Cleanup

Another wonderfully warm day down on the Medway.  Makes it hard to motivate oneself to do the work.  But motivate myself I did.  It was time to clear the ropes off the deck.    But first I had to clear out the paint locker to put the ropes into.  It was knee deep in stuff.  Turns out there was a whole set of proper fire hoses including the nozzle.  When I get the bilge pump working it will pump into the fire hydrants and we can really have some fun.  It looks like the fire system is taken from the sea.  That worries me in the marina.

An hour of cleaning out the rubbish and another trip to the skips and it was clear.  The ropes weigh a ton.  Each about the thickness of a pint glass they are hard to handle.  After the ropes were away and the fire hoses rolled nicely in the locker I cleared the deck and swept is clean.  All nice on deck now.

The next job was to try and get the remaining covers off the 3 hatches and try and get the opened.  I managed to open the 2 hatches under the heli pad but not the one on top deck.  I could not remove the plates from the two either.  But the top plate came off easily and I managed to strip the paint off and it looks good now.

There are three portholes from the windlass room into the main corridor.  They too were painted over and grease ridden.  An hour of work on those and now we have nice clear portholes and light at that end of the ship.

Finally I had a rummage through the draw full of keys.  I managed to find a key for each of the external wooden doors.  They now lock ok so this will enable better security with the external metal doors padlocked and the inner locks.

The newly cleaned cabin escape hatch porthole

A now working lock.  The downside is they are badly corroded and don't look like they will be restorable.