About Me

My photo
The name describes my demeanour and voice! I love narrowboating and that is why this blog is mainly about the boat and our interaction with it. I have been keeping a log for Sonflower ever since we bought her and moved onto her as our main residence. Some incidents in our boating life have been hilarious, some scary and some down right dangerous. I cannot tell what will come in the future but you can now share them! The crew are an 'ordinary' couple. The Best Mate and I.

Tuesday 10 March 2009

Now the waiting.....

No pictures...the camera gave a message 'that operation cannot be completed' and gave up.

The surveyor did a thorough job. SONFLOWER was duly hit with a chipping hammer outside and inside and declared sound enough to be insurable.

There are some advisory points like rust treatment, four additional anodes to be fitted, engine maintenance, bilge pump reinstatement.

However....the ballast in the boat is aparently unecessary and the counter is about four inches lower in the water than it really should be. This means that the weed hatch standpipe was designed to give four inches more freeboard than it has. This means that there is a potential risk of sinking if the back end of the boat gets full of water and the weed hatch joint seal leaks. The surveyor recommends that an extra four inches are put on the weed hatch or ballast is removed. The latter would mean taking up a lot of the floor as the 'ballast' in her is made up of great big precast concrete kerb stones. These have also kept bilge water back and made the bilge damp. A recipe for corrosion. And there has been some.


The good news is that the surveyor was confident that the boat will last my lifetime.

The painting isn't a waste of money then!

The waiting is for the report.

No comments: