The devil to pay and no pitch hot In english explanation

The expression was originally nautical because 'pay’ meant to seal a ship’s seams with tar. As regular readers will already know the ‘devil’ was the name of the longest seam of a ship, which ran from stem to stern and supported the gun deck. It was also the most difficult seam to reach and when repairing a ship in dry dock sailors had to squat in the bilges to pay the devil.