Tuesday 4 May 2010

A Working Weekend

With the Boat Safety Certificate examination due in the summer and mindful of what it cost to get Starcross through it last time, last weekend was designated a "working weekend" on the boat. In 2006 we made no attempt to prepare for the exam and paid the price, literally, with a list of failures as long as your arm. This time we hope to do better.
At the same time we thought we'd tackle some of the long-standing "domestic" jobs on the boat that we never otherwise seem to get round to. So, between last Friday evening and Monday afternoon, we:
Checked the ventilation, fire extinguishers and battery terminals.(all failed last time)
Painted the floor of the gas locker (a "fail" in 2006)
Emptied the gas locker of all the superfluous bits of kit that have accumulated there since 2006 (another fail)
Checked and cleaned the gas burners on the hob, grill and oven (and another)
Scraped the rust off the solid-fuel stove and repainted it with stove paint.
Removed and replaced half the tiles in the kitchen and cleaned and re-grouted the rest.
Stripped off the old wallpaper in the bathroom and put up some new.
Removed the bathroom tiles and replaced them and, finally
Washed and polished both sides of the boat and polished the brasses!


When I say "we" I mean Hilary - who is the practical one aboard Starcross! My role is confined to fetching and carrying and basic jobs like cleaning and making the tea.
Hilary at work re-tiling the kitchen
Despite three days of constant activity there were still a few jobs left undone, such as cleaning the pilot light on the water heater (turned out to be too difficult to get at due to inadequate tools and a hopeless diagram in the manual) and re-carpeting the saloon (although we did get as far as buying the carpet tiles). The weather wasn't particularly good and I'm planing to go off for a few days boating next weekend, so we didn't mind spending a bank holiday weekend working on the boat and we now have the knowledge that we've done something towards getting us through the BSC exam when the time comes.



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