Week 219: Sanding and more sanding

This week has felt a lot like Groundhog Day. You wake up, work on sanding and varnishing windows and frames, collapse in bed, and then do it again the next day. Yet there have also been other events interspersed.

Of course, the biggest of these was our 30th Wedding Anniversary. Neither of us had a plan for what we'd be doing in thirty years, but I'm also sure it didn't involve sanding. We're fortunate to have video taken by two people at the wedding, Nero and Graydon. To celebrate, we did what we should have done long ago! Condensed it down into a one-and-a-half-minute summary of the day.

So why all the sanding? It's a job that needs to be done and that we can work on while we wait to go into the shipyard for the major repaint. We've been taking them out, covering the frames with foam inserts, and sanding them back to bare wood. Repairing any holes and gaps, then coating with 3 - 4 coats of a high quality oil based stain. Then, digging out the old grout, resealing the external frames and also adding back new silicon rubbers to seal the windows. It's a lot of work, but very satisfying. Once it's finished, they look amazing.

The frustrating part is that it takes longer than expected. Into our second week, we've only got two completed–one window and the forward dog hatch. There's four in progress and we've started on the large dog hatch now. There are two major challenges we're dealing with.

The first is the concept of Belgian quiet hours. They take noise control very seriously here. Even to the level of music in supermarkets. We were commenting the other day how quiet the supermarkets are, and then we found there's regulation governing that too. Sunday is a complete no-noise zone. You're not allowed to operate power tools or mow your lawns. I expressed frustration to Karina a week ago about the hardware store closing on Sundays, which is of course when you want to do projects. Not in Belgium. All this is fine and an interesting cultural difference, but it's slowing us down as we can't work outside with power tools on weekends or public holidays.

The second challenge is the weather. While it is exceptionally good for this time of year, it's still very cool and things just aren't drying. Especially the oil based varnish we're using on the outside of the windows. That means waiting for it to dry before sanding between coats and also being patient and not trying to re-insert the window too soon, so they won't stick.

On Tuesday we had the first of potential builders come and visit us on site with the architect. They spent an hour and a bit going through the boat and we'll get an estimate from them soon on how much it's all going to cost. There are three more builder site visits scheduled this coming week.

Wednesday we had the first part of our boat inspection survey, an essential process in updating our documentation and getting all our paperwork in order. It was all as expected, there's a few things we need to do (most of which we're in the process of) but nothing major. The next milestone will be this week (hopefully) when we come out of the water and we get the hull thickness measurements done. This is when we'll know how much overplating and welding has to be done under the water. The survey process isn't really delaying anything, we're just keen to get it done as it's at that point we will officially rename Clair de Lune which we're excited to share.

We have managed to get off the boat a couple of times. During the week we headed out to go shopping and have dinner at the pub, and last Sunday, we headed to Baasrode and the ship museum. According to our documentation, this is where Clair de Lune was built in 1907. It was a very enjoyable visit to what is an otherwise small and unremarkable museum dedicated to the barge building craft. Something about wondering if "is this the spot" that made it feel a lot more intriguing. The volunteers at the museum were very excited that we may own a boat that was built there and took a lot of information from us. We are expecting some sort of follow up, but we're not sure as it was difficult to communicate. The uncertainty about the location is because we have another shipyard listed in one set of documents, and also, Baasrode used to have three yards, so this remaining one might not be it.

If you do ever find yourself knee deep in an unexpected renovation, then one thing you really should do is invest in good quality tools, and the right ones! After some challenges with delivery (why is that all so hard here in Belgium...) I got a new multi-tool and it's been a game changer. It's made several difficult jobs possible and a lot of other jobs faster.

I stripped all the silicon from around one window frame, a process that took almost two days. With the multi-tool, I could have done it in about an hour. Of course, I didn't get the tool until after I completed it by hand.

With the window frame out, it was interesting to see the effects of the water–the steel frame of the coach roof lips inside, which is good, but the water sitting under the leaking frame has created lots of rust spots. I spoke with Peter and he advised sanding and scraping it back, then SIX coats of primer. He said to do it "properly" it would mean sandblasting it, but of course, no-one ever does that because of the work involved in pulling all the windows. He thinks this will give it ten years though (more than enough for now).

The commerical primer has been an interesting experience. It's a two-part paint, the paint itself, an epoxy hardener and then a dash of thinners. It feels like a mad science experiment mixing it all. Of course our challenge is that we're using very small quantities (a single window frame at the moment), so the measuring tools make too much. I created a set of measuring cups from old aluminium cans that does the job well enough.

There's been questions from the architects and the builders that have also involved digging deeper into the internals of Clair de Lune to try and find out things like "exactly where is the plumbing from the toilet." She's becoming less of a home and more of a building site by the day. We're fighting hard to keep her habitable, but as soon as we haul out, it will be back to the apartment for us and a daily commute instead.

Karina applied for a permanent mooring this week. A spot in Ghent is not going to happen unfortunately, there's a waiting list of at least 30 other boats.

We are looking forward to all the windows being finished, at the time of writing we have done three, and there are fifteen more to go.

And that's that. Lots of work, we're looking forward to relaxing today (we might squeeze a coat of varnish on if the sun comes out and things look like they'll dry).

Until next time.

Tim and Karina