Back to work!

Not real work although i have got a weeks worth at the end of this week so i guess having everything ready for primer at the end of June has gone for a burton still could do with the money tbh. Just spent the entire day fighting the rudder tube assembly, i wanted to remove the rotten plywood pad the boss sits on and also when it comes to painting i want the minimum of masking so no chance of any paint peeling.

I had this down as an hours work this morning but hadn't banked on it not playing ball and so ended up wasting most of the day in the workshop fashioning various tools out of mild steel to undo said boss. As is always the case the tool that worked was stupidly simple - a piece of 50mm flat bar about a foot long with two notches cut in to fit around the two pins on the boss, (Centaur owners will know what i mean) and bobs yer uncle.

As of writing i have just got done, such was the effort i've had enough for today plus i smell of wd40 & acetone so beer-a-clock me thinks and back to the cockpit drains and bulkheads tomorrow.

cheers

Full ahead stop!

Have come back from Bournemouth Hospital having had my left knee x-rayed and have found the reason why i've been hobbling around the last few days.

It turns out i've damaged the medial ligament in my left knee. Funny really as i had an ace day out on Sunday on a friends Beneteau 285 and the pain seemed to ease either that or as i think was the case i was still drunk from the night before.

Still we had 8.5 knots of boat speed at one point but i did have it on her ear the entire time from Cowes back to Ocean Village, great fun though getting into an impromptu race with a Sadler 29 and a Dufour 325, we beat the Dufour and had caught the Sadler up but then he unfurled his genoa and left us for dead.

However after getting home i sat down for an hour or so then went to get up and realised i could hardly walk and it just got worse throughout Monday, i remember it hurting when i got up from tabbing in a bearer for the gas locker bulkhead but thought nothing of it.

So i've been told to rest my knee for a week or two which is a bit of a pain as all the work for the foreseeable future requires crawling around on my hands and knees.

Cheers

Almost down to a crawl

Managed to hurt my knee quite badly just my putting all my weight on it via a blob of hardened resin - bloody painful so i have awarded myself a day off (Sat).

Still pushing the jobs through though its funny as its a a bit chicken and egg at the moment in terms of to get one job done i have to undo another.

For example i need to cut the floor away in the aft locker to get access to rudder tube and then this creates access problems to the rest of the area so tabbing in bulkheads blind or at best using a shaving mirror placed in the bilge isn't helping things move none too quick, but progress is progress i guess.

I really don't want this to run past another week as i'm tiring of squeezing myself into spots that are slightly smaller than me.

Slowing down a bit.

Yes the reality of the task is setting in not that i'm surprised but it must be said working on my own is wearing me down of late, i'm still ticking jobs off but the original time frame was 4-6 weeks to get the deck moulding up together to prime.

Well i've had a few work commitments to fulfil but other than that have spent the rest of my time on the boat but somehow it doesn't look any different - its funny had a guy come over to pick up an outboard i'd sold him via ebay and got talking to him about this.

Turns out he was at Southampton Institute the same time i was studying yacht design, he was on the boat manufacture course in the same faculty he encouraged me saying in a few weeks it will suddenly take shape as you pull all these seemingly disparate jobs together. Needless to say he's no longer in boat building, no money in it - i feel this way with cabinet making (the job i had before going to uni and the one i subsequently returned to after dropping out).

So with this encouragement and the fact works scarce i'm still driving through the jobs one of which was cutting away the floors in the back of the boat this included adding two longitudinal bulkheads also got the toe rails cut and glassed in.