Cap'n Spack Jarrow
Brownian motion-type musings on barge renovation, life and other bits of flotsam.
First Blood
Well this week has been mostly concerned with destruction. Not only of my body (see below) but also of the final pieces of the interior. The cargo boards have slowly given up their secrets, but we made an executive decision that they weren’t worth keeping in the long run. They are pine or equivalent softwood and had started rotting in places. . . .
One of those days...
Have you ever had one of those days where things just don’t go the way you planned and you are thwarted at every turn? Yeah, pretty much that was today’s effort. The last week has been mostly spent moving from Norfolk to Portishead, packing, unpacking, moving stuff into storage and once that was done, trying to get rid of some of the excess . . .
The last push (or two)
Having jumped ahead a little to the catastrophic diesel bug fiasco around Longships near Land’s End I thought I would go back and cover little of the route from Portland to Portishead. Throughout the journey we were trying to minimise the expense so leaving Zeelandia at a marina and getting charged 70+ a night for the privilege was one of the . . .
"Overpowered by gunk"
(apologies to any Clash fans for hijacking their May 1982 song title "Overpowered by Funk")
This is a cautionary tale of diesel, lumpy seas and fuel tanks which, like Tutankhamun's tomb, had not been opened in an exceedingly long time.
The story of the transit to Land's End will be covered in another blog post but this post specifically deals with the effects of 'tainted'- to put it politely - fuel. To cut . . .
2 0n, 2 0ff.
Hours that is...
Ok, so I last left you having waved 'au revoir' to Chuckles the Pinball Mooring Wizard and said hello to Chris, our new Skipper. We knew the Saturday was likely to be over the Force 4 we were limited to by our insurance, so we aimed to have a slight lie in and then start a bow to stern going over of the barge under the guidance of . . .
Skipper and Engineer?
With great power comes great responsibility....
In our last fun filled instalment I left you at the lock. Well, once again our skipper managed to test the integrity of the hub and the length of my patience, but as dark was falling I felt we needed just to get on with it and left him to moor us. Again, probably a bad choice. Either every piece of concrete in Holland is highly magnetic and . . .
Le Grande Ache Des Ballons...
Well, as I sit here at the bow of Zee wondering how I can mount a large cannon above the foc’sle to wake up bridge keepers with a 10lb shot through the window (more on this later) I have time to reminisce on the events which led to possibly one of the most stressful few hours afloat (and there’s some competition I can tell you, even in our . . .
