Anodes and painting

Catching up with photos ... Ollie completed the blacking yesterday ...

... and today he welded on four new sacrificial anodes. I was asked if I wanted slim anodes half-way along the sides as well, but I decided against it. Yes, they would give better protection against galvanic corrosion, but they could potentially catch on an obstruction. I measured the width of the base plate as 79" or 6' 7"; the base plate protrudes from the hull sides by half an inch each side. The slim anodes are only one inch thick so the overall effect would be to increase the width at the bottom to 6' 8", so not enough to cause a problem at any lock ... but we tend to be cruising for six months of the year and the rest of the time the boat is tied up with no other boats on shoreline within the vicinity. Our isolation transformer on board provides the most effective galvanic protection when we connect up to a shoreline.

I spent the whole day preparing and painting the gunwales with some Hempel Multicoat semi-gloss black paint I bought from the marina. I was advised to thin it, which I did, but it dried almost as soon as I brushed it on. Thinking about it now, perhaps I used the wrong solvent. I had a bottle of cellulose thinners which I used, but should I have thinned with white spirit? Too late now. Annoyingly, muck from pressure washing of a neighbouring boat blew onto us and I had to wash down the gunwales and elsewhere a second time before painting.

Friends Paul and Kim from Somang came to our temporarily land-based boat for tea; it started to rain lightly as they were leaving. Perhaps it will wash off some of the muck from the boat. 

One job for tomorrow can be seen from the top photo: repainting the red tunnel band.

While the red paint is out I'll have a go at redoing the bow flashes. I think masking tape will help.