What a week! It started strong with 8 hours on the angle grinder — sans injury — de-rusting section 4; the stern, the finale, my magnum grinder opus: And with that done, the boat is officially no longer a rusty shell! As Sean Parker would say… Following that I washed it all
People on the canal are so nice! On Friday a Dutch family helped me through some locks, and today I had 4 lovely conversations with boaters and walkers, curious about what I was doing and offering their encouragement. One guy talked about his motorbike from Myanmar in the second world
Rust is falling, all around me, moving kitchens, having fun. 🎵 This week I installed the first window! It went, well… I needed some rain to test it, and 2 hours later the gods delivered. The rain was heavy, the moment of truth, aaand… drip. Drip. DRIP. Fuck. Still, better than
You get many wonderful neighbours on the canals, and some of my favourites are the ducks and swans. Not only are they funny and sometimes majestic and very edible, they also keep my boat clean. Algae grows on the hull at the waterline, and you’ll occasionally hear the rattle
Happy July! This week was glorious, starting on Monday with a leisurely refurbishment of some windows and a trip to the chandlery, only to find they didn’t have the window gaskets I needed. But I did get another spaceship vent — sometimes called a pancake — and another mooring pin. And
Hello and happy Sunday! The last 3 days I was AFK, or “Away From Katona,” visiting Denmark to celebrate St John’s Day with my family. That normally means a bonfire on the beach, but with the lack of rain the Danes decided to ban any and all fires. So:
The downside of living under trees is that it rains for hours after it officially stops. This week there were thunderstorms (there’s even one as I’m writing this), and although slightly inconvenient as I have to cover the now-windowless holes in the side, they’re useful for a
Leaving the boat by the canal side for more than a day is often unsettling, but I’ve always been delighted to find it in the same place, with everything inside. This week I was away until Friday for reasons, but these last 2 days still proved plenty to make
Post 1, and week 54. This is my journey of renovating a narrowboat that I’ve had since summer 2020. Photo evidence of tearing it apart starts on the 23rd of May 2022: Last summer and autumn I dawdled, not really sure what I was doing, and it wasn’t