tanks. The fittest tanks! I was walking over the bridge to the boat and there they were being delivered. Cath and Tom were trying to find a way to get them out of the van and into the boat. So they carried them through the mooring and then lowered the tanks through the hole in the roof by tying rope to the handles on the tanks and lowering them down. They are Tek Tanks and apparently very handsome according to all who saw them. They are new and shiny and nothing like the rotting old metal horrors that lived in the boat before. They are made of plastic and they have brightly coloured valves.
On a different note Tom has already laid down pipes and insulation around the pipes and all sorts, I had to hand over lots of money for various things I don’t understand, like ‘Hi Grip S.S. Clip 35-50mm’ and ‘Hex. Nipple 1 1/2’. I wonder what they are and I understand that they are related to pipes and pipe fitting. He’s plumbing the entire boat, and it’s quite impressive. He was telling me about how he studied marine engineering at college. He’s very innovative and knows a lot. I clearly know very little. But I know some things and I’m learning.
My biggest worry at the moment is getting carried away with everything and spending way more than we have. It’s very difficult not to want to do everything as you look around and see how nice it would be to put a porthole here, and a skylight there. But we haven’t even got a functioning toilet, shower or kitchen. And those are the essentials. At the moment we’re hacking away at everything and it scares me how much more we’re doing. I suppose it’s not more than we originally planned, but as you start to do it, you realise how everything is connected and one thing leads to another.
The thing with boats is that you really need to cap the amount you spend on them because they will rarely become an investment in the conventional sense. There is a decided top-line to what a boat can ever be worth. You see boats for sale at the same price as houses- and some are really amazing and beautiful- but they end up on the market for years and years because no one can get the finance together to borrow that much (with boats you need capital- you can get a marine mortgage like we did but it’s not like getting a house mortgage, it takes a lot of dedication) and fundamentally, no one wants to spend that much on a boat. So you need to be realistic about what a boat can ever be worth- no matter how nice. A boat our size is good- it’s not so big, but if we spend too much we’ll lose out. Anyway, I shall be keeping my beady little eyes as close to the action as possible.
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