YAFT - Day 2

Not a good start to the day. Rik awoke feeling ill and within half an hour was very ill indeed. Not nice in a small boat but couldn't be helped.

Odd cos we both ate and drank the same stuff last night. It left him out of it and sleeping in his berth for most of the day.

Meanwhile, Toby and Paul arrived around 8:30 and set to with the pressure washer and a cunning garden hoe scraper - why didn't I think of that? She was nowhere near as fouled as I'd expected and the lads expressed surprise as well. Still took about an hour to clean her up but by the finish she was all but ready for a fresh coat of jollup.

Toby and Paul put her down on blocks in the yard ready for us to set to work ourselves. My first job was to scrape and scrub the strips of hull that had been under the lifting strops. That was enough to make me glad I wasn't trying to do the whole job on a muddy slipway!

Next mission was a shopping trip for fresh antifoul. We'd got most of a tin of the Flag stuff left from last year but it wouldn't be enough for two coats and one might not be sufficient. So I headed down to the oft recommended Dauntless chandlery on Canvey Island.

Its an Aladdins' Cave of a place crammed full of boaty bits and for sure there are bargains to be had (if what you want happens to be something they've got a good deal on) but overall the majority of prices on the stuff I'm likely to buy looked roughly the same as I'd pay online ordering from Seamark Nunn or Force 4.

Given that its about an hour and a half round trip using a gallon of diesel I'd need to be buying something unusual and big such as my own mooring tackle or a power winch otherwise overall we're better off sticking with the internet for planned purchases and Marinestore at Burnham for odds and ends

Anyway, I left without spending too much money with a 3 litre tin of XM antifoul (which I have my doubts about as I've heard its not much cop but it was leas than £30), a long roller handle and some 4" rollers and a tin of white boot top paint which cost half a much as the antifoul for a fraction of the quantity!

Back at the yard eventually, having ducked and dived around the back roads to avoid a long queue of traffic getting off Canvey Island, I set to with the roller and by the end if the afternoon she had the first coat on. In the process, I'm raising the boot top line by a couple of inches all round - we got it about right when she's sitting level but wind induced heel on the mooring meant that for long periods the water would be lapping up over the boot top allowing weed to get a hold on the topsides paint.

During the course of the day I ticked off a number of odd jobs from the list - the engine electrics connecting lead is now connected, the external fuel tank has been drained of 2-stroke mix ready to receive unadulterated unleaded and the fuel line engine connector changed for the correct type for the new engine.

I crashed out and dozed off in my berth about five-ish. Meanwhile, a somewhat revived Rik did some investigation work on cable runs before heading for a shower. He woke me up at well gone 8! The pub, of course, beckoned although Rik wisely decided to avoid the beer for the night.

We ate and I had a pint and a coffee but left by around ten as the bar was full of noisy blokes getting noisier. They'd done a good job of clearing the place as we were the only other customers apart from them. Otherwise though, the pub hasn't taken a turn for the worse under the new management as we'd feared.

Fan heater on tonight when we got back on board. Neither of us felt like a nightcap so we hit the sack early.