All hands to painting stations!!

Yes, the weather this week has so far been reasonably good (i.e. not lashing down in torrents not seen since the old bloke with the beard was out shopping for cubits of gopher wood).

Thus the crew have been busy beautifying a Pippin not exactly shabby, but certainly on the continuum.

This of course was Jackie's idea. All the best ones are, after all.....

So the wooden liners to our side hatches and stern doors have been removed. Jackie has duly blasted them with my hot air gun and given them a severe tickling with the sander. They've come up really well.

Meanwhile, over at the woodpile, James and I unloaded a bargain bag of oak offcuts from a sawmill near our chums' house in Ware. As all the bits have beautiful straight edges, piling up in the woodpile was a doddle, if a bit like a game of Giant Jenga played backwards by Dadaists...

We also tidied up the rough log pile and shored up the tin roof over it with the judicious application of a couple of longish beams recovered from the Cam and a few well placed nails. It's actually very solid! The Advanced Stealth Technology which hides the woodpile from prying eyes seems to be holding up pretty well, though a re-think will be due in the autumn when a lot of it will die back.

After lunch, Jackie continued her ministrations to the hatch liners. James and I sailed upstream to the local 48s where we moored right at the far end, fired up the monster genny, then spent a few hours removing rust with our angle grinders. Amy turned up later and managed to finish some work on our computer. How she did it with the inside of Pippin sounding like a none-too-quiet corner of The Govan Shipyard is beyond me, but she is a game young thing and didn't raise a single complaint.

After James and I had splashed some primer about, we chugged back to the mooring. It was very kind of him to help (and very understanding of Amy to let him!) Thanks Both!! The favour will be returned when the time comes to re-do Lucky Duck!