Cambria’s bow looking very clean after her painting by Sea Change; Photo by Dave Brooks
While we are still “on the blocks” at Pinmill I thought it would be nice to share another photo with you taken by Dave Brooks. This really just to show you how nice, clean and grey she looks in her new paint. This bow area, particularly has been a problem to keep looking neat due to the bleeding of tar (bitumen?) through between planks outwards, leaving us with a horizontal version of zebra striping. This is not a problem in ‘soundness terms’ (better tar leaking out than water leaking in!) and is seen as a good thing and common in brand new barges, especially where the bow and sides are double skin, like ours, overlapping but stepped like brick-work, with a layer of bitumen-soaked tar felt between the 1 and a half inch (I think?) planks. The spiking down of the outer skin puts such pressure on the tar felt layer that it bleeds out between planks (inwards and outwards).
Even when we were first painting the hull, before she was launched we would faithfully roller on a layer of the silver-grey only to find it ‘spoiled’ (in the eyes of we volunteer, beginner-ish painters) by the next morning, especially in warm weather. We’d let it ‘dry’ (of course it never really did), try to clean it off and then repaint, only for the bleeds to come back again. Eventually she was launched like this and we just had to explain to everyone that this was OK and she might do it for 5 years or so before she eventually settled down.
Well, now the Sea Change Sailing Trust have had a go at painting her again. We’ll see whether they get the same issue as the “Summer” progresses.
Tomorrow, a nice report by Boss of Volunteers, Basil Brambleby from the Faversham Nautical Festival which took place last weekend and at which the Cambria Trust had a stand.
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