Gently on to Deptmore

After a quiet night, we made a fairly standard sort of start today, getting going just after eight. I'd had time to get a paper from the newsagents by the lock, and we ambled down to Park Gate, arriving there in nice time at nine, just as Midland Chandlers opened. I bought 10 litres of Morris's best 10W/40 and an oil filter. At £16, the Fram alternate filter is getting significantly more expensive than the Beta original; must arrange to get a couple of those either at Crick or sent to Elanor's. For those still living on shore, finding a local motor factors is even better, as their prices will be lower again.


Then we came on to our towpath mooring above Deptmore Lock, overlooking a field with a couple of pairs of Lapwing on it. We've heard them calling more than seen them, as they are spending much of their time sitting around on the ground.


"Simple" raised some queries about the value of our blacking deal, especially the comparative costs of Intertuff versus Comastic. He felt that we'd been ripped off, which seemed unlikely as we did a fair bit of research on the subject before booking the job.


Some of it is my fault; I'd miscalculated the cost of the Intertuff job. I'll quote MD Simon Jenkins's reply to my email:

The cost difference between the materials is as follows, for a seventy foot boat, Intertuff is £739.00, Comastic is £845.00 the cost difference in materials is £73.74, in some cases people can re use the applying brushes when using Intertuff but when we use Comastic we throw the brushes away thus adding to the overall cost.

He also makes the points that they do a particularly thorough job, including an inspection of the hull, anodes  and stern gear. They black the weed hatch and internal trunking thereto, and allow liveaboards to stay on board with an electric hook up. It's also a very commodious dock.

Simple also asked about relaunch time, having found a site which reckons it should be 48 hours to launch. I won't quote all the stuff from the Comastic site, but just comment that no commercial dock would leave you on there for two days after the blacking was finished, and that the main risk with a launch after 20 hours, as we did, is that the blacking changes from shiny black to brown more quickly (it does so anyway over time, without affecting the performance of the coating).

All in all, then, I reckon we did OK. Comastic is undoubtedly more expensive, and smells awful when it's going on, but the build is much better, and stands up to abrasion well. We'll stick with it for the present; it did well enough on Sanity, such that when we eventually had her grit blasted, the guy complained about how difficult it was to get it off.

Tomorrow, on to Tixall/Great Haywood.