2002 Dry Dock

Our first sight of the hull.	Rust nodules and dirt!
After the survey the welders got to work and we were able to get our tools out and get started on the work of stripping the hull. Lawrence started with a wire cup brush on the grinder and Lorna followed him with a paint brush. The rusticles were partly because of the new plating with its mill scale and partly because of poor electrical connections at Goole Marina. The wire cup brush soon wiped them away and we soon started to see a difference.

The beginning of Waterdog's face-lift: the Metaclor undercoat going on, all by hand roller after wire brushing.
Two of our skilled welders who had been building barges for many years and were looking forward to retirement very soon.	These were old water intakes no longer in use, welding steel to iron is difficult due to different heat conduction properties.
Lorna happy after a hard day painting under the boat.	Lawrence happy after a hard day wire brushing under the boat.
It all sounds very straightforward but stripping and painting the hull took nearly all of the four weeks. It nearly beat us. We are all for working hard and saving a bit of money, but after three coats of paint we finally succumbed to fatigue and asked Gus to get a spray painter in. The sprayer did most of a whole coat of chlorinated rubber paint in not much more than a couple of hours! We were gobsmacked and certainly learned a lesson from it. Our time is worth a fair price too and in future we wouldn't be spending three weeks of it in November in a cold damp dry-dock, much of it lying under a boat! We would get a spray system in next time!. While we were painting, another friend Clive (a ship's engineer,) had been checking out the engine. He cleaned up some filters, connected the diesel and made sure we would be ready to go at the end of the month.

Once the painting was done we needed to get the steering system in. We had ordered the pump and ram and the dock yard had got us hydraulic hoses and throttle cable. The ram was fitted as part of the welding work and we did the pump and hoses ourselves. We had ordered 5 litres of hydraulic oil, as advised, but when filling the system the day before we were due to leave we realised it wouldn't be nearly enough. Luckily Gary came to the rescue with 20 litres from ‘a friend', and we managed to get the system filled and bled. He had also found us some second hand navigation lights and some heavy ropes.