One job leads to another

After getting back to Milton Keynes from Cambridge, I needed to do housekeeping and maintenance on my boat. So today I went up to Yardley Gobion (about an hour away by boat) to get diesel and a pump out. I loaded up with 169 litres of diesel which is the most I have ever put in the boat at one time. This was not entirely surprising, as I last filled up at Peterborough on the way to Cambridge. Since then I have gone to Cambridge and all the way back to Milton Keynes. En route the dilapidated state of the boat's paintwork was massively evident to me, and since it was such a nice day, I determined to restart work on the paintwork when I got back to base.

The paintwork on the roof is so bad in places that I am going to have to strip it back to bare metal. So the first thing I did was to go out and buy a band sander and a lot of bands. I also bought some other bits and pieces to assist in the paint preparation.

Got back and started tackling areas of the gunwales that I had previously prepared that had deteriorated since I did them. To do this I had to run the generator. It is quite a long time since I last ran the generator and first I had to fill it with petrol. Then it took quite a while to actually start it. As usual I connected the generator to the battery charger whilst I was working. Part way through the day the battery charger started resetting itself, which is usually a sign that the charge to the battery is interrupted. The last time this happened, it was a sign that the generator's oil was dirty and needed changing. I did not get to this today, but is definately something for tomorrow.

Anyway, got to applying the primer, and went through the three quarter full tin of metal primer I had. So tomorrow I'll need to get some more.

Finally, I started packing up and putting tools and materials away. In the process I noticed how filthy I was - oil and petrol from the generator; primer; coal dust from tools I got out of the storage area under my tug front which tends to get covered with dust. This led to me having to clean the generator externally. It also showed that I would need a bath and a complete change of clothing. As I went to store the generator I tipped it, and spilt petrol in the boat - this is not a good idea. It meant that I had to clear this up immediately.

So half a dozen jobs down; another half dozen jobs generated.