First Start Up & Cruise In Five Months

so here she is not looking too bad considering gosh how many months has she been here and not used so this is just some old sheets bed sheets that i use to help protect the uh the canopy from the iron fall out from the rusting beams here but uh let's get on board and see if my uh dehumidifier and other things have worked see what the old moulding mildew is like so so far in the cockpit area looking really good and the only issue i can see is some spots on the keep gold bag um but otherwise in here it doesn't smell funny nice and dry so let's go in together oh what's that just stepped on didn't i something crunchy oh okay they didn't work then anyway let's get some power on the old fridge on some lighting on so my non-slip um thingy bobs as you can see they've been a casualty um but otherwise this has been doing a grand job it basically overfills what you can see by there how much water that's got as well so i'll empty that and basically that is then run off a timer down here so it's coming on off on off so that when it's very cold this doesn't freeze because if it's on all the time this will freeze up and then become completely ineffective um but because i've got this obviously all the windows the vents are all completely closed um so that as little outside moisture will get in as possible of course there will be moisture and just leaving all of this open and lifting up the mattresses and so on and so forth but um there's a tube heater under here that gently wolves heat up because the water tanks for it as well rather than being a bit dirty outside yeah now it's fresh and fine dry the heads looking good in there as well i think we've survived um is there any water in the bilge let's see no bone dry bilge so now i'm going to take this poundland windscreen cover off take the duvet off and start washing the outside fill the water tank up put the food in the fridge that i brought with me and generally um do that thing called getting ready for the season so unfortunately i forgot to do it before but here's the after um and i thought i'd just share a couple of tips with you if you've got a grp boat that's got an original gel coat especially on the the top sides um the biggest thing i would say is get it professionally compound polished someone that knows what they're doing uses the right equipment uses the right products because gelcoat is a porous material and it will oxidize it will weather it will go chalky it will lack its shine and smoothness the more uv light it sees the quicker that happens and the more general weathering now this boat was built in 1992 and it was polished professionally about well three years ago i guess and you can see that shine still it is smooth as you can see um but if i had it polished three years ago and then i just went all right that's fine and left it it wouldn't look like this once you get it polished which admittedly is not a cheap endeavor every time you come down to the boat give it a hand polish so what i do is i have several coats of 3m marine wax that i put on straight after this was machine polished and that's my kind of barrier layer now people can argue with me about what i do and i don't know what i'm talking about but um i don't know that many boats that are this shiny and this has just literally just been washed i haven't polished it again with anything after three years from an initial machine polish and of an age boat of this 1992. and the reason why it still retains a lot of its luster is because i keep on top of that wax layer but i also seal that wax in with a polymer polish on top now the polymer polish can be any old stuff it doesn't need to be expensive it is an incredibly thin layer and that's your sort of pop layer the sacrificial layer and it's that layer that i top up every time i visit the boat and it goes on really easy it comes off really easy and then once a year i'll strip that off with some detergent just some good old-fashioned washing up liquid at quite a high concentration and just wash the boat using that that will strip all the grease and the protectants off and then start building up your wax layer underneath and then seal it with a polymer on top that's what i do and it means that this was covered in bird crap and iron fall out from the girders and everything else and you can see here where it's pulled some of how bad that was but you can also see how shiny the boat is and that protection layer means it comes off easily it is not getting into that gel it's not staining the gel and this jelly is not in the best of conditions if we look closely you can see these pot marks from the original manufacturer so it's not perfect but it's it's good enough it's shiny and that protection i keep up keeps it shiny keeps it protected so you don't have to keep on paying out you know for compound polishing compound polishing is after all very abrasive nasty thing to do to gel coat it removes a layer of it and reveals underneath it some of the fresh virgin material which is shiny and there's only so many times you can do that so if you can protect what you've exposed and keep on top of it you know month after month you might come down to your boat every three months give it a wash give it a polish and it also allows you to get to know your boat any loose screws things that you've got to pay attention to and i i find it quite relaxing quite nice to do so uh yeah i thought i'd just share that with you and another little tip how do you clean glass you think that was simple wouldn't you well first of all using decent quality uh glass cleaner i've found this mr muscle is not only a good cleaner but i like the spray patterns use two cloths always make sure the one you're taking off with remains quite dry when it starts getting a bit too wet change it and don't do a circular motion do a up and down left and right and then take it off firm pressure with your taking off claw and up and down and what you'll find is you will not have any smears and you will feel that it is hadn't become really smooth if you're rubbing it across and you can feel areas where there's a bit of friction that's a smear just gently go around the boat doing that and you'll have absolutely perfect glass you can see there i've done that one such a small thing but that's there's no secret sort of chemicals and stuff that you need to worry about it's just how you put it on take it off so i'm going to go around the rest of the boat and then give the cockpit a quick tidy up and then fill the water tank and then i think we're ready to depart well it's taken forever time now is 13 25 so i've been basically doing this cleaning up for almost two and a half hours now but we're filled up with water and it's time to start the engine so i'm not going to put any glow plugs on because this hasn't started since november i'm just going to run the starter to get some oil pressure [Music] there we go i've got oil pressure and now let me do the glow plug that's actually i'll put the throttle on easy tiger easy tiger that's our gear box the oil that's trying to go into gear even though our neutral detail is pulled that's because the oil in the gear box is so thick we're not too bad november where we are now nearly the end of april so five months it's just we've got some coming out the back we have got a little bit of smoke from the old girl so 90 engine 43 horse so i just let that tick over and uh start to warm up a little bit and then we'll be off so here we are we're underway and um sorry you can't see a great deal with all the reflections and the light it's doing havoc with the lens and so we started up as you heard in the wet shed um all is to the good uh we're just building up engine temperature because of the size engine this boat has got and the obviously the four mile an hour speeding i have to keep two um and the weight and size of the boat the engine has to virtually do no work at all to push the boat through the water so unfortunately um she only ever gets to around about 65 um maybe 70 degrees celsius which is not good for a diesel engine you really want to be up at sort of 80 [Music] diesels prefer to to be hot and under load if i change the propeller for a larger either a full blade or a three blade with more pitch and that would load the engine more but it would also mean that the boat would at low revs want to push through the water at faster speed um and already sort of you know 1200 rpms four mile an hour and if i bring it down see below 1200 then the gearbox starts to grumble a little bit it doesn't really like any less than 1200 rpm and if i put it into neutral it's all right but if i'm tick over it does that you see so it really 1200 rpms it's sweet spot so i don't really want to go and you know adjust that oh that's beautiful isn't it canopies up apart from one little section and i've got mr waspi coming for saying hello to me brilliant anyway he's going to get pissed off that he can't now get out probably come over to me and sting me so if you don't mind just uh bearing with while i just go and launch a chemical attack against the wasp okay so it was successfully dealt with a few boats just more down at paddy's lane mooring there which is nice i'm going to carry on spartan broad and what i've coined rascal bay but it's uh it's an absolutely glorious day it's just that perfect temperature of just above having to wear a coat but equally just right for sort of braving in the sun in a t-shirt but in the shade in the breeze you might want to put a coat on it's british weather oh this is put a smile on my face i just realized you know there's a lot of turmoil and upheaval going on at the moment with uh dealing with solicitors estate agents buying a house looking ahead towards the uh the sheer scale of like having to buy furniture for every single room um carpets what sort of carpet do i want do i want polyester do i want nylon do i want wall do i want a wall mix do i want patterned how thick does the underlay need to be do i want wallpapers or paint do i want to go for a light oak finish with the furniture or a more deep kind of mahogany style or maybe go for the gloss white so many choices what sort of dining room table do i want how many chairs should i have four or six should i have a table that extends more tumble dryers they've changed as well they've all become heat pumps which are far more efficient but nonetheless that's a confusing world my tumble dry is just vents old-fashioned gets the clothes dry and i've got 12 a new condenser boiler installed because currently the house is heated through a agar a range cooker it's gas powered not solid fuel but they're not known for their efficiency and it just does the radiators it doesn't do the hot water so that can all be changed but yeah so that's all going on in my mind and then i thought i've not been anywhere other than like a quick afternoon trip to the likes of ramworth or now we're allowed out and you know going for trips elsewhere but it's not like holidays is it so i thought well now we're allowed to come and stay overnight on a boat let's come and stay overnight on the boat and here is rascal bay just inside the posts on the first bay on the downstream as you're coming away from stalin you will find rascal bay so yes i'm sure it's been asked many a time if you can mod weight on barton broad and you can safely go inside the posts to do so i wouldn't recommend ever going inside the channel markers on any other broad or location on the boards other than martingale asterisk only where you know it's safe not all of the areas outside the posts on barton broad are safe terms and conditions apply thank you very much well it's the only time i really listen to classic fm is when i'm on the boat it just seems so fitting and i don't know if it's just me but when you've made your bedding it feels like you've finally arrived i've had to go through all the cupboards and fortunately um we're not too bad with stuff that's gone out of date so um i've got some shortbread fingers and some popcorn that is about five days past itself by date but that'd be fine um otherwise i've put everything away i found this um book boatman of broadland by migrant day which um was this published hmm 1999 not as old as i would have thought well still 21 years ago but um i just thought that font and photo was very 70s very interesting some of the stories and tales of old boys long gone that thankfully we've captured their stories uh people like the uh the weary builders at simpsons at stalin and of course that name lives on simpson's boatyard um although they're not carrying out private engineering work anymore it's still a day boat operator and private marina um so yeah here we are so i haven't done any i've cleaned the inside of the windows but i haven't had to worry about any sort of problems you know with sort of mule jew and mouldy bits getting in the corners or the curtains you know suffering in the corners and the crevices so sealing the boat up really well and having that dehumidifier and just some gentle heat on all the time has has really been great um coming out here it's a bit of a tip um i do appear to have got an obsession with window cleaning i found a fresh unopened one there a sort of half used one there a quarter used one here and an almost empty one there i'm also collecting fly killers i've got two um i thoroughly recommend this by the way it really works very well it's only a quid you get quite a lot it's in poundland just a little tip there that's what i use for my onboard wi-fi it's a tp link um this is the ac750 you put a sim card in there these aerials draw in the signal from the mobile phone mast and then it has your obviously your onboard wi-fi just stick it out here because it gets the best signal but here we are on barton broad in rascal bay very little boat traffic just absolutely lovely still no wind and um just a really nice day so um i'm well overdue eating it's now 14 39 only done 16 000 sorry 1 676 steps today um but anyway i just better start jogging [Laughter] anyway i'm gonna settle down thanks for coming along i can't do any more filming at the moment i'm chock-a-block on videos on my phone i can't do any editing until i get rid of some stuff um it's all i've got is my phone so um you know i just wanted to share this though because uh it is nice to get out in the water and um just that even that old bmc chugging away it's just you won't get anywhere else quite the same as the broads you'll hear those engines on other waterways but i think it's the vastness of the the water and the way the sound carries its unique broad sound if you have been thanks again for watching and uh in time i hope to bring back some good old-fashioned captains vlogs but for right now that's all i'm afraid till next time more as it happens

Channel: The Captain's Blog

Views: 4,293

Rating: 4.9448276 out of 5

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Id: ojIRQQKd7A0

Length: 23min 50sec (1430 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 23 2021