Hilarious account of boat blacking - and that's just for starters

I've come across a very well written and extremely funny account of two people's battle to black a narrowboat, Coroskeir, against the clock. Catherine Bertrand and Andy Rankin tackled this in 2004. Here's an extract from day 3:

I shall set the scene. You are lying on your back on a rough wooden plank, nanometres from the rusty, and now mycorrhizal soup under the boat. Above is the rough, pitted surface of the bottom covered in large organic lumps. Imagine something from the 'Alien' film set. As you scrape, there is splatterage. You are wearing clothes that really ought to be burnt, a rough woollen balaclava, worn safety gloves, goggles you can't see out of, a mask you can barely breathe through, and waving a piece of disposable saw around like a maniac. It's really really really really dreadful.

But this is only the beginning of an adventure. As Catherine writes,

This is the epic tale of a journey from Cambridge to the nearby town of Bishops Stortford via the canal and river network. It is told by Catherine in a series of emails.

Read it all here. It really is good.

Oh, and the boat is propelled by a 48V electric motor powered by eight 12V batteries with a diesel generator.