Stuart ‘Billy no mates’ returned to LJ all by himself, because Nina decided she important things to do at home, with a mountain to climb; the polishing of 86 feet of blue gel coat. The second problem was having to live in the boat, in a cradle with no running water and no useable toilet.
Just so my reader is aware blue is quite possibly the worst colour in the world for boats as they oxidise in the sun and go very dull. LJ has a black belt at doing this, and I feared that she would never come back to her original deep blue lustre. So, armed with a scaffold tower, eight days to play with and an electric polisher fired up, off we went.
For once I wanted dull days and no sun and whilst the north side was a perfect location to polish the south side was sun drenched. In order to beat the sun it was necessary to get up at ‘Stupid-o-clock’ and equally work way past ‘Beer-o-clock’ to work in any form of shade.
A week later the results spoke volumes. It’ll be at least another couple of years until I have to do it all again.
8 days later Nina flew into Nantes and joined me on the boat which was still in the cradle, up a ladder with no running water and other aforementioned facilities. Being the gentleman that I am I even gave her the new bucket, the big one.