Red primer

Painting inevitably follows a bout of rust busting.

Here, I've used an initial coat of red primer. This will be followed by a coat of grey and then finally white primer before finally applying the finishing coat of white.

The idea here being, I can easily tell where I started and finished when doing multiple coats along the length of the boat.

The different colours also help show any little bits that may have been missed, something not really possible when using just one colour of primer.

By the way, those plates you can see in the foreground fill the big holes in the side there.

Rust busting

Finally a break in the weather gives me an opportunity to get out there and do more rust busting.

Here I continue on from where I finally gave up last year on account of the weather.

The 'mess' you can see is the result of a diligent days worth of chipping and wire brushing.

While working, covered in dirt, I found myself thinking 'Here I am after nearly five years of owning Lady Jane. If anyone is thinking how glamorous it would be to have a steel boat, they should take a look at me (or anyone else who blogs on progress on their steel boats for that matter) and think about how they would feel about going through all that themselves'.

After a long, hot, shower and sitting on deck in front of the barbeque in the evening I felt that warm glow of satisfaction, the result of a good day's work.

Floating dock

Of course, no trip away would be complete without checking out the contents of the nearest harbour.

In this case, Whitby.

Here you see the back end of a trawler of some description nestled in a big floating dock.

That has me wondering how much that costs, and if Lady Jane would fit in there.

Big power

I bet this would be fun to play with.

For a while anyway - at least until the credit card bill for the fuel arrived!

These outboard engines just keep on getting bigger and bigger.

I wonder how soon we will be seeing a pair of 500hp outboards on a rib?

Away again

I've been away again.

This time to York for the weekend, as you can see.

Being away hasn't got any of the outstanding jobs done, but having a break from it all has been good fun.

Back to working on board again shortly....

New tap

Back to the real work...

Here I've finally got around to replacing a troublesome water feed tap on my main engine's freshwater header tank.

A pretty straightforward job, once I had all the bits.

The new plastic pipe you can see in the foreground replaces the old one, as I had to remove that piece to get the old tap off and the new one on.

What was pretty shocking to me, was the fact that the old jubilee clips holding the piping on had all rusted away to the extent where they just pulled away off the piping as soon as I tried to loosen their screws.

Needless to say, that was the catalyst for me to order a few additional hose clips - just in case there is a similar issue elsewhere.

White deck

I don't know how long this will stay clean!

I'm enjoying it while it lasts though, as suddenly having a newly painted fresh white space is certainly refreshing.

Part of the reason for this painting splurge inside was seeing the spotless engine room in an RNLI boat, as shown on TV.

I thought 'it looks so good with a spotless white floor that I should give it a go myself on Lady Jane'.

Starting gently with the easier space above the engine room, of course, before attacking the engine room decking itself.

As usual, an immediate result helps motivate me to do more.

Wind generator monitor

I've been at the electronics again....

Recently I've been working on my wind generator, and wanted some way of telling just how much power it was producing.

When it's windy, this simple display will replace hours of messing about with a multimeter checking out just how much free power I'm getting!

Although it still needs a bit more work, I can now see the average amps/second in the last minute, last hour or last 24 hours, while the bottom line shows the average voltage and average amps in the last second.

I'm showing average amps per second in each timeframe, rather than amp hours, because it seems easier to mentally translate this back to the power (in amps, and therefore watts) various things, such as lights, the fridge and central heating system, run at.

I'm planning on getting myself some solar panels at some point, and can extend this amps monitor to encompass solar energy production monitoring as well.

As it turns out, a relatively small addition would also allow this monitor to perform the function of a regulator. Something I'll bear in mind if/when I start producing my own power at home.

This was done with a PIC16F88, an LCD display, some resistors and a few other bits and bobs I'd never even of until a few months ago.

Away again

Sorry for the recent silence.

It's just that I've been away again.

This time to a sunny Spanish island.

Patch and I had the little beach you can see in the picture completely to ourselves.

I also grabbed the opportunity to dive again, an easy cruise at a maximum depth of twenty metres. My first dive in years.

The water was that clear, and teeming with all kinds of life, that it was just like diving in a large aquarium.

I've all but forgotten that it was the love of diving, and the dream of travelling to places like this, that was largely responsible for me buying Lady Jane in the first place.