Beric and Boris

Dad can't resist another opportunity to go paint Cambria. She's pretty much done and is, and should now be, spending her life earning money, doing charters and educational stuff, which means away from Faversham, generally. So the fun project, which has kept Dad off the streets for the last three years is pretty much coming to an end. Today there were only him and the 'Boss of Volunteers' Basil down there, Basil doing a bit of varnishing, Dad painting pale yellow onto recently fitted wooden cleats and the main 'horse'. Dad also gets involved in the job of hoisting the masts of Sailing Barge Beric back up. The gear was lowered yesterday to allow the sails to be taken off and sent away for repair, and had to be raised again today to get the masts back out of the way of the imminent deck repairs.

Part way through the morning, 2CV Llew turns up at the barge to leave 9-month-old Boris with us. We are babysitting him again while Llew and a chum sail the chum's 40 foot yacht over to Boulougne and back. It might be just one night but, as is the way of these things, it is at mercy of weather and tide and , says Llew, I may or may not be back Monday night.

Although Llew is, in theory, in a hurry to go take the maybe-ex-but-we're-not-sure girlfriend to a charity garden party, Dad tempts him down below decks with the fully equipped galley and offer of a cup of tea.

Dad is then amused by Llew and Basil, who are both fans of keeping boats 'traditional' chuntering about 'yottie' barges with fancy skylights, modern domestic interior lighting, sophisticated electrics and possibly even (soon) radar! (Gasp!) Llew is only teasing and Basil is laughing as he explains patiently that whilst in Denmark and Norway the governments supports old barges kept as museum pieces, here the barge has to pay its way. That means offering the possible paying charter guests a certain level of home comfort, i.e. 'yottie luxury', hot showers, warm dry bunks with duvets and pillows, good cooking facilities and so on.

Ah well, the silver lining on the Boris-shaped-invasion cloud is that Boris doesn't do sleeping alone downstairs and creates such a fuss it's easier to let all the dogs off the sleep-in-the-kitchen rule, so as long as I can resist the temptation to pee on (Mum in the) bed we should be OK tonight.

Deefer

Out on the Cambria

So. How does Dad decide to spend his first day of leisure? On the Cambria, of course! He's down there with mate Dave B today as it is a bit of an "all hands on deck" last few days preparing the barge for her first session of chartering, which she needs to do to get some money pouring back into the coffers after all the (£1.4m) spend restoring her.

This is a sail training session for disadvantaged yoofs, a character building experience for them with a bit of hard physical work involved. That, in theory, is Monday. The barge, in fact, still looks like a building site in the last panic stricken hours before the house buyers turn up. Dad and Dave are helping by dragging lots of no-longer needed tools and hydraulic jacking equipment up out of the hold / "classroom" to stash them in one of the sheds. This earns them a cup of coffee from the Project Manager, William Collard, and permission to stay on board while the barge is towed out of her moorings, taken a few hundred yards upstream, and then turned round so that she can leave for her charter in a more dignified bow-first direction. So Dad can hardly contain himself - he has technically "been out on Cambria" all be it within the Creek and only for an hour. Never mind, though.

Then the ol' bu***r came back and clippered us to within an inch of our lives. Well, within 5mm of our skin, anyway. We are now very white and super-cool doggies, ready for whatever the next few weeks of heat-wave throws at us.....

Deefs

Duffing up the Boris Boy

Yup, Boris has fitted in quite nicely and is now available mornings and evenings for some serious duffing up by both me and Haggis. These pictures show us largely up the right way and Boris largely on his back, and that's how it should be, don't you agree.

Dad has to disappear down to Cambria to do his painterly duties and they are all delighted to find that SB Beric has snuck in on the evening tide and is now moored alongside. She is in to have some repairs done to her decks and this is seen as a SIGNIFICANT development given all the gloomy talk of the landlord evicting all the shipwrights from their workshops and preventing any repairs going on after Mid Summer's Day which is now only 9 days off. Beric's appearance suggests that this may not be the end of the story.

This afternoon's walk has us down through the allotments and out across the feilds and Dad, feeling a bit brave now that we all have name collars with the new, post-Erroll phone number on, lets Boris off the lead for a while. Boris stays around, but its me who vanishes into the waist-high oil seed rape and fails to re-appear for several minutes causing him palpitations. Got to keep the old bu***r on his toes.

Good luck

Deefs