Thanks Jay for the prompt response!
(had my weekend off)

I have deleted the instances through nova as you suggested, I then see them being cleaned , which is Good! >
(undercloud) [stack@interop010 ~]$ openstack baremetal node list
+--------------------------------------+------------+---------------+-------------+--------------------+-------------+
| UUID                                 | Name       | Instance UUID | Power State | Provisioning State | Maintenance |
+--------------------------------------+------------+---------------+-------------+--------------------+-------------+
| 97b9a603-f64f-47c1-9fb4-6c68a5b38ff6 | interop025 | None          | power on    | clean wait         | False       |
| 4b02703a-f765-4ebb-85ed-75e88b4cbea5 | interop026 | None          | power off   | cleaning           | False       |
+--------------------------------------+------------+---------------+-------------+--------------------+-------------+

And after a while they become available >
(undercloud) [stack@interop010 ~]$ openstack baremetal node list
+--------------------------------------+------------+---------------+-------------+--------------------+-------------+
| UUID                                 | Name       | Instance UUID | Power State | Provisioning State | Maintenance |
+--------------------------------------+------------+---------------+-------------+--------------------+-------------+
| 97b9a603-f64f-47c1-9fb4-6c68a5b38ff6 | interop025 | None          | power off   | available          | False       |
| 4b02703a-f765-4ebb-85ed-75e88b4cbea5 | interop026 | None          | power on    | cleaning           | False       |
+--------------------------------------+------------+---------------+-------------+--------------------+-------------+

now I can start deployment as planned.
Igal
On 4 Mar 2021, at 20:12, Jay Faulkner <jay.faulkner@verizonmedia.com> wrote:

 are provisioned (active) are not able to be moved to manageable state.