Maiden Voyage

(first published on the 13th September 2005)

This was yesterday - the 12th of September (I'm not superstitious, but I wasn't going to launch today!) The first photo shows son Ed pushing the boat out - literally.



The second shows trials under power - Lugg rows easily and tracks well, although the rowlocks jump out of their sockets a little easily if you get the oar blade at the wrong angle.



The third and fourth show the little bugger actually sailing - which he does well: stable (I started out sitting on the floor but soon realised that it was fine to perch up on the centre thwart), a fair turn of speed for the hull length in a breeze, and safe. We had winds of force 1 to 3 only, but it seems that Lugg won't tack through less than 120 degrees in winds this light - inevitable for a small lug-rigged boat, I imagine.





I had a great time and I think Ed enjoyed himself too.

It's finished!

(first published 24th August 2005)

The past four weeks have seen a stream of visitors staying at our house (they all remembered Norfolk this summer), and it's been great to see everyone. But it hasn't helped Lugg's progress. Nor has the very changeable weather - no danger of a hosepipe ban here. But at last, by fitting in the work between visitors and rain, it is done.

The first thing was to get the hull finished completely (note the rowlocks - they were a fiddle):



Then I made the new rudder - a higher aspect ratio than the original, and with some attempt at a chord section (don't laugh when you see it, James):



The rudder was made from 12mm ply and the Optimist rudder fittings used. The hard part was the lump at the top for the tiller (I reused the original tiller as it looks nicely of an age with the boat. The original rudder just looked tatty.) Next I refurbished the centreplate, cutting out the soft part, filling and reshaping (another pseudo-chord section):



I think the colours clash nicely here. I might think about a bare wood handle for the centreplate at some point. Edmund will be pleased to hear that I took his advice and used a matt poly varnish on the rowing thwart - it now looks like the other oak in the boat; much better.

Finally I wheeled it out and stepped the mast and hoisted the sail:



The halyard is a foot too short and very old and ropey (Ha!), the sheet is an old bit of blue polyprop and also has to go, and I need a mooring cleat, so it's off to Wroxham this afternoon. Maiden voyage at the end of the week, weather permitting?

Look at that finish!

(first published 21st July 2005)

Three coats of epoxy on the gunwale timber and it's looking good if I say so myself! The centre thwart is not varnished 'cos your arse would slide all over the place when you were rowing if it was - it's bare oak.



(The blob on the nose is a piece of oak stuck on as a finial which is awaiting shaping - I've since faired it in and it looks good too.)

And here's a view of Lugg's derriere:



I've just started remodelling the centre plate, and I've ordered rudder fittings from some place in the Midlands called Purple Marine. Found them on the Internet and they're charging about one third of the price asked by the local (Wroxham) Chandler for these items.

Prediction: one more week.

Dunlaminatin'

(first published July 13th 2005)

That's what we should rename our house. It's been hours and hours of cutting and glueing and, latterly, planing and sanding, but now the gunwales are finished and ready to be varnished (with epoxy, of course!)



Now I should be able to make some real fast progress - after I've fixed the Landcruiser's clutch hydraulics, that is. But it is only a couple of weeks now if the weather holds; then, the maiden voyage.

Back again (in progress)

(first published 24th June 2005)

Not much done in the last week and a half due to very pleasant family life interlude, but I've got an outer skin of oak on the gunwales and started to laminate the tops, I've started to trim around the stern thwart, and I've roughed out a new centre-plate, though much remains to be done there. This shows the gunwale as it is at the moment.




Clearly the completion date has gone back at least a couple of weeks, but it won't be long!

Over, under, sideways, down

(first published 9th June 2005)

Time to turn Lugg back over, the paint having had three days to harden and me three days to garden. In this photo I've propped him up to extract the old centre plate.



This was struggle on my own (Linda having gone to RHS Wisley for the day), so when it was time to get him on his trailer I enlisted the help of Adrian, my next door neighbour, who seemed to welcome the break from fixing his brother in law's Land Rover.



Just the finishing touches now - a few more days work.

Gettin' there (as they say in Norfik)

(first published 4th June 2005)

This is starting to look something like! One coat of International One Pot Polyurethane Norfolk Green over one of Berger's Lead Grey Undercoat over three of Blake's Waterproof Primer. Am I getting sick of painting this hull? Is the bear a Catholic? But it's worth it.

There’s the rub

(first published 3rd June 2005)

Thought I was running out of corny titles did you?

The past three days have all been spent on the keel band and bilge runners. They're of English red oak and although not very thick they're almost tough enough. The most difficult bit was around the centre plate opening. I originally intended to make the whole keel band in one piece, but it was just too complex because of the original shape of the hull (it went up and down in the middle like nobody's business). So there are separate pieces each side and fore and aft of the opening. It's all held together with SP Systems best Epoxy Resin so it ain't gonna fall apart. The photos show it and the bilge runners finished and coated with epoxy. The next job (which may get done before the end of the day if the showers stop) is to undercoat the outside of the hull. Not long until we turn it back over for the finishing touches.

We have the technology . . .

(first published 28th May 2005)

There are now three coats of primer on the exterior, with rubbing down between, principally to get rid of the mini-dings that are all over the hull and which didn't show up until I painted it and then looked along the lines of the planks with the light in the right direction; so some I spotted in the morning and some in the afternoon - and each time I cursed! In each case it was a necessary to scrape off the paint in the area of the little ding, scratch up the surface of the gelcoat to ensure adhesion, level with polyester filler, sand it smooth, and repaint. So that's done now, t'ankeegod (cf Gerald Durrell), and it's taken three bloomin' days (cf Raymond Briggs).

The next job is the keel rubbing band. I started by epoxy-ing a thin (6mm) strip of red oak to the keel. I wasn't sure how to make the wood conform to the curve of the keel while it was glueing, but after much thought I arrived at this very high-tech solution. If you want to restore a dinghy like mine I can provide the major parts of this laminating kit very reasonably - say £10 per brick or slab?





Tomorrow I hope to be glueing a thicker (8mm) strip of oak to this initial strip given the time and decent weather. But it's a Bank Holiday on Monday, so I'd best get as much done before the rain as possible.

How I kept losing my wet edge, Missus

(first published 25th May 2005)

As today progressed the temperature went slowly up, the wind dropped and the sun came out. As this was the appointed day for applying the first coat of waterproof primer on the stripped and repaired hull it was interesting, to say the least. Keeping a wet edge on the paint was all but impossible, and it was touch dry in about 25 minutes instead of the three hours it said on the tin. And this is what it now looks like.



Two days ago I tack-ragged the hull to get any dust off and then primed all the rough patches with pink primer. Then today I sanded all those patches with a detail sander (triangular head) until I'd levelled all the imperfections (well, nearly all - I kept on finding fresh ones). When you start to sand the pink primer off paint is left in all the depressions, so you have a very good idea of the size and shape of the mini-dings you need to get rid of with the detail sander. Once this was done and the hull was pretty smooth, I applied the Grey Metallic Waterproof Primer (Blake's Marine Paints). There'll have to be a bit more sanding tomorrow to get rid of the remaining imperfections that this coat has revealed (and a couple of runs) and then two more coats of primer before we proceed.



While I was watching the paint dry (who said my life isn't full of excitement?) I pulled the centreplate up (down really, but the boat's the wrong way up remember) to have a look at it. It'll have to be replaced as it's made of ply which is starting to delaminate. Another job, but at least I've got the ply sitting in the garage.

Launch date in four weeks time?

Dealing with dings and holes

(first published 21st May 2005)

Here's Lugg upside down with the dings inked round with a Magic Marker to remind me where to excavate and where to put the filler. Some of the pits in his surface are just where years of badly applied paint have cracked and flaked - these disappear when the old paint is removed, a process I've nearly finished; and some are the result of past collisions and crunches - sometimes just cracks which need raking out, sometimes holes which go right through into the glass cloth in the laminate. This sort need a bit more preparation; rake out all the loose stuff, then drip in polyester resin to replace that which is missing; sand smooth when it's gone off, and fill and fair with car body filler. So far this process has taken me about six hours and I reckon I've got about another four hours to do before the first coat of waterproof primer is on and I can see all the minor imperfections that will need attention before the gloss is applied. You can see from the photo above that Lugg's had a hard life. More dings than you can shake a big stick at.



And here's the repair I had to make to the back end of the hull after I discovered there was a crack which led straight through the bottom of the skeg from underwater into the aft buoyancy tank. I had to enlarge the crack when removing all the loose material before I could repair it. You can see the resulting cavity under the layers of GRP I applied - it's the two black bits in the middle of the upper surface. No wonder the boatyard drilled a drainhole from the aft buoyancy tank into the cockpit!

It seemed immoderately to please Jack, my 87 year-old retired farmer neighbour, to see the hole. He said: "You need one of them so you don't have to bail, Boy!" Then he laughed quite a lot. I didn't - I was up to my ears in polyester resin and chopped strand mat fixing it. Anyway. there are three layers of one ounce cloth over the hole - about the same thickness as the original hull minus the white gelcoat. There will also be a wooden rubbing strip glued to the bottom of the skeg - in fact all along the keel - so there will be plenty of material between the water and me.

The weather's forecast to be lousy tomorrow, so I feel a trip to Wroxham coming on to buy rowlocks and their sockets. And some waterproof primer. And anything else that comes to mind. Just like Tom Dudgeon at the beginning of Coot Club - except older and fatter; much older.

The World Turned Upside Down

(first published 18th May 2005)

Yes, after about 45 minutes of thinking how to do it, Lugg is now upside down on his trailer. This is because all that's left to do on the inside is to finish everything with the oak trim, and I don't want to do that while I'm still slopping about with paint and resins.

I lifted one end of the boat (about as much as I can manage these days!), and Linda very kindly manoeuvred the trailer underneath it. It's resting on a wood strongback which I lashed across the two side hull supports on the trailer.

Given good weather I'll be getting on with fixing the dings in the outside of the hull now. Then oak keel strip and bilge strips; then paint, lovely green paint..

More woodwork

(first published 17th May 2005)

Not a lot of progress in the past couple of days, mostly due to the continuing miserable weather. It’s perked up for a day or two now, though, and I’ve done two small jobs.


The first job was to start on the breasthook - the horizontal knee that joins the two gunwales just abaft of the stem head. This is a strengthening member, but I decided to make it decorative as well by fabricating it from a few offcuts of both white and brown oak. It won’t be finished until the final decorative oak strip is applied to the inside of the gunwale, but it’s a start.



The second job really was one of those “two steps forward and one back” efforts because I changed my mind and decided to give the rear thwart a wooden surface. I bought some quite reasonable WBP ply from B&Q with a good veneer face and cut it to fit on top of the rear thwart/buoyancy tank. Before I could epoxy it onto the GRP I had to remove all the paint - including that which I put on a week ago! I suppose I’d painted it without really thinking how it would look when finished - I just wanted the boat to look as if I was making real progress after weeks of taking it apart. But now it’s going to look much better.



'Sgonna look good when the oak trim hides the raw edge of the plywood.

Thwarted at last

(first published 16th May 2005)

Yes, it's in. And here's a photo to prove it. The excess glue needs cleaning up, and the whole thing will need to be sanded to a well-worn smoothness, as if caressed by the sea for a hundred years - oh, all right, slightly eroded is more the look I'm going for. But it's there, in place, done. The thwart hangs from the gunwales on each side and rests on the centreplate case (actually, is glued to the centreplate case). This has been the most difficult task so far, and it seems to have worked. In the words of Hugh Laurie in Blackadder 3 - "Well, huzzah for that!"



Oh, and here's a detail photo to follow on from the last entry about knees. Here they are in all their glory:



Now for the rowlocks and rudder, then we turn the hull over for keel and bilge bands, and painting. I could have a boat by the end of the month at this rate!

British Knees

(first published 14th May 2005)

A tutorial on knees - not the thing halfway between your foot and your naughty bits, but the wooden boat variety. Basically a knee is a wooden triangle which supports or reinforces two other bits of structural woodwork which meet (at approximately a right angle) in a wooden boat. Think of it as a bracket. Now, because wood has a grain and because wood is normally stronger along the grain rather than across it, knees need to be thought about. In fixing the main thwart in Lugg I will be using hanging knees, which is to say that the knees will be above the thwart, hanging it from the gunwale. To avoid the wood splitting under stress I have used oak instead of softwood - much tougher - and I’ve cut the knees so that the grain runs diagonally.

You can see from the diagram that when the grain runs vertically, if the wood splits, the thwart would detach from the gunwale; whereas if the grain runs diagonally the thwart will not become detached even if the wood splits.

In the photo you can see at top right the triangle of oak I cut for each knee, then the paper template I made up for the actual shape required and at bottom left the knee cut to (more or less) its final shape.



In this photo you can see the knee roughly in place (I’ve doctored this pic a bit to remove all the props and wedges I used to hold the knee temporarily in place). You can also see the direction of the grain. QED.



Today we have mostly shampooed all the carpets in the house and mowed the grass - not much boat time - and I'm tired now, so cheap epoxy putty (special recipe) next time. A bientot.

Working in the sunshine again

(first published 12th May 2005)

Yes, the weather's improved and the epoxy is going off in reasonable time again.



Yesterday I spent about two hours fitting watertight screw hatches to the fore and aft buoyancy compartments - basically I wanted to get inside them to have a look for any nasties, and it's always handy to have somwhere to stow small, light items safely when you're sailing. (Yes, I promise not to compromise the reserve buoyancy!)

The difficulty with these hatches was that they were bought as four inch diameter - handy, because I have a four inch hole cutter. Unfortunately they were actually four and a quarter inch diameter, which meant I spent a long time filing out the holes to fit after I'd used the tank cutter. Still, they look good, and seem pretty watertight.

Inside the buoyancy tanks there was a very little damp right in the bottom, but as some idiot had drilled small holes in them at some stage this was not surprising. The holes may have been drilled because water seepage - possibly osmosis - led to the sound of water sloshing about in them, but I've seen no sign of any problem yet. I've decided to epoxy the hull on the outside anyway, so for daysailing it shouldn't be any problem. And I'll block up the little holes with epoxy putty.

Incidentally, the tops of the two buoyancy tanks are made from threequarter inch thick end-grain softwood with GRP on both sides - it took an age to cut through and even longer to shape. Fortunately the vertical faces of the tanks are just an eighth of an inch of GRP - that rear one was a lot quicker.



Now this is getting to be something like: today I started on the main thwart, using one of my nice pieces of oak. The pic shows the thwart wedged in place with a temporary strut and a couple of folding wedges, and you can also see the clamps securing the final laminations of the inner gunwale where it's thickened for the thwart supports and rowlocks. At the back you can see the hatch in the aft buoyancy tank.

Since I took the photo I've roughly shaped the hanging knees which will support the seat; I promised a diagram of them ages ago and I'll explain them in more detail in the next article; I must also mention my patent epoxy putty next time - it's very cheap and very strong. Tomorrow should see the main thwart in place: fingers crossed!

Oak and teeth (a minor hobbit character)

(first published May 10th 2005)

The front thwart - the mast support - is in place, and there really is nothing like oak. It looks so good. Of course, it needs sanding, not least to get rid of the pencil marks and gluey fingerprints, but I’m sorely tempted to leave it plain and unvarnished when the boat’s finished.

Two steps forward and one back this morning again: the air temperature has slumped in the last couple of days down to about 12 degrees C in the day and about 5 by night. This is a full 10 degrees colder than we had last week. So when I grasped the lovely new mast support thwart this morning the glue joints broke - the epoxy was still plastic and squishy after 18 hours. It takes three hours to start to harden at above 15 degrees - below that it takes forever. Still, I was able to remodel the supports for the thwart, and it looks a bit more elegant than it did last night. The weather hasn’t warmed up yet, so it’s going to stay clamped up until the sun returns.

The last couple of days have been dominated by the toothache - I haven’t had one for years and years, but it’s been an absolute stinker, and today I went into Norwich and had a wisdom tooth pulled by my South African dentist, Albertus Joubert (really). Now I feel like a spring lamb; well, a spring old goat anyway; a pretty knackered spring old goat, but I hope for many good nights’ sleep from now on. A demain, mes enfants.

At last

(first published 9th May 2005)

At last a positive step forward. The painting of the inside of the hull is finished, and the mast support (forward thwart) is in place and the is glue hardening overnight. I couldn't resist taking a pic with the mast in place - looks something like a proper boat at last. I'll post details of the fixing of the thwart later; but for now, in the words of the execrable Maggie, "Rejoice!"

VE Day - and the paint starts to go on.

(first published May 2005)

The preparation of the inside of the hull for painting has been three days (admittedly fairly short days) of temptation and frustration: frustration at not being able to get on faster because of the amount of scraping, sanding and making good to be done; temptation to simply slap some paint on to hide the defective surface and pretend everything was all right. But now, finally, the first coat’s on and, although I didn’t manage to remove all the blemishes with scraper, wet-and-dry paper and filler, it looks more like a boat and less like a camouflaged bath tub now.



The trouble has been that curse of the painter and decorator - poor preparation in the past, paint slapped on over a previous layer of gloss with no sanding. It lasts for a year or two, then starts to flake off the unkeyed surface. But the problem is that it doesn’t flake off uniformly - you end up picking at bits of it with a penknife blade or even fingernails. Then you have to sand the layer underneath, which should have been done last time, to give the new paint something to key to. On Lugg there were three layers of paint like this, all of them flaking. In the words of Terry Pratchett’s Witches - bugrit!

Now that the new paint’s on the inside of the hull I can see the few little places where I didn’t manage to get all the old loose paint off - they really weren’t visible on the tatty, multicoloured surface. Still, it’ll be an easier job to tackle them now, before the second coat of Danboline Bilge Paint goes on tomorrow.



Speaking of which, what a good investment that stuff is. I know of no paint that lasts so well under boaty abuse. When I had Fram I painted the bilges with Danboline and it was the only coating which was still intact 7 years later - despite being half-submerged in bilge water for much of the time. The bloke who bought Fram from me just left it sitting on its mooring for 7 or 8 years and did no maintenance. The varnish and the paint on the topsides and deck were in a sorry state, but the submerged Danboline was still OK. (I’ll have to tell the story of Fram’s new owners some time - it’s a salutary tale.) So use Danboline - accept no substitute. Can I have that sponsorship now please, International Paints?

Wheezing but happy

(first published May 2005)

Yesterday I dodged the showers and prepared the inside of the hull for repair and painting. (If all this is familiar to you then skip the next four paragraphs.)

Explanation - when a small GRP dinghy is popped out of its mould the outside shows the same high standard of finish as you see on any yacht or motor cruiser; but the inside is as rough as a badger’s bum. A yacht has a set of GRP internal mouldings which means that you see the same smooth shiny gelcoat finish inside and out, but a dinghy like Lugg - because it’s small, relatively cheap, and has to be kept light - has no internal mouldings. The inside of the hull is just the rippled surface of the Polyester resin over the rough chopped strand mat. This is usually painted so that it feels OK to the touch, but no real attempt is made to achieve a smooth finish - it would take too long and cost too much.

So Lugg’s insides were rough - not just because of the production process, but because he’s been repaired a number of times over the years in various places on the hull, and each time it added to the irregularity of the inside surface. First I sanded as much of the existing paint as practicable, with a power sander where possible, but also by hand; then I levelled the bigger irregularities in the surfaces with Polyester filler and sanded that to a reasonable finish. Finally I had to repair the joint between the centre-board case and the hull as I mentioned in a previous article.

Having cut glassfibre chopped strand mat to suitable sizes, I mixed some polyester resin and painted the surfaces to be repaired with it fairly generously. (You have to work quite fast once you’ve mixed the resin because it hardens in about 20 minutes.) Then I laid the shaped mat into the wet resin and stippled more resin into the surface until it was completely saturated. I worked around both sides of the plate case with an initial layer which was local to the damage, then laid another layer over the whole area of the join on each side. I worked about two inches up the plate case and about six inches on the horizontal hull surface. This picture shows the mat and resin laid up in the hull - it’s a reddish colour, although the light wasn’t good for the photo.



Finally I skimmed the whole lot with a thin coat of filler to make the repair look like the rest of the hull and sanded it smooth. This photo shows the grey filler being sanded and a bracing strut in place to hold the plate case vertical while the resin hardened (it was leaning slightly to the starboard side).



You can see the sanded surface of the (grey) original paint in these shots. Tomorrow - all being well - it’ll change to dark red when I put the new paint on.

Using polyester resin is always dodgy - the fumes can make you ill - so I did the lay-up in the open air. I still ended up wheezing. Mind you, when I was teaching in Sussex a colleague and I made a GRP kayak in a workshop in one week after school hours. It was winter and cold, so we kept the windows closed. I was laid up with styrene poisoning from the fumes for about a week afterwards. I won’t do that again!

Two steps forward and one step back . . .

(first published May 2005)

Starting to strip off the paint from the inside of the hull yesterday I noticed that the centre-board casing will need a bit of reinforcement where it joins the hull. When the boat was built (by a fairly unsophisticated builder in a pretty crude way) the hull moulding had a slit put in it along the keel for the centre board, and then the centre board case was just glued on above the slit with glass fibre and polyester resin forming a continuous L-section join all round, as in the diagrammatic cross-section.

But polyester resin is not as good a glue as epoxy and, over the years, the join has started to break down. Now, before I paint the bilges again, I’ll have to renew the joint between centre board case and hull with glass cloth and resin. Another trip to Norwich, I suppose!

Meanwhile, here’s a list of jobs done and still to do:

1) remove and discard fendering around the hull (done)
2) separate hull and deck, discard deck after measuring (done)
3) make new gunwale - spacers, inner and outer (done)
4) repair stem, make and fit new stemhead (done)
5) make and fit new rubbing strip and capping to gunwale
6) make new sternpost and fit (done)
7) cut holes and fit buoyancy tank screw hatches
8) design make and fit thwart and rowlock support beams (done)
9) design, make and fit thwart
10) design make and fit mast support thwart
11) design, make and fit aft thwart to top of buoyancy tank
12) prepare and paint inside of hull
13) reinforce hull to centre board case joint
14) fair off and paint outside of hull
15) fit rubbing hardwood strips to bilge runners and keel
16) fit deck hardware, rudder hangings etc
17) acquire new sail
18) fit mast and sailing gear

That’s it so far, but in the spirit of this article I bet there’ll be more to come!

Slow progress

(first published May 2005)

Slow because it rained a little this morning, and then I had to mow the lawn and cut down an old bullace (wild plum) tree. Then, after lunch, the sun came out and I was able to get on with Lugg's nose.

You may wonder why he's called Lugg; apart from the fact that he's a lugsail dinghy, Lugg is a character in the Albert Campion novels by Margery Allingham published in the first half of the last century. He's Campion's manservant, a semi-reformed thug with a heart of gold. He's reliable, solid, and not really built for speed. If Campion could be seen as a rather tippy racing yacht then Lugg is a sturdy, steady, safe lugsail dinghy. But a bit of a bruiser. Here's a description of him from 'Look To The Lady': ". . . . a mountail of a man with the largest and most lugubrious face . . . . his great muscular arms were bare to the elbow. For the rest, his head was bald, and the bone of his nose had sustained an irreparable injury."

My Lugg's nose had sustained a pretty awful injury if you remember. Here's a reminder of what I found when I started to take him apart:



So today I continued rebuilding his nose. Oh alright, the stem. I used chopped strand mat and polyester resin to start with, then finished off with body filler. Here's his new profile:



Having done that (and it needs a final touch of filler and more sanding) I started on the seat and rowlock supports. Here's the port side one clamped up and glueing:



My current thinking is that I'll brace the seat (thwart) with hanging knees from these supports. I'll try to include a diagram tomorrow. Hope the sun shines.

An unpleasant surprise

(first published April 2005)

It’s been an interesting afternoon. The stem fairing was going quite well until I saw what I thought was a loose bit of paint about two inches along from the stem. I put my thumbnail under it and a big lump of filler came away from the “plank” and the stem. One of those hurried Saturday boatyard repairs - they’d bodged the filler in on top of greasy dirt and green algae without even roughening the surface of the GRP. There was no adhesion at all. I had to fill it with a mix of chopped mat and resin, then fair it with more filler when that had gone off. Now, last week it was so cold that the epoxy glue (setting time 3 hours) was taking 12 to 24 hours to go off. Today, with temperatures in the low twenties celsius, the bloody filler was going off in about five minutes. There was no time to get a finish - just bosh it in and sand when hard. And that’s despite only using about a quarter of the catalyst recommended. (Car body repairers will know what I’m talking about.) Here’s a picture of another bodged repair I found - when I raked out the loose filler this hole was about half an inch deep in a quarter inch thick hull. Yes, they’d filled it on the outside and whapped some chopped mat and resin on the inside. It’s looking better now, I promise.



So loads of sanding tomorrow. Never mind, it’s going to be a good day for weather again. In between the filling and sanding I managed to make a new stern post/rudder mounting and glue and screw it in place on the transom. Here’s a photo of the old and new mountings side by side.



Don’t know what’s been chewing the old one, but the new one’s oak, and epoxy coated, so any wood eating worms are going to have blunt teeth, I hope. Here's a shot of the new stern rudder mounting in place on the transom.

Wax on, wax off

(originally published April 2005)

There’s a sort of Zen about doing these jobs on this little boat. When I had the “Two Brothers”, my 22 foot clinker sailing cruiser, I seemed to spend all the time doing desperate remedial work. The idea that it should be laid up for a few months while it was thoroughly sorted never entered my head; it had to be ready to sail when I wanted it (on one occasion on Boxing Day, I remember). So the maintenance was always rushed, always crucial and always present. A bit like keeping an old car running if it’s your only means of transport - except that the need to keep the boat going was only in my head.

But the work on the little dinghy is interesting - everything is a problem to be thought through instead of a disaster to be averted, and there’s no rush (except my desire to see it on the water before the summer’s gone; well, before the summer starts really). So I do a bit, make a coffee, have a think, do a bit more, make a note or a sketch, feed the chickens, do a bit more, walk the dog, and so on. I’m enjoying it so much that I’m thinking about the next boat already. Ray Mears’ programme on BBC last night (canoeing down a Canadian river) made me think it would be good to have a Canadian canoe; but then I’ve just seen some plans and an article about a 19 foot double-ended open boat, yawl-rigged, suitable for camp-cruising (another one from the Salle quiz - “Carry On Camp Cruising”) which I’m thinking about. Don’t know where I’d keep it, but it really looks nice. I’ll try to post some pictures later. Now back to fairing the stem.

Gunwales and transom

(originally published April 2005)

Now then, where was I? Oh yeah, in the garage.

To show what I’ve done around the gunwale I took some photographs and drew a diagram. I think that it’s important to make the gunwale as stiff as possible; with the original GRP deck in place it was virtually immovable because of the large horizontal area of the deck moulding bracing it. Now the stiffness will have to be provided by the wood laminations I have glued in place. So far there are four 10mm layers of soft wood around the gunwale, glued to the steel band on the outside of the hull, and to the GRP on the inside, with epoxy adhesive which has been just brilliant. There will be more wood, with a further 10mm thickness on the outside (possibly even hardwood - oak?) And a capping piece to run right along the top of the gunwale. Then I have to fix in a hefty member each side roughly amidships to support the rowing thwart and the rowlock sockets.







The next photo shows the hull starting to look a bit more like it with the wood in place around the gunwale - albeit with clamps.



There’s also a shot of the transom after I removed the old rudder mounting - a piece of hardwood which over the years had been eaten away by rot and what looked like worms.