Steady weather, steady work

The first part is true, anyway. We've had bright sun for much of the day, though frequently accompanied by a gusty wind. We've taken advantage of the dry conditions to get on with the painting.

This morning I masked off the edges of most of the red on the bow whilst Sheila made two templates  out of paper for the semicircular ends of the flashes. After wielding the paint brush, I removed all the masking with some trepidation; all was well. The curve isn't absolutely as smooth as Andy Russell had produced – we couldn't expect to achieve that – but it's perfectly acceptable.

After a break for coffee, I washed off the gunwale ready for blacking later. The remaining time to lunch was spent reading the paper...

After feeding, we got busy again. Quantities of masking tape were applied to the boundaries of the black on the gunwales. In anticipation of running out, we'd earlier made a trip to Midland Chandlers to get an extra roll.

Once that was done, the long mooring lines were used to pull Sanity Again away from the pontoon by about a foot by stretching them across the empty space alongside to the rings on the opposite pontoon. This meant that we could remove the fenders whilst the blacking was being applied. I got out the mini roller kit from its carrier bag, finding a spare roll of broad masking tape in there as I did so...

Using first a brush for the fiddly bits, then the roller for the bulk, I applied MC hull blacking to the gunwale from the top rubbing strake to the edge of the cabin side. We used to use Andy Russell Gunwale Black for this job; it's fast drying and has a black silk finish. But it's also £20 a tin where the MC stuff is £9.50. It means keeping the boat tied the way she is overnight, but that's no big deal as long as our neighbours don't suddenly appear.

If they do, we'll just have to scuttle about and redeploy the fenders, accepting that a bit of the black would get a shade rubbed.

We'd planned to go for a pump out on Friday, but the forecast has changed; the rain due tomorrow is now not arriving until Friday, so we'll move in the morning, all being well. With luck, I'll be able to reverse onto the pontoon when we get back, so that we can black the other gunwale in due course.

Once I've recovered from today, that is...