Boy Racers

We were woken up at 11.45pm by the noisy and nearby sound of the local ‘boy racers’ having a “meeting”.  Screaming of engines and tyres along with a number of explosions.  Not the crack of rifle fire; more like a loud shotgun.  My guess is they were using the roads in the adjacent Ventura Business and Retail Park.  These guys obviously earn too much money!  The noise died down around 2am.

More boat painting yesterday and today.  You can see the blue masking tape on the rear doors in the photo below.

I’ve prepared and painted the graphite grey area inside the door jamb.  The masking tape is there to protect the light grey paint on the exterior.  I also sanded and painted the sliding hatch making a right pigs ear of the finish.  It was my error as I failed to add Owatrol to the paint.  The paint was too thick and the finish had huge brush marks in it.  Today I sanded the hatch back and had a second attempt.  But only after I’d added Owatrol to the paint.  The finish isn’t much better.  This time the sanding was too coarse.  It is now going to need a number of coats to get the desired mirror finish.

We ran the Refleks stove today and it warmed the boat so well we had to put the bungs in the portholes to prevent peepers looking into the nudist colony! 

I discussed the Refleks flue with the UK distributor when we passed through Shadlow several months ago and identified a couple of interesting facts.  The first was his comment that the stove could be run whilst on the move by removing the straight sections and just fit the top directly onto the cabin roof.  It this is done then turn up the stove slightly to increase the draw.  The second fact was the long sections of flue are the same price as the short sections.  The stove came with one of each but we now have two long sections (same price).  This has improved the stove’s performance.