Mallo came and helped to paint again, he's such a
star. The deck looked so great and we got very
excited, we could suddenly picture ourselves sitting
on the flat deck in the sunshine with beer in our
hands.
Of course, once we'd spent weeks painting and a
fortune on the paint itself... we were suddenly
decended on by a swarm of people telling us what bad
luck it is to paint a boat blue and green. Still we
like it and are very pleased with the effect.
In fact, we met quite a few people while we were
moored in Goole who knew Thomas from her previous life
when she was part of the tannery fleet. It was lovely
to hear about how proud the skippers had been of their
ships and how they had lived.
Alan put a mast and navigation lights on and started to wire up a make shift control panel in the wheel house.
Over the autumn and into the winter, the Iveco engine
that we'd had put in the place of the old Lister JP3
was finally coupled up and we were ready for our
maiden voyage. This was exciting for us, but not
exactly a white knuckle ride as it became immediately
evident that we didn't have much in the way of
acceleration and we'd have to get the propeller
pitched before we could make the trip out to sea.
So there followed a flurry of activity as Alan sorted out: a slip that we could use for a day to get the boat out of the water, taking the prop off, rushing it to a yard that could alter the pitch of the blades so that they'd work with the new engine, rushing it back to the slip, getting the prop put back on and getting Thomas back into the water before the next boat booked to use the slip appeared.
Suddenly though we were ready, ready to get Thomas out to sea, around the coast and into the Thames. It was all very exciting and a little bit scary.
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