So, a couple of little things about doing the whole Dutch thing (and not going halvsies on a meal). A slight frustration is that many debit and credit cards are not accepted in stores so a healthy wad of cash is often needed. As can be seen from the photos, I have managed to accumulate a lot of rubbish in the boat and so have attempted to book a skip in order to get some of it out of the way. Unfortunately, everything needed to be booked online, delivered to a post code (which I don’t have) and paid for using a special Dutch system which works with Dutch bank accounts only. No credit cards and you can’t talk to someone on the phone to organise it. All very frustrating and it means I have to work around the huge piles of wood, insulation and ripped out sanitary units. Hardly a glowing reference for the single market, as it were.

Well, by the end of day 7 progress has been speedier than expected. Almost the entire fore end has been stripped, with 4 radiators removed, all sinks and water outlets capped and insulation removed. Annoyingly I found that some of the insulation wasn’t rockwool but was glass fibre. No wonder I was itching like a dog with fleas at the end of a days work recently.

There was a slight pause in the progress while I dealt with the bathroom area. It would appear that this was added when the ship was reduced from carrying 18 to 12 persons. The thick tongue and groove boards had plywood screwed over the top and then another layer of marine ply glued with what I can only describe as the worlds strongest silicone glue. This adhesive from hell caused considerable consternation and almost a few injuries. It seemed as likely to shift as a Frenchman living next to a brothel, but after considerable sweating and swearing the four walls were in hundreds of pieces, the stainless steel shower tray was removed, throne was out and waste pipes disconnected. The 2 external waste cocks were closed off as they won’t be needed after the refit. Whether I decide to weld them shut is another matter, but for the moment they will remain.

In an attempt to free up some space I decided to attack the main saloon area. There were 4 bench seats which were fixed to the floor and 2 large tables fixed to the floor with a piece of 4” square section steel and a base plate which wouldn’t have looked out of place on a large mortar. Again, totally over spec’d for the job but at least when the herd of male rutting wildebeest charged through the saloon the tables would have been ok. Having deconstructed the bench seats the tables were a different prospect altogether. The first had the cross beams underneath screwed into place with immense hex screws, of which about 5 decided to shear off in the wood. Predominantly I think this is because the wood was made out of 40mm thick solid mahogany planks! It was definitely worth saving... The Black and Decker oscillating saw came to the rescue and one blade later I managed to cut the bolts off sufficiently below the level of the wood so that I can cut them into their original planks and pt them through the planer/thicknesser.

The other table came apart much easier (although still had enough ironmongery to sink a battle ship) but sadly it wasn’t mahogany. I think it might be Douglas Fir or similar. It wasn’t quite as hernia inducing to lift as the mahogany one but it will still be useful somewhere I am sure.

Unfortunately with the amount of wood coming out of the fore end, the saloon area is now pretty full. Once I break through the wall between the fore end and the saloon, I think I will have run out of space to stack the detritus. As well as the obvious health and safety nightmare, the lack of space will eventually stop the work on the interior.

On the plus side, I have worked out we can fit 12” fixed, thermally broken, portholes in the raised section of the 2 bedrooms at the bow. The downside is that it’s going to add about £1300 to the window bill. That said, we have 5 excess large 14” brass portholes which are in great condition and I have seen advertised for around the £250 mark on eBay and maybe 9 other 10” portholes which can be sold in order to help finance the new windows and portholes. During the financial planning phase I didn’t bank on any revenue from the sale of bits and pieces, just as a “worst case” type scenario. Anything I do manage to sell will be all gravy, as they say...

While we are talking about wombling/recycling etc, I have saved as much of the decent wood as possible. A lot has moisture damage on the inside but I hope that I should be able to remove all the screws/nails and then run it through the planer thicknesser to hopefully end up with a stockpile of useable wood. Bizarrely, I am sure some of the wood cladding from the bow bedrooms is solid maple flooring. There are some other cladding planks which are definitely flooring but have a deep red colour. I am yet to find out if they are stained pine or something more exotic. They certainly feel heavier than pine but I may be proven wrong.

I had hoped that by the end of the 10 days I would have got through the fore end bedrooms and and the shower room which I have achieved so far. Any work on the saloon is a bonus and if I can take down the wall between the saloon and the bow area I think I will have done pretty well. I am leaving the majority of the flooring in place at the moment, just as a nod towards health and safety. Once I have got rid of the majority of the demolition detritus and we have a large open space, then I will think about taking the floor up. Until then my ankles and knees will breathe a sigh of relief. That’s not to say I am injury free of course but certainly nothing that needed serious medical attention.

Tomorrow I need to measure the void under the Skipper’s cabin as this will house the sewage treatment system. There is a concrete lined steel water tank under the Skipper’s cabin at the moment which will need disassembling.

I think the way ahead for this little conundrum will be to cut a hole in the floor of the Skipper’s cabin which will allow me access with the plasma cutter and, more importantly, allow me an exit path should something go wrong. It is not going to be an easy job, but it needs removing so there is enough room for the sewage treatment plant. The hole will need to be big enough to drop the Headflusher AT-6T down through it as it’s the only way it’s going to fit.

We haven’t budgeted for the Skipper’s cabin at this stage. The priority is to get all the M&E work done and then the main living area sorted so that we can ‘live’ on board. I am hoping that by the time I come to convert the Skipper’s cabin I will have learned enough from the carpenter (who I am going to try and book for a week in April to sort the floor joists in the main living/bedroom area) to be able to set all the battens myself. I suspect a Froth Pak 600 (polyurethane foam) will be enough to insulate the entire cabin. Having used it before I am pretty confident it will give a good result.

As I sit in the wheelhouse quaffing a stein of tea (my mug is somewhere in the battlefield down below) and crunching sea salt and Chardonnay wine vinegar crisps (thank you LJ - again you may wing yourself for that selection) I watch the sun go down and think to myself, “If only I could get a f&^%ing skip...”