Before I begin I just want to say “Happy Bastille Day”, as I
am writing this on the 14th, and I am half French!
I left you last week with Pipit’s starboard engine, still in
pieces, scattered carefully all over the boatshed and the prospect of a week of
grinding and chipping old paint and repainting new paint on.
The reason we had to repaint Pipit is that the nonslip
surface underfoot was becoming worn and slippery which is not good when one has
to contend with ice and snow. We had to put a new surface on to make sure that
we are safe when working on the decks. Now my predecessor, Matt Kenney, had
spent many hours trawling through the many many nonslip options and with the
help of one of our GOs, Jo Cox, had come
up with the option of ‘Kiwigrip’. This is actually pretty good stuff. One of
the options is to make up a normal topcoat with a nonslip additive which you
then paint on. In addition the jetboats are aluminium so most paints require an
etch primer which you have to paint on first and then put several coats on etc
etc. However this stuff is impressive. It goes onto anything from aluminium to
wood to old paint as long as the old paint is secure enough. This meant that we
didn’t have to etch prime it or even prime it which cut down dramatically on
time which was very lucky. It is a very very thick paint and you dollop it on
so it is about 4-5mm thick. Then once it is on you roller it with a special
roller which stipples the paint, creating peaks. If you want it to be very
nonslip you wait till the paint is tacky
and then roller it again. It is a very elegant and clever way of doing things
and I think it will work well.
In order not to get in the way of Paula and Erny and so as
to not annoy them I worked on chipping the paint whenever they weren’t in the
engine bay. This meant a fair few rushed lunches and latish nights. They were
actually much quicker than they thought they would be and were finished by
Wednesday afternoon. This was a massive boon. On Thursday Hazel and I got down
to some hard work. Poor Hazel, she had volunteered to help paint since she
enjoys painting things but I managed to cajole her into helping to chip as
well. We chipped off what paint we could with scrapers. We started out with
normal length scrapers with sharp edges and finished with short scrapers with
rounded edges as that nonslip stuff is pretty tough to get off. What we
couldn’t chip off we ground off with wire brushes on angle grinders. You only
have to look at the photo to see how tough the paint was on the equipment. Once
we had that off (and that in itself pretty much took two days) we could wash
and clean the surfaces and prepare them.
Masking tape is a wonderful thing but when you have to put
it around smallish circular bits it can be very annoying. We taped every edge
and made sure everything was as clean as it could be. We started painting on
Thursday night. We finished on Thursday at midnight and stumbled back up to
Everson House. Stumbling was the operative word since there had been a good
deal of rain and sleet and then it froze so the entire base was an ice rink for
most of the week. Even with studded grips on I spent most of my time outside
skidding from one snowy or bare patch to the next.
We started again the next day bright and early and continued
to chip away at the bow and then paint that. We had to be very, very careful
not to walk on our new paint since the peaks were not quite firm yet.
Saturday was spent doing the last few bits, touching up and
making sure that everything was neat, tidy and shipshape. We have been hearing
that the summer at home is searing hot and that everyone is having BBQs all
over the country. We got jealous so we decided that Saturday night we would
have a bonfire and a BBQ. OK so a BBQ in 2’C is a little different to 22’C but
it was just as nice even if the dress code was padded orange boiler suits and made us look as
if we were all inmates from a federal prison, and it was lovely to return to
the bonfire for a beer once Hazel and I had gone and put the last coat of paint
on the bow.
 |
| Bonfire |
 |
| Angle grinding |
 |
| A lot of wire brushes . . . |
 |
| Hazel angle grinding |
 |
| Nearly done . . . |
 |
| Wire brush: right new, left used |
The other thing that has been going on this week is ‘Race
Antarctica’. Normally this is organised by BAS HQ at Cambridge and the bases
have to make teams and race for the equivalent distance of crossing Antarctica
but this year things have been made a little smaller. The Doc at Halley is in
charge and we are doing half the distance between all the British bases.
However that is still 1996km which is a fair old way. Different activities have
different weighting. If you walk or cycle then it is 1:1. Ski (cross country,
not downhill), crosstrainer and running is 1:1.5 and Rowing is 1:2. So if you
row 7km then you can put 14km towards the race etc. Each day the people with
the 4 greatest distances make up the base team and the data is being sent back
to the Doc at Halley to keep track. Luckily Hazel has a turbotrainer on her
bike so we have been putting some goodish distances on that.
We are at a slight disadvantage at this base compared to the
others because the winter season is actually our busiest with ships coming in
etc so we are not able to put in as many hours as we would like but we have
still managed a good start and with a less hectic week next week we should
hopefully be able to get into a routine and start ticking the miles off. I
think I might go see if the bicycle is free to get some miles on before dinner.
Hopefully this event should have us all fitter and healthier which is only a
good thing.
Only 1635.9km to go. . .
No comments:
Post a Comment