Monday 16th September 2019



We were awoken before 7am when the yard started moving boats around. Bridge Street was then given a third coat of undercoat.

Initially, Streethay were to give both the roof and the handrail a repaint as they reckoned that it would be very difficult to repaint the roof without doing the handrail. The boat was given an all over test of the thickness of the paintwork with very disappointing results. Overall the paint is very thin and there is no undercoat, the top, gloss coat has been applied direct onto the primer and, according to Streethay, the paint job will not last. We have no reason to doubt them, their reputation precedes them.

The handrail was tested with a small piece of masking tape and, when removed, patches of the paint beneath, came off, a sign of poorly prepared and applied paint.

We have decided to have the cabin sides and handrails repainted by Streethay either next year or the year after, and live with patchy hand rails until then. They can always be touched up temporarily.

Brenda spent the morning ironing all the washing, while I caught up with the blog. The roof is not expected to be finished before next week and we could not face spending this time living within a boatyard, under a poly-tunnel. Therefore, we started looking at time away. We decided on a caravan beside the sea with North Norfolk being the closest. We could not find any availability and so started looking further around the coast before eventually finding a vacancy near Great Yarmouth.

We hired a car from Enterprise, a brilliant service they provide, packed and quickly took off. We hadn’t realised just how far Great Yarmouth was and the journey took over 3 hours.

The caravan and site are nice though, and serve a purpose. Our US holiday was anything but restful, we are both tired and there was no relaxation in the yard. Harvey has been all out of sorts since he returned. He has been spoilt and is obviously as fed up with the situation as we are. 


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