More stripping

Mrs Ciao Bella and myself slipped away for a couple of days in and around Bath. We stayed in The George, a fantastic old Inn from the early 1500's. As well as the Roman Baths, shopping, cake & coffee we also found some fabulous pubs and cider houses :0)

The George Inn at Norton St Philip. A great place to stay.

Tuckers Grave Inn, a hard to find traditional cider house.

Despite this, I did still managed to get a bit done on Sunday afternoon.  As I still had some strippit left I applied that to as much of the Mirror as I could.I left that on overnight and gave it a good Jet wash off in the morning.  I'm quite impressed, I haven't been near it with a scraper yet but considering the limited amount that I had it has done a great job.  The other worry was that it might attack the taped seams, these are absolutely fine.  The wood is pretty solid, the only filler that I can see is where small knocks have been repaired.

Back to business, after the strippit had been jet washed off.

While the Strippit was working it's magic I climbed aboard Ciao Bella to see what else could be done.. who says blokes can't multi task?  The headlining needed refitting after I had removed it to fit the clutch on the coach-roof.  This was an absolute bugger to get back in and as it has a tendency to slip out of the slots I decided to drill and screw it into position. This I did on the starboard side as well.

Looking around me I could see that she needed a right good tidy up so I started chucking everything that was in the cabin out into the cockpit.  I stuck my head under the starboard quarter berth to retrieve some junk and was confronted with and odour like no other.  The rear of the bilge keel is hollow and when I looked down it there was about 3 or 4 inches of black stinking water in there.  Unfortunately the only way I could think of getting it out was to roll my sleeves up and reach down with a sponge to soak it up.

I was worried that a mouse may have fallen in and drowned but the smell was from bits of thin ply that had rotted in the water.. who'd have thought that would smell so bad.

I spent the rest of the evening tidying and putting tools away that I thought had long since vanished.

I nice piece of good fortune while sat it the cockpit sorting the wheat from the chaff, one of my neighbours stopped for a chat, the upshot being that he has a trailer winch that I can have and also a roll of genuine boat quality foam backed upholstery fabric in Tan.

Planning to get her in this coming weekend, Woe betide anyone who has other plans for me :)