Whoa! That was a pretty intense weekend!

Just a quick one! Boat painting. 

I'll no doubt add more to this post by way of a part two (or more!)

So paint on boats, No#1 it protects the steel from corrosion. There's absolutely no point in having a nice shapely new boat with loads of thought into how it's going to be used, and not protect the bugger from the nasty British weather. 

Up until Friday the colour scheme for NB Ernest was pretty well decided. Quite an industrial colour scheme with a red raddle type mat paint for cabin top, hand rails, decks and probably foredeck and cants. Cabin sides were to be a nice darker grey and a lighter mid grey singular rear panel would have the boat name in large, bold, fairly square tug suitable font at the rear. 

Decent paint for narrowboats costs a decent amount. The Aircraft blue that we've just bought two 750ml tins of for touching up the gunwales of NB Lois Jane cost us £33.95 each, that's just over £3 per square metre per coat! How many coats? I don't know, I haven't the foggiest. It's no surprise that getting a pro to paint a boat does cost a little bit to a lot, depending on who's doing what to it. 

Now we've always wanted to have a paint scheme that was simple for us to keep looking fairly good. We've tried really hard and done pretty well to keep LJ's painted cabin looking nice through the years mainly because the only option would have been a full repaint. We hope NB Ernest will be a little easier to repaint in sections when we really need it rather than pay, probably £10,000 (some are up to £15,000) for a pro paint job that we're paranoid about damaging.  

So a couple of hours ago I arrived back from my weekend training/intro 'how to paint you're boat' course run by THE Phil Speight. Phil is an  absolute master coach painter, classical sign writer and decorative artist extraordinaire! This fella has been hand painting the important bits of narrowboats and the odd rather impressive vehicle for decades, as well as being involved with video production on narrowboat history and heavily involved with the production of first class coach painting and sign writing paints and protective finishes. Phil's current job is a 1913 bread van painted using, and for Craftmaster Paints, a company that he has an awful lot of history with. 

So what did I learn on this classroom based weekend hosted by Bollington Wharf up in Cheshire? Well an absolute load from how to look after and repair damaged paint, to prep and application of the nine plus coats needed on a new boat. I'm not going into depth about what Phil says to do... go on his course you tight buggers! £135 for the weekend including all the tea and biccies you can manage and thoroughly hearty home made lunch.

Phil did take us through the process for most coverings and I took a few pics of his progress once it got interesting on day two with his taste of what he thinks any methodical boater with half a brain (and his next course of sign writing) can achieve with enough time in a paint dock. 

Needless to say I'm now in a bit of a quandary as to whether to keep with the industrial style or look further into a trad trad and what I may be able to achieve with some further tuition. Here's some pics

My Sketch-up plan of Ernest

Day One, how to get from steel to this and why

Cabin panel lines, arcs marked and sketching

Lettering begins

Half a panel lettered

Scroll work

3D

Ran out of time for the Liverpool

Drop shadow work

Highlights in off white

Close up

And yes he thinks we can do it, more importantly he really wants the tradition carried on.

Hmm decisions decisions

Ohh Thank Gawd (edited) For That

Phew, relief. Builder B is building NB Ernest (confused? read the last post!)

So who is this skillful, flexible, calm (at least when we're there) builder? Building NB Ernest is Paul Barber of Sheetstores just off the Trent on the Erewash canal.

So why did we choose Paul, well lots of reasons really but here's a few...

His Boats - 

We'd seen a couple, not many as he's not a prolific boat builder and doesn't shout out about how many he's made. A couple of years ago we were invited to the first floating market at Fenny Stratford on the GU canal. A great little event (we hope to go back next year) and the organisers there had a fairly recent PB narrowboat 'Sidney'. Now the lines weren't exactly what I'd choose but the owners were really happy. For me the bow was a bit too pinched cheeks and pouty. 

Tug Boat Sidney

His other work - 

Paul doesn't only build boats, he runs a proper canal side boat yard. A fellow trader had some work done on a butty boat there, quite a bit of cutting, stretching and welding although you'd never know it was chopped as the transition between old and new was seamless.

He also puts an awful lot of wrong boats right. New stern gear in recently built boats that aren't up to the job. Re plating worn out hulls, upgrading rotting bow thruster tubes, major repairs to historic ex working boats (most recently converting one from an old elm based one to steel, probably bigger jobs than new builds). In fact St Tudno one of the best converted butty to motor boat jobs I've ever seen was done by Paul. You've got to be respectful of the original boat when you're making so many changes and it was built by Thomas Bantock 160 years ago.

Butty Boat Echos

St Tudno before 

and after

The Price - 

Well it's got to come somewhere into the equation. Not the cheapest, but definitely not the most expensive. Not forgetting as canal side builders there's no road haulage to do so the extra budget can be spent at Pauls yard.

His Hobby - 

Paul and wife Viv are boaters. Now that may sound pretty logical but when you start looking at boat builders most aren't based near the water but at industrial units where the finished boat gets loaded on to a lorry and transported to the canal. Lots of the builders I spoke to don't own boats and never go on them. Using them has to be the best way to know how they perform and what's going to work and what's not. Especially if the client wants quite a lot of "input", we don't want to end up with a boat that swims 'like a wardrobe flappin its doors down the cut'. 

So when they're not working they're out boating on their own historic narrowboat Whitby

Paul and Viv's Threefellows Carrying Company Pair

His Knowledge - 

Paul isn't new to boating, he used to work the gravel barges on the River Trent for a living in his early days. Even now, boaters chat amongst themselves as to whether its safe to go out on the Trent, most conversations end in "ask Paul, if he says it's fine, it's fine".

He started building boats not long after and built many of the very well known S M Hudson boats for the (now closed) Hudson firm.

So what is he building for us, and why did we have a sleepless night and a rush over to his yard less than 48 hours after visiting to confirm some details?..

...Tune in next time to find out ;)

Paul's website is - here

When the decisions you made a couple of blogs ago are wrong

OK so what happens in boat building land when you've realised you may have made a slight error in what looks right for cabin side heights and speak to your builder and say 'can the whole roof come off and lower by three inches'.

Does builder A say 'sorry, I double checked with you it's really too far in now'

Or builder B say 'Probably, pop over tomorrow and we'll do some measurements' 

So have we got builder A or builder B...

Find out who's building Ernest and why in the next blog... 

Code Name Tapatahi

The importance of being Ernest. 

We've all past loads of boats with names anything from mildly amusing to ridiculous to bordering the offensive. Apologies if yours falls into these camps.

Flat​ Bottomed Gal is one of my least favourite. 

Madasa-Soles

Kids inheritance

Llamedos (read it backwards)

Norfolk Enchants 

Norfolk 'n' Goode

Farkem Hall

Fircombe Hall

Wet Dream

Cirrhosis of the River

Yeah but, no, but

Every variable of MeAndEr

Just too many ... Lady or Lady...

Maybe it's just me but with new boats approaching the best part of £180k  cruising in Flat Bottomed Gal just seems kinda wrong.

So we've put quite a lot of thought​ into our boats name. Trying to think of the ethos behind the plans and how we're trying to live.

The closest I could come up with was TAPATAHI. Maori for Simplicity. A simple life and a simple boat build, nothing too complicated and nothing unnecessarily techy. I'd even researched a Maori symbols and how they could be included in the paint work and possibly interior art and carved wood.

But... I also had a fairly clear vision in my mind's eye of what I wanted the boat to look like and this wasn't going to work. We'd chosen the Builder, looked closely at his work and influences from his decades of not only building but previously actually working the boats and the fact that we wanted an industrial edge to our shell and interior and TAPATAHI just wasn't working.

What we needed was an actual name, not just words, translations or anagrams and hashed conglomerations. 

Our boat is going to be a bit of a bruiser, big old thumper of a British ex industrial plant engine and it had me remembering a tale a few Christmases ago of a mad dash across fields in South Wales.

It was towards the end of the WW2 a hospital full of mothers and babies, no one about to ward off the air attack and only one visiting soldier to man the twin Lewis guns. Hanging on to the out of control twin guns he recalled with a grin that most of the shells were headed in roughly the right direction. It was highly probable that the fighter aircraft were keeping all their ammunition for a bigger target. They could well have been on their way to the Swansea Blitz towards the end of February (the month was right but it may have been a year earlier). 

Apart from a brief hospital visit it was to be the one of the last conversations I had with my grandad. In that Welsh wartime hospital, my nan and newly born mum.

I think he'd have liked Narrowboat Ernest

Ernest Baker 15th June 1917 to 13th January 2016