Well, perhaps I’m being a bit hard on myself. However, it was becoming clear that I didn’t have either the time or sufficiently specialist knowledge to handle all the things that needed to be sorted out on the boat.

I’d noticed the previous year that the roof was in a bit of a state, so I laid some new sheets of plywood over the roof and sealed them in. Only 6 months later my repair was looking distinctly tatty. For a start, there was a ridge running down the middle of the roof from bow to stern that trapped the water at the rear, as a consequence of which the wooden trim on the roof at the stern was softer than soap. It needed to be cut out, and I wasn’t quite sure how to do it. In addition to this there were spots on the rear deck at either side that we couldn’t stand on because the plywood beneath the mahogany planks had rotted through, meaning that the planks were floating unsupported above free space.

I was blithely carrying on in that somewhat annoying way I have, assuming that I could do it all myself but secretly knowing that I didn’t really have much of a clue how to progress. At this point Selena stepped in and made the obvious but, for me, difficult suggestion that we get someone else to do it. At least, that we get someone else to help us do what needed to be done. This suggestion was difficult for me partly because it wounded my pride to think that I needed someone else’s help, but also partly because my painful and costly experience at Shepperton Marina had left me highly suspicious of outside help.

Fortunately, we were able to ask someone at The Marina to have a look at what needed to be done for us. I won’t name the individual since he wishes to remain anonymous but our mystery shipwright took a look at the rear deck and told us that the whole thing needed to be replaced. This didn’t come as much of a surprise. What the previous owner had done was to hold the mahogany planks together by screwing them directly onto a sheet of plywood. Since there was no drainage provided in the rear deck this meant that any water that fell onto this part of the deck pooled on the planks and was drawn into the tiny gap between the planks and the plywood by capillary action where it happily sat and rotted. The plywood, being less dense than the mahogany, had rotted through first but the planks were full of rot spores and the whole lot had to go.

In order to remove the rear deck and get a look at what was there and what needed replacing I had to rip the entire thing out so our shipwright (I’ll call him Mr A from now on – you know who you are!) lent me an awesome electric saw for the job which made it much more fun. It felt good to remove all of the rotten wood and get a proper look at what we had to deal with, but as with any job like this by lifting the corner of the carpet we had taken a glimpse at all of the dirt that had been swept under there. To put it another way, without torturing any more metaphors, by removing the rotten wood we could see we were able to see just how much more rotten wood there was that we couldn’t see before. Somewhat more worryingly, we were also able to see how much rotten metal there was. It would appear that we were in for the long haul.

No more rear deck!

The new deck

The new deck (again)