High Tides

Another busy day today. In between jobs I dropped Jim's peg-leg generator off at his house along with a bottle of wine and a 60th Birthday card. Happy Birthday Jim!

I took advantage of todays Spring tide which allowed me a few hours of work on the boat. On the way I stopped off at Jim's boat and tidied up hid mooring buoy which was hanging off the bow by quite a way. As you can see he's not that far away from me now:

When I got there I noticed that the other night's storm surge wasn't just limited to the East Coast. We did have coastal flood warnings locally and no wonder. When I got to the dinghies the high tide mark was past their bows and almost on the road! I checked the Chimet web site the other night and was a bit surprised to see a reading over 5.8 meters, an hour before the top of the tide, but looking at the tide mark and the dinghies covered in seaweed and grass, I can believe it.

So this is what the dinghy looked like today:

You can see the seats and the transom board I added last week. I also added a couple of small drain holes which did their job and drained the dinghy so it was easier to flip over not being full of water. But you can see the rubbish the tide swept into it.

The combination of decent weather, spring tide, the dinghy being sorted and the generator working all meant I had time on the boat to do something worthwhile rather than check the bilges and make a brew. I loaded the dinghy up with the genny and a few bits and went and did some sanding on the handrails. I did the two small ones at the front of the boat today and hopefully with most of the odd-jobs done today I'll do the big handrails tomorrow.

The first thing was to load up the freebie genny and the sander:

First wrap up warm as it there was a fairly cold breeze blowing. Then start work on the handrails.
This is how they started off, the usual weathered grey:

It took about an hour per rail with a sander to remove the grey oxidation. It starts off really quickly, with lots of red dust but the oxidation runs deep and takes a while to get an even finish after the initial dust is sanded away. Two teak plugs at the far end are missing so I'll have to get some at some point.

Once sanded I got to this stage:

Then on with the teak oil to bring out the grain and weatherproof the rail:

I prefer teak oil as you can just keep applying it without doing a lot of sanding. It soaks into the wood and really nourishes it as well as the resins in the oil proofing it against the weather.

You can see from the last photo that by the time I came off the boat the shadows were getting a bit long. Handily the tide was still high enough that I didn't have to drag the boat up the beach as my back is still a bit dodgy from the other week.

So hopefully the weather will stay fair tomorrow long enough the get the big handrails done and maybe something else. It'll feel like I've had a productive weekend then.