Getting There

Hello again, dear readers. It's been a while, I know. I've got a lot to update you on. We've been beavering away at this boat of ours for the last six months, and at last it's taking shape. I say 'we'; I mean 'Peter'. My role has mostly been as sympathetic (and only occasionally bored) listener to all the woes and troubles that come with turning a beholed wreck of a boat into a pleasant place to live, and, if I'm feeling very ambitious, holding a screw in place so a nut can be fastened on to it. A couple of times I've been mistaken for a boat builder, but I can't say that I've earnt the label.

This is not how a boat's hull is suppose to look

The boat has, however, been transformed beyond all recognition. Except for the fact that she's the biggest boat in sight wherever you go, which is, I suppose, one very easy way to recognise her. Otherwise, though...

The first thing on our long, long list of jobs was to get rid of the sheer volume of crap she was carrying. That and fixing the holes in her hull. We definitely didn't want to keep those. As Peter dug further and further into her depths, he discovered all sorts of things we absolutely hadn't expected. The cockroaches, admittedly, which we discovered in their hundreds, weren't too much of a surprise, even though Peter had let off three bug bombs when the boat was still in the Caribbean to try to get rid of them. The tree frog he found huddled in a forward locker, looking rather the worse for wear for its voyage, was another matter. What on earth do you do with a tropical tree frog that gets accidentally uprooted to the UK? Peter ended up taking it to the water and hoping for the best. At least with the heat this summer it won't have been quite so much of a shock compared to its usual habitat.




We went through three skips' worth of rubbish, and for a while the boat looked even more dispiritingly wrecked than it had to start off with. It didn't help that, once Peter had cleared all the obvious rubbish off the boat, like the multiple non-functional starter motors someone had for whatever reason decided to hang on to, he started tearing apart the interior fittings. The headlining covering the walls wasn't exactly pretty, but the bare fibreglass beneath, with bits of foam from the headlining still clinging to it, was even less so.

Halfway through tearing everything out. That's insulation
 that looks like someone's being chewing bits out of it.

Pretty much everything had to go, even the floors, which had become so sodden after Penguin's almost-sinking that they were positively dangerous. It took a good week of twelve hour days for him to get through it all, but eventually he had a reasonably clear, if not attractive, space to work in.




While a qualified professional set about making the holes in the hull not be holes anymore (we figured that was the kind of thing we didn't want to take any chances with), Peter began fitting new floors, which first involved re-fibreglassing in supports for all the floors, as all the joists were rotten too. It was messy work, but before long we were in a position where everything but the floors was a mess, which was a significant improvement upon everything including the floors being a mess.

With the floors in place, everything else was much easier, now that we no longer had to balance on the tops of water tanks to walk around. While everything was bare, Peter turned his attention to fully plumbing and wiring the entire boat, starting entirely from scratch. In place of a jumble of confused wires that were just begging to be turned into an electrical fire, he established a well-ordered system, every wire labelled, and returning to a dedicated electricity cabinet.

Peter took great pleasure in his system and his label-maker, but electrickery safety is important! The biggest risk of us ever running into major danger is from an electrical fire, which would probably burn down the entire boat to the waterline, so we aren't taking chances.

We also fully insulated every wall of the boat, and it took on a strange, spaceship like appearance thanks to the silvery foil backing on the insulation.

With these basics complete, it was possible to move on to some more fun bits, like putting in parts of the kitchen and adding worksurfaces. Things like a shiny new fridge, hob and sink made what was still essentially a shell of a boat into something that could plausibly one day be a home.

While Peter was slaving away all summer inside a very hot boat, our engines were serviced and a lovely old gentleman, who works part time to get out of the house (and, he claims, away from his wife), steadily filled in and covered over all the cracks and dents in our outer gel coat, until she gleamed again. We took the opportunity, while she was out of the water, to remove all her old anti-foul (a nasty but useful substance that theoretically prevents any marine life from clinging to the bottom of a boat) and replaced it with a new coating, in black. We also painted over the navy blue stripes down her sides with grey, and suddenly (from the outside at least) she was transformed into a boat that looked positively sleek.

All too soon, it was time for her to be returned to the water. Much as we like having a boat in the water, it's much easier to work on one when it's sitting stably on land. Plus, it was a very short walk from our flat to the boatyard. Still, there was no room for us to stay. It was both terrifying and thrilling to watch Penguin dipping her toes in the sea again before floating, just as boats are supposed to do. Very terrifying, in fact, given that the yard staff weren't keen to give us an absolute guarantee that they could even get her back in - she's about the biggest boat they've ever attempted.

Ready and waiting to return to the water

Thankfully, it was a perfectly calm day - not bad going for late September - meaning that she was  dropped with impressive precision into the water with no wobbles and at least an inch to spare on either side, and I had no trouble manoeuvring her into the distinctly tight spot she would occupy until we took her to her new home a week later.

Before that, though, we had one very exciting task to complete - giving her a name. With the utmost care, a fair bit of swearing, and the sacrifice of our knees on her hard back deck, we transferred the letters to her stern. Suddenly, she seemed to be coming along rather quickly.

A few days later, we proceeded out of Emsworth marina - very carefully indeed, as it was, if anything, even narrower than when we arrived thanks to the position of the other boats. It was the first time we'd travelled anywhere in her without slowly sinking. The trip itself was an uneventful hour and a half (to travel what was a three minute drive down the road), and although it was awkward getting in to the marina that was her new home, thanks to its shallow waters that left little room for manoeuvre, we were soon tied up and Peter was back to work, naturally enough.

We were starting to get to the point where we could do exciting bits - like putting walls and ceilings up. Even after months of labour, the inside didn't really feel much different, except for the spaceship-like effect from all the foil-covered insulation. As the bright white ceilings and walls began to go up, though, the boat was transformed - suddenly everything appeared brighter and lighter. It started to be possible to imagine her as a pleasant place to live.

Every time a new wall went up, the wreck she was when we first got her faded further into distant memory. Peter's had mental image of what she'll eventually be like in his mind all along, but it's taken a lot longer for me to be able to share his vision of our finished home. Now, though, it's unbelievably exciting to think that we'll be able to move on board in only a couple of months.

I am so excited about this bookcase

This brings us almost up to date now. Practically all the walls are finished, with the exception of a couple of particularly tricky bits, and Peter is working on the finer trimmings, such as white oak edging strips and mini penguin logos. Excitingly, he's almost completed my two bookcases - one of which doubles as a window seat - which will be the thing to really make the boat feel like home to me. The only major thing left to add is soft furnishings - which we'll leave until the last minute, when the boat has stopped being a workshop. Oh, and doors. We could do with some doors.








Now we just have to work out where we want to go. Perhaps it's the effect of being in one place in the darkest month of the year, but we're feeling quite adventurous. There isn't anywhere we can't go in Excessive Penguin, and at the moment we rather feel there isn't anywhere we wouldn't like to go. The open ocean is beckoning - who knows, we could even circumnavigate.

We might be getting a little ahead of ourselves - we haven't even tried out her sails yet. But the possibilities are endless, and that's what having a boat is all about.

That, and this.