Apologies for the late publication but progress has been slow recently and there wasn’t much point in taking photos of not a lot and trying to make up something witty (ish) to say about it. Now I do have something to report. I have removed about half of the remaining flooring and have found something amazing - ballast. Butt loads of it. Probably enough to sink a battleship…

I will have to keep the majority of it or at least replace it with concrete blocks instead of bags of sand but the exact distribution will be difficult to gauge to get the lefty/righty balance correct. I will have to leave some ballast areas empty initially during the fitout so that if she does start to develop a 'lean' I can counter it with some ballast accordingly.

I have managed to remove the coating on most of the upper walls of the hull where there aren’t any rivets, taken it back to bare steel, derust then painted with red oxide paint. There are areas around the corners where I need to grit blast but the majority of the area has been treated. But, oh-my-god what a massive chafe. It was like wearing neoprene underpants with half a dozen trowels full of very fine sand shovelled in them and then walking around in the blazing sun. Yeah, that kind of a chafe. However, perseverance won the day (as well as several surface preparation discs) and when Zee is dry docked I will strip the other hard to reach areas with an industrial shot blaster.

I have to report the sad demise of my trusty crowbar though. She has taken more of a pounding than Aleppo and finally gave up the ghost. She has been a trusty friend and will be recycled accordingly.

One of the problems with working in a restricted space is that it ends up like one of those games you used to have as a kid with a grid of movable squares on a 4x4 grid but with 15 squares and one space. You have to keep moving everything around in order to get a clear area to work. This is becoming more difficult as the pile of cr@p I have accumulated gets bigger and bigger.

The cr@p pile just keeps getting bigger....

I do have a cunning plan though as I will be advertising it as free firewood in the hope that some hardy soul will come and truffle through it to find those gems of wood which can be cut up and burnt (of which there are plenty). I hope that this will reduce the size of the pile with minimal effort. I have a lot of tongue and groove flooring in average condition which, despite my temptation to keep it and recycle it, I will advertise and again hopefully someone interested will come and take it off my hands (with little effort on my part).

My search for a dry dock has taken another twist. I have found one in Sharpness who are more geared to commercial vessels. I am still waiting for them to get back to me with a quote for a dry dock and hull strip etc. In the meantime I have found a slipway in Bristol which is a charitable trust that can accommodate Zee’s considerable bulk and whose rates are pretty reasonable. Essentially you hire the yard and get in contractors or do the work yourself, which is what I am looking for. They are packed out until about mid February so I have some time to get the hull in good shape for stripping… Just as well considering the amount of ballast that will have to be humped and dumped around in order to get to the hull and derust it in time.

I have contacted the Kromhout museum in Amsterdam about my engine. I am looking for the dimensions for the core plugs which are corroding and leaking when the engine is running. I am also looking for the dimensions and material for the engine driven compressor gasket for the start system. Whilst travelling back to the UK it became obvious that emulsified oil was being blown through the air feed into the primary air tank. No doubt tank will have to be drained at some point but that is for another day.

I have the dimensions for the portholes skylights so I will be ordering steel blanks cut to size to weld in place of the portholes. This will free up the large brass portholes for sale which will hopefully offset some of the costs coming up, one of which will be for the power system. I have the renewable power systems guys coming in a week or so to have a look around and hopefully to mark up the roof for photovoltaic panels which will then give me the available size for the double glazed skylights, location for the flues for both woodburner and pellet boiler. So not much going on really…

The mast plan continues but due to the lack of anchor points on the bottom for the lift it might require a plate or large cleat adding in order that it can be lifted out in one go. As with all things in this build, nothing is easy. As I hammered and crowbarred my way through the flooring today I had one of my “Holy sweet merciful Jesus what have I got my self into” moments as I viewed the devastation left in my wake and tried to calculate exactly how much effort is required to bring this steel tub up to a standard I would be happy to live in. Fortunately it didn’t last long…