Well, the weather has been warm which means working in the barge is uncomfortable at best. Especially if you are foolhardy enough to start welding. The steel roof of the barge 'pops' when you walk over it so I have purchased some 50x50x5mm angle steel to weld to the steel roof in order to add a little rigidity. Long term the roof will be supporting 2 large 1000x1500mm double glazed skylights and 8 PV panels, so having it move unduly is probably not a great move.

A lack of a platform and lots of head room make for a difficult time positioning the steel for welding. I will have to make a 'best guess' as to where the skylights will go so that I can weld the steel in place before it goes to dry dock. I don't want to pay for a flash paint job and then burn through parts of it welding from underneath. All in all it was a pretty unpleasant job and the uneven surface made for fairly, well, snotty welds. However, after a couple of passes per weld I had sufficient adherence to the roof and after walking on the roof and trying to get it to 'pop' with no joy I was happy it would survive. It just doesn't look too pretty - the complete opposite of a 'Kardashian' job (looks good but is f&*% all use)...

The other major problem I have is that the front end of the cargo hold has a false floor under which are a butt load of concrete blocks for ballast. Well, I thought they were concrete. Turns out they are mixed steel and concrete which means they are so heavy they create their own gravitational field. At a rough guess the thinner ones are 30kgs and the bigger ones are anywhere between 50 and 65 kgs. Well, that's what my double hernia and slipped disc keep telling me...

Yeah, that's about one third of the total number of concrete ballast blocks...

The front end of the cargo hold with the steel lattice of angle steel creating the floor level under which all the ballast is stored.

Unfortunately when I get to dry dock, all of the ballast, bricks, concrete blocks and steel square section will all have to be moved around in order to gain access to the entirety of the bilge area to shot blast and paint. It is going to be a back breaker of a job but needs doing. There is no way after the crappy survey done in Holland ("Pfffft, yeah the bilges will be fine...") that I am not going to inspect, scrape and shot blast every inch. If I am in any doubt, it'll get plated over to make sure.

Speaking of which, I am off to the shipyard on Friday to talk through the works in more detail with the yard and find out what they are able to offer in terms of blasting equipment, blasting media, steel, welding, paint and painters/painting equipment so that I can better plan for what is likely to be a very expensive, but necessary dry docking.

I think the weather is due to take a turn for the worse over the next few days so I suspect it will be more humping and dumping of the concrete and steel ballast then scraping the bilge. Rock and roll ladies and gentlemen, rock and roll....