Friday, 31 December 2010
Thursday, 30 December 2010
Quick visit & Christmas presents...
Went down to see "Papillon" yesterday, I usually go and see her at least two or three times a week as it's only a short detour on the cycle from my usual route to work... the difference this time was that I actually went aboard to check everything was OK down below as well. I'd spotted that one of the solar panels had come loose so it seemed like a good excuse...Everything was well - a bit of water in the bilges (from condensation and dripping windows I guess), but 10 seconds with the electric bilge pump cleared that.
Kind of itching to get working on her - at the very least I need to start sourcing some foam for the cushions soon, if I'm going to get those done this winter!
On the plus side I have two or three days off next week and I have the promise of a loan pressure washer; this time next week I hope to have her bottom scraped & cleaned (ready for the anti-foul *), and I also hope to have replaced the topping lift - the new one is sitting in the car waiting. I also still need to do some day-skipper revision!
Later dudes...
* Top notch Christmas present this year from my sister by the way - a big tin of two part anti-foul, enough for this year and next!
Tuesday, 21 December 2010
It's still cold...!
Bl**dy freezing in fact, so all possibility of doing any work on "Papillon" is out of the window for the time being... temperatures here in the UK have tumbled recently, and one newspaper article I read the other day mentioned that the cold weather was going to be with us until February! 
Still, I have other things to focus on - this winter I'm doing my RYA Day Skipper Theory course, which was a way of keeping in touch with things boaty throughout the winter. I think it fair to say that I'm not going to set the world of chart navigation on fire with any new discoveries (and if that last lesson was anything to go by neither were any of the rest of my co-sufferers!) but I am quite enjoying it - the problems are a little like a three dimensional cross word - figure out where you are, how fast you're going, where to, what the tides doing, what the winds doing, and at the end churn out a triangle with a dot in it (to those of us in the known, that's an "EP" or estimated position
) Now if I could just get to grips with plotting magnetic courses I'd be a sure bet, but it looks like Christmas will involve some revision at least as the last thing the instructor told me before he told us not to bother coming back until the 4th January, was that we'd have the exam on the 4th January... yeah, and Happy Christmas to you as well, mate!
Wednesday, 1 December 2010
It's cold!!
It's hard to believe that only 7 weeks separates this, which was the last major sail of the year,in (t)shirt sleeves...
..from this..
..and this, which was taken this morning when the temperature was still -2' C!
The UK is going through an unseasonal cold patch - we don't normally get this kind of weather until January or February which had lead me to think of contents of "Papillon's" bar.. yes, she does have one.. 
Sub-zero temperatures do nasty things to pressurised cans of beer, and not wanting to have a major clean-up on my hands I decided to go and empty the bar on my way to work..
This was what I came away with....
.. what can I say - it was a hot, dry summer..
..from this..
..and this, which was taken this morning when the temperature was still -2' C!
The UK is going through an unseasonal cold patch - we don't normally get this kind of weather until January or February which had lead me to think of contents of "Papillon's" bar.. yes, she does have one.. Sub-zero temperatures do nasty things to pressurised cans of beer, and not wanting to have a major clean-up on my hands I decided to go and empty the bar on my way to work..
This was what I came away with....
.. what can I say - it was a hot, dry summer.. 
