What on earth has happened since last year?

At times it feels as if you haven't been near the boat for ages, but then, you look back and find that you've spent weeks on the boat but not recorded anything.

Well, as you will remember, last summer was one of the hottest for a long time. Were we out and about on Polgara? No! We had decided to have her repainted.

After six years of being bashed about we felt that a makeover was in order for the 'old lady.'

We decided to ask Andy Cain at Kegworth if he would undertake the task for us having seen the job that he did on Ramyshome. Luckily he had a spot available BUT in August. Oh well, never mind, we weren't intending to go out until September anyway.

It was quite an odd feeling leaving our beloved boat with someone else for a few weeks.

Anyway, he soon got started on the preparation. Now our chimney had always given us a problem with leaks and tar running down the outside and Andy soon found out why.

After he managed to grind away the bolts holding the chimney plate to the ceiling rust he discovered a whopping great hole right where is shouldn't be - no wonder it was leaking!

Well, undaunted he carried on and stripped it all back, removed the windows and started on the reconstruction. The following show some of the progress.

Getting ready

Starting on the primer

 

Primer applied

Looking good

Windows back in

Nearly finished

After we collected her we spent a week or so pottering about with grins like Cheshire cats. What a glorious boat we had.

The only problem is that most of the photos were videos - but don't worry, I will find some somewhere to show you.

I felt sorry for Andy when he was trying to paint the boat because some days it was too hot to apply paint, other days the humidity was up in the air - and one day his floating dock started to sink! But the end result was and is terrific. Thank you Andy.