tcm
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I have just returned from inaugural med trip of the season. In antibes, the start of the season is hearldedby a large antiques fair which simulates summer crush by being held in all the car parks.
The boat was filthy, as antibes is between cannes (full of cars) and nice (ful of cars) and under the flight path to nice airport. So anyway, i experimented with my latest idea which was to clean the boat with petrol. You dip a sweeping brush in a shallow bucket of petrol, then wham over the deck, then a big squirt of washing up liquid to emulsify and wash it off, doing it in sqauers of bout a mtere at a time. This method has no guarantee and is unprintable, but did result in a clean boat v quick, and nothing disolved this time, unlike my previous daft idea using acetone in the bathroom which burned through the varnish when i dropped a bit, or bleach on the seats, which resulted in all my shorts having bleached lines innem and me selling the boat shortly afterwards.
Petrol is much cheaper than lots of suscpiciously similar products which are flammable and sold in tins at 10 quid a litre. However, Learner, who helped as he was boatless but anxious to find out about boat cleaning (well, he actually came over for a beer) said his bare feet were stinging a lot, and then emma the crewperson said her feet were also falling apart a bit the next week ahem. Oh, also if you use the yellow brushes with fluffy ends, the following days they have set into a solid mush, therby costing another 40 quid for a new brush head, and you get quite an adrenalin rush as you inspect the boat for signs of the foredeck dissolving like an empty pot noodle container does if you use it to wash brushes with white spirit. The blue bristled brushes are okay. You can't use petrol on the teak of course, that would be really stupid.
Got it all cleaned, then it chucked it down for two days solid, so wife turned up to boat with freshly soggy cushions, damnit. On a nice day we went to st tropez, which is sort-of a fixed-up Mouslehole without tides and with more sun and better food. I had a look round Leaners potential boat number n+1 in golfe juan which was v nice, so he made a laughable offer on it, so somebody else bought it. JFM was somewhere around in the second week, but he hid in an hotel whilst it chucked it down again for a day or so.
A few days later, another friend was taking delivery of a predator 56 which was very lairy in yellow and dead cheap 2nd hand. Time for a seatrial, so lets go now. We passed our boat tied to the fuel pontoon. Son #1 aged 14 called over to suggest that he take our boat out into the bay just half a mile, on his own, windless sunny day and hardly anyboats out , which erm i sed yes cripes er okay then so and cook/crew person on deck set off in blimmin 75 foot boat and they anchored out whilst i watched all worried from this predator doing 35-40 knots in the same bay and swmbo saying i was utterly raving mad and what abgout the insurance hmm? But no probs, and he was full of it, so later I had to show him how to berth the thing. Mind you, i now get to lounge on the foredeck and generally direct operations instead of sitting in the pilot seat which is fortunately jammed at highest setting, and the only single fault on the entire boat, apart from the horn not working.
Bread? Ah yes, well, Deleted User is also down there now, in nice new boat in nice new (to him)La Napoule marina. But it was 8 am when i went round, he wasn't around, so i gottim some bread and croissants at the shop, and chucked it on board in a nice bag as a sortof useful hello. I had to rush off, so i thought i would ring at nearer nineish to say hi, i brought you some bread. But I couldn't find his number. So I dunno if he found the bread, or if he thought a dog had abandoned it, or if another dog nicked it, or if he foiund it but thought hmm must be somebody else's, or what. Not sure if I would eat new bread found in a bag in the cockpit one morning: I would probably not eat it all, as it would taste of petrol, or acetone, or bleach. He will probably be complaining round at the harbour office termorrer to say oi where's the flippin free bread delivery like yesterday?
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The boat was filthy, as antibes is between cannes (full of cars) and nice (ful of cars) and under the flight path to nice airport. So anyway, i experimented with my latest idea which was to clean the boat with petrol. You dip a sweeping brush in a shallow bucket of petrol, then wham over the deck, then a big squirt of washing up liquid to emulsify and wash it off, doing it in sqauers of bout a mtere at a time. This method has no guarantee and is unprintable, but did result in a clean boat v quick, and nothing disolved this time, unlike my previous daft idea using acetone in the bathroom which burned through the varnish when i dropped a bit, or bleach on the seats, which resulted in all my shorts having bleached lines innem and me selling the boat shortly afterwards.
Petrol is much cheaper than lots of suscpiciously similar products which are flammable and sold in tins at 10 quid a litre. However, Learner, who helped as he was boatless but anxious to find out about boat cleaning (well, he actually came over for a beer) said his bare feet were stinging a lot, and then emma the crewperson said her feet were also falling apart a bit the next week ahem. Oh, also if you use the yellow brushes with fluffy ends, the following days they have set into a solid mush, therby costing another 40 quid for a new brush head, and you get quite an adrenalin rush as you inspect the boat for signs of the foredeck dissolving like an empty pot noodle container does if you use it to wash brushes with white spirit. The blue bristled brushes are okay. You can't use petrol on the teak of course, that would be really stupid.
Got it all cleaned, then it chucked it down for two days solid, so wife turned up to boat with freshly soggy cushions, damnit. On a nice day we went to st tropez, which is sort-of a fixed-up Mouslehole without tides and with more sun and better food. I had a look round Leaners potential boat number n+1 in golfe juan which was v nice, so he made a laughable offer on it, so somebody else bought it. JFM was somewhere around in the second week, but he hid in an hotel whilst it chucked it down again for a day or so.
A few days later, another friend was taking delivery of a predator 56 which was very lairy in yellow and dead cheap 2nd hand. Time for a seatrial, so lets go now. We passed our boat tied to the fuel pontoon. Son #1 aged 14 called over to suggest that he take our boat out into the bay just half a mile, on his own, windless sunny day and hardly anyboats out , which erm i sed yes cripes er okay then so and cook/crew person on deck set off in blimmin 75 foot boat and they anchored out whilst i watched all worried from this predator doing 35-40 knots in the same bay and swmbo saying i was utterly raving mad and what abgout the insurance hmm? But no probs, and he was full of it, so later I had to show him how to berth the thing. Mind you, i now get to lounge on the foredeck and generally direct operations instead of sitting in the pilot seat which is fortunately jammed at highest setting, and the only single fault on the entire boat, apart from the horn not working.
Bread? Ah yes, well, Deleted User is also down there now, in nice new boat in nice new (to him)La Napoule marina. But it was 8 am when i went round, he wasn't around, so i gottim some bread and croissants at the shop, and chucked it on board in a nice bag as a sortof useful hello. I had to rush off, so i thought i would ring at nearer nineish to say hi, i brought you some bread. But I couldn't find his number. So I dunno if he found the bread, or if he thought a dog had abandoned it, or if another dog nicked it, or if he foiund it but thought hmm must be somebody else's, or what. Not sure if I would eat new bread found in a bag in the cockpit one morning: I would probably not eat it all, as it would taste of petrol, or acetone, or bleach. He will probably be complaining round at the harbour office termorrer to say oi where's the flippin free bread delivery like yesterday?
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