The Journey -
Idling at Watten on Rosy

Our time at Watten passed by very pleasantly.  The evening and night continued to be a bit chilly, but by day the sun was warming.  There are three good baker's shops near the mooring, and a Champion supermarket is nearby - within easy cycling distance.

There is a dry dock at Watten, and the people who run it will also repair and maintain boats.  Some friends have left LaHoya there to be painted whilst they are back in UK. 

I've been getting on with sorting out Rosy.  I get very little satisfaction in maintenance.  I do some of it 'cos checking oils etc just HAS to be done.  But the redecoration etc I do only because Rosy is beginning to look a bit tatty, and I can't afford to pay anyone else to do the work!!  Needs must (whatever that means). 

Anyway, I spent a ghastly two days using Mike's Bosch scraper to remove the paint etc from the starboard side deck.  This consisted of bitumen, with a sprinkling of sand underneath the top coat to provide grip for ones feet.  The two days were made up of a half-hour's worth of scraping followed by one or two hours doing something less brain deadening, like reading or doing nothing!!!

At the end of the second day the tar was all removed, so I sanded the exposed grey/red undercoatings down a bit, to give a good keying surface.  Day 3, and the first coat of new bitumen went on, followed by a second coat on Day 4.  Day 5 rained, but on Day 6 a coat went on and had sand sprinkled on it.  After that, it rained intermittently, so the top coat (or, maybe, two top coats) have still to go on.  When the top coats finally go on, I have the pleasure of the port side deck to do.  Then there is the roof, to rub down and paint, and the two cabin sides, and the front and stern deck etc.  AAaaaarrrrgggghhh!!!

… AND ON TO AIRE-SUR-LYS

We finally left Watten, and headed south for Aire-sur-Lys.  We had two locks to negotiate on the journey, both at Arques.  Many folk will have items in their houses manufactured at Arques, as there is a massive glass factory there.  They use 'Arc' as a trade name, with Luminarc as a major brand.  For the canalaholic, there is a vertical boat lift, similar to the one at Anderton.  It has now been side-lined, and has been replaced by a 13+ metre lock.  The old lift is still there, on view to the public, but it looks very unloved.  At the foot of the lift are a couple of 'mules' - small railway engines of the type that were used in northern France to pull dumb barges along the canals.  Indeed, the system was so extensive that it greatly delayed the wide spread use of motorised barges.

Aire-sur-Lys might be a pretty town, but it's a pain in the butt for Rosy and me.  The official town mooring is off the main line, beside a noisy, stinking mill of some sort - what it is making I don't know.  The mooring is affected by wash from the barges roaring along the main line.  An old quay is beside the main line, and is immediately next to a coal yard - useful if one needs coal.  Unfortunately, there is an underwater concrete ledge, which made the mooring very tricky for Rosy.  Personally, I can't wait to leave.

TAPS AND DIES

On one of the finer days, I had some time left over, so another job was done - hop-ups at the stern.  A hop-up is a little fold down step, attached to the cabin side, that enables one to 'hop-up' onto the roof.  I have a pair at the front of Rosy, but have long planned to put a pair at the stern.  To this end, I had acquired the hop-ups some time ago, plus the 6 mm stainless steel, counter-sunk bolts, required to fix them in place.

The first job was to attack the (brass) hop-ups.  The two, pre-drilled fixing holes were too small, so I re-drilled them to 6 mm, and ensured that the counter-sinks were large enough to house the bolt heads.  Why 6 mm?  It's a good hunky-chunky size, and I have good set of 6mm taps and dies.  (Taps cut a screw thread into a hole, dies cut a screw thread onto a rod).

The next decision is to decide where to place the hop-up.  This is a personal preference - mine are a touch over half way up the cabin side.  A hammer and centre punch were used to mark the spot where the upper hole on the cabin side was to be drilled.

The size of drill to be used is critical.  Tables are available to show what size hole to drill for each size of tap.  Alternatively, most engineering suppliers can advise when one buys the tap from them.  The 6 mm tap is easy - it requires a 5 mm hole to be drilled.

There is an a problem in using taps.  Each tap is made of metal, and it has to cut a screw thread into a metal hole.  If the strain of cutting the thread should break the tap, then part of the broken tap will be firmly jammed in the hole, and will be difficult (impossible?) to remove it.

For most sized holes, I just use one grade of tap, but because I mainstream on 6 mm, I have a set of three, graded, 6 mm taps.  Used in succession, each cuts the thread a little bit more deeply, the third one cutting it to the exact size.

Even so, it is advisable to use taps with care.  A little grease should be applied to both the hole and the tap.  The tap should be held in a proper tap-holding tommy-bar.  The tap should be put into the hole, and screwed in about a third of a revolution, before being unscrewed about a sixth of a revolution.  This 'one third in and one sixth out' should be continued until the tap is fully into the hole.  If the tap is going in very easily, the one third can be increased, but the backward turn is still important, as it helps to clear the swarf away.

Once the first tap was fully screwed into the hole, I unscrewed it, and did exactly the same with the other two taps.  It was easy to see which taps to use - on the first, the first few millimetres of the tap were almost bare, whilst on the third tap, the first few millimetres had a definite thread, whilst the second tap was about halfway between the other two.

I then held the hop-up to the cabin side, and screwed the bolt in - it worked!!

The next tricky bit was to mark where the other hole was to be drilled.  I lined the hop-up to the vertical, and tightened the bolt.  I then applied the centre punch through the lower pre-drilled hole in the hop-up, and whacked it with the hammer.  With the hop-up removed, the lower hole was drilled and tapped.

The next thing is to bolt the hop-up into position.  It will soon become obvious if the tapped holes are correctly positioned - if they are not, the bolts will not be able to be fully tightened.  On Rosy things worked out OK.  Had they not, the solution is to expand the lower hole in the hop-up, either with a file, or with a slightly larger (6.5 mm?) drill.

Finally, I removed the hop-up, smeared some all-purpose, white, silicon, waterproof, flexible sealant over the surfaces of the hop-up that will be in contact with the cabin side and with the countersunk bolt head, and finally re-bolted the hop-up back in place - not forgetting to wash away the sealant that was squeezed out.

MEANWHILE …

Fanny-the-Woof got a bit over-excited at Watten, as a travelling rodeo circus was setting up shop about 100 metres away, complete with horses, sheep (or maybe goats - who knows?  Let's settle for shoats) and a couple llamas.  What a life!!!

AND …

I know that the following will brand me as a SOB, SOB or BOF (Silly Old Buffoon, Silly Old Buffer or Boring Old Fart, but here goes … A rant on the debasement of the English language.

Now, I realise that there are several English languages:  English English, American English, Canadian English, Australian English, New Zealand English, South African English, Indian English etc. etc., each of which can be considered as a language in its own right.  And, indeed, the purists maintain that current American English tends to be closer to the English spoken in England in Elizabethan/Jacobean times than current English English.  However, there are several trends in English that seem to be pretty universal (from the evidence of vox pop contributors to BBC World Service phone-ins) and which get right under my skin.

The first is the dreaded 'go for' when used as a synonym for choose.  Even Roget's Thesaurus gives several column inches of synonyms for 'choice', so there are plenty to pick from, without having either to invent another, or to misuse an extant expression that means something else.  The problem (for me) with 'go for' is that it is inappropriate.  Consider the restaurant situation, when the diner says to the waiter 'I'll go for the grilled trout'.  Now, the one thing that the diner is NOT going to do - is to go anywhere.  The over-exploited waiter is going to do all the 'going for', whilst the diner is going to sit in sheer idleness and luxury, drinking a fine white wine or a smart aperitif, and complaining (often loudly) about the slow service.

Actually, the next on the actual hit list is the word that many people actually believe is one of the most overused words in the actual universe, to the extend that it is one of those actual words that has nearly ceased to have any actual meaning, and has been so debased that it is now actually used in place of an actual grunt or "er" to suggest that the actual speaker had not yet actually come to an actual decision as to which actual word to actually utter next.

Number 3 is 'do' when used to emphasis a verb.  Hence 'I read a newspaper every day' is less emphatic than 'I do read a newspaper every day'.  Unfortunately, that emphasis is now being lost as the 'do' word seems to appear even when no emphasis is required.  'I do think' is used synonymously with 'I think'.  The emphasis now has to come from really, as in 'I really do think'.  'I do know that Emily is late but she does have a long way to come and I really do think that she will be here soon'.

Hey!  Number 4 is actually the word that I actually do go for as my actual Number 1 hate of all time and it is the dreaded 'Hey'.  A 'Hey' to attract someone's attention is OK, but then our American cousins started inserting it into everyday speech as in 'But, hey, you know what ….' Or 'I was going to go to the bank, but then I thought, hey, why don't I come and see you!' Personally, I've never thought 'Hey' in my entire life, and I have a basic mistrust of anyone who wants me to believe that they think 'hey'.  How can anyone think 'hey'?  One thinks thoughts, not heys!  I heard that nice Mr Blair use a 'Hey' the other day, so he is now, officially, off my Christmas card list.

Hey!  I do think that that is actually all I am going for today.

Toodle pip!!

Bill