slight mishap

And it was all going so well! Starting before 7.30am and before the heat of the day, I painted the first coat on the tunnel bands. By 8 am Ian started rubbing down the gunwale on the port side. He dare not start earlier 'cos I don't think the neighbours would have appreciated a noisy awakening. By midday, I had completed the third coat of blacking all round. Then Ian decided the gunwales needed a tad more rubbing down and I was not best pleased to see my nicely glossed blacking going a mat colour due to the dust! I'm a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to the look of the hull. It needs to look the business, well at least for the first week once we had left the dock. So out comes a wet cloth and a duster to dry and I goes around the whole hull cleaning the muck. Halfway through in comes Vickie (dock owner) and she burst out laughing saying I have never seen anyone polishing the blacking before! Trying to explain made it seem even more ludicrous and we both ended up having a good laugh. Anyway, it did look tons better when I'd finished. Ian then gets out the black gloss for the gunwales. Suddenly a loud expletive and "Irene I need a cloth".  Thinking he had painted the cabin side by mistake I was amazed to see him holding the paint tin with black gloss dripping from his hand and onto the floor.  He said his grip went but somehow managed to catch the tin before it hit the ground. Anyway, several cloths drenched in white spirit later and I managed to mop some of the paint from his hand and floor. And just when we thought it couldn't get any worse the weather turned from hot and sunny to overcast and rainy.  If it had only held off for another hour the paint would have dried. Now we fully expect splash marks in the nicely finished gunwale.

This taken moments before he dropped the tin. If only I had'nt put the camera down!

mopped most of it up.

We also are kept entertained by fish swimming along the gully that runs along all four sides of the dock. Every day we have to rescue fish that manage to get under the gate and lay flapping helplessly as water laps over them. There is now a healthy shoal of fish keeping us company.