On Schedule !

Week 27

Sunday

The nucleus of a plan is beginning to develop. Some of the things that we need from Braunston are big and bulky and may not fit into the car. Those that do will probably have to be transported one at a time. That means that we'll need to make at least four, and probably five, trips to Braunston. Therefore it seems logical to us to go to Braunston by boat for the shopping. This will give us the equivalent of a sea trial and a break from fitting out the boat. The plan is to go around the middle of May, by which time we hope to have the basic facilities installed. This is before the trip boat season gets fully underway, and it is probably the last chance that we'll have to be away for so long until the autumn.

The idea of the trip developed over a couple of days but it was Sunday before we decided to try to turn the plan into reality. It'll give us something to aim for, but does depend on the items that we want being available at Braunston on the day we hope to be there - we have a five day window, provided that we leave late on the Sunday (after a trip boat job) or, at the latest, first thing on the Monday. If we take full advantage of daylight hours, without starting out at the crack of dawn (even though we'll probably be awake), we hope to do the journey in two days each way.

Despite being awake bright and early, we didn't feel that we could disturb others, so we stayed at home until around 8.30am. When we contacted the boatyard before we left home we found that the painter had been out and about early - 6.30am to be precise, painting the front and rear doors before the temperature climbed too high. We'd specifically asked that these doors be painted because, until they were, we couldn't fit the door inserts with the result that we couldn't properly secure the boat. Having discovered that the doors had been painted, we did plan to fit the inserts on Sunday but, as you've probably guessed, things didn't quite go to plan.

Both the fitter and Mrs. Fitter were going to the boatyard - we'd given Offcut the day off. Mrs. Fitter had some trip boat chores to attend to and, while she did those, the fitter busied himself working on the engine room floor. He started by removing the rear port side floor panel with the intention of fitting a floor pull to it. However, when he attempted to remove the panel, he realised that it wasn't something that could easily be done in isolation because it was semi-trapped by the adjacent floor panels. As the battery bank and the isolating switches are located under this panel, it is rather critical that the panel can be removed fairly easily. Consequently, having fitted a vent to the panel, to provide a through air flow over the engine, the fitter then cut out a rectangular section that could be easily removed to get to the battery switches. The cut out section is supported by a batten screwed to the main panel on one side and by one of the main floor supporting battens on the other side. As the panel is only about 200mm by 100mm, we don't think it is necessary to support it at the ends, especially as it will not normally be stood or walked on.

We used the jigsaw to remove the cutout. We didn't want to have anything other then the saw's kerf showing so, instead of drilling a hole in one corner, we placed the jigsaw vertically on the panel and gradually tilted it backwards, so that the blade gradually cut into the floor panel. Eventually the blade broke through the other side and we were then able to use jigsaw in the normal way. With the cutout removed from the main panel, and the supporting batten added, we restored the main panel to the engine room floor. Now we had to fit a floor pull to the cutout. However, before we could do this we were volunteered to help one of our colleagues to fit a roof to his recently purchased, self erected shed. This took us way past lunch time, but it had to be done.

We finished lunch by around 2pm. Mrs. Fitter had finished her other chores and was available to assist the fitter, who still had the floor pull to fit to the floor panel. These are a beggar to do as they include several parts that have differing depths whilst, at the same time, require the screw fixing holes to be at a specific level within the plywood panel, if the upper surface of the pull is to end up flush with the surface of the floor panel. The fitter didn't quite manage this on either pull and also had to resort to using a small amount of filler around the edge of the recess to tidy up the finish.

One quick job that we had to do was to put the hip bath back on the boat. This will only go through the front doors and won't even do that once the Ash trim is fitted, because that makes the door opening about 5cm narrower, just a shade too narrow for the bath to fit through. The down side to all this is that we now have to work around the bath until we've finished fitting out the bedroom and the bathroom.

The next job that we did was to re-erect the bulkhead at the foot of the bed. Whereas this had fitted when we initially cut it to size, like all the other bulkheads it had then been test fitted in isolation. Now, with the rearmost bulkhead permanently fitted, the adjacent bulkhead no longer fitted as well as it should. Fortunately, it was too tight rather than too loose. As a result, we spent part of the afternoon putting up, and taking down the bulkhead and planing small amounts off both the top and bottom. Eventually we decided that we had as good a fit as we'd be likely to achieve and started to position it vertically where it would ultimately be fitted. It was at this time that we found that the two bulkheads simply weren't parallel. We couldn't do anything about the rear bulkhead as this was now firmly fixed into position.

And here is a problem with a boat. We have no guarantee that any part of the boat is vertical and, because the boat is now in the water, we can't even use a spirit level. We spent quite a while positioning, measuring, checking and then positioning, checking, etc.. Things aren't helped by the boiler front being very close to the new bulkhead and any attempt to relate the position of one bulkhead to the other upsets the relationship to the boiler. Things aren't helped either because the rear bulkhead was fastened to the metal that separates the dry and wet bilges and checked for square on the floor. On reflection, by this point, the floor probably starts to incline slightly, and this may have affected the tests that we made for the bulkhead being vertical. We also suspect, again with hindsight, that the metal plate between the two bilges may not be 100% square either. Because the rear bulkhead is screwed to this plate (which we assumed at the time was square), any inaccuracies in alignment of the plate will be transferred to the bulkhead.

We were socialising again during the evening and all the mucking about with the bulkhead had brought the time nicely round to packing up time. Whilst Mrs. Fitter went to get changed - the boat isn't far enough advanced that we can change clothes in privacy on the boat - the fitter and Offcut, who had appeared a little while earlier in preparation for the evening's festivities, quickly manhandled the other two bulkheads into position. Fortunately, only one needed any serious work doing to it and this was solved with a quick burst of jigsaw action.

We just about had all four bulkheads in position - for the first time ever - when Mrs. Fitter arrived. Our daughter and her friend also put in an appearance about this time and they also saw the bulkheads in position. The fitter now disappeared to get changed and then returned briefly to the boat to pack up the tools and stow them out of sight. Alas, we didn't get round to fitting any of the door inserts, so we still couldn't secure the boat. Maybe tomorrow!

Monday

The fitter had to take his car to an accident damage assessor on his way to the boat and, as a result, didn't get to the boatyard until just before 10am. He'd pre-warned Offcut of the later arrival on Sunday afternoon and, as a result, Offcut arrived shortly after the fitter. In a break with tradition, we skipped the tea and got straight down to some serious work.

With the maiden shopping trip now becoming more of a reality, we need to get the boat into a state where it is reasonably comfortable to use. This has spurred us on and given us something to aim for. We still can't do anything about the gas or the electric. One is awaiting some parts and the other some assistance from the grease monkey. This leaves the plumbing which, at the start of the day, required the vent outlet fitting to the side of the boat and then being connected to the pipe from the tank. We had planned to get the grease monkey to do this, but we've now got a better drill and as the hole that we need is only about 25cm, the fitter decided to give it a go himself. To his surprise it wasn't as difficult as he thought it would be and daylight was soon visible through the side of the boat. We managed to locate some ribbed hose that would flex easily and, with copious amounts of sealant and a couple of jubilee clips, we eventually managed to connect the skin fitting to the pipe from the tank.

There was nothing to stop us from filling the tank now, so we dug out the hose, unscrewed the filler cap, connected the hose to the tap, put the other end of the hose in the filler pipe and turned the tap on. We'd taken the precaution of shutting the valve on the outlet side of the tank so that we could limit any damage if we had any leaks. Whilst the tank was filling the fitter was temporarily connecting up the 12v circuits to the battery.

The tank filled a little faster than we thought and this tested the vent. Although it worked, it is nearly as high above the top of the tank as the filler connection and so water overflows from both almost at the same time. We hadn't quite got the pipe run right and got some strange noises out of the vent skin fitting. Next time we filled the tank - see below, we paused in mid fill and adjusted the pipe run and the noise, which was mainly air bubbling through lying water, ceased.

With the tank full and the water pump wired up we opened the first gate valve and the pump sprang into life briefly because there is another gate valve on the opposite side of the pump, D switch and accumulator. There were still no signs of any leaks although we later found a couple of very small weeps in this area after the system had been running for a while.

The front of the boat settled further into the water as the tank filled. Eventually both anodes, one of which is at least an inch higher than the other, were under water. Unfortunately, as the front went down, the back lifted up and ended up a good 5cm out of the water. Luckily, we still have the extra four batteries to put at the back of the boat and one of our colleagues is going to lend us some weights that he no longer has a need for. We'll take these on our trip and see what happens once we have a few more bulky items in the boat.

It was getting to be a case of so far, so good - thank goodness, on the water front. This was getting a bit scary for someone who flies a pen / pounds the computer keyboard most of the time. It was time to open the second gate valve. With Offcut located by the water pump's MCB and the fitter lying on his back under the fore deck so that he could reach the gate valve, we opened said gate valve and the pump sprang to life again. We closed the gate valve and Offcut went to the stop valve in the kitchen area to see if any water had got through that far. He opened the valve and the fitter opened his gate valve and, suddenly, Offcut got slightly damp. Offcut's dictionary obviously doesn't include the phrase open the valve slightly! Anyway, he closed the valve and shook himself dry.

The process was then repeated at each of the following four cold water gate valves, although Offcut had learned his lesson by now and was only opening the valves (slightly) until water came through and then they were quickly closed again.

It was now judged to be safe to leave the gate valve open and the water pump MCB turned on, so the fitter extricated himself from below the for deck and we let the calorifier fill up. What we didn't notice until a little while later was that the drain valve at the end of the cold water pipe, just before the feed into the cylinder, had been left open when fitted and, in the dark corner, was happily draining off a lot of the water that we were trying to put into the system. When we eventually found it open the fitter quickly plugged the hole with his finger while Offcut looked for a spanner to close the valve. The floor panel wasn't exceptionally wet, and we may well have miscalculated how much water escaped but, apart from closing the valve, we didn't investigate further. For all we know there may be a lake under the floorboards. However, as we write this, we're trying to work out how we can look under the boiler / cylinder because they stop us lifting the rear floorboards on the port side. Maybe we'll need to try to cut an opening so that we can inspect the area for any possible damage.

The water pump eventually cut out and we assumed that the cylinder was full so the next job was to try venting the hot water outlets. Again, each one is fitted with a stop valve so, one at a time, starting from the rear, we gradually opened each valve. However, this time the result was different. Instead of water eventually appearing, almost unannounced, there was a rush of released air as we opened each valve and, eventually, water appeared at the end of each pipe. We closed the valve and moved on to the next one.

We did experience one small leak where one of the push fit connectors wasn't screwed up tightly but, by the time we packed up, we hadn't found any others. One of our first jobs when we next arrive will be to have a check round and see if there is any evidence of water in places where it shouldn't be.

With this branch of the plumbing now complete, Offcut and the fitter could split up and each work on a different task. Offcut spent the rest of the day installing the front door inserts and re-fitting the windows in the same doors. We had to fit the insert first and then fit the window because the screws that will secure the window in place will also pull the insert tighter to the door frame around the window opening. With the doors finished, Offcut was able to start fitting the trim. This wasn't a major job, although we were fitting longer screws than before. We did have a problem with the strike plates for the locking bolts because, since the extra welding had been done on the weather strip, one of the doors didn't close as tightly as it used to. Although we were able to bolt the doors when we left, we hadn't fitted the strike plates, we do need to do some more work in this area before it can be considered as Job Done.

The fitter's task was more plumbing. We needed to connect the calorifier to the engine (or vice versa). The engine fitter had provided a loop of hose properly connected to the engine. All we needed to do was to make use of this as part of the circuit. Originally we thought that we'd need to disconnect the hose from one point on the engine and use the disconnected end for one of the calorifier connections, fitting a new length of hose between engine and the other calorifier connection. However, As we wanted to route the calorifier end of the connection through the bulkhead, we connected plastic pipe to the calorifier. This short length had an elbow at the far end and then a further length of plastic pipe that went through the bulkhead. By doing this we were able to cut the original rubber pipe that the engine fitter had supplied and slip each of the cut ends over one of the pieces of plastic pipe, securing the joint with a jubilee clip.

We were able to avoid draining the whole system by clamping the rubber hose with a G clamp on each side of the point where we cut into it, far enough back from the cut so that we could still slip the cut end over the end of the plastic pipe. We took the precaution of placing a washing up bowl under the hose, just in case the clamps didn't work but there was hardly any loss.

The fitter had read somewhere about people having problems with water not staying hot in the cylinder overnight because convection was drawing the water back into the engine block. The solution was to fit a non-return valve in the circuit, so the fitter had added one of these at the calorifier end of the feed leg of the circuit.

With all the connections deemed to be secure, the fitter started the engine and, whilst he waited for it to get warm, started to tidy up. He checked the tube about 10 minutes later and it was still cold, whereas other pipework was now quite hot. It was almost 5.30pm by this time and past going home time, but he did speak to a couple of people and their views were that the non-return valve may be impeding the flow of water. It was also suggested that the hose, which had simply been cut in two and not had any excess removed and was sagging as a result, might have caused an airlock. There certainly didn't seem to be any significant reduction in the water level in the engine's header tank.

Any attempts to correct the problem were liable to take a while to implement so, rather than incur the wrath of Mrs. Fitter when he got home - shades of "Your dinner's in the dog" - the fitter called it a day, loaded the tools into the car and headed for home.

Tuesday

The weekly trip to London prevented any work being done on the boat on Tuesday.

Wednesday

In a break with tradition, we went to Braunston on Wednesday to make sure that all the goods that we wanted to collect on our trip were either in stock or would be available when we called. We even collected some of the smaller items and brought them back with us. It looks as though our trip is definitely on.

The fitter eventually arrived at the boatyard just after 1pm. to find Offcut already there. It was Offcut's turn to make the tea while the fitter unloaded the car.

Offcut's task for today was to try to help the fitter resolve what appeared to be a problem with the tunnel light circuit. The fitter noticed that the two wires for this circuit had remained connected together following earlier attempts to match positive and negative pairs of wires. The fitter was worried that this should have tripped the circuit's MCB when this was tried when the 12v circuits were initially connected to the battery. The fitter spent some time trying to track the circuit and simply couldn't understand why he was having problems. It took a good 15 minutes before he latched on to the fact that the tunnel and navigation lights have switches on the steerer's console, and both these were turned off. Stupid Boy!

With the electrical problems resolved, Offcut was free to start fitting the inserts into the rear doors and, following that, add the trim at the sides of the doors. However, before he could do that he had to reduce the length of the bolts holding the cabinet hook on the starboard side and then cut the appropriate recesses in the back of the door insert to accommodate the nuts on these bolts. We also had to trim the length of one piece of trim slightly because the steerer's console appears to have taken up a slightly new position since it was finally installed.

The fitter, meanwhile, had turned his attention to the plumbing. He clamped up the hose on the water heating circuit and then released the jubilee clips securing the hose to the plastic pipe. He cut about 15cm off each length of hose and then re-secured the hose to the pipe using the jubilee clips. There had been a slight leak on both joints overnight, so he made sure that he tightened the clips even more this time.

With the hose still clamped up, he then removed the non-return valve from the connection to the cylinder and fitted an ordinary piece of plastic pipe in its place. He then removed the clamps, to allow the flow of water again. With bated breath he started up the engine and waited to see if the hose / pipes got warm. Fortunately they did.

The intention was then to fit a couple of taps, temporarily, so that we had a means to access both the hold and cold water. However, he kept getting distracted and never quite managed it before it was time to pack up and get ready for an evening boat trip.

One of the distractions was to try to ease the weather strips on the front and rear doors. These had both distorted when the welds were strengthened and this was preventing the doors from closing properly. The fitter had some success with this but thinks he needs to do a little more work on them.

Thursday

Another day and another boat trip, before we could get onto our boat. In the meantime, the painter had been busy at the rear of the boat and had encountered a significant problem. We've bought a number of rubber mats from Wilkinsons to cover the front and rear decks. These mats have a series of large holes and are supported on little rubber pimples, so that water can escape underneath them. Offcut had, under the fitter's direction, cut our supply to size for both the front and back decks. Now that the painter had got round to putting the first top coat on the rear deck, he discovered what looked like a silicone deposit that has the same pattern as the mat's rubber supports in the painted surface.

There had been something similar around the hatch at the rear and the fitter is beginning to wonder if someone had sprayed something in this area that has re-acted to the mats. We'll have to wait and see what happens when the foredeck is painted as the mats have been on here a lot longer.

Mrs. Fitter busied herself with trying to organised window covers for our forthcoming journey. Over the years she has amassed numerous oddments of material and the springy wire that curtains used to hang on, together with the hooks and eyes that are needed to support them. These will now be used to support temporary curtains that will give us some privacy when we're asleep.

The fitter's job was to install the temporary taps in the kitchen area. These were bought at Braunston and will eventually see service in the bathroom once that is fitted out. The taps, which are connected to the plastic pipe with even more push-on fittings, have been mounted on a piece of plywood that has been screwed to the cabin side under the gunwale, where the kitchen cupboards will eventually go.

The taps were tested and the associated joints didn't appear to leak. We ran several jug fulls of water through the hot tap and the temperature of the tap was noticeably warmer at the end, compared with the cold tap. We were hoping that this would be the case because we'd had the engine running for a while on Wednesday to heat the water. The limited warmth that was still in the water tended to indicate that, over a twenty four hour period, the water may well remain warm.

We're proposing to have a table in the kitchen to support the microwave and the two single gas ring burners that we have. There'll be something else, a little lower on the other side of the boat, under the taps, to support a washing-up bowl. Finally, we'll put something else temporary in the toilet area, with another bowl, so that we can wash while we're away on our trip. We'll just have to make sure that we don't leave the bowls unattended whilst we're underway if they have any significant amount of water in them.

By the time that the fitter had finished his plumbing, Mrs. Fitter had done her bit with the curtains. We still had a little while to kill before we went to the pub for a meal and the weekly quiz, which we won by half a point, despite having a seriously depleted team. We used up this time by plugging and glueing the screw holes in the Ash trim around the front and rear doors. One of the first jobs on Friday will be to saw off the excess from the plugs and then rub the trim down so that it can be varnished. However, there may be a contest in this area with the painter, who is threatening to start applying various stages of top coat in at the front of the boat. The painter certainly spent some time rubbing this area down during Thursday afternoon.

Friday

Another reasonably early wake-up and a short while on the PC, writing up Thursday's notes on this page, before the fitter set out for the boat.

I was almost 9am when the fitter got to the boat. The tools had been left on the boat, so it was straight to the kettle, apart from dropping his lunch on the boat on the way. Offcut appeared while the kettle was boiling and we both started work just before 9.30am

The fitter's first job was to trim off the excess from the plugs over the screws in the trim around the doors - later in the day Offcut rubbed these areas down and applied a coat of varnish to this face of each piece of trim.

The plug cutting session was interrupted by the need to move the boat back under cover so that the painter could carry on with the final top coat on the starboard side of the boat. This movement, which also necessitated the movement of another boat beforehand, was done at incredibly slow speed because, with all the weight shifted to the front now that the tank is full of water, the boat was cavitating - drawing air rather than water past the propeller - quite a lot.

Once we were secured under cover we diverted our attention to trying to add some ballast to the rear of the boat. We had been offered the loan of some ballast for our trip and we quickly added this, plus the four extra leisure batteries, that we will be using once the supporting cage has been built and fitted. All this weight dropped the rear down in the water and we'll also fill the diesel tank before we set off on our trip to help keep the back down. the weights were placed on the swim, in the bilge and also beneath the stern deck, on the starboard side of the weed hatch. The majority of the heavy furniture will be on the port side, so the placement of weights on the other side should help to keep the boat more level.

The fitter also paused briefly to contact the signwriter, who expects to be in the area over the weekend. We don't know yet whether he'll be able to signwrite the boat before our trip.

The next job was to lift the starboard floor panel at the rear of the boat so that we could cut the rear 30cms off and then screw the two pieces down separately so that we had a relatively easy means to inspect the dry bilge - the bilge under the cabin. It took a while to do this as one end was trapped under the riser for the bottom step up to the false floor in the engine room. In the end, we removed the riser and the floor panel lifted out without any trouble. However, we then discovered that the fastening for the outer floor bearer had not taken to the steel cross member and, as a result, the bearer was loose. We drilled two holes in the bearer and through the steel and then bolted the bearer down. It is amazing how starting one small job often ends up in undertaking several others, one of which is usually quite time consuming.

We re-secured the floor panel, drilling extra holes in each so that they were both held tight on the bearers. Offcut had also removed one of the side panels from the ceiling so that we could access the 12v supply wires for the boiler pump. We expected the electrical connection for this to be at the bottom of the boiler where in actual fact it is on the top. We needed to extract the wire from where it had been placed behind the wall panels so that, once the flue is fitted, we could connect it up. We also need to purchase some wire to connect the thermostat to the boiler and need to do this before we can get the boiler working.

The thermostat will be placed on the bedroom wall, at the head of the bed, for two reasons. Firstly, with the stove in the saloon, there is a risk that the thermostat will give false readings and not warm the rear of the boat when needed - we may yet normally have the saloon radiators turned off. The second reason for placing the thermostat at the head of the bed is more important! On cold mornings we can reach up and trip the thermostat so that the boat warms up before we get out of bed!

We'll only fit the thermostat temporarily because its final position will be determined by the cupboards over the head of the bed, and these won't be fitted for a while yet.

The next job was intended to be to remove the two floor panel that pass through the bathroom and cut the bathroom piece out of the middle - both the toilet tank and the hip bath will have the plywood floor removed beneath them. The former to allow us to have a slightly deeper tank and the latter to stop water laying on the floor and then being absorbed into the end grain and damaging the bulkheads and wall panels.

We had to finalise the position of the bathroom bulkheads before we could lift the floor panels and we never quite got that far! First, we sneaked onto the hire boat and re-checked the measurements of their bathroom, as we are copying their layout and installation in every respect except that our toilet tank is across the boat while the hire boat's tank is along the length of the bed. We then came back and discovered that by adding the stop valves to the hot and cold tap supply pipes we'd need to allow a little more space than originally intended for the service area between the bed and the bathroom bulkhead at the head of the bed. We can't encroach on the bed space any more, so we've encroached on the kitchen instead. This involved moving the bulkhead between bathroom and kitchen. And that is where we hit a brick wall!

We'd roughly marked the positions of the bulkheads when we initially cut them. Now we tried to check them for squareness and for being vertical - and we must have spent a good hour, getting nowhere. No matter what we did, each time we thought that we'd got one of the bulkheads square and vertical, we'd check the measurements to the other one and find that this one wasn't. If we then checked the measurements between them and based the positions on that, one of them was out of square. No matter what we did, we simply couldn't get the two to line up properly.

By 5.15pm the fitter was getting very frustrated, and had just decided to call it a day when the painter appeared on the scene. Besides being our painter he has also fitted out a number of boats himself and has encountered problems like this before. He suggested that we cut the two pieces of blockboard that will become the partition wall between the bathroom and the corridor outside. Once cut we can fix these to their respective bulkheads, making sure that the doorway is square. Because the partition pieces are as square to the floor as we can get them, the bulkheads must be square as well.

Cutting an 8x4 sheet of blockboard isn't something to be entertained at 5.30pm, so we tidied the tools away, closed the doors and went on our merry way.

Saturday

Saturday was a bit frustrating, specifically as we didn't really achieve much, despite being awake just after 5am and at the boat at 9am. We quickly made a cup of tea and were on the boat before 9.30am - the kettle takes a long time to boil! The jobs for today were identified as removing the two bathroom bulkheads so that we could lift the floor panels in the bathroom and to cut the two floor panels into several pieces, one would become fixed under the bed and adjacent bulkhead, another under the kitchen and adjacent bulkhead. The third part will go down temporarily, until the toilet tank arrives and the fourth piece will eventually be cut into two with one part becoming the permanent floor in the centre part of the bathroom and the other part being discarded when the hip bath is installed - more of that in the weeks to come.

Once we'd cut the floor panels we intended to restore the bulkheads and then cut our remaining full sheet of 18mm thick blockboard to provide the bathroom's corridor walls.

We soon had the bulkheads down and had unscrewed the floor panels. Although the floor panels were only two feet wide, they were eight feet long and judged to be to large to cut on the Triton WorkCentre so we used the circular saw instead, making all the cuts on one board and then all on the other. We did make one mistake and had to re-cut one piece from one panel. Fortunately we'll be able to disguise this error when the shower bath is installed as the affected piece will be one of those discarded.

We then trimmed two of the pieces so that the corridor walls will rest on the floor bearers, rather than on the floor. We did this because, once the toilet tank is fitted, there won't be any floor for the corridor wall panel to rest on unless we keep a little strip of 18mm square plywood. We decided that this was tempting fate and opted to minimise the number of board ends, in areas where water could become lodged.

The painter appeared before we could trim the final floor panel. He'd been busy painting the top bend black, had just finished and was about to go to lunch. He called in to tell us that we'd possibly need to move the boat.

Now that we were back under cover, we were sharing the space with another boat that needed to move away. As the fitter was out on a trip boat during the afternoon, the other boat either needed to move at that moment - just before 12.30pm - or wait until the trip boat trip was over, at about 4.15pm. The other boat chose to move there and then, so we had to stop what we were doing and move our boat out of the way.

By the time that we'd finished moving the boat the signwriter turned up, so we stopped again to talk to him. We also got distracted by the grease monkey who needed the fitter's help with the trip boat. The fitter eventually got his lunch but instead of having the planned half an hour, which included the time to change out of his working clothes, he got just over 10 minutes to eat and get changed.

We were back from the trip and had the trip boat closed down by 4.30pm. The rest of the day was spent talking to a number of people about the bed and the stove. While we'd been away the painter had put primer on the rear hatch cover and non-slip on the port side top bend.

We had intended to fit Masterboard to the side and at the rear of the stove. However, we hadn't been able to locate a source locally but had found a substitute material that came in 8x4 sheets, whereas we would only need about half that amount. We hadn't placed an order as we didn't need it just yet. Discussing this with a fellow moorer at the boatyard, the suggestion was made that we use quarry tiles instead of Masterboard, which we'd have to finish (cover) anyway. The fitter has since spoken to Mrs. Fitter and got her tentative approval, presumably on the basis that we can find a tile colour that she likes.

We hadn't any real plans for the bed, save that we knew that we want it to be able to be pulled out from the wall for two reasons. The main reason is so that the person sleeping on the wall side doesn't feel boxed in. The second reason is to provide a means to access the rear row of plastic crates that will be under the bed and hold a lot of clothes and bedding as we have little other storage for these items. We'll also need the bed to slide clear of the boiler so that it can be removed for maintenance or repair.

Our discussions revolved around using sheets of plywood to support the bed or slatted frames that would slide across each other. We want to get some form of bed fitted before the trip because we need the storage space underneath for a lot of the bits and pieces that we're using for fitting out. The fitter thinks that he can knock up a slatted frame quite quickly and, if it doesn't work on the trip - we're taking an air bed - we won't have wasted a lot of money if we change our minds later on.

It was almost 5.30pm by the time we'd finished these discussions and long past the time to go home. A quick tidy up within the boat and the fitter and Offcut departed for home.

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