Bit of a mixed bag really........

I spent most of yesterday with the music blaring in the shed busily measuring and cutting cloth for the penultimate assault on the keels happy in the knowledge i'd be fully prepped with no worries about today's job in hand - that of three further laminations around the keels stubs.

The start went flawlessly and considering the size of the panels and accessibility was chuffed to nuts when in under two hours i had the first panel rolled and taped i then stopped for coffee thinking i'd knock this out in a few more hours as each panel size is decreasing, but oh know there always something.

I think where i loaded the area up with an almost filler-like consistency of cabosil and wests it acted like a magnet to the cloth - the minute it touched the surface regardless of where you wanted it it had stuck so trying to remove and reposition meant pulling the previous layer up such was the adhesion.

Still undeterred i threw the offending piece of cloth over my shoulder and grabbed another one and proceeded to do exactly the same, by now you'd have thought i'd learned my lesson so after the third piece of cloth i pushed the sign over the door to 'sulking' and sat at the bench for ten minutes cutting three new panels whilst seething and the heap of waste by my feet.

Weird stuff epoxy; sometimes it works and sometimes its like pushing water uphill, i finally got the job done around 7pm tonight having started at 8am thoroughly knackered but pleased with the results just trying to muster the motivation to do it all again on the port side..........

cheers

rog

......I'll need to see the paperwork

When i was young and very ginger as a child - no one likes a ginger kid  - i used to go to the boat shows with my family, a sort of twice yearly pilgrimage first to Earl's Court then Southampton - for me i loved the spectacle and clambering all over the boats much to the annoyance of the attending sales staff but what i liked most was collecting the brochures.

I couldn't tell you where my collection went but a few years back started collecting via ebay and a couple of other online outlets, i thought i'd lost the lot when reformatting an old drive but much to my surprise i've recovered more than a few - heres the westerly collection......................

Watcha cock!

My new sea-cocks from shakewell have arrived this evening, its a bit controversial to some as sea cocks are made of bronze and that's that but for me the essence of the project is to improve the boat using design and technology not previously available when the boat was manufactured.

The sea-cocks fulfil this criteria as i was crap at chemistry and have a difficult time getting my head around galvanic corrosion so the less metally things in the water can only be a bonus.

These sea-cocks need to be bonded into the hull and through using west system epoxies and additives i know how strong a bond can be created so I'm confident they will be as strong if not stronger than conventionally fitted valves. A fact borne out as all the old sea-cocks i removed were on rotten ply bases which allowed more than a few to rotate and generally become loose in the hull.

Maintenance is required although less with these and the marelon type products than conventional sea-cocks and with no need for a skin fitting as you mount them slightly proud in the hull and sand flush the cost too was significantly less than conventional fittings (even though they were paid for in Helsinki and shipped via Vigo in Spain) so all in all this was a no-brainer for me.

cheers

roger

Back to it

I've finally got some time to work on the boat, so picking up where i left off in August......jesus wheres the year gone........anyway having wrestled the boat off the cradle like steve irwin with a crocadile it seemed fitting to try and finish the hull.

My start point to my embarrassment was the strips of gelcoat where the cradle endplates rested on the hull whilst it was obvious they needed cutting away and glassing in with the usual two layers of cloth and peel ply -  fairly straight forward but somehow in my haste to get the boats hull filled and faired i had forgot to join the three main panels together.

Having dug out the grinder i set about cutting into the fairing compound around the waterline to find where the bow section met the mid section met the stern section, i got all of them opened up and taped everything and then peel plied. All that was left was an 8' x 4' panel in the centre of the boats belly.

I never enjoy doing overhead work but the few panels i've done have largely succeeded by making the panels small so using the tube technique but on a larger scale i was amazed how easy it was to cover such a large area so quickly and against the forces of gravity, here take a look.

More sooner rather than later now i'm no longer living and working on the isle of wight.

Cheers roger

Now its time............

Having been granted a weeks leave from operation 'chaos' on Jekyll island (IOW) i thought it about time i grasp the thorny issue of getting the boat off of its cradle and onto the ground (or as close as possible).

Having performed David Blaine-esque feats on this project before with nothing more than a pallet truck, a cup of coffee and the look of a dinlow i thought to chance my arm one more time and do the job of raising some three tonnes of boat first up in the air balancing on four car jacks and then 'control' the descent to the floor minus the cradle.

It was during the early stages of jacking up each side that i remembered the mass of the keels is concentrated in the front half as the boat appeared to be taking a bow all be it very slowly but still a problem. My worse fears came to pass when with all four jacks pretty much at full extension the boat slowly started moving forward!

Whilst remaining calm i eased each jack a little but on seeing the boat moving ever closer to the front wall of the shed i panicked and opened the bleed screws on both jacks, with an almighty 'thud' the back of the boat landed back down on the sleepers, only now it was popping a wheelie. I got the bottle jack out of my van and hastily scribed a block of wood to the profile of the bow and chocked the front so it couldn't move.

At the end of the play yesterday i felt like i'd run a marathon, with the boat firmly on terrafirma i spent today boarding over the floor so i can get on glassing the hull.

roger

Rings around the world.

I hadn't realised blogger re-designed their admin software so you can now see from what countries people are viewing your site.

To my surprise this site is well known throughout the globe as far a field as South Korea and China but is most popular in the US, UK, France and interestingly Russia as well as a host of other EU countries. So with that in mind i have added a gadget that translates the site into 1 of 53 different languages.

Hope it helps...................

Oh yeah, nearly forgot i have finally got round to structurally securing the keels to the hull by taping each keel joint with three successively wider laminations (100mm, 200mm, 300mm) of bi-axial cloth. The keels now look moulded-in and will be interested to see how they perform when out on the water as to whether it goes some way to alleviating the stresses on that area of the boats structure.

Happy Holidays

Roger

Take a pebble

Had an away-day today as i needed a few things before i could do anymore work, principally the rudder is the centre of attention at the moment strange as its sat under the boat for the last two years since i built it.

Something the old man never did from day one was to replace the rudder bushes,  the original tufnol ones are looking more than a little secondhand so took the opportunity to visit Trafalgar Yacht Services near Portsmouth, very helpful people they were too.

After what seemed like an age i got the rudder dry-fitted to find the fit less than impressive and a little puzzling as i took the top angle of the blade directly from the original before butchering it for the rudder stock, an hour later and i had the rudder moving freely on its stock minus 10mm off the top of the blade.

Next i bonded the skeg on via an incredibly thick mix of wests and a couple of wedges, the positioning of which was done by eye as there is no other way, i'll finish 'bogging' it out tomorrow but other than that i'm very pleased with my new rudder