Varnish, Fame and War

Apologies for the lack of recent blog posts. It has been a hectic couple of weeks and the time rather got away from me. The weather has, largely, continued to be fantastic, and so work on the deck has also continued. Although it is incredibly time consuming, and the weather in the South West being as temperamental as it is adding a certain amount of gamble to each coat, varnishing continues to be my favourite job. The combined efforts of Keith and his family brought our down rails back to the original wood, and they are looking stunning! They have been positively glowing in the sunlight. Wooden boats take an awful lot of upkeep, but when the sun shines off the varnished teak it is really worthwhile.

It seems like we are not the only people to think that Teka is a pretty boat. Part of the recent hectic-ness was my birthday, and Keith was bizarrely excited about my birthday card. What could have possibly been on it that he was virtually jumping up and down to give it to me? None other than our Teka. Bought from a card shop on Portishead high street, it was a photo of the marina, with our boat front and centre. We are famous! It is a little odd to think that there may be complete strangers out there with a picture of our home on their fridge door. It does reinforce our obsession with varnish, though. She really is a very beautiful boat, and we want to keep her that way. The cover of Classic Boat magazine, here we come!

There is a negative element to all this aesthetic work though. We have declared war. Our opponents don’t actually know that we have declared war yet, but we have. As mentioned before, there is a lot of wildlife around. On the whole, this is really enjoyable. Unfortunately, we have developed a seagull problem. Or, more specifically, a seagull poo problem. They keep sitting at the top of our mizzen mast and going to the toilet. The guano sets like Roman concrete! The most infuriating thing isn’t that we have apparently become an avian loo, but that it seems only to be us. We haven’t seen any on any other boat, even those which are left mostly unattended. When we asked the guys on our current port-side neighbour boat, Sea Grass, they denied any such problem. We are by no means the only masted ship, nor do we have the tallest masts. While it is rarer than fibreglass, we are not even the only wooden boat. So why us? We have nob idea. We have contemplated buying a bird scarer: one that is shaped like a hawk, but given the violent attacks by the seagulls on the buzzards which occasionally visit we aren’t sure about how long it would survive. It might even draw the seagulls as they ‘defend’ themselves and their patch. Send help?