I now know how to varnish. Period. I’ve put the time in. I’ve visited the importer for Epifanes varnish in Maine. I’ve read the book. I know the different properties of Wood Finish and High Gloss. I’ve scraped and sanded and acetoned and tack cloth wiped. I’ve done 25% and 5% and splash mixes with thinners.

I have a table in a notebook of how many coats have been applied to different areas of the boat and when sanding is needed between coats. And tomorrow will be the start of the final two High Gloss coats before we get relaunched. The weather is set, the brushes are ready and the platform (trellis) is in place. And then hopefully I will start to talk about something other than varnishing. I have become a varnishing bore. Be grateful you are far away.

Two things to report from the weekend. We had a particularly snazzy brand new black hire car. Laura the manager at Enterprise looked after us well. We unsurprisingly book the cheap and cheerful, less than ten pounds a day option when we choose to have a car. The cheap Kia or Noddy car equivalent. To drive away in a 3.5 litre V6 thing which had quite a bit of poke in sport mode was a driving treat. It was slightly embarrassing to take it back with assorted boat yard dirt staring out from the black carpet foot wells.

Trips to Enterprise have been a little like living in an episode of the Archers. I’d describe the Archers as a BBC radio soap opera for middle class people if you have never heard of it before. Think that’s fair. Anyway, Enterprise offer this great pick up and drop off service which works a treat. A retired police officer  who’d I’ve never met before gave me a lift back to the boatyard one day and after chatting for a while, I said, I know your wife Cheryl. You live in Newport. He was dumbfounded. She had cut my hair a few weeks earlier. Small world.

Then there was the serving Marine who did a bit of driving on his days off. I asked him about the sparkly equipment the American military provide and he laughed and said, ah, the stuff we get to use is from the 1970’s and we spend all our time fixing it. The sparkly stuff only comes out for Military shows.

And finally the sales assistant who was involved in a paternity test after finding out on a ski holiday that an ex girlfriend of his was 7 months pregnant and he may be the father. Turns out he wasn’t but he had an interesting two weeks getting his head round that little scenario. It made for a somewhat more interesting conversation than just talking about the weather. Why he chose to tell me this stuff I have no idea. Script writers get yourselves down to Enterprise. It’s a microcosm of life.

We took the car to the Newport Pig Cookin’ Contest. A bit of North Carolina madness. Think Hog Roast on steroids. We ate pig then left.