Naughty-Cal

With the weather looking none so clever for the weekend and high winds forecast it looks set to be another marina based weekend. This will give us another chance to sort out some more small odd jobs onboard Naughty-Cal. Better to do them now and get them out of the way.

The first job will be refitting the broken anchor light. We tried to do this job last weekend but realised we didn’t have the right tools onboard to do the job. With the right tools taken to the boat we can finally install the light fitting and its power saving LED bulb. Then, when the weather is right, we can try out our new light with an evening spent at anchor in Brayford Pool.

The next job will be emptying the bilge water with the wet vac. We have collected quite an amount of bilge water in the last few weeks with various jobs we have been doing and it is about time it was cleared. To help keep the boat dry and condensation free through the autumn and winter months it is important to remove any bilge water which will start to evaporate when the heating is switched on. Whilst we have the carpet cleaner to hand we can also clean some of the fixed upholstery and carpets in the cabin, again! The last water leak we had has left water stains on our freshly cleaned carpets, hopefully that is now sorted out and the source of the problem located.

We have recently purchased some new decals for Naughty-Cal. The new ones look much fresher than the older style ones she currently sports, so this weekend might be the time to fit those to the bathing platform. It will also give us a chance to hand polish and wax the platform which tends to get forgotten about during our spring polish and spruce up. We shall also fit some new cords to the drop down section as the current ones are starting to show their age and signs of wear.

Lastly we will have the chance to give the cabin and cockpit a good thorough clean. It is amazing how quickly the boat gets dirty especially at this time of year with the mud, rain and wet grass. Both the interior and exterior need a good clean and it will be another good opportunity to get the polish and wax out and concentrate on getting some more areas polished up in preparation for next seasons major cruising. My interior polishing will be concentrated in the midships cabin for this weekend. A small area of the boat but one we use a lot and it is ready for a good polish and wax. We also have some stickers to remove from the windscreens. The Broads Authority temporary licences are proving difficult to remove from the glass screens and we are going to have to resort to a sharp blade. Following that a quick polish with some Autoglym Glass Polish should see the glass sparkling again.

This sounds like a lot of hard work but no doubt we shall enjoy ourselves during the process of the work. It is rewarding to see your efforts come to fruition and the boat looking fresh, clean and cared for. A little hard work now will save us a lot of effort early next year. If we break the back of the hard work now during the bad weather weekends, we can enjoy the nicer weekends on a nice clean boat with everything working as it should.