Things have been really busy on the land in the last week. We’ve been planting trees and wiring up lights and testing out a new rainflow diverter that I’ve taken pictures of and will try to post over the next few days to get caught up on.

But first, I thought I would post an update on the ferry boat. We purchased some Shera floor planks and laid them down on top of the metal structure and coated it with several layers of color.

Here are a few pictures:

You can see on the right side the removable panels (another one is on the left side) that give access to the maintenance ports on the two pontoons.

In addition to painting it, we also bought 400kg of 1.125″ diameter steel rebar cut into 1m lengths. Here they are sitting in the sun drying out after we coated them in anti-rust paint.

Here it is loaded onto the boat in the L-shaped ballast area on the front and back of the pontoons:

Adding a few layers of the coloring, the ferry boat is sitting in the water in what is close to its final form:

Here is a close-up of the fiber cement Shera planks with about 4 layers of wood coloring added:

Next we will add a few layers of lacquer to protect it from the elements and the floor should be good to go.

Then we just have to add solar panels, a motor and propeller, and it will be ready to drive around the pond.