballast of Glad Tidings, taken from the Arbroath shoreline and intended for use under the floor to weight the craft so it doesn't wobble about the place.  It's outside because we needed it out the way to investigate where the leak (or leaks) might be. 

It comes in very handy as a rudimentary balancing kit, as from this shot you can see we are currently moored against a wall.  As we are floating over mud and don't have a flat bottom (unlike all those smug-looking Dutch barges that surround us!) when the tide goes out we are sometimes prone to "heeling over" the wrong way.  The aim is to settle against the wall, with a bit of leaning to the right, where our fenders cushion the descent. 

However, if there is a dreaded northerly breeze (even just a puff of air - a boat weighing 20 tons can be as light as feather to move when afloat) we can be blown away from the wall and this can get quite precarious.  If we're not careful we could go over the other way, which has been known, whereupon it's a case of clearing the shelves and preparing to spend 8 hours at a 90 degree angle.  The green box on the grass is full of ballast, and this is used to hold the line in place so we don't drift out.

You may just have observed the amount of clutter on deck - coal for the stove, a Black & Decker workmate circa 1976 that no longer folds down and a giant TV aerial that was donated to us and which would probably pull us over if we tried to install it.  This is all material that is subject to 'put and take', as we sort everything out and compile the lot into what to preserve and what to chuck.

The coach roof has a canvas top painted blue.  As soon as we removed the ephemera, we understood exactly why it was there.  The picture was taken on a beautiful sunny day - as the heavens opened we began to leak mightily.  Though the deck is fibreglassed to keep out rain, we regularly get drips in the most unexpected areas.  Bizarrely they can migrate, so you'll get a metric ton of water through one plank, only for it to be bone dry during the next shower.  Then you go to bed and find it's all gone in there.  The water can also get in through bolts in the deck, so not only do you get wet, but there's a delightfully brown and metallic quality to what comes in.

Here is a picture of Mum's sleeping berth at present, with enough takeaway cartons to fill a van.  It looks like the bedroom of a conspiracy theorist trying to block out satellite signals!

Below is the side deck, with the stanchions that are in sore need of painting. 

The red square to the right is the foot of one of a pair of boat "legs" my Dad made, that can be attached to either side enabling the vessel to stand up when the tide goes down.

In addition to the deck clearance, painting and varnishing of the masts, we are also going to buy a big bag of sawdust and a rather large knife.  This is going to form part of a highly delicate operation, the details of which are best left to a future instalment...