Rusty bottom

Today the guys at the docks have been taking the layer of old paint of the the hull ready for a repainting. Underneath the old blue is this horrible rusty looking orange colour, thankfully a crack squad of painters are coming to paint over it soon with our classic Glassboat blue colour.

English Ash

Ash
Ash

The inside of the lounge roof is also to get a good seeing to. Off with the old wooden sheeted roof and on with the English ash wood. This will be treated and should polish up nicely.

COMMENTS PLEASE

When we reopen in June I think we should celebrate. What do you think would be best?, an introductory period of discounted food prices to sample our fine cuisine in the sumptuous new surroundings or lashings of free champagne for everyone? Personally I'm in favour of the latter as it's our 21st birthday. Any Ideas welcome, Cheers.

Peace man

The weather has been kind for roof work..

Listening to the hard working good folk of Bristol who want peace and quite in their meetings were going to rip this old noisy sod off, be away with it all together. With the generator cleverly located elsewhere & the roof re wooded and pined in place the lounge will now be a haven of tranquillity.

The offending generator..

We've taken the opportunity to install a new ceiling in the lounge area of the the boat ( the upstairs end nearest to Bristol Bridge) as the old one was alright but it was home to one of the loudest generators ever. Any one that's tried to hold a meeting in there will tell you that every now and then an almighty humming and throbbing starts up above the ceiling and it feels like your about to set sail. It is in fact the generator for the three large walk in fridges in the kitchen...

New Hull please

The idea is to give the Glass boat a reinforced hull, not that the other one had holes in, in order to protect the bottom for longer. This means that we will be able to stay in the water for longer without having to come out to dry dock every five years or so. We usually come out of water in January and every one thinks that the restaurant has either closed down or sunk, but now with our super strong hull insuring us for twenty years of sea worthiness we wont be missed at all, great. Now all you have to do is find a sheet of thick steel, say 35 meters by 7 meters in size, drop your said boat onto it and then bend up the edges, pour in some light weight concrete, leave to set and then solder the edges shut. Simple. The sheet steel was laid out in the dry dock and the Glass boat sailed in above. The water was drained out and on the top she sat...

Sparks are flying:

Whats that with an angle grinder, is it an Arne, is it an Arne???

Foot prints:

Bristol Bridge..

The Aft foot print..

Barely a bar foot print..

The reconstruction of the bar really has been on the cards for some time. It’s one of those bars that are massive but there’s never any room behind it. Any more than 2 staff and it was a nightmare to work which particularly bad when we had functions or weddings on board and the bar was mobbed. Here’s the new construction in its foot print infancy.

Cheese..


The reconstructed stern of the boat is to be strengthened with iron girders, here your can see the first build foot print. The stern, or Aft as its known from the inside, has hosted many couples taking advantage of our civil ceremony license by tying the knot and is a great visual vantage point with panoramic views of Bristol Bridge (top) and the floating harbour. We are to use our dry docking time to enhance this by replacing the tired looking per specs windows with new strengthened glass. The glass is made in Italy and is cleverly designed to only let in certain rays that maintain a cool temperature and are not blinding, although the cost of it doesn’t boast those qualities!

Back to bare bones.

Some of the fixtures and fittings are taken away to storage but most were skipped. I had phone calls from other restaurants to ask if there was anything of worth for them but sadly I told them it was all knackered. But that didn’t stop some people going through the skips; one local artist took a really old large stock pot, which must have made 100 swimming pools full of various meat stocks, so that he could melt down some metals! Old metal shelves and racks also found new homes, skillets, pots and pans were hot items.

Chef Matt Woods looks above for divine inspiration in his bare bones kitchen...

On any large scale project the easy part is the rip out, it’s good fun and it doesn’t take long, results are quick to see. In these pics of the old kitchen after the rip out the metal ribs of the boat take on a skeletal look..

Docked

The dock workers waste no time in using the giant cranes cladding the boat in scaffolding..