Today it was myself, Martin Hale, Jacky Lindley and Ian Price-Smith travelled up To Portsmouth. Jacky spent some of the day practising with her new video camera and interviewing a lot of the IBTC staff, real fly on the wall stuff. Martin set to cleaning up the wheelhouse, this included removing a lot of superfluous bits and pieces on the walls and giving it a good tidy and clean with the IBTC hoover. Ian had a go in the engine room trying to remove the two last bolts from the prop shaft coupling but to no avail. I removed the tank breather pipes on both tanks and they are now in the stores in PC3.
Man of the Match was definitely Martin Hale, we had a short day because we are running out of things to do and partially getting in the way of IBTC staff but in a way that is good because we are talking to them and they are a very good bunch of people.
I think we are close to being able to take the engine and tanks out. After talking to Alan and taking a look today it would appear that the only two things holding the tank in is a reverse gallows bracket screwed down on top of the tank and a long piece of timber going along the base of the tank. Perhaps this is a job for the next visit. Also, taking the graphics off the timber in the wheelhouse, on the back external wall of the wheelhouse and also on the glass.
