With the weather warming up it is time to tackle the remaining tasks I have on my list for Naiad. Of the 48 tasks I wrote out originally, 11 have been completed, 4 have been postponed due to lack of finances, 1 is not going to be done and of the 32 tasks still remaining, 16 are varnish or paint related. Fortunately, it's just the temperature that was slowing me down on these, with Naiad safely in the hay barn, wet and windy weather is no longer a concern. Well, as long as it isn't blowing a hoolie from the North West as that is the only direction where the wind blows on to Naiad.

The plan for the weekend is to scrape, sand and put one coat of varnish on all the exterior brightwork and then in subsequent days, try to get anther coat of varnish applied each day until there are sufficient coats for this season.

Once that is all done a few hardware related tasks will be tackled, such as mug holders for the cockpit, something that is really lacking, in order to give the varnish time to harden whereupon the decks, coachroof and poop deck will be repainted.

That's the plan. We'll see how well it goes.

The starboard toerail was scraped, sanded and varnished fairly shortly after Naiad was taken out of the water last year and yesterday I started on the port side. However, I forgot to take any photos of the section completed. The above shows that toerail from the chainplates to the stern. Where the varnish has cracked and flaked, I scraped it down to bare wood. The whole thing was then sanded with 80 grit sandpaper.

It makes quite a mess but it is easy to brush off once the sanding has been done.

At the stern, the boom crutch supports were unscrewed and the back of the cockpit upstand was scraped and sanded.

And here we go with the varnish. I haven't bothered to sand all the grey out, there's not a lot of point as far as I'm concerned. It is a lot of extra work and would remove a fair bit of the wood.

It looks quite good, even with just one coat. Mind you, once it has soaked into the areas where the wood is bare, it won't look quite so nice and the dust and flying insects will probably also mar the rest of the finish, but that isn't a concern for me either. With the non-waterproof workshop I have at the moment, I wouldn't be able to get a decent finish on the varnish and paintwork anyway, so there's no point in trying too hard to achieve that.

Now, once the workshop is waterproof again, well that will be a completely different mater.

Moving on, the aft cockpit upstaged was also varnished before moving into the workshop.

These are the two boom crutch supports after they have been sanded down on the outside. Sanding the inside is going to be tricky so I'll leave that for the moment.

First coat of varnish applied to these makes them look really nice.

And finally, the front face of the poop deck is also scraped, sanded and varnished.

So, a good few hours work done today and one or two task ticked off the list.

Time for a cup of tea.