The Voyage of Wendy Ann 2

Having a fight with Meself.

2011-12-16T18:55:00.007Z

I’m almost done with the big plywood aspect of the interior lining throughout the boat. Well, clearly that’s a rubbish statement, as it doesn’t include a myriad of future projects like boxing around tanks, bathroom subfloors and built in furniture. But since none of those things actually exist yet I can conveniently ignore them and say, aha yes- for now I’m almost done with plywood. This is good because I’m bored, bored, bored of working with the stuff. Each time a piece is templated, cut/planed/sanded and finally into position I experience a deflating sort of miniature anticlimax. This can be attributed to the idea that although getting every one to fit tight is an achievement one part of my brain won’t be fooled, merely confirming to itself that the panel just looks the way it always thought it would. After all, the desired result is large featureless areas of blank lining, and that’s what you got. Another part of my brain demands to know why all the usual boaty excitement buttons are getting really hard to push, and threatens to sabotage the whole day by wandering off and getting distracted by something completely frivolous. A third part has had to learn to ignore the constant bickering and quietly do-the-dance-to-attract-pencils ready for the next piece instead.

An Experiment.

2011-12-13T19:04:00.003Z

I’m almost ready to begin cladding out the interior hull sides of our vessel, and am keen to maintain the lovely shapes that they describe. I’ve also been spending a bit of time thinking about how to do lately (it’s called daydreaming I think). So on Sunday morning, more or less while I waited for coffee, I pinned this lot to the hull side in the forward accommodation. It’s just a couple of packs of the cheap 8mm thin rubbish from wickes thrown up with complete disregard to where the butted joins fall, but two cups of coffee later, it seemed to answer the following questions.

1) Will the wooden panelling happily follow the original sweeping platelines in wendy’s steelwork, which I handily remembered to mark on the battens down one side before she was sprayfoamed?
A) So far so good, I need to go have a play in the engine room to be absolutely sure though…

2) Do all the battens fair up nicely in relation to one another, or will I need to fart around with them too?
A) Buggering hell, there’s always one.

3) My, this wickes panelling is certainly very cheap, so is it really too thin, or am I just overimagining things again?
A) Nope, it definitely is too thin. And also appears to be made from balsa.

That was fun. Next please.

Meanwhile, Back at the Office.

2011-11-22T20:03:00.004Z

It seems to never rain, but pour. We’ve currently got this rather sweet little dutch barge on the slip. She’s in for some extensive doubling (overplating) of the hull, and a whole bunch of other works besides. But the doubling part of it is all mine. In four days flat me and my two trusty Nepalese labourers have managed to get eleven plates tacked into their proper position on the bottom of the boat, and we’ve done a decent job of it too- I’m well pleased at the progress. Of course, if she were mine we’d have to cut the whole lot out and start again replating the proper way but economics dictate that we don’t have, um, four years. Instead I’m told I have three weeks from Monday gone. I’m really looking forward to plating round the bow partly for the shape that the doublers will take up but mostly because doing so will mean that I don’t have to scramble around in this space:

It’s just a wee bit tight under there folks, each day has already become an steadfast exercise in contortionism and seriously athletic to boot. I’m considering asking my osteopath if he can have me fitted with a flip-top head and Stretch Armstrong back to make life easier…

Boats, you gotta love ‘em.

Twins.

2011-11-15T22:41:00.003Z

They exist. As a pair. And they are equally as unfinished as one another, because I was careful to work in mirrors. What I did to one I did to the other.
And it’s only taken me three days. And then some.
I’m lucky, having just been granted some arbitrary annual leave, so have just spent a good proportion of it making a real, sensible stab at making some actual built in furniture that’ll A) accommodate nooks and crannies B) be removable at a pinch in whole or part C) hopefully utilise top notch craftsmanship or D) as near as I can get dammit. Maybe I can squeeze in E) be useful too.
Being skint is the mother of all bastards but contrariwise, at least it has the capacity to make you patient, even occasionally inventive. So these are made from a real wood jumble. Battening, 24mm mahog ply, inch birch ply, teak, 12mm WBP, pitch pine, 5mm AA birch, and a couple bits of celotex, they’ve got the lot. And I still have to do the nosings on the shelf bits, god only knows what they’ll turn out to be made of.
Why?
Because:
The pile of ‘useful’ wood stock on board (and, to my shame, off) keeps growing. There’s all sorts in there and it’s in danger of becoming the woodpile that grew tentacles and tried to take over the world.
Lacking a handy pocket Godzilla with which to deal with this I’ve decided that the only way out (apart from having a very expensive bonfire) is to actually make some of the things that have hitherto lurked in the dark recesses of my little brain, mostly for some time.
Built in the hardest corner of the boats interior I could think of working in, which required constant crawling in and out of the compartment to measure, mark, measure again ‘cos I forgot which side the half mil goes on, template, cut, assemble, disassemble, block plane, headache; here they are, my half finished bedside cabinets. Tweedledum and Tweedledee. All I need now is a Walrus. Oh Maaaarrk…

Propped up.

2011-11-14T04:07:00.001Z

Not sure how I feel about the use of such a dreadful pun, but what the hey.
Moving this bugger required the invocation of the spirit of Kingdom-Brunel as it weighs something around half a ton, luckily all concerned still have the full prerequisite of toes, so that’s nice.
Pleased with it, looks good. Although a certain captain may be about to remind me that the propeller is supposed to go on the outside of the boat…
My thanks to Sleepy J and Lover N for their ingenious assistance.

Kate Winslet.

2011-11-13T19:06:00.004Z

Imagine my surprise when the following week after our little chainsaw massacre I returned to the boat to find the carefully stacked woodpile had been spread all over the island that wendy is moored to. As I arrived after dark it took me a while to understand why this had happened. At first the local youth got my indiscriminate blame, but as I gathered the bits of wood back together I realised what had actually gone on. The old boat had been constructed using bronze roves- effectively great big rivets, and someone had removed them all from my woodpile. Non ferrous metal of this nature commands a high scrap value, and indeed Jan and I had already rescued a bucketload of these from the ashes of the big bonfire the previous week. I realised that someone had invested some time in gathering a bucketload or four for themselves as well.
Feeling a bit sheepish I first cursed my own idiocy and wondered how much cash I’d just let slip away. Then I reasoned that it would’ve taken whoever did it some time and effort to achieve. Philosophically deciding that if they had the time and were desperate enough then I’d done them a big favour, generating a source of cash that probably paid their rent or whatever for a month at least. I’m lucky to have a steady job at the moment, and whilst it doesn’t pay so great, at least I can cover my debts and obligations each month. I ruefully reminded myself that I hadn’t had the time to get at the roves the previous weekend, nor had I come down this time to salvage them, being too preoccupied with my preferred state of dreaming about the next bit of Wendy’s line-out project. So I wrote the lesson off to experience and prayed that whoever the culprit was wasn’t having a good laugh at my expense.
I finished rebuilding the woodstack and told Jan all about it. He seemed only too happy to arrange a return to Wendy for a second weekend of wreck processing.
I wanted to get something at least for our efforts, so we decided to chop all the wood into foot long logs and lay it in as winter firewood for the woodburner, an effort which would remove the pile from the island and make everything nice and tidy at the same time. As we were getting into this we discovered that in fact not all the metal had been spirited away, just the easiest, biggest prizes. We dealt with each piece by knocking out the remaining roves before putting it through the chopsaw. Again the gnarliest bits found their way onto the bonfire, but by lunchtime the tide was on the flood and we realised that we were about to see it extinguish our fire. I was less prepared for the eventuality of a floating fire though, as burning logs suddenly started to wander away in the tide I hurriedly squeezed into my wellies to rescue them before they floated off to start fires of their own god knows where, I had these visions of other boats being torched to the waterline and your truly making the local paper for all the wrong reasons. When the panic was over I discovered that I could engage in a messy sort of ‘panning for bronze’ effort while the ashes of the fire were still submerged. At the end of the day Jan and I reckoned that we had more than doubled our ‘penny jar’ scrap metal pile. So this week I weighed the whole lot in, learning that our haul added up to 52 kilos before our labours were rewarded with a small fistful of hard cash, a welcome boost to what is still a very tight shoestring budget that we have to work on Wendy Ann with. And all the remaining wood is now neatly stacked on Wendy’s foredeck in what looks a deceptively small bundle, but it should be easily enough to see me through the coming winter.

The Wreck Eaters.

2011-11-12T18:39:00.005Z

This was nearly two months ago now, and incidentally one of the best weekends I’ve had for ages. But blow me, could I get the words together to explain it all? No, and I was sorely tempted to just publish my notes on the matter and let you, the reader, try to make sense of them if you will. In fact, that’d be a bloody good idea. Except for all the scribbly bits in the margins, which don’t really type all that well and even I can’t remember what they’re supposed to mean anyway.

Do you remember that unprovoked Indian summer’s friday night at the end of September? Three of us took an overnight bike ride from London to Littlehampton in honour of Jan’s birthday, the joy of cycling and, well, because we could. I chose a hilly backroads route that ensured dark, starry solitude, a few nasty big climbs and LOTS of screaming into the darkness long fast descents. Total distance for our route, about sixty miles. Jan (who as I’m about to illustrate is clearly insane) did this fixed, a feat which ten years ago I would’ve gone for, but these days must say I prefer gears, a freewheel, and brakes, touring in style. The last couple of miles home from the back of Arundel were the best descent of the lot, and we therefore arrived at Wendy at 3.30am experiencing a sweaty sort of sense of glee. We used to do these kind of overnight country rides all the time, although having my own boat as a destination is a new one. Since giving cycling up as an, um, profession (?!), I’m sorry to report that my legs aren’t what they used to be but still, I loved it all the same.
It’s what we did for the rest of the weekend that I really want to write about though.

There was a wooden 60’wreck laid on her beams alongside our own vessel. It had clearly been there a long time and I’d recently noticed that it was starting to break up. This bothered me, so I’d made the decision to break it in a controlled manner before tidal action did it in a less predictable way. (and on the Thursday prior to the bike ride had made a mad preparatory dash in convoy with Becky to deliver large amounts of tools, wellies, beer and a car to get home in on Sunday when we were done.)
As soon as everyone was properly awake and had rubbed their knees a bit we took Becky’s chainsaw to the rotten old hulk. Dismantling the bulk of the teak, oak and pitch pine wreck was a lot easier than I’d imagined it would be. This was probably because when Jan got hold of the chainsaw I glimpsed that faraway look in his eyes that means it’s probably time to stand well back for fear of losing a limb. So I did, quickly deciding that perhaps I should instead gather up some of the flak that he was rapidly creating. I got the waders on and happily sploshed around for hours; first in the mud, then in the advancing tide, shepherding bits of wood back to a growing pile on the shore. It was a belting sunny day and everybody, already sticky from overnight cycling quickly became coated in a mixture of 2 stroke exhaust, sawdust and mud. We tied ropes to the bigger chunks and when the tide came right in they were floated around our vessel and piled up too. At high water everyone downed tools and we wandered down to the beach for a welcome swim in sea. I’m still not sure why everyone found the fact that I’d taken a bar of soap in with me so amusing though.
Back at the boat. With the sun going down we built a big fire of the worst bits of wreck and it was time to ingest beer. Later we barbequed burgers on embers and at some point after that I showed my age by conking out in front of it, sorry boys. Sunday morning rolled around and unsurprisingly I woke first, found the embers still glowing so stoked them up, made some coffee and warmed myself while picking fluff out of my bellybutton and considering the universe in that ‘I’m the only living boy in West Sussex’ way that I love so much about sunrise at the boat.

Sunday was more or less a repeat performance, with Jan determined to carry on being a one-man deforestation problem, except by now he was running out of wreck. At least, he was running out of bits that were not completely submerged in the mud or full of concrete. I know he was having a good time, I know this because since then I’ve lost track of the number of conversations we’ve had that revolve around getting at the rest of the wreck and cutting that up too. Due at least in part to this, there’s a part two to this little story, coming next.

The Unexpected Sofa.

2011-09-21T21:13:00.004+01:00

Erm, yes. Well, it was the birthday weekend after all. For various inexplicable reasons it seems that acquiring Elton John’s sofa* seemed to be the best way to celebrate.
We long tired of our only choice of seating being either fold up camping chairs, with us folded up uncomfortably within, or on toolboxes, or as a frequent last resort the floor. Little did we know that a visit to the local (and reliably quite good actually) car boot sale would present us with the ideal opportunity to do something silly about it.
Obviously we spotted our new sofa a mile off; well, wouldn’t you?
Sat on it and politely enquired the price. Remained poker-faced and wandered off to engage in heated debate once safely out of earshot, walked as slowly as possible round rest of boot sale twice, buying other random objects before going back to discover it hadn’t been sold and make an insultingly poor offer. Fair enough, the seller didn’t bite, but instead came up with a more sensible figure, as these things go, somewhere in the middle. Deal done we grabbed one end each and marched the thing straight out of there, into the car (sort of- didn’t quite fit), out of the car, over the footbridge and into the boat, stopping on the after deck for these frankly scary pictures. Sometime about this point a passing rambler shouted “well, you just don’t expect to see THAT!” which is about right. I mean, it’s so bad it’s good really. And comfy enough to sleep on convincingly, once the bits of dead vegetation had been vacuumed out of all the crevices.

Becky has developed some mad plan to reupholster the thing and spruce up the bonkers faux Louis XIV carving, which I wholly approve of, but also figure that it can stay red crushed velvet for a bit, as for a while at least it’s only going to get covered in dust while we cut more bits of wood up all over the place.
I love it, it’s ridiculous aesthetic crashes horribly into the whole tugboat-tough thing. Also being able to lounge about in front of the fire when I should be sanding something down or wrestling electrics instead is a very gratifying thing indeed, which is a bit of a first.

*A lie.

More Fiddly bits of Woodwork.

2011-09-21T20:18:00.007+01:00

It took a few weekends of careful joinery, some logistical headaches, a little help from my friends and one almighty hangover- but the deckhead is now fully lined in the forward compartment of the hull.
Being me I couldn’t just go to the timber merchants could I? That would be far too dull. Instead this ceiling was made from some extremely knackered old pine floorboards that’ve have been cut down to a new width, planed, thicknessed, and chucked through the router table to make new tongue and grooved edges. That little lot added up to about ten hours of evenings in the workshop and to start with the stock was in such bad condition that I doubted the sanity of going through the process at all. Obviously, I decided to be bloody-minded and carry on and I’m well pleased with the results. Actually getting the ceiling up wasn’t without it’s challenges either but let’s face it, that’s the reason we like doing this sort of thing. The finished lining follows the original sheer and camber of the deck fairly well I reckon, and that was the aim of the game. The scarfed joins in the planks have come up nice too and all she needs now is a bunch of edge beading, the ones visible in the pics are only temporary ‘registration’ beads. The real ones are supposed to be teak or something else dark and contrasty, no doubt I’ll come up with some ridiculous profile that I’ll have to make them all to as well. Back to the workshop I go, luckily I’ve got plenty more crappy looking stock to play with…

Laissez Faire.

2011-09-19T20:39:00.001+01:00

Yes, bad and naughty Seb. I’ve just had another can’t-be-arsed-blogging-few-months.
But trust me the biggest excuse for this is that we’ve been stupidly, insanely busy. Regular readers will be relieved to know that, as always, there’s far more to it than that.
The last blog entry I did was a deliberate and extremely oblique reference to the fact that I’d just had a significant industrial accident, and let’s just be clear it was my own fault. Quite interestingly I smacked myself in the face with a small angle grinder fitted with a cutting disc. It was like being kicked in the head by a fairly large horse, and it very definitely knocked me off my perch. A mere seven stitches across my upper lip and nose seemed like a lucky escape at the time. But I still have little sensation in the area beyond the cold, numb, been up all year doing cocaine sort of weirdness that once upon a time I was used to for entirely different and very wrong reasons. And the scar hasn’t even the grace to be cool either, I regret to report that it’s come up more Wonky Hitler than Heroic Swashbuckler. No you bunch of bloodlusting oddballs, I haven’t got any photographs, being alternately too shocked and then too ready to beat senseless the entirely undeserving and quite fit nurse who gave me the six local anaesthetic injections, the bitch.

Anyway, you don’t want to read this sort of thing, you want to know about progress aboard the vessel ‘Wendy Ann 2’ don’t you? Right then. Over the next few days I hope to tell you all about the following, at the very least:
An unexpected sofa.
And fridge.
First battery lighting and it’s effects.
Forward accommodation deckhead joy.
Why I love diesel, even though I shouldn’t.
Engine room ballasting and working floor at last.
What’s wrong with chemical toilets anyway?
My Da, and the meaning of the word ‘love’.
Moving that bloody propeller.
Guess the Flag.

So, tune in for words and pictures again soon folks.

Sometimes.

2011-06-23T21:12:00.003+01:00

Sometimes you just can't get nothing done.
Arse.

How Many Cyclists does it Take..

2011-06-15T20:51:00.002+01:00

Wendy Ann II - Bulkhead Timelapse from Harry Foster on Vimeo.

To line a bulkhead?

The answer is two, and a bit, as regretfully I find too little opportunity to get on the old steel horse these days, I guess doing it for a living was a sort of aversion therapy in the end.
This fun bit of footage is a result of Harry's thing about time lapse, which I belatedly prodded after we'd already installed the other eight panels for the day, and was recorded after 8pm, hence the beer (well, it's a decent excuse anyway). My big thanks to mr H, and if I can persuade him, we'll do some more of these sooon.

The other Other Lady’s Hull.

2011-06-12T10:26:00.004+01:00

is pretty much complete now. I’m particularly proud of the bow and transom plating, which all went exactly to plan. It’s still a stressful exciting hardworking fun fast paced large scale build and therefore I’m currently going through another phase of collapsing face first onto the sofa every evening after work. This kind of behaviour lends weight to the rather scary phenomenon known as ‘where the bloody hell has the week gone, AGAIN??’, in which one minute it’s Monday morning staring down the barrel of another huge list of things to do, and the next thing you know it’s Friday afternoon and bits of my brain are falling off. This week we’ve started to plate the main deck, a task that seemed like it was going to be huge, but to my surprise is in fact (so far) behaving rather well.
My thanks to the whole team, who are also behaving rather well, and I know for a fact that they too are giving it everything they've got.
Meanwhile, on board Wendy Ann 2, progress is almost just as exciting. But I’ll have to save that for another time.

Ooh Bugger, there goes me back.

2011-05-08T08:30:00.001+01:00

I’m sorry to say that injury stopped play last weekend. Everything started out so well, but Saturday afternoon I was quite innocuously screwing bits of maple together in the bedroom when my back started loudly protesting its opposition to my own point of view. This in itself is nothing particularly unusual but it was enough to stop me for the day at least. The next morning however I got out of bed and, accompanied by searing pain, did a passable impression of a dying spider on the engine room floor. I discovered that I simply couldn’t stand up and walk at all, which made life a bit difficult as I was alone on board and I really needed a wee. I got to the lav in the end, but spent the rest of the long weekend doing absolutely nothing. Except for growling every now and then. Becky kindly came to my rescue and helped me to pack up and disembark, as by Monday there was little change in my predicament.
So, I apologise for the lack of anything exciting to report, believe me I’m twice as disappointed as you are. It’s mostly better now, I’ve been to see an osteopath which was an experience in itself, if he hadn’t have got me in a sort of an elaborate headlock at the time I think I may have actually punched him when he made my back crack the way he did. At least I could stand up a bit straighter afterward though so it’s possible that he knows what he’s doing.

Make Dust while the Sun Shines.

2011-04-26T20:39:00.005+01:00

This Easter, blessed with the sort of weather usually reserved for our more traditional ten day long british summer, y’know the one, hammered blue sky, baking sunshine and a light breeze from dawn ‘til dusk; we decided to make the most of it. I wish I’d had the sense to take a ‘before’ pic of this because our wheelhouse and cabin, which we launched with a heavily oiled finish- had gone almost black over the last two years. It seems the oil just couldn’t keep up with the harsh coastal climate. No surprise there. We decided to yacht varnish the thing, but then discovered some super dooper penetrating oily varnish product that seemed just right and bought that instead. It’s made by some SA firm I’d never heard of and is supposed to be good for boats, picture of tin coming soon.
It only took three solid days of hard sanding before we were actually ready to open the aforementioned tin though. And now everyone’s elbows hurt. On the plus side we did balance the working bit quite neatly with being a bunch of total beach bums, naffing off to the west beach for a swim every time we felt too burnt/dusty, and wearing an impressive array of silly hats to keep the slaphead from overheating. Also cooking various tasty meals on de woodburner including mackerel caught that day by my neighbour, and spending almost the entire weekend barefoot wearing little more than a pair of cut off combat shorts. Deepest of joy it was, especially when we all stood back and admired the lovely first coat of varnish stuff.

And the best bit (apart from Becky and Ranka being there and revelling in it)?? Due to some royal people getting hitched this friday I get another four days to do it all over again. Except the sanding bit quite so much.
Bet it rains.

The other Other Lady's Bow.

2011-04-26T18:31:00.005+01:00

Is happening. These pictures, taken last week show the situation. We made a jig, built the hull bottom and stem on it, bent the (12mm- eeek!) chine plates into position, cut the jig off, and now the hull side frames have been bent in pairs and are in place. There's a temporary internal structure evident in this pic, which was taken during the centring and squaring process. I'm pleased to say that the whole thing is now set, bang on plus/minus just 2.5mm across the centreline, which is cool. This week we've moved onto deck beam knees and stringers, and then we'll be able to plate the thing. Oh, and the cambered deck beams themselves have just arrived. Phew.

God. I love my job.

Flooring it.

2011-04-12T21:24:00.005+01:00

Here’s the results of another fairly exhausted Saturday at Ms Ann. I’ve been meaning to put this little raised floor in the forward accommodation down for, like, ages. It’s made from leftovers of the thick pine T&G that went into the bedroom as I discovered that if I was super careful in my cutting I’d have just enough. For those that want to know, the central portion lifts out to allow access to the bilge and the sides are fixed down with some fat recessed bronze bolts through a damp proof membrane to the steel bearers beneath. I still have to make and fit the nosing so I’m afraid this is another unfinished job. Actually, let’s just apply that phrase to the entire vessel and have done with it shall we?
On the subject of careful cutting, there was inevitably a bunch of smaller offcuts left when the job was done, which fed the stove that evening and kept me and the new floor nice and toasty all night. After a glass (ok, three) of warmed wine this struck me as having a marvellous symmetry. Things are going well, but I keep running out of wine.

Half-a-job Seb.

2011-04-05T20:10:00.002+01:00

Oughta make my Mark smile, seeing as that’s what he was so fond of calling me during the cabin construction, and proof that sometimes I definitely do do things by halves, even if it’s only by necessity.
So I just worked a six and a half day week, finishing up a job that I’d organised privately on Sunday lunchtime by promising meself that should I complete the job to customer satisfaction in time- I’d reward myself with a flying visit to the iron lady. In order to justify a mere two hours on board I decided a tiny small target was in order, followed by a good hour at least of mooning about the place wondering why my back hurts so much.
So I screwed three of these things to the oak deckhead in the wheelhouse. They’re part of a collection of boaty bulkhead lights that we’ve built up over the years and I’ve converted them to 12v halogen fittings.
Here’s the half measure bit, as you can see I didn’t actually get as far as the important part of the task, hooking them up to their circuit. Ah well, even more stuff for the bloody list.

Proto-furniture.

2011-04-03T07:38:00.004+01:00

This was just going to be a picture post, but then I seem to have got carried away.
Although the items portrayed in the photos don’t look much they were more or less the sum total of efforts of last weekend, and Sam and Jamie were very helpful in helping get me this far. This is mostly due to the birch ply we used being reclaimed, so it had to be sanded like mad by Jamie to get all the footprints-n-shit off. Various issues around bolting the batteries down to a strongpoint had to be dealt with too. There is of course a bigger plan for this forward bulkhead area, and I’m beginning to wish for more 1” birch ‘A’ veneer to fall out of the sky. Well, what are you waiting for sky, come on!
That odd shaped plinthy thing with the sort of bite out of it will provide the start of a home for our fridge. How I’ve survived two summers without contracting botulism or worse is a minor miracle, as since our vessels launch we’ve been reduced to a fairly medieval damp tea towel draped over bucket arrangement. So I’m defo looking forward to somewhere to keep the cheese to stop it running away, oh- and cold beers too- before the summer.
Also, I cannot for the life of me figure out any more sensible plans for that awkward bastard bit around the stairs. Believe me, I’ve looked sideways at the issue for several years and I can’t think of anything better. Never put spiral stairs into boats folks, they’re a pretty pain in the bum.
Whilst I realise that to the unschooled eye it may all look like a load of bollocks, this simple beginning is enough to get me all excited, I know, it doesn’t take much. And the wendy-ideas wall is currently covered in various sketches and scribbles describing how the whole thing should end up looking.
It’s going to take a while though.

Prometheus inserted it.

2011-03-27T22:40:00.003+01:00

This one’s for my dad really, as you may remember he donated us a piece of family history in the shape of a tortoise wood stove some time ago...
I just got back from another push-it weekend at the boat, during which we had a successful test firing of this now forward woodburner. I’m so excited (eeek!) about it that I’ve come back and got onto de computermabob straight away.
I had a bucket of sand and fire extinguishers at the ready and as I got out the matches I was nervously prepared for a total smokeout or worse, a disappointing failure during which the thing just wouldn’t go. It turned out happily that I was wrong in both my pessimistic assumptions. It took a while to get it lit but boy, did it get a good run up when I started it with a paraffin soaked rag. Later, with the damper open, the draw that the fire created was so good that after a bit of boyish experimentation we discovered that you could get it to make a noise like a jet engine just by loading it up with oak offcuts.

Da, I love you x.

And the warmth levels? Sublime. Perfect. Funny how the smallest thing (in this case a £3 tub of fire cement) can make such a massive difference to the joyous sensation of being at home. I got so overwhelmed that I decided to double the fun by sleeping in the new bedroom at the stern FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER! Even though it's not quite finished. Wicked.

The other Other Lady.

2011-03-23T18:38:00.002Z

After nearly two years of weekly struggle for meaningful work, and of course any money to go with it, I seem to have finally landed the right way up.
I’m proud to say that I now have what I consider to be the dream job I have been hoping for for a long time and have landed work as a welder fabricator at a boatyard that builds boats and houseboats from the keel up. Ever since I had the good fortune to employ Robin and Larry the idea of doing this kind of thing has been a massive ambition of mine. I know, having gone through the whole saga of rebuilding Wendy Ann 2- anyone else would probably run several miles at the prospect of having to do any of it again. So I must be a bit mental as it’s something I’ve not quite been able to get out of my head. Therefore I consider myself very, very fortunate indeed to be part of the small team that’s building this:

She’s destined to be a 23 metre houseboat, will have a five metre beam, a sensibly shallow draft, and two floors of accomodation. Unlike some this one will be boat shaped rather than house on pontoon shaped, and the only reason the pointy bit isn’t on yet is because we’re still waiting for a decision on the exact final shape of the bow, hopefully we should be able to start on this within the week.

We’re working to a series of tight deadlines, and when I started ten weeks ago this was just a huge pile of plate. I’m lucky to be working with a really good bunch of people, all of whom have absolutely loads to teach me. Clearly I’ve had to make some adaptations to what I already learned in order to get on, low hydrogen stick welding has been replaced by MIG plants, and oxy-propane burning gear by plasma cutters. But there’s a lot of familiar ground (and grinders) too. Oh, there is one big difference, much of Wendy Ann involved trying to get a lot of plates to curve gracefully in several directions at once; by contrast we want all of this to end up absolutely straight and flat. Anyone who’s ever worked with plate steel will tell you that there’s no such thing as a perfectly flat plate fresh off the truck, but the principles are the same, just in the other direction.

Mind you, having said that the hull bottom and chines on this baby are 12.5mm thick, which I think might qualify as heavy plate. It’ll bend sure enough, but it wants a lot more persuasion before it goes your way.
However, there is nothing simple about this metal bashing. I was a bit daunted when a chunk of the responsibility for getting this build right was placed upon my shoulders as the learning curve feels huge, and it’s also unusual for me to be required to tell colleagues what to do. I’m gradually getting my head round the whole thing, but am finding myself thinking around issues at work all the time that I’m not there too, just to try to keep up. Nevertheless, it should be pretty obvious that I’m loving it, and that everything seems to add up at the moment even if it doesn’t seem to leave much energy for my own vessel. Indeed it’s a rigorous physical and mental workout each day. So my targets for Wendy Ann 2 have had to go through some, er, reimagining. For the first few weeks after starting this job I came home from work every night to more or less pass out face down straight away. Luckily this proved to be a passing phase. Now that I’m finding my stamina a little better I’m getting back to working every weekend on Wendy, although I’m aware that it’ll be tough to get used to this next step too. I’m hoping that by taking things a little easier on board on Sundays I’ll be able to keep going, and if not, then I guess I can always um, try to remember how to have a lie in…

Nanu is as Nanu does.

2011-03-19T05:57:00.002Z

I’ve said it before, come to think of it about a year ago, I dream of Wendy. Indeed over the years she’s become very much my reason for living.
Things are happening on board, albeit slower than I’d like, and to prove it here’s a picture taken last week by Mr Harry, thanks H. Yes, that’s the forward woodburner stack going in, hallelujah.

Anyways, there are only so many hours in a week and I have something going on, something big to report- the words of which are currently having the lumps bashed out of them in my notebook. So, patience friends, patience, and soon come.

Tings a G'waaan.

2011-01-21T18:16:00.003Z

Good Things are happening, but I've come over all secretive. Normal service will resume soon.
In the meantime, something from the vault. Pump up the volume guys...

Aaarghh!

2010-12-14T16:21:00.006Z

Why is working overhead always such fun? I just spent a couple of days making a start on the soon come bedroom deckhead (ceiling). This included waking up early on Sunday with such a severely cricked neck that I know how it feels to be stargazy pie. It’s not the overhead bit so much as the fact that the deckhead is very low and the space has some awkward corners, which makes it seriously bastard. Couple this with the use of reclaimed material, oh but why? Also grrr, my nailer has decided to be a piece of rubbish and either bend everything double, or just jam solid. So all the pins have to be hand driven, and to cap it all some clever bugger in their wisdom put porthole liners round all the decklights which are a total sod to get the planks around, thus involving devious use of a router. Bastard bastard bastard.
Comparative triumph of weekend was the lightwell on the aft bulkhead, I had some flexible ply left over and put it to some use, although due to the springy nature of the material even this wasn’t complete without having to hurl some creative insults about. Every time I had everything all nice and snug and I reached for say, the panel pins, something would choose its moment to go ‘boiinggg’ and fling itself across the room, the bastard.

After two days of loud cursing, I’m now exactly halfway through the deckhead lining, the starboard side is done apart from finishing beads. The port side however looks like this: One sodding plank. Pathetic.

Oh well, looks like I'm in for another weekend of ‘who needs a neck anyway’.

It’s Over.

2010-12-02T15:22:00.006Z

AT LAST it’s time to begin lining the hull compartments. When we bought the vessel all those years ago we naively thought we’d be embarking on a houseboat conversion straight away. To say that we were wrong about this possibly qualifies as understatement of the century. We clearly didn’t realise that we’d have to attend to the whole time consuming saving-a-piece-of-british-maritime-history boat rebuilding palaver before we could actually get on with any of the house/home bit at all.
When the foam went into the hull in September it marked a massive demarcation line in the whole project so far and now, after a good rest from the summers big effort I feel I have finally begun.

Starting in the bosun’s store/main bedroom seems right, if only because it’s a small space and I’m righteously bored of putting an airbed away up forward in order to clear space to work every morning. I also really, really want somewhere to sleep that doesn’t involve waking up nose to nose with a chopsaw as the rather alarming novelty of this sort of behaviour has definitely worn off. And anyway, sharp objects don’t go happily with airbeds and the sinking feeling of a leaking mattress just before falling asleep is one that is now depressingly familiar to me. I hasten to add that I’ve never knowingly punctured my bed with the use of power tools but you get the picture, a forgotten screw on the floor does just as well.

My chosen starting point is also the only compartment where we don’t have anything even vaguely approaching headroom, as evidenced by this picture of me taken by Ranka:

…and since we’ve owned the boat we’ve never used it for anything at all, so it seems nice to put it to use and gain a bit of extra space to lie down in straight away.
So far I’ve managed the bulkheads and the floor sections either side of the bed ‘platform’ in a couple of weekends, and the results are well, quite pant-wettingly exciting. The bulkhead that separates this compartment from the generator room at the stern has a secondary structure and layer of acoustic insulation installed behind the plywood for obvious reasons. And the floor has a layer of celotex underneath it, let’s have warm feet too, why not. I’m pleased with the floor, it’s 2” thick pine that originally came out of the rather hotchpotch forward accommodation floor some time ago, after some attention in the workshop it went back down in its new home like a dream. Next up, my apologies, will be the deckhead (ceiling) for which I have another nice bit of reclaim timber prepared and sanded ready to go.
It’s conceivable that I may just get this done before Christmas and this is why I need some unsullied underwear, it’s just so quick. All I need is materials and tools, a little time and half a brain, which even I ought to be able to manage; and an appreciably domestic looking space is already starting to take shape. If it doesn’t look homely enough to you yet then squint a little bit harder, but I can see it just fine, isn’t optimism great?

By the way, last Friday night was my first real opportunity to test out the effectiveness of all that foam. As it got dark outside and the temperature fell healthily below zero I’m pleased to report that one crappy little fan heater kept the forward accommodation and the wheelhouse above it tolerably warm and the sheer weight of foam in the bedroom coupled with my efforts at fitting square bits of wood into triangular holes enabled me to work in just a t-shirt, ok, and trousers too, don’t want to give the wrong sort of impression. Anyone who has had the misfortune to visit us on board over the last few winters will understand what a revelation this is, not least the bit about wearing trousers. I’m sure readers will be relieved to know that thankfully there’ll be no more sartorially misguided attempts to survive winters on board like wearing Becky’s tights underneath long johns (due to a critical sizing error I found I couldn’t lift a leg, or stop fondling my own thighs either), or double sets of overalls with layers of newspaper stuffed between the two (which was too crispy for comfort, also big fire hazard) for me. Nope, t-shirts on November nights will do nicely and I think we can definitely say that the insulation works.

Devils and Details, part 2.

2010-10-13T08:54:00.008+01:00

AKA. Getting by with a little help from my friends.

Well. Before this becomes ancient history I want to mention something about the battening process, which had to take place before we got covered in foam. Namely that it took a while, and required more of me than I could give alone without imploding. That vessel of ours is one seriously complex shape, see?
Becky and I hired the Hilti gun for another weekend and came back exhausted stinking of gunpowder with bruised elbows and chunks out of my knuckles. Then Jan and I took out shares in gripfill, using boxes of it to fix battening where a hilti-nail just wouldn’t do.
By the way, these babies:

are some of the porthole liners. I couldn’t handle the thought of de-boatifying wendy’s soon-come interior lining by putting square frames around circular holes, so I only spent four days laminating up eighteen of these shapes. They’re made from ‘AA’ grade birch ply in various configurations, in order to get them done the forward accommodation had to become something of a production line of repetitive tasks, before handing them over to Sam and J to fit. Fit they did. Where would I be without competent crew?

Marooned, that’s where.
So, to my mates, Jan (as ever), Supersam and new girl Jamie, Ranka- my big grinders new best friend, and of course the ever delightful miss Bee- I tip my hat to you all again. I reckon we did a good job, you all cheerfully tolerated my complete obsession with the boat as usual, only scarpering for the beach when my eyes really glazed over- and I didn’t completely lose my mind as a result. Thank you.

Devils and Details, part 1.

2010-10-11T10:40:00.003+01:00

I had to do something with the boat davits, as the last time they were used was when I had our big generator delivered by boat last summer, and stubbing my toes on them as they laid awkwardly on the deck ever since then was getting really boring.
After much headscratching about where best to put them permanently we decided the only sensible spot was either side of the engine room hatch/skylight, where they might one day be vaguely useful.

Here’s a picture of them in position, with their new bosses that I made from tube and 8mm plate welded nicely in, all with low hydrogen rods so they should be good and strong.
Wish I’d pinged the bloody slag off the welds before I took the first picture though, as i was really pleased with how they came out.

Bristol Fashion.

2010-10-11T10:25:00.003+01:00

In my experience, fitting mortice locks is one of those fiddly, careful-careful, measure thrice jobs where rushing or using blunt objects can be fatal. Fitting the locks to Wendy Ann’s sliding wheelhouse doors was even more so. Not only did I have to find suitable locks (which only took months of looking, eventually got lucky on a well known internet auction site), but then went through all the careful drill and chisel work of fitting four in total, two to each door, only to realise that the cunning recessed door jamb that Mark so carefully routed out when we built the cabin meant that the keys had no room to turn in their holes. Bugger.

In the end the only solution was this, eight carved scoops out of the jamb in order to give the keys room to turn. Thank goodness Ranka so kindly recently lent us a set of strangely shaped carving chisels to play with.

Debt.

2010-10-03T07:30:00.004+01:00

It’s a fact that saving our wreck of a tug cost an absolute fortune. And we’ve grown so used to dealing with the consequences that for us it’s usually just a fact of life, like furniture, or cheese. All that welding and all that time in a big shipyard cost serious money.
Occasionally however the stark truth gets up and bites one, or other, or both of us on the bum. In rebuilding Wendy Ann 2 we committed financial hari-kiri and plunged ourselves into massive personal debt. I shan’t trouble you with the details, but suffice to say that between us both we must raise £2053.77 each and every month simply to cover the repayments. Some people don’t believe us, but it’s true. Next time you’re wondering why progress might seem a bit slow, this is why. It’s also why I get a bit annoyed when people accuse us of having had ‘massive financial backing’. Er yeah- and we’ve got to pay every penny of it back with interest. This is not to say we haven’t had help from parents as well for which we are hugely grateful, but a trust fund it was not, and again every penny will be repaid as soon as we are able.
But I’m not complaining. Somehow or other we keep our heads above water, even if it is a desperate scrabble sometimes. All we can do is keep chipping away and work as hard as we can. In the meantime we constantly have to be very careful in balancing what we can spend on actual boat building, and when.
Why am I writing this now? Well, getting that foam in and all its associated preparation was an expensive task for which we worked, saved, and worked some more. Now it’s done, and it suddenly looks like winter is outside the window. Yesterday I sort of dropped the ball and got quite depressed, having become overawed (see above). Becky reminded me however that we’re always working to a plan. It is this; Earn money, split it proportionally in three directions starting with daily survival, then debt repayment, then boatbuilding. By doing it this way our situation is slowly but definitely improving.
So what next for the boat? Well, to all things a season. Over the years we have squirreled a fair amount of materials together down on the farm and now the insulation is done we can start to use them, which means that unlike a year ago this winter we won’t have to mothball our project. Instead I’ll be getting on with preparing and fitting these materials. This should enable us see a fair amount of progress on board without the need to invest any large sums of money over the next few months.

Cake Or Death.

2010-09-28T18:30:00.008+01:00

THIS is the reason why we’ve pushed and pushed this summer, and I know that parents, friends and crew will be dying to see the results so I’d better get on with it. We are pleased to say that the entire interior of the vessel is now covered in sprayfoam insulation, mostly to a depth of at least three inches. Which gave us both the ideal opportunity to get fairly drunk on cheap fizz at an entirely inappropriate time of the afternoon.
But it wasn’t easy getting there, oh no, and I’m not talking about the jobs we did in preparation either. After trying the ‘cold’ (30˚C) foam DIY kits in our cabin we decided that for many reasons it’d probably be worth the money to have the big job of the hull done with ‘hot’ foam by professionals, not least that by the time we’d got all the prep done I’d most likely be completely knackered- which indeed I was. We hoped that spending money on professionals would make things easier, in one way it did, and it’s hard to find serious fault in the quality of their finished work. However, when we hoped that getting the professionals in would be stress free, we were wrong. Communication with the company we chose was akin to extracting blood from a stone once they’d taken our deposit (nearly two grand), and the job ended up happening over a week later than it should because of a simple failure to check their equipment which led to a small but critical malfunction on site the first time they turned up. Consequently the last fortnight has been massively stressful for us, so I guess the lesson here is that no matter how you choose to attack a big task, it’ll probably cause more hair loss one way or the other.
They did make a good job of it in the end though, and being me I was determined to basically stand alongside the man on the gun and heckle him every time I considered a spot ‘too thin’, he took this treatment fairly well considering and we got on cheerfully, which means that there are few holidays and most of the job is well over spec. Hell, I even persuaded him to put an inch or so over the inside of the funnel, which raised an eyebrow or two when I suggested it.
The process did however, get foam everywhere- which I suppose you could say is the whole point, but it’s going to take weeks to cut back the foam where it needs it, expose all the battens again (luckily I masked every last batten face with gaffer tape, otherwise I’d be buggered) and take all the mess away. Especially from the bilges where all the stuff I’ve already started cutting back has inevitably ended up. Godddd.

And the rivets are gone, all that super clean steelwork is covered up forever. I feel fine about this, being pretty much sick of the sight of it by now- but a friend who saw the results on Saturday morning said “part of me wants to cry” and I know what he’s getting at. The interior of Wendy Ann no longer looks like an engineering masterpiece, instead she now looks very organic indeed, like being inside a giant cream bun. Part of me wants to cry too, but mainly because I have to do that bloody big tidy up yet again. On the plus side, this really does mean the final and absolute end of shivering our arses off at pick-a-number-below-zero in the winters. Result.

Stick Up.

2010-09-27T20:39:00.028+01:00

In the interests of playing catch-up, and as promised, here are photographs of the most obvious exterior change we’ve made to our vessel. All being well, I’ll post some more of the other stuff we’ve done too- soon.
During the August bank holiday we raised the mast. I’d been shitting it about doing this as the mast is not exactly a lightweight object, but a long chat with one of my neighbours and another long chat with Arun Canvas and Rigging helped to allay some of these fears. The guys at Arun Rigging prepared Wendy’s new rigging from 12mm galvanised steel rope, and also provided me with all the shackles, turnbuckles and wire clamps that I’d need to do the job. They were so helpful and had the entire package ready to go in an hour at a really reasonable price.

When the big day came Becky, Ranka, and I were joined by my neighbour, Jalil. He keeps his little open sailing boat almost next door to our tug and clearly knows his onions when it comes to things nautical, so when he kindly offered to help out I practically bit his arm off.
The scariest part of the whole process turned out to be getting the mast bolted into its tabernacle. I wondered if Jalil, who was supporting most of the weight would be squashed between the mast and funnel whilst I desperately scrabbled to get the retaining bolt into position on the tabernacle. Once the bolt had thankfully slid home it was almost a simple case of ‘one two three heave’ and before you knew it, Wendy Ann 2 suddenly looked like a proper boat. It’s funny the difference a bloody great stick and a bunch of wire makes to the overall proportions of her, but it does.

Oh, one small detail did induce mild alarm for a moment. When the mast was all rigged and right, the temporary headline we used to pull the mast up got itself tangled as we were trying to let it go. So my new sea-dog pal tested my new mast by climbing up it to remove the offending rope. I hasten to add that absolutely nothing bad happened, but it’s a test that I wouldn’t have dared employ myself at the time. Silly thing is that the rigging itself is rated to five tons safe working load- I guess that would make the shackles the weak links, rated at a mere one ton each. Jalil definitely does not weigh one ton, I’m sure. Not to be beaten, since then I’ve climbed the mast myself and it’s quite a view from up there.
Theoretically we could now do things with this mast, although I cut the gooseneck off for reasons too complicated to explain now welding it back on shouldn’t present too much of a problem and then we’ll be away.
For now though all I’m using it for is flying some big silly flags, like this stupidly enormous 'celebration' ensign- which is a strangely satisfying sight.

Many thanks to grinder monkey for de pictures.

Art Thys Thyinge Workinge?

2010-09-20T17:27:00.004+01:00

It’s been a busy couple of months, but particularly August, I don’t know where it went.
Oh. Yes I do, but I haven’t documented it, so did it really happen? I’m beginning to wonder if this is the question we should all be asking ourselves in this internet age.

At the start I was mostly too stupidly busy, then more recently overawed by the task of writing it all down. That bit’s easy, but what’s happened lately is that I’ve sort of gone cold on the whole blog thing. I read something a couple of weeks ago that was all about living in an information saturated world- and people in our society feeling that if they didn’t blog or facebook about something they've done then it wasn’t worth doing, about us 21st century folk losing grasp of the concept of having a private life, you know, the one where you get on with things quietly on your own without the need to shout 'look at me!' all the time. And that was it- I suddenly just didn’t fancy sitting down in front of this computer and telling the world about my silly little victories anymore. I mean, who really cares if I’ve had the busiest time on board Wendy Ann 2 since our launch? When I’m there I can appreciate the huge recent changes that I’ve made happen and the benefits they bring, surely that should be enough? Blah. I don’t really want to rant any more about it either, and since I can’t really think what to do with this blog except carry on anyway it’s all a load of bollocks. So I’m trying to sidestep the issue by writing the following statement:

Shit loads has happened.

I’ve been fortunate enough to dedicate a large chunk of the summer to our vessel, and have been on board for at least 4 nights out of 7 on average. There’s no computer there. As you’d expect, enjoying this kind of regime has meant I got quite a lot done.
In no particular order, we’ve:

Completed the battening out with a hilti gun, then applied the rest of the battening with gripfill throughout the boat
Laminated up eighteen circular porthole liners from fancy ‘AA’ grade ply and fixed them into position around their respective portholes.
Put the mast up. Which ought to be in capital letters. It looks wicked.
Made up some hefty bosses and welded them onto wendy’s decks, into which we put the davits, and now they actually serve a purpose rather than being bloody great lumps to stub your toe on.
Moved wendy’s original steering engine into a new position on some bearers that’d been welded down where the towhook used to be. One day soon it’ll become a standby generator set, it’s chief virtue being that it’s a hand starter.
Finally welded some hasps into place so the generator hatches can be LOCKED, thereby removing the ugly truck tarp that’d been covering wendy’s stern.
Welded in five through hull skin fittings, each threaded up to take these 1 1/12 inch ball valves that we had. Found the valves for our bilge line skin fittings too so all the skin fittings actually work..
Welded down the funnel top, then cut a four inch hole in it and tacked a blanking plate over ready for the installation of one of the woodburners flues.
Fitted the teak weatherboards over our sliding doors on the wheelhouse, one of those annoying twenty minute jobs that I’d been meaning to do for months and in the end got so sick of tripping over the parts for that I put them together, duh.
Started fitting the fancy locks to the doors, there’s a bunch of precise woodwork in this.
Removed another IBC. You know what happened last time, well, not like that.
Put the solar panel in it’s place on the roof, more to get it out of the way than anything.
Ditto our navigation lights (well, some of them).
And some other things I can’t think of right now.

Needless to say, I had help.

If I can overcome this desire to kick and scream at modern technology for no more sensible reason than 'oh dear, I seem to have turned into a hippy' then I’ll have a go at presenting a load of pictures of all this, and a bit more detail, soon. For now though it’s all about making ready for one more ‘nearly a week’ trip to the boat to do one final push at this daft project, so I’ve a car to pack instead. And I’m tired now. But yeah, I’ll fill you in later.

Bookends.

2010-07-30T09:12:00.003+01:00

Regular readers of this blog will know that over the years of doing this boat restoration malarkey, Becky and I have been bigtime blessed by our various friends and their frankly humbling enthusiasm to get involved on board with our epic task. Indeed, we couldn’t have done most of it, or stayed relatively sane without them.

An old friend from my past life of cycling the city recently expressed an interest in coming along to see what all the fuss is about, so last weekend she did. I’d previously thought that she would be amongst the last people to come visit but boy, was I ever wrong. It turns out that Ranka has a fondness for doing woodwork, so amongst other things it seemed like a good time to install the floor in the cabin. Yep, we used those ‘some-kind-of-mahogany’ boards that I’ve been trying to find the right home for hmmm, shall we say, some time. The boards required their T&G scraping out, and ordering nicely but apart from that they just needed cut to size before they were good to go. We fitted them, screwed ‘em down and plugged the 36 screw holes in less than a day; all we had to do then was wait for the glue on the plugs to dry overnight before planing and sanding them flush. Another dear friend, Mark, bequeathed me the 1/2 inch plug cutter that we used for this some time ago and it’s still one of my favourite little toys.

The plywood ‘L’ shape that you can see round the back is where a fitted set of seating will be going one day soon, so there’s no point putting mahogany there and anyway, there wasn’t enough.
It’s very nice to have dealt with another pile of hardwood, very nice to have another finished floor to admire, and after getting some varnish onto it yesterday we can actually stand very nicely on it too.

The next day we faced the interesting issue of how to go about showering before work, as after two hardworking days on board we were feeling a wee bit sticky. Ranka suggested a novel solution for us both, which went as follows… Get up early, take towel and shower gel to beach, stand in surf soaping up and wave to the bemused local dog walkers, tuck shower gel into sarong wrapped around head, swim off suds, clamber out and wander back to boat feeling very relaxed and about three sizes smaller. Works a treat, although I wouldn’t like to do it in February.
I should probably say that Ranka is from Croatia and survived the civil war there, therefore there’s not much that fazes her, so industrial camping on board doesn’t seem to present any obstacle to her enjoyment. And I should also say that I have a feeling she’ll be back- and most welcome she will be too. As we grow older, old friends remind us of what it’s like to be young once again.

Weld on hinges.

2010-07-29T00:09:00.004+01:00

On the generator room hatches X 4. Just add paint, and grease. Grrrrr.

Nest Building, part one.

2010-07-28T20:58:00.004+01:00

Wendy Ann’s steering room, or bosun’s store is going to be our main bedroom. It’s the only compartment on board which does not have full head height so it seems like an obvious choice. Since the rebuild it has had no floor, or any bearers whatsoever; so the space has been pretty much out of bounds as to occupy it means climbing the walls like a frog in a bowl.
Two weekends ago we changed all that. It’s one of those jobs which we’ve been meaning to do for aaaages and the steel for it has been kicking around getting in the way for a similar length of time. So finally I paid one of Becky’s helpers to cover for the day at the farm and we got the burning gear out on board. Simples really, Becky and I spent the day cutting, positioning and tacking all the pieces before she left me to weld the whole lot up.

Here it is before I painted the steels.
Photographs are funny things, sometimes they cover a multitude of sins and make stuff look better than it is. And at other times, like this one, they're A) crap and B) just can’t sum up the awesomeness that such a simple change has effected. Well, it’s a small space and a camera phone has limits…
The bosun’s store now has a steel ‘sled’ arrangement placed to fit no less than a queen size mattress, and there are floor bearers about a foot lower to take some nice thick old pine boards that I’ve been busy with in the workshop. The mattress itself will be supported on a frame built over the set of 6x2 timber inserts that you can see in the picture (they're notched into the steel sled so it's a little unclear what their dimensions are from the pic). The reason for this is because under that frame is a large empty space, and eventually we want to occupy that with a water tank, so the mattress base will have to be removable for when the time comes.
I need to lay my hands on some nice thick plywood to cover the thing before I can finally kiss goodbye to every night pumping up an airbed and sleeping surrounded by tools on the forward accommodation floor, then packing it all away each morning before my bed fills up with sawust/metal dust/varnish/whatever- an arrangement that has seen us through (gulp) five years of working on Wendy Ann 2. Going to get a real mattress too soon, oh ja…

The Resurrection?

2010-07-21T21:45:00.003+01:00

Pictured here is one of Wendy’s two ‘original’ batteries. Together they could theoretically produce 620Ah of power. The only problem is that as you can see from the strata of dust they’ve lain dormant through the whole rebuild- almost since we purchased the vessel all those lifetimes ago. The last time they were used was during our first tow from Plymouth to Southampton, when they powered a bunch of lights overnight. Indeed the only reason they didn’t get scrapped just like everything else was that they were just tooo heavy to move and we weren’t about to pay for more craneage, so I’d always just thought of them as handy ballast.

Anyway-because of things like wanting to get some sort of security lighting set up I’ve been sidetracked into the brave new world that is twelve volt power. I remember talking to Tim months ago about his batteries on board Lady Jane and have got around to wondering if there’s a way to save these old batteries of ours. Knowing that there was every chance that they might be buggered, last weekend I gave them a top up, tested them and discovered to my relief that they had about 9 volts in each of them so stuck a crappy little halfords charger on one for a day to see if anything would happen. Sure enough at the end of the evening the meter showed 11.5 volts. So it seems they’ll take a charge, and my hope is growing that they may indeed be salvageable. If they are it seems silly to go to the expense of buying new ones, when the answer has been under my nose all along. These batteries of ours might possibly be in fairly bad condition, or they may be fine- I dunno. So I’m wondering how best to proceed with the whole show of getting them up to scratch, and also just how long it might take if they are a bit on the knackered side.
There are obviously plenty of reasons to have reliable 12v power on board, and I’m practically salivating at the prospect of being able to run domestic lights and stereos without the expense of burning fuel oil. We have been lucky and have had a very cheap source of pink diesel lately but this will not always be the case, and because of our vessels location we need to be completely independent in our power generation. And although it’s nice to have an engine running on board, it’s also nice to enjoy my evening beer in peace and quiet with just the gulls for company.
So I’ve gone a bit mental on a well known internet auction site and bought various things, including a fancy automatic charger, then completely lost the plot and picked up a solar panel too- figuring that there’s plenty of sunshine available down in Littlehampton. This is the reason why Becky usually has to ban me from perusing ebay as I can’t help buying stuff. Now the only problem is that I’m a bit daunted about how to put the whole lot together. Yet another thing that I’m almost an absolute beginner at. Although I did study ‘electronics’ at school for GCSE technology, I’ve obviously forgotten pretty much the lot- but I do remember enjoying it, so that’s a start. This weekend I hope to at least put the basics together and get some charge into those big batteries. Hopefully it’ll grow from there.

Radiate Everything You Are.

2010-07-08T19:56:00.007+01:00

I’m just waiting for Captain Cautious to keelhaul me for this one.

Love it or hate it, this is a minor personal alteration that I’ve wanted to make for ages, and indeed with its sea-pup theme was originally planned for around the launch of our tug last year but things got a bit, hmmm, messed up so it had to wait until the time seemed right.
After being so pissed off about broken windows and all that I decided, well, now the time just seemed right- I suppose in a funny way it was about getting the episode out of my system. So yesterday I toddled along to New School Tattoos and enjoyed a brief moment of mild pain with the aim of doing myself up. A rather cool lady tattooist called Naomi made sure that my hands changed forever, just the way I wanted.

Tuesday was Becky’s birthday and Saturday will be mine, so this weekend we’re off to the boat with a few dear friends to celebrate being twelve again. We’re not going to do a stroke of work, which is something I may or may not find difficult depending on how many bottles of bubbles we manage to get through. Instead the plan is to enjoy just being there, take in Littlehampton Carnival, and fly kites on the beach before barbequeing something tasty for tea. Can’t wait.

Keep Calm and Carry On.

2010-07-08T19:34:00.005+01:00

As promised, here’s a (bit blurred, sorry) snap or two of that oak ceiling, the one that I decided the installation of which would cheer me up. It worked. The wheelhouse ceiling is now 99.9% complete, requiring just the final cut pieces on each side, some beading and the teak ‘false’ purlin covers (that I’ve already made) to finish off. Oh, and a couple coats of finishing oil too.
I bought myself a cheap 240v nailer to do this from screwfix to help speed up the secret nailing process, and it behaved immaculately throughout, which makes a nice change.
This is what I love about wood- the material that this ceiling is made of started out looking like a load of old shit that was destined for the bonfire, and all it took was a bunch of work to end up with a ceiling that even in my humble opinion, looks a million dollar.
I am obviously rather chuffed with the results, and feel all the effort was rather worth it. By Christ I’m glad I hand sanded the stuff before I put it up though, as it was I spent the weekend wondering if they sell flip top heads in screwfix too…

How to Break our Hearts.

2010-07-07T00:22:00.006+01:00

I’m back from working in France, and I had a much more positive blog entry in mind than the one I’m going to write, but that’s life I suppose. Having been back for over a week, I’ve been on board our boat several times since returning. But on arrival to work early Saturday morning I was greeted by the sight of this.

And this.

(I know, the bronze needs a polish)

Some poisonous vermin have vandalised Wendy Ann 2. My mind managed to flee through violation, shock, anger and resignation even before I called the police, which was more or less straight away. After speaking to them I let the Harbour Board know what’d happened and it wasn’t ‘til I got off the phone to them that I cried.

The little wankers- for I’m fairly sure the culprits are likely to be a group of males between the ages of say, twelve to fifteen (and we know what boys of that age like to do when left alone), smashed one of the engine room skylights and threw a shoe (??) through the hole, they also tried to break two of our engine room portholes, the ones we spent a fortune replacing glass on. Luckily the glass we used was 1/2 inch thick toughened stuff so although I think they used a piece of scrap metal bar which was found at the scene, they only managed to severely crack these. The engine room is absolutely covered in broken glass from the skylight, I’d only tidied the place up on Wednesday for god’s sake and I know the vessel needs ventilation but this is just not the way to get it. But the damage is going to cost money to fix and of course take precious work time away from real progress. Before you ask, of course we’re insured, but that’s not the point.
I mentioned tears falling already. What upset me was that whilst the authorities were sympathetic, a lack of witnesses and so on means that the likelihood of catching these brainless, selfish fucks and holding them to account is unfortunately close to zero. The police eventually called back and declined to visit the scene to dust for fingerprints or even just send a uniformed bobby down to show a reassuring police presence, a response which I was (shall we say) disappointed by, and I was eventually asked to take the items that may have fingerprints to the local copshop. So much for the community policing pledge boys.
Stupid thing is that apparently there’s an increasing problem with this sort of thing locally but the sergeant I spoke to tried to feed me the excuse that ‘it’s a long drive round to that side of the river’ when I suggested that a regular, visible police patrol just might begin to serve as a deterrent to idiots. It isn't, I do it all the time and it takes less than five minutes. I listened agape to this feebleness, before being subjected to a couple of horror stories (break in to yacht club and theft of distress flares, theft and burning of vessels etc) by the same sergeant. He seemed slightly mollified when I explained that this was really not what I needed to hear right now, before going on to politely suggest that maybe the local constabulary should try actually doing something rather than scaring the shit out of people who were already trying to deal with having just suffered a crime, but I doubt that I made any difference whatsoever. It’s a shame, because Littlehampton is a nice place full of decent people, but naturally now my faith in it all is severely shaken.
Inevitably, the upset gave way to anger and I knew I’d be in trouble unless I let the whole thing go pretty quick, for I found myself glaring accusingly at every gang of teenagers that wandered past the vessel on the way to the beach, which was not only unfair, but unhealthy too. The damage is so wanton and pointless that it near breaks my heart to think of it being done. I don’t expect kids to have any idea what it means to dedicate every fibre of your being to saving an old boat for over half a decade of your short life, but I would hope them to have enough basic respect not to smash it up for the fleeting, destructive fun of it. Call me naïve, but clearly I have hoped in vain. I keep telling myself that it could’ve been worse, and might be if it happens again.
The only thing to add is that we won’t be beaten by nasty setbacks like this, we’re tough, adult people who are blessed with the resource of fortitude; so all the upset and anger of Saturday will only serve to make us more determined to get somewhere this summer, I promise. It's only glass, and glass can be replaced, but unfortunately faith in oneself and human nature cannot.

Anyway, by the time the phone calls and so on were all done I’d lost a fair few hours. I decided to cheer myself up by doing something really, really satisfying- so I spent the rest of the weekend installing the oak ceiling in the wheelhouse, which meant working past ten at night for two nights. It looks brilliant, but it deserves to be unsullied by the filth of what’s written above, so I’ll give it a blog entry of it’s own, next.

Lets Go to Wick.

2010-05-25T21:02:00.007+01:00

Seeing as my all female crew (!) have blown my cover I may as well get on and write this.
I’m currently enduring a little forced exile at work. All boats eat money, a fact that many people who don’t own a boat (yet- but want to) don’t seem to grasp. They are the ones who say ‘oh, it must be so bohemian living on a boat’; well, unless I’ve got my history all wrong and bohemians actually do wear filthy overalls all the time, work 27 hours a day, never go to the pub, suffer near frostbite during the winter months and headaches the rest of the time, and also hemorrhage money on a regular basis before imbibing anything naughty- or even getting on board- then no, it’s not exactly a bohemian existence thus far. Wendy Ann is no exception, and because Becky and me have some fairly large plans for the very near future we’ve been quick to realize that some bugger will have to pay for them. Well, this time that bugger is me. Therefore right now I’m absolutely nowhere near my vessel, and have been for nearly three weeks, and I miss her terribly. What’s worse, I’ll still be nowhere near Wendy Ann 2 in four weeks time. There is definitely, as far as I’m concerned, a big downside to this particular fact. But on the other hand, some bugger has to earn the money. So yes, I’m in another country, doing the same thing I always do, in fact last week I was doing this:

You can take the boy out of the shipyard, but you can't tek the shipyard out of the boy. So there.

The only thing that galls me ever so slightly is that a few weeks ago, just as the date for departure loomed my work on board Wendy Ann was really going well and I was loving it. I mean, I was seriously fucking shattered, but boy was it looking good, and it was with a very heavy heart that I dragged myself away for the last time before this period of necessary abstinence.
I’m very happy that Becky is minding the vessel closely while I’m away, and I’m even happier that she’s roped a gang of her attractive friends into helping out.I just wish I was there to enjoy the privilege. Our boat is so much a part of my life that she’s ingrained herself under my skin indelibly, so it’s obvious that I find it so hard to leave her (this probably has something to do with all my blood, sweat, tears and money sloshing around in the bilges) but while I graft away in a foreign country for another boat shaped dream I’m reassured that my missus is deriving some pleasure from our creation that is, well, distinctly her own.
Meanwhile, whilst away from the boat my own experience of life has turned into something about as comprehensible as this:

Mind you, sometimes I'm wonder if it's always been this way. Hopefully things will soon be back to normal, whatever that is, and I’ll be back before you know it for the big plan. Then I promise I’ll make all the girls swab the decks. Naked.

Here come the girls

2010-05-23T05:30:00.009+01:00

Yes we do and with style, laughter and muscle power to rival the boys.

Firstly, hello darling. Now before anyone gets excited that was just for Seb- currently away on work and left me in charge of Ms Ann, with would you believe it a list of ‘should you have time’ jobs. Oh, and I should mention at this point instructions on how to varnish and teak oil (in case I hadn’t done it before the cheeky ****). For those unititiated of you the opportunities for me to get to the boat of late have been very sparse due to starting my own business (ours really because there is no way I could have done it solo), so the idea that I can get down to look in on Wendy let alone work is, looking at recent history, laughable. However I had my own ideas and although the teak oil and varnish will get a look in, the girls and I had bigger plans…

Have a guess; when thing one disappeared one of the few remaining parts were the wheels from the gangplank. Well here they are, back on dry land, how strange, how did they get there? Why go into the mud to retrieve them unless you were down there anyway?

Here are some clues; we needed a car, a trailer (which in itself presented a problem seeing as Seb has the car with a tow bar) some muscle and a plan. This aforementioned plan involved two day trips a week apart, borrowing Jon’s (Jenny’s dad) Land Rover Discovery, a people carrier, a lot of dangerous manoeuvres, three planks, ice cream and a stroll on the beach. Oh, and ropes…

Can you tell what it is yet?

Oh yes, we have removed both empty IBC’s

Plan A wasn’t really a plan so we winged it and got into a spot of bother. The trouble was not getting the IBC out of the boat but getting the damned thing off of it. We hadn't accounted for the logistics of actually getting this huge thing up the deck to the walkway, going over or around fixed obstacles such as bollards. So we threw it overboard. Great, it’s buoyant we thought. However it won’t float ashore on a fast ebbing tide will it. Hence the mud, you can imagine the laughs and the hours it took to drag it round to a low part of the shore so as we could drag it out again.

We needed a plan B seeing as we were now filthy, exhausted, mildly traumatized and running late to do evening stables back at home.
So, week two. We checked the time tables, realised that it would be low when we got there so went prepared with three long planks with which to make a temporary gangplank on the uncluttered part of the deck. We lifted the IBC from the engine room, carefully onto our gangplank and pulled it ashore, rolled it to the trailer and away. Plan B worked so well that we were caught by surprise and left with nothing to do but go for ice cream.

This is a major job on Wendy Ann done and I couldn't have done it without the 'girls army'. The recruits being- my sister Victoria, who travelled down from Nottingham twice to take part, Paula, who managed to juggle motherhood of 4 around helping out and Jenny who managed to fit the last trip in before starting her new job- congats! All of whom worked so hard with a fantastic sense of humour, I couldn't have asked for a better team of friends.

The pictures speak for themselves really so enjoy, we certainly did and I am far too excited and pleased with myself to edit this blog further so apologies. The last piccie is for Paula; it is of her two cool dogs having a run on the beach. I had the pleasure of dog sitting them a few weeks prior to this madness; say hello to Bear and Pumpkin.

The Phantom Flan Flinger.

2010-05-04T10:16:00.016+01:00

As I promised myself, I managed to finish work, climb down from those perilous ladders and whisk myself away to Wendy for Friday morning. The downside of pushing myself so hard was that by the time I made it on board and embarked all the tools, absolutely smash and flake it I was. I tried coffee, then I tried sitting around enjoying the view (yup– still there.) I tried another cup of coffee whilst admiring the view. But in the end it was the arrival of the fishermen next door back from a mornings work that galvanised me into action. Because I was dog tired I had one of those days, you know, the ones when everything you attempt seems cack-handed, even if it’s not. I did however manage to survive the day without losing a thumb or gouging out an eyeball or anything, which is always a winner.
The plywood panels in the timber part of the structure were already lined behind with celotex and after last weekend now had all the electrical conduit in place, so I moused the wires through it before lifting out the panels and having a fight with the final layer of insulation that was to go in. I’m not sure how I feel about rockwool on boats because of it’s propensity to absorb water. I certainly wouldn’t put it on it’s own next to bare steel because it’d be guaranteed to soak up condensation and be a soggy mess in no time, but I’ve had these rolls of thin rockwool kicking around for a while and had long decided to fill the void between the celotex and the ply lining on the timber sections with it. As long as I put in a vapour barrier on the inside face to prevent water absorption, and also allow it to breathe out, the science says I should be ok, and I’m doomed to hope it’s right. Fitting it was easier said than done whilst single-handed. For each section I cut the rockwool to size and cut damp proof membrane to fit too no probs. The battle started when I tried to get everything to sit just so in position before attempting to slide the plywood lining back into position. Bloody nightmare, I discovered I needed the arms of an octopus and the patience of a saint. At the last minute something would always shift, bulge, or succumb to the laws of gravity. I tried all sorts of ways to pin, tape, staple or glue everything in position but nothing really helped. In the end it was a case of get it all into place, quickly, and shove. Consequently I only managed 4 1/2 of the eight panels which make the sides before giving up in frustration and awaiting the arrival of miss B, who walked across the gangplank to supper, a glass of wine and a comfy bed at quarter to midnight, which gave me plenty of time to batten out the details which I found I’d forgotten in preparation for the next day. Becky and I subsequently discovered that if the rockwool is cut just the right amount too big it can be persuaded to sit happily in place for long enough to down tools and make a cup of tea, but cut any bigger or smaller and it’s on the floor before before you can say ‘nowadays I like yorksh… bollocks’

Anyways, that dealt with the cabin walls, but the aft wall below those windows, and the floor were both bare steel. For months I've had most of the after wall chocked in with leftover bits of celotex, which certainly helped but the floor has been a big fat steel heatsink ever since the demolition of our old cabin. The plan was to sprayfoam it all out and neatly sidestep any condensation issues. We are aiming to sprayfoam inside the whole boat at some point (like, when we can afford it) so a small area like this inside the cabin makes a good test bed for our plans.

We were ready for the main event by lunchtime, having removed the panels and temporary insulation from the after wall, cleared everything out, pushed the hoover about a bit and indulged in some fairly industrial masking off.
After a fair bit of research we had invested in a small sprayfoam kit from x-pandifoam, which would theoretically cover the area we wanted to a thickness of two inches. The foam comes in two pressurised parts which need to be kept at 20-30 degrees C, the manufacturers suggested that we keep them in warm water baths to get them to the right temperature prior to use, so this is what we did.
I had been warned that for a small area the process of emptying the tanks would be extremely quick, so when everything was at the right temperature and each tank had been shaken one final time for luck it was time to don the teletubby costumes, take a deep breath and go for it. I immediately discovered that spraying this stuff on was bit like a cross between throwing cake mix at the wall, and one of the messier moments from Tiswas; and within minutes everything we wanted to be, and some stuff we didn’t was covered in creamy goo.
What I hadn’t bargained for was just how fast this stuff goes off. I’ve used tinned sprayfoam plenty on sites before but the foam we were using is different and sets by chemical reaction so within minutes it was more or less solid. Wow.
Bummer of the day was that the tanks ran out just as I had moved position to the tiny area of exposed steel at the bottom of the wheelhouse. So we sat around in stunned silence for a bit before working out what the hell to do next. With the benefit of hindsight I’m increasingly convinced that the stick on thermometers that come with the pack are not exactly quick to register changes in temperature, and, as the tanks depressurised and rapidly cooled we failed to realise and compensate. Therefore I’m becoming sure that we could’ve extracted a bit more yield from the kit if we’d understood this better. But because experience is just another word for learning from mistakes I’m trying not to stress about it.

With the steel all covered in splat, the process of unmasking and cutting back the inevitable overspray could begin in earnest, and the winner of this weekends Random Handtools That No-one Tells You About award is: the super sharpened kitchen knife. This puppy cut the dense foam so much neater than a saw, or various scraper type devices that we tried. I was gifted this knife at eighteen as a leaving home present, and I never thought it’d be used for this, but it worked pretty well.

That evening B had to go home to be ready for work early the next day. After waving her off with sadness I plugged in the tiny fan heater that has been used as life support over the years and within moments had to do something that has never, ever happened before on board. I had to turn it down. I’m not used to these levels of luxury, and was so stunned by this discovery that I turned it back up again, removed the larger portion of my clothing and stood around in the lovely warmth enjoying my drink and the (by now rather quieter) rumble of the generator just for novelty value of it. When I recovered my senses I was pleased to note that the space remained warm for a good while if I switched the heater off, and I soon began dreaming of a toasty boat when the whole thing is insulated. I think the heat must've gone to my head.

Sunday was a three coffee morning, and even with that hefty dose of stimulation my poor little brain felt like it was leaking out my ears. But it was time to put the panels I’d already made back in and then make the little ones that line the lower sections closest the floor. They are the darker squares in the pictures, being made from 18mm ply. Eventually most of these will form the inside of some fitted furniture but that’s a way off yet. By the end of another day of measuring and dust making and back aching I was able to see completed walls, all the way to the bottom. I began putting a protective coat of varnish onto my nice new cabin, using well thinned yacht varnish to penetrate deep into the wood- unfortunately this is the one step of the progress that I do not have pictures of, by this point being so utterly exhausted that my remaining reserves of energy were required for packing up and getting home for 24 hours of absolute rest.

For anyone who’s had the patience to actually read this far I apologise that it has been such a long and winding piece of writing, I’m really excited, particularly because all that remains to do (uh oh- dangerous phrase alert) is to install the ceilings and the floor before we have a fully lined space. The ply panels will eventually be covered with a rather prettier exotic lining, but that will have to wait- for like a year or two. Until then, we're more than happy to live with what we've got.

The Future is Now.

2010-04-28T19:02:00.004+01:00

Becky and I went to the boat for four whole days last week. It is simplest to say that we had about the best time it’s possible to have whilst boatbuilding on a shoestring. I absolutely love the rare occasions that B is able to pull herself away from work and join me on the big dream.
We had all these enormous plans as usual, and as usual knocked our guts out attempting to get them all done, but common to all building projects Wendy Ann has this way of making everything we do take longer than we thought it would. By now we know all about his phenomenon and were well braced for it, so there is no sense of disappointment whatsoever at what we didn’t manage to cross off the list.
The big idea was to concentrate on ONE area of the vessel and attempt to make a huge difference. So after much obsessive planning on my behalf Becky persuaded me to drop some of my wilder, more addled ideas and we chose to dedicate our efforts to the wheelhouse and cabin interior.

Here’s a list of what we DIDN’T manage to get to in those magic four days:
Sprayfoaming the steel cabin floor and rear bulkhead wall
Second layer of insulation and vapour barrier the walls and ceilings
Installation of oak lining to wheelhouse ceiling
Mousing through all electrical cables
Floor and lower wall sections cut from 18mm ply

And here’s a list of what we DID:
1/4 ton Concrete slab laid on steel bridge deck
All electric conduits installed
Wheelhouse lining ply cut, backed with glassfibre and fully installed
Ply lining of cabin walls all cut to fit and dry-fitted
Steel cabin floor battened out ready for sprayfoam

As a bonus B also found time to cover our new access staging in chicken wire to provide a bit more grip underfoot in wet weather, so now our staging has the Littlehampton look- as every fishermans wharf this side of the river seems also to be covered in the stuff.
So you could say we’re halfway through the list, that’s possibly a bit misleading though. The reason I say this is twofold, firstly getting all our electrical conduit in the right place was one of those thinky thinky carefully type jobs which required a two brained approach. So that took the best part of a day. Secondly those (incidentally top notch quality hardwood WBP ply) linings that feature largest in the photographs look simple. But there’s almost not a right angle in the things and cutting them ate up two days. I’m proud to say that I cut nearly every one to fit within a half millimetre tolerance. Bevel gauges and really sharp block planes are truly marvellous tools for helping do it right. The only slightly gappy ones are in the wheelhouse linings, where the lining meets at some severe angles two of my mitres are ever so slightly (fit a credit card between ‘em- which is actually quite thick) off. But hey, there are more layers going over here so B persuaded (read ‘drunkenly heckled’) me after the evenings first bottle of red that maybe I should just try to be a little less anal about the fit. She says she knows it’s against my nature, I have absolutely no idea what she means.
With the exception of the wheelhouse panels, all the others are merely slotted in position right now as time just ticked out on us again, but as Sunday progressed B and I shared a rising sense of excitement at the rapid transformation of the first part of our vessel’s interior which is finally beginning to look like you could almost live in it instead of the ‘very expensive shed’ aesthetic I’d grown so used to.
In my day job I’m currently spending an awful lot of time at the top of some insanely tall ladders, but I’m hoping to get back down to Wendy for a few days around this weekend to move this project significantly further forward, and I’ve got my fingers and toes crossed that Becky might come for a day too. So I’m fervently hoping that we’ll get as far as trying out the sprayfoam that we ordered up special on the exposed bits of steel, as for moving on to that oak ceiling lining, well, that’d be a dream. I’ll let you know how we get on.

Thing 2.

2010-04-27T19:45:00.006+01:00

Do you remember me posting about Thing one, my wooden access ramp and staging that I constructed last summer? Well, perhaps calling it thing one was an ill portent because recently I turned up to the boat with a car boot full of heavy stuff and the buggering thing had disappeared, gone! I can only surmise that the combination of a very high spring tide and some gusty weather took it away and (hopefully) out to sea, as there have been no sightings of it since. At least it’s (hopefully) not floating up and down the harbour endangering the fishing vessels but for a few weeks the hole left by its absence has made gaining access to Wendy Ann 2 interesting to say the least, as I was back to just a shitty ladder for a while. Thing one was heftily bolted to the old wharf where Wendy lies, but clearly the old wharf was more rotten than I thought as a chunk of that has gone too. At least the bolts didn’t snap I suppose.

Me and de leathermann Jan hatched a plan to build a new access staging last weekend, in preparation for the big trip I was planning with Becky, of which more next. I decided that whatever we built should be significantly less likely to float, as I really don’t fancy having to build thing three, but you never know. This is why thing two stands on scaffold poles hammered four feet into the ground.
So, without further ado here are some pictures of what me and Jan got up to. Yes, they are the ones I took on that ridiculous new phone of mine. No, they do not really show it to its best advantage, but that’s life.

If by any chance you live in Littlehampton and have seen my original staging, please don’t tell anyone.

A Kick up the Arse.

2010-04-19T20:52:00.004+01:00

Big tings a g’wann. I’ve been down to the boat absolutely loads lately, as B and I are working on something radical which will hopefully bear fruit next week. So it’s been all go with me making regular forays boatways to prepare, either long day trips or overnight stays. I am currently spending a lot of the time wearing a big grin, God I love the springtime. And when I’ve not been doing that we’ve been organising, discussing, ordering stuff. And also I’ve been in the workshop loads ( that thing is turning out to be such a flippin’ godsend) preparing various weird and wonderful timbers, of which more soon. The unexpectedly odd knock on effect of all this is that rather than not having enough time in spite of finding hours, days to graft at boat stuff, so far B and I have instead found ourselves mostly more organised and productive in our regular worklives. This HAS to be good. The only problem now is that I find myself with about five blog entries queuing up to be written, and feel somewhat guilty that I haven’t shared my recent progress and good fortune with de blog. There is a spurious reason for this in that I have a superdooper new phone which seems to have a good camera and therefore I’ve taken photographs of significant moments upon it. But because I have this sort of mindblank trouble with the kind of technology that you don’t have to oil I haven’t yet mastered the art of getting my phone to talk to my computer and hand over the pictures. Maybe I should be less Manly and just read the bloody book that came in the box with it- there’s a thought.
Anyway, it’s all a bit of an excuse really, so on that note please make do with a reasonably abstract pair of pictures to illustrate one of the many things:

It’s the battening which is now lining the cabin and wheelhouse. I should really have tried to get an overall pic as the result of my efforts is quite cool, but since Becky’s camera can’t fit it all in you’ll have to make do with these close ups. Yes. I have found a use for cheap white pine. It dun’t be much, a mere snippet in the long haul that is boat construction, but believe it took two long day trips to complete, and I’m now working on battening out the floor in the cabin which is a steel surface, but not for long. Wendy gave me some gorgeous teak floorboards to play with you see…

Aaaargh.
I’ll do my best to get some more descriptive stuff of goings on up here before midweek, at which point theoretically we’ll be boatbound together for several big days (eek!!). I know that if I don’t get scribbling quick a couple of things I really want to write up will inevitably be lost in the melee and will never get done, which would be a shame.

NB: the above bracketed squeak(!) is an exclamation of excitement, not fear, or anything else. I’m beside myself with anticipation at having my lady join in with me on my other lady again.

Eh?

No hang on, that’s not right is it?

Er… I’m looking forward to Becky coming.

Nudge nudge.
Oh for God’s sake.

Oy Mark, Look no Lungs!

2010-04-06T17:09:00.002+01:00

And for my Dad too...
Stunning.

Small but Significant.

2010-04-04T08:58:00.005+01:00

After weeks of arsing about, procrastinating, getting obsessed with other aspects of the project and so on, yesterday I pulled my finger out, went to the boat and tiled the woodburner hearths. I’ve never done any tiling whatsoever before. So I was surprised when it went well, too easy really. I’m not sure I’d like to tile an entire room with those little blue ones though, as lining them up right were a bit fiddly. The big slate yins obviously have to be polished and sealed too before I plonk the woodburner on top. Before you say ‘oy!- you haven’t done the sides’, be aware that I have a plan for them…
I’m dead pleased with how they look, and at the time of photographing I knew that Becky would love the pictures. I now cannot wait to see the hearths grouted and ready to rock, I’ve got grout and everything. Incidentally, that orangey timber you can see behind the blue tiles is (we think) some sort of mahogany. It has made it into the photo simply because I was spreading it out to see if I had enough of it, as I’ve had it for an absolute age and I badly need to find somewhere useful for it to live. It turns out that the amount I have’ll fit that little raised area of floor like, perfectly.

Workman’s Hands.

2010-04-01T20:38:00.006+01:00

Warning; this post contains a comedy grossout lower on the page. I’ve included it mainly to give my mum the jitters, sorry mum.
I like having hardworking hands, I’ve always wanted and for many years now have the rock solid calluses and good leathery palms which work well in all conditions, but there are limits.
Mark always tells me that power tools are a good way to make the same mistakes, only quicker, which I think relates well to this post as compared to my last. Yep, think I must’ve hexed meself; after having wound myself up silly about the danger inherent in my new router table thingummy I went ahead and put the T&G into my oak with no fuss. I then spent two days hand sanding the whole lot after which it looked gorgeous. (I like hand sanding, it gives a nice finish, but after that little lot I’ll be glad to do something else.) Anyway.. I went to de boat today and managed to do this to myself whilst getting a load more timber ready to visit the workshop of peril, not with any kind of scary power tool- but with a humble (if sharp) hand saw:

Yes, I tried to saw my own thumbnail off.
With a bloody hand saw.
Like the man says, same mistakes…

PS. After a good rinse in cold water and the liberal application of sebo’s patent industrial plaster (some gaffer tape) I mopped up the blood, aimed straight and cut the wood.

PPS. Do you know what really pissed me off about this? I couldn't roll a decent cigarette for about four hours after, I mean, what's the first thing you want after the blood stops and the adrenaline wears off? Grrrr.

Frighteningly Dangerous Workshop Tools.

2010-03-29T14:54:00.004+01:00

Since I got into woodworking, I’ve always wanted a spindle moulder. It’s a man-bling thing I guess, but I always thought it’d go nicely with my planer thicknesser. I also covet tools like bandsaws and bench morticers, anything which is made from cast iron so weighs a LOT and has a nicely obscure name will do really.
However, being currently of similar means to the proverbial church mouse this is one of those little dreams that will have to remain so for the near future at least. Anyway, I recently scored this pile of oak.

Before you go mental you need to be in possession of the following facts:

1) It came out of the walls of a strongroom that’d been demolished and consequently has nail holes in one face so it’s only good one side.
2) Because it was reclaimed from a strongroom it was a total and utter bastard to extract, but it was at least free.
3) It didn’t look like this when I got it, it’s already had a day on the planer thicknesser lavished upon it to square it up and make each piece the same section, 16x75mm if you must know.
4) I like to think it’s red oak, but I may be wrong, I often am about these things. Shortly after starting work on the cabin construction I went through a brief period of thinking everything I saw was made of iroko.
5) The guys I got it from had a load more come in the same evening, but the bloody idiots put it on the bonfire before I saw it, so I should have had twice the amount I’ve got-
6) Which adds up to about 7 square metres. After wastage that’s enough to do either the cabin ceiling, or the wheelhouse ceiling, but not both; for which I’d need about 11 square metres.
7) Grrrrrr.

So. One pile of wood, which I want to use for ceiling lining. I could just nail it up couldn’t I? Me being me, apparently not. As a direct result of spending too much time talking to Mark I’ve decided that I’d like to make it into tongue and groove panelling. A really good tool to have for doing this sort of thing is a spindle moulder, but I can’t afford one so I’ve had to think laterally about this little hang-up. For some time now I’ve been in possession of a bright yellow1/2 inch Clarke ‘contractor’ router. It’s such an unwieldy behemoth that it’s almost useless as a conventional router, because it’s approximately the size of a boulder. It is however EXTREMELY powerful. Now I know you can buy router tables, the underside of which you bolt your router to but that involves spending money. So last week I found myself looking at my rather large and sturdy workshop table (that I built as a Christmas present to myself) in a new light and soon wandered off to borrow a holesaw from someone and set about cutting a hole in it to make this.

I know, it scares the pants off me too, particularly because the cutter block that’s sticking out of the table surface (the one in the picture does the ‘tongue’ side of the wood stock) has four extremely sharp TCT knives in it, is about 50mm in diameter and spins at god knows what RPM. With the giganto-router mounted to what’s effectively a large sounding board I have discovered to my dismay that the machine seems to go through several harmonic frequencies as it runs up to working speed. This creates the convincing sound of a small but extremely loud spacecraft taking off in my workshop every time I switch it on, the effect this has upon me is to give me the overpowering urge to flee the workshop and go and hide under another table in, say, the next county.

Before I am lambasted by some beardy health and safety freak who happens to read all this and decide to again accuse me of being a reckless danger monkey, I am at pains to point out the following fact:

1) It’s not finished.

That block of wood with a sawcut in it that you see bolted to the table is a feathering board, designed to help keep the work piece hard up against the aluminium fence, I want more of these including a pair to help press the work piece down onto the table before I’m prepared to chuck all my precious oak through the machine. Also I’m so scared of it I’ve decided if I have to be in the same room as it then I MUST fit some sort of guard to at least partially cover that cutting block whilst it’s running. Also I’ve wisely decided to omit the photograph I’ve got of the underside of my table as the wiring I frankensteined up to test my switching idea is probably enough to get me arrested.
Annoyingly, until I bite the bullet and get on with sorting these things out and finishing the job I now cannot use my workbench for anything else, and my other bench has got half an oak tree stacked up on it so the whole workshop’s even more of a squeeze than it usually is.

Oh Bugger.

Wendy Leaks.

2010-03-06T15:29:00.002Z

No, thankfully not from the bottom up, but instead from the top down.
Since the launch I’ve learned that every time it shats it down with rain Wendy develops two reasonably annoying rainwater leaks. One is through the engine room skylight, and I’m still scratching my head about how best to fix this. The other was through two of the wheelhouse windows. The wheelhouse is an original part of our vessel, and survived not only our big rebuild, but also seventy years of service largely intact. It has these (for want of a better word) sash type windows, which slide down into spaces in the wheelhouse structure when opened. Any rain that makes it’s way down the windows and into these spaces is supposed to be caught by these sort of built in tray thingies underneath and then directed outside again through little brass spouts mounted in the bottom of each tray. Trouble was that the tray that looks after the two forwardmost windows was mostly missing. Our previous owner had made an effort at reinstalling it, but in doing so the little spout holes had been covered up. As I discovered at the beginning of the extra wet winter we’ve just endured, this resulted in a rather large amount of unwanted dihydrogen monoxide (lit. ‘get me a cagoule and a flask of weak lemon drink’) making its way into our accommodation. On Tuesday I hope I dealt with it. Ripped out what was left of the previous owners tray thingy, cleaned up and drilled out the drain holes, then installed a new tray of marine ply with plenty of mastic sealant underneath, before lining the interior of the thing with glassfibre.
I’m afraid it’s another one of those dull, dull photographs, but in case you’re at all interested in the above, here’s a picture of the result so far, I just need to epoxy in the new brass spouts and give the tray a splat or two of protective paint and it’s done.

Hopefully I can now rid myself of one of the two drip catcher buckets that’ve become a near permanent feature of my vessel’s interior design, but not before I’ve indulged in a little ‘storm simulation’ test, which is also known as throwing a bucket of water at the wheelhouse and seeing what happens. I shall have to make sure I’m wearing my best cagoule for this one…

Say what you like, but we do like a challenge.

2010-02-26T19:22:00.003Z

You know that long blog silence and accompanying mega lull in activity Ms Ann wise over Christmas? Well, I’m about to (at least partially) justify it. There were many reasons to mothball our creation, not least the fact that I temporarily lost the plot again, which is one of those things that seem to happen with alarming frequency, and I AM taking my medicine again thankyou so much, goes well with a glass or two of red. But no, not that; in a rare moment for this blog I’m going to let you in on a little tiny bit of the kind of things we get up to outside the boat. The single biggest demand that made things quiet on board over Christmas was Becky’s fledgling business, the largest part of how that pertains to me (apart from having to live with a completely horse-mad-workaholic) has so far been this thing…

It’s The Yard’s outdoor horseriding arena. I finally finished it yesterday and had the immense satisfaction of seeing a horse ridden upon its brand new surface for the first time ever. It measures 20 by 60 metres and a combined total of 570 tonnes of material has gone into it. 240 tonnes of aggregate, an eventual 300 tonnes of silica sand, and thirty tonnes of chipped rubber. Oh, and a whole bunch of telegraph poles too. Trust me, there’s some science in how that surface has been laid. Almost everyone we know seems to have taken part in its construction in some way or other, so my most heartfelt hats off to all of you. It has taken over three months to build, but it had taken our lives over so much that it actually felt like forever since we staked out the site with some string and a vaguely remembered maths lesson involving some long dead Greek bloke, Pythagoras, that’s the one. It took too long, cost too much, forced a steep learning curve and made us both cry at various points along the way. But it’s all done and now I feel a profound sense of relief that it’s complete and usable, and more than a little pride in the achievement too.
No rest for me though, I’ve got a kilometre of telegraph pole fencing to complete round some fields. Oh Bloody Hell.

Hmmm, apart from the horse bit it all sounds a mite familiar doesn’t it?

Hame and Hearth.

2010-02-25T17:21:00.003Z

The picture is nothing to write home about but sod it; I’m going to do it anyway. Last Monday I spent an extremely physical few hours making two of these things…

This one’s in the old engine room, and the other, which is a slightly different shape (sort of a bit narrower, but much thicker) is up forward.

They are destined to be the hearths for our woodburners. Of course they don’t look like much being merely two shitloads of freshly laid reinforced concrete in wooden shuttering. The easiest thing to say about concrete is that it’s quite heavy. Never mind actually getting the raw materials on board in the first place, for which I did at least have some much needed help in the form of tough girl Becky; who got away from the demands of her farm for a half day only to have to barrow ballast over rickety bridges with me. I’ve worked out that together they weigh over 400kg, which is surprising because they’re not huge or anything. So you’ll probably believe me when I say that actually mixing and pouring the stuff in a confined space by hand fair near snapped me in half. It’s for these reasons that I now suddenly have a renewed appreciation for cement mixers, and also for sites where the materials are conveniently unloaded by HIAB, or by other people.
Once they’ve cured these monoliths will have to be tiled and finished and the woodburners brought on board ready for the big flue building weekend. The only issue here is that I’ve never actually laid so much as a single tile in my life, never mind, there’s a first time for everything, but my wallet has that doomed feeling that it’s time for even more new tools.

It should be quite obvious to the reader that yes, we are starting this AFTER the worst of the winter has passed. For diverse reasons we couldn’t get it done before the temperatures dropped below silly last year, so by starting now I figure that we are at least in with a reasonable chance of being ready for next winter (I’m also sure I’ve made this kind of rash statement before). After the winter we’ve just had (er… and the one before that) I am determined not to be such a dummy that I’ll be living without heating on board for one moment longer.

Popping my Engineering Cherry.

2010-02-16T23:51:00.003Z

Two weekends ago I was back on board Wendy Ann again, taking out the mothballs with the help of my friend Supersam. Among the more important discoveries we made whilst doing so was that my generator would start only with fairly extreme persuasion, indeed I flattened one starting battery whilst attempting to get it going, luckily I keep a spare fully charged just for this kind of eventuality. Except for the ship’s stereo and a fairly pathetic pair of 12v fluorescents that I run off an old car battery, our vessel is unfortunately currently completely dependent on that lovely big machine for all electrical power- so sorting this engine starting issue was an immediate concern.
Working on the restoration of our boat has taught me an awful lot of skills so far, but since we’re devoid of a main engine diesel mechanics is not one of them. Luckily however while I was working on the tug Storebror I did learn a few basics, although I must stress that I cannot by any stretch of the imagination call myself an engineer. One thing I undertook regularly (but admittedly usually with supervision) was filter changes on Storebror’s engines, including her own generator which had a three cylinder perkins engine for a prime mover.
Although I was worried that something bad could’ve happened to Wendy Ann’s generator I decided that the best course of action would be to start simple, and undertake a complete oil and filter change; which I figured was about overdue anyway and therefore couldn’t do any harm. A quick visit to my local agricultural plant suppliers armed me with the correct replacement parts and I approached my task with a mixture of trepidation and excitement. Overalls on, I drained the old oil, turned the fuel valve to ‘off’ and began- all the time reminding myself to take it slowly and to be methodical. After changing the oil and fuel filters, filling the day tank to the top and cleaning up, I loosened off the three fuel lines to the injectors and cranked the engine over to bleed them through- which seemed to go straightforwardly enough. That done and everything once again checked for leaks I crossed my fingers and cranked her up in earnest.

No, she still wouldn’t start, same as before, loads of smoke and no soap. I stilled the rising sensation of panic and tried to think calmly. I thought, ‘now, what does an engine need to make it go? Fuel, lubrication…. and air! you dummy!’ In a proper eureka moment I realised that my generator has an air filter too, so I took the big air inlet pipe to the engine off of it in order to test my principle and behold, one three cylinder Kubota D905 with 8kW of generator started first time and running sweet as you like. You can really hear it sucking without the muffling effect of a filter over the intake. Out came the big old air filter from it’s casing and I mused about how best to clean it, or whether I should attempt the purchase of a new one, and also whether or not I could run my engine with no air filter for a day. So I phoned a friend, no- I phoned two. Jon of Griffin Towage and Bill of Becky’s Dad both provided me with some further illumination to add to my learning and now I’m considering a couple of extra small engineering projects as a result, so thanks to them both for their helpful insights.

The success of this little adventure meant I could get on with making a beginning at some work for the rest of Sunday, Sunday night and Monday. I had a tiny little bit of welding to do in order to provide some bearers for something big I’m working on, a bunch of stuff to organise/move about, and two tons of water ballast to pump off from those pesky IBC’s to provide some much needed space in the engine room for something else I’m about to begin too…

Yes folks, we’re back.

I Dream of Wendy.

2010-02-10T20:32:00.000Z

Yes I do.

Things a go on. Patience, patience...

This is not a dead dog.

2010-01-08T09:19:00.002Z

There has been a protracted radio silence on my part recently. I apologise to anyone who is expecting exciting updates on progress because this is not it, I must regrettably report that for one reason and another the big project is effectively mothballed at the moment. I can only hope the old girl is all right on her own for now.

Over the last couple of days I’ve wrangled long and hard with trying to find the right words to explain what we’re going through, and there are three much longer efforts at this post in my notebook, which is now a bit of a mess. In the end I’ve decided that there are some things I just don’t want to air in public, which is simpler all around.

So for anyone who thought it was looking too easy; here, between the lines, is the proof that in the end boats really can break people. Believe me it hurts, but I've got to put the past year behind me.

Reading this back I realise this may scan to an uninformed reader very much like the end.
I’d like to state categorically that it isn’t. We’ve just needed a little time to attend to some important aspects of being human beings, that’s all. I absolutely promise we will be back in full effect before too long.

I’d like to say a big huge Thank You to all readers who have left comments on this blog, well, since always- but particularly recently. It’s really good to know that out there some people are rooting for us, and I’m quite sorry I’ve not been able to respond properly. Your encouragement, feedback and even criticism is massively valued.

The Outside In Gunpowder Plot.

2009-11-02T22:38:00.003Z

Right. I’ve been fantasizing about actually getting as far as this for a long, long time.

We’ve made a start on the process of battening out the hull with that 2x2- when finished and insulated around, this will provide a solid fixing surface for the lineout material.
Indeed, we hired the previously mentioned Hilti Gun. This contraption deserves the second capital letter, being quite the most entirely brutal method of fixing I think I’ve ever used. For anyone who isn’t completely mad and therefore may not have encountered one in their everyday business it is basically, wait for it, a gun. Yes, unlike other powertools that call themselves guns this one’s not messing around. You load it with gunpowder caps, then a whacking great steel pin, press it against your wooden batten, aim very carefully and pull the trigger. Done right it’ll fire that pin through the wood and the 8mm thick steel frames of our boat easily. So far so good.
Although it is completely savage in its power the ‘carefully’ bit is clearly still supremely important, not only is it a device which is probably quite capable of killing you if you’re really stupid; but you’ve got to concentrate and fire that pin absolutely perpendicular to your chosen steel. Not always so easy. If the angle is even slightly out or you’re being at all namby-pamby about how you position yourself while you hold the gun, what happens is that the pin doesn’t penetrate the steel. It bends double on impact instead and your chosen batten vandalises itself quite badly by more or less shattering (this in spite of drilling pilot holes in the wood first). On Sunday afternoon one broken bit flew across the engine room and hit Becky on the left tit, which raises one of the more amusing health and safety issues I can think of. Becky rallied magnificently from this insult with the choice words “never mind, we will have to persevere, just like we always do” as she passed me yet more gunpowder, nail and block.
Also, whilst lining the thing up straight you’ve to think quite hard about recoil, both the certainty of it and how to minimise the effects. By Sunday lunchtime and over three hundred firings later I found myself soundly bruised about the wrists, knuckles and elbows after many wallops upon the hull during kickback- and I silently offered up these strange sort of exhausted hopeless prayers immediately prior to inducing each loud bang. Oddly this seemed to help, or maybe by then I was simply getting the hang of the damned thing. However, when I was just limply hanging off the trigger The Hilti Gun would then immediately make me inexplicably angry. Well, if you had to keep detonating small explosives in your own living room and bits kept flying everywhere I’m sure you’d get a bit hot under the collar too after a while. Wouldn’t you?

So, in the end we got the forward accommodation completely done, and managed a decent start in the engine room, which not only gave me the opportunity to wake a cold stricken Becky on Sunday morning by shouting ‘Look Snotface, I made your boat stripey!’ at the top of my voice- but also led us to believe that after moving those four ton sodding water ballasts we could probably do the rest of the hull in a single weekend’s hire (and another four hundred bangs) as that pile of wood I prepared seems bigger than first thought, or maybe it’s the softwood equivalent of the magic porridge pot. Yep, it was a violent, loud and arduous, but incredibly fast process.

Postscript: the included pictures really don’t do this any justice at all, somehow the sensation of being surrounded by all this lovely battening just refused to be caught on film. And for the record: the black stuff is visqueen, a damp proof membrane that’ll be trimmed back later. Becky (pictured with gun) did have a go at firing a few nails too, although she seemed mildly terrified afterward, and preferred to dominate the chopsaw instead. And the pictured frames are forward, where there’s really not that much curve to the hull. By the time we got to the engine room where the frames are distinctly, and quite tightly curved- following them presented us with a few challenges. We tried little cuts which worked on the less curvy ones, I suggested steaming each batten to fit, a suggestion which was scorned as being ‘far too fussy’. But we eventually sussed out how to do it- in lots of little bits... I’ll be running a drawknife over them later to sweeten them up then. Because yes, I’m fucking fussy ok?

A Big Pile of Wood.

2009-10-19T08:36:00.002+01:00

Yep, that’s all it is. As with any big building project I guess, there are some jobs which are dull as ditchwater, but nevertheless have to be humbly done before anything exciting can happen. Yesterday I spent over five hours doing some home tanalising, sloshing nasty brown preservative liquid over all my prepared 2x2 in the final stage of preparation for battening out the hull, or at least a bit of it. Even with all the skylights and portholes wide open I was still thankful for whatever providence that had led me to invest in a couple of decent 3M breathing masks months ago (when I still had some cash) and leave them in their seals waiting for an eventuality such as this. I tried it without a mask for a few minutes just to see what interesting effects the fumes might have on my neurosystem, and the results packed a bigger hit than a few of the illegal things that I’ve tried over the years. So after a long stagger around outside I decided that breathing apparatus was indeed the way to go.
I laid down one of our super heavy truck tarpaulins to prevent filling the bilges up with preservative and gaily began painting away, stacking up the timber neatly as I went- the idea was that any overspill on top would percolate through the pile and soak in even more to the lower layers. Everything went fine until my pile reached towards hip height. At this point there must’ve been a passing speedboat or something, because Wendy Ann rocked ever so slightly and the whole pile promptly collapsed, burying me to the knees. A moment of chaos followed while I played pick-up-wet-sticks, before deciding to give up and fashion a kind of wood hill instead, and stand sort of on top of it to finish the last thirty or so pieces.

It’s a bigger pile than it looks in the photo, and I’m now crossing my fingers that there’ll be enough to do the whole forward accommodation space-the front end of the hull basically. In the background of the picture you can also see the four ‘IBC’s, bulk containers which are lurking in the engine room like unwanted guests- who’ve turned up too long ago, long since drank all the booze, and are now just sitting there in awkward silence. They contain four tons of water ballast that I reckoned we needed for the short journey round from Southampton, as Wendy Ann were a scarily lightweight fifty tons at the point of launch and I was desperate to get the skeg as far underwater as possible for the tow... I’m now dying to get the damnable things off because as there’s a crawl space around each they’ve eaten a stupid big chunk of future living space.

With that in mind we’re still gradually accumulating manganese steel ballast. Now luckily we’re slowly collecting the small ones, which are quite handleable, but also quite heavy little lumps. And because we’ve stuck to the rule that whatever goes in the bilges must be painted first here they are with their protective coating:

For this I used bitumen, which is about the only use I can think of for the world’s stupidest paint. It’s like painting with sodding treacle. It never quite sets, which means the smallest bit sticking on your hands, hair or worse, your feet transfers bloody everywhere. And it eats brushes and gloves. Life is just too short for attempting to clean brushes that look like the creature from the black lagoon’s done his teeth with them.
Actually, I’m being a bit naughty- it is very cheap, and because of bitumen’s aforementioned fluid properties it does make a pretty ok sealant against rust. It tends to get right into the lumpy bits and provide a good, if unpleasant barrier against the elements. There’s still no way you’d catch me being all beardy and traditional and using it anywhere whatsoever on the exterior though, that sort of use is the reason why some very clever people invented two-pack epoxies.

Next weekend we should see some proper action as a result of all this boring splatting about, and I’m now in a ridiculous feverish state of childish excitement about at last getting the Hilti guns in for that battening. Can’t wait.

Becky, Seb, and Blowing the Bloody Doors off.

2009-10-13T19:02:00.003+01:00

I was the luckiest man on planet earth, because on Friday night B travelled with me to Wendy Ann 2, and stayed for the entire weekend. We had ourselves an absolute blast.
The big task was all about taking the sliding bridge doors off and rehanging them properly. We needed to change them from their broken and bent bottom rollers (original including the mangled bits and hurriedly rehung before the launch) to the fancy the-pants-off top hung system into which we invested a sizeable amount of cash in the parts for some months ago. While we were at it we introduced some much needed and very effective draught proofing to the gap between the doors and the wheelhouse itself, and for good measure ripped and planed up a bunch of teak for the next phase of the wheelhouse windows project…
But I have no real need to elaborate further about all this (unless you really desperately need to read the boring then-we-did-this-next stuff all the time), except to say we got it done with grace, even if we did end up indulging in racing woodwork and working well into the night on Saturday. No- I want to talk about me and my missus.

I am so SO pleased that Becks managed to find the time to come for the first time in a couple of months, and I cannot WAIT for her to do so again. It’s difficult for her to get the time as she’s recently struck out on her own business wise and is now more married than ever to the world of horses and horse welfare- early indications show that it seems to be going well though, which in any recession has got to be good. And it’s been weirdly difficult for me holding on to a boat shaped dream for both of us in the meantime over the months. Because although I’m completely obsessed with the tug, at the end of the beans it’s all still about us and our love for each other; the big fat romance that, after one glass of red too many kicked off the potentially fatal idea of ‘lets do up an old boat and live on it’ five (?) years ago. Good God. It’s been only a few years, yet a few tons of steel and teak has changed our worldview beyond recognition. It’s done a few cool things for the skills I have too.

Occasionally, owning a huge dream like this is a burden. It’s bigger than me, bigger than both of us- so the need to constantly maintain one’s own belief that we’ll get there eventually isn’t always easily done. Staying strong as a person, and therefore as half a couple is sometimes tough when the task of putting together a new life seems to be going in different directions, or all just going to ratshit, and the dream home still has no running water, heating, or floors.
It’s still a hell of a test of a relationship, this pursuit of a mad dream. And I particularly feel for Becky, because when she’s not been able to visit the boat because of the career chase it’s like she has all the slog and none of the reward. This weekend was a refreshing change. And after it I’m relieved to know for certain that yes, Becky still definitely wants to live on a boat.

Sometimes it’s best to stick a finger up at adversity, to celebrate even when the overdraft is maxed and it’s beans for supper yet again… We’ve a duty to remind ourselves we’ve got something great as a result of all the sacrifice. “Dance, even if you have nowhere to do it but your own wheelhouse” (thanks Baz Luhrmann) worked well for us on Saturday night.

In case you’re wondering, this is what the title photograph of this blog entry obliquely refers to; My old work bike, now relegated to occasional provisioning runs over the bridge to town represents my past, Becky’s red wellies that cost her a mere tenner are her present, and the background is of course our future. And we’re more determined than ever to have one living full time together on board. Come hell or high water.

By the way….

2009-10-13T18:28:00.004+01:00

Wendy Ann 2 finally has the first two of her total complement of six cowl vents.

Unlike the other four which are much larger and still waiting for repair- these ones are not original, we found them and haggled like fuck in a junk shop a couple of years ago. As you may be able to tell I’ve fitted them to the generator room deck at the stern, where they’re providing just the right amount of ventilation to that lovely big generator rumbling away below.
They need a fresh coat of the right red paint inside, and a serious belt with some brasso on a regular basis, but they’re already doing what they were designed for which is the important bit.
Now I’m dying to get the others repaired and installed, as I’ve got a bit of a thing for cowl vents, they always make any vessel look like it’s Time for Teletubbies.

The Tortoise.

2009-10-13T18:05:00.002+01:00

Some weeks ago I visited my Dad and his family, and whilst we were discussing all things houseboat shaped he gave us this:

It’s something of a family heirloom, the daddy having acquired it when I was maybe only six or seven years old, he bought it off some gypsies because he himself was planning on a travelling life. However, he never used it for its intended purpose but somehow miraculously hung onto it for all these years instead, and now we’re immensely proud to call a tiny piece of family history our own.

The Tortoise Stove company turns out to have quite a lot of its own interesting history (go on, google it) and the company motto was ‘slow but sure’ in reference to the speed with which the stove burned it’s fuel, the boast being that it made it more economical and efficient, and sure enough these words are embossed on the front of ours, which is the smallest model made. It’s so wee I reckon it’s probably designed for solid fuel but only experimentation will tell, and anyway someone may want to correct me before I indulge my pyromania; and we know it won’t heat the whole boat. But anything’s better than enduring minus 7 centigrade for several nights with no heating at all during the worst of last winter, which really was not funny at all.

We’re gleefully stealing the stoves motto for ourselves. The reasons should be obvious to anyone who’s read more than a cursory glance at this blog over the years.

Becky and I are enjoying arguing in our customary manner over where exactly it should go on Wendy Ann 2, and I’m itching to get on and make a flue for it out of heavy wall 3” pipe, as it handily has a slightly unusual 3 inch flue size.. Luckily our boat already has an original provision for just such a flue, as long as we put the stove down in the forward accommodation, which is fine by me. This boss shaped provision sits on a steel box in the superstructure just in front of the wheelhouse and is currently covered with a blanking plate that I made just before the great unveiling in February, but it will be no problem at all to remove to take a pipe instead- that's what it's designed for. So positioning decided all I have to do is cast a substantial concrete block into the floor level (and tile it) for our tortoise to stand on- hey, we need the weight anyway. Then go and pester my friendly local steel merchants and make that flue before I install the flue and start burning stuff. Hopefully just in time for the worst of the winter.

The Privilege of Friendship.

2009-10-06T21:21:00.002+01:00

For the first time in ages last weekend I had company at the boat, first Jan, then Pete joined me for a couple of days of big work in preparation for the coming winter. As you can see, we finally got the first insulation into the cabin and wheelhouse. I’d designed the structure to be fitted with 50mm celotex first, to be followed by a layer of rockwool. I’m currently doing some work on a building site and you’ll never guess what the site agent was about to put in the skip… As A: we’re as poor as church mice right now and B: I’m not that stupid, I kindly offered to save the site agent a bit of space in his (admittedly empty, but that’s not the point) bin. Two midweek dashes to Littlehampton later and Jan and I had plenty of lovely insulation to play with at the weekend, and enough to not only do the proper job for free, but also a bunch of leftovers to jam around the steel bulkhead at the back of the cabin (underneath the windows) temporarily while we save up for proper sprayfoam.

Speaking of which, before we can sprayfoam out the hull all the battening has to go in, which is why we spent Sunday emptying the engine room of all the 2x4 that we’d stashed from taking the tent down at Saxon Wharf, ripping it in half to make 2x2, and throwing it through the planer to clean it up a little. All this required making huge piles of timber on the island that we’re moored to, and of course I checked the tide times. But come high water we found ourselves with pause to reflect that sometimes the amount of tide can vary considerably from predictions. Today it turned out, was going to be one of those days. My little book clearly said ‘Sun 4th October HW1300 5.8m’ and I know it takes a six metre tide to begin to flood the little path that leads to Wendy Ann. So I was a little surprised when we found ourselves moving all the piles of wood to higher ground in a bit of a hurry and then wondering if the planer/thicknesser would float away. Even the fishermen with whom I share the island remarked upon the large amount of water kicking about, and between us we reckoned that we were looking at a tide of maybe 6.3 metres or more.

There was no point being upset about the enforced break in proceedings, on the contrary- my attitude was 'bugger, my workshop's flooded... what fun!'. After packing things that needed to stay dry away, and whilst lunch was warming up on the stove I decided to celebrate being in waterworld again by going for a little swim around Wendy Ann. Christ it was cold.

Now we’ve got a large amount of battening, maybe enough to do the whole forward accommodation/galley part of the hull, but before I can go mad for Hilti guns I’m going to have to treat it all with timber preservative which will be a days work in itself I’d imagine, but it’s one big step closer all the same. Whilst the frankly enormous pile of timber was out of the boat and that big silly tide was up, we did manage to lower a load of iron ballasts into the bilges from the floor of the engine room which they’d occupied since our launch. As they weigh well in excess of 150kg each and there were sixteen of them, I’d had no chance of moving them before now without friendly, and strongman assistance. Peterkin and Jan true friends, my thanks to you both.

Keeping the Faith.

2009-09-06T20:02:00.003+01:00

Over the last few weeks it’s been a big trick to find time to invest in working on the boat. Strange work commitments meant that I could get there some days, only during the week, but would have to leave each day at around four. I was lucky because there were fortuitously a couple of these short days at the start when B could come to lend a hand too, which was dead handy for moving the plates around during preparation.
You can see from the pictures that building the deck over our generator room was what we dedicated that time to, and in common with everything else that we’ve thrown at Wendy Ann- to do a proper job takes plenty of time. One of these days I’ll stun myself and floor everyone around me by accurately predicting how long a given job will actually take.
I should also mention that having plated, tacked and welded up the deck itself, I was all set to make the two hatch covers but woke up that particular morning with an excruciating pinched nerve in my neck. Feeling belligerent I determined to get to the boat anyway, which (never mind driving there feeling like I'd welded my own vertebrae together) left me welding the covers up with my head stuck out from my body like a sore sort of industrial turtle.

The picture of the deck with its first coat of primer on it makes for a smooth, elegant (almost!) finished impression, but belies the truth; that I could never have tackled a fabrication job like this if it weren’t for the wealth of skills that I learnt from both Robin and Larry during our vessels big rebuild back in Southampton, and the best thing of all? I’m sort of pretty proud of the result, that’s what.

The Ship Must Have a Heart.

2009-08-01T10:16:00.003+01:00

Boat wise, this is a major breakthrough. Blog wise I’m sorry to say it’s a huge cock up…

Over the last few days we’ve finally managed to get the domestic generator that we bought several months ago on board, which means that as long as we feed it diesel we can pretty much do what we like electricity wise now.

It’s a 7kVa set, and the prime mover is a three cylinder Kubota D905. And I’ve already discovered that you can weld all day off it, and that it’s quiet (I put it down on flexible mounts.)

The generator weighs nearly half a ton, so big that it was logistically adventurous getting it on. In the end I plumped for having it delivered by the harbour launch Windsong, and lifting it on by means of davits welded out over our stern. How did I weld the davits on before the generator was delivered? With great skill and dexterity of course, and a little help from my friend Pete. I’ll give you a clue, it involved a trailer, 60M of heavy electrical cable, and a very hectic morning indeed.
Of course once we had the wee beastie on the boat we could fire it up so she could weld in her own bearers, sort of make your bed and lie in it stylee.
The reason for stating that it’s a huge blog disaster is this: As the harbour launch approached Wendy Ann 2’s stern I dug out B’s camera, only to discover that in my rush of organisation I’d neglected to charge it’s batteries, and my phone camera’s lens is covered in teak oil and therefore buggered. So I’ve not a SINGLE photo of the momentous occasion.
Sorry.
All I have is a couple of pics of the generator in it’s home (which only a week ago was full of stuff like wendy’s original Lister steering engine, my compressor, and a great big day fuel tank), and another with the framing out of the deck that’s going over it all begun. And I only got those because I went home overnight halfway through the job so I could get the camera’s battery charger.

Sorting out the rest of our generator room and fitting the deck should keep me busy for a wee while, but for now we’re basking in the good glow of getting stuff done.

Fish in a Bucket.

2009-07-26T12:05:00.005+01:00

This entry has been removed by the author. On account of it being terribly written. It will be back when it actually makes sense.

I

Thing 1.

2009-07-20T13:50:00.007+01:00

In order to deal with some of the really fundamental issues of our situation on the berth, Becky and I have developed what we are constantly referring to in a silly voice as the Three Plong Plan. Simply put, this involves sorting out three things, Access, Real electrical power on board, and a decent Water supply. Luckily, a recent stroke of financial good fortune has enabled us to make serious plans for actually getting it done, as opposed to dream-world plans that I make over and over again all the time. This weekend, while I wait for the cheque to clear I took a load of reclaimed (for free, ta Ben) pressure treated timber and some other bits and bobs down to Littlehampton and constructed this. Behold, I have built Thing 1. Finally, we’ve some decent access to the boat, which is something that you wouldn’t think could make so much difference, but it does. The reason for the slightly oversized staging (partially occupied in the photos by a pallet) is that I reasoned if I was going to build it, it might as well be big enough to stack materials on when they arrive at the boat, or indeed it might as well be large enough to take a couple of chairs, a bottle of wine and a barbeque too.
The staging is theoretically prevented from floating away by seven long steel stakes made from 50mm angle, laboriously hammered into the ground around the whole thing, but the spring tides are back later this week so I’ll weld some sort of retaining lugs on top of those soon as I can.

Obviously there’s an inherent security implication in providing real access to the vessel, so much so that I dithered for a while about whether to actually make the ramp bit (not doing so would kind of defeat the object), or if I could construct some sort of mad drawbridge or gated affair. Then, lubricated with wine on Saturday night I was struck by one of those genius moments, either that or I was pissed. I remembered reading Guy Grieve’s book ‘Call of the Wild’ about a Scot who goes to Alaska to build his own cabin in the wilderness, sounds familiar. Well, when he left it he covered the door and windows with plywood with nails sticking, sharp end out all over it and called this hoarding ‘Bear Boards’. Now, I don’t think that there are bears in Littlehampton, but I could be wrong- anyway I’ve nicked the idea just as an idiot deterrent. Trust me, those screw tips sticking up are SHARP; I lightly maimed myself twice just moving the thing around after I’d made it. So when I finally left, I cunningly fixed my bear board down to the top end of Thing 1’s ramp and figured that’d prevent opportunism by all but the most masochistic at least. So my vessel appears armed to the teeth and now I just worry that I’ll return to find an unfortunate toddler impaled on it or something, if I’m a responsible person I’ll do the right thing and put up some sort of warning sign, trouble is bears can’t read.

The sharp-eyed will notice that I have also taken down the silly frame construction at the blunt end of Wendy Ann. Not only was it a depressingly hideous carbuncle, but also it didn’t get used for its intended purpose. Because of the lovely summer weather it was never covered over so it provided no function other than to give gulls something to shit on, and I’ve decided to set up a small workshop away from the vessel anyway. So down it came, and what a bloody relief, Wendy Ann 2 looks like a tug again. Not only that but I’ve reclaimed my uninterrupted view of the river so I can watch stuff like this go by.

You wouldn’t believe she’d fit, maybe they’re lost.

And finally this week, I’ve realised I still haven’t shown off the finished roof, which by now has had plenty of time for the birds to shit on too, but since I was up there bolting down the mast tabernacle and the roof’s looking good I thought I’d get a photograph or two. Here it is.

And a picture of the opened engine room skylight for good measure.

Watch this space for more Plongs of the Plan Coming Soon! New Generators! Spring Tides! Neighbours! Bears! Welding! Up All Night Working! Heavily Perforated Toddlers! It’s all go around here, and about time too.

It’s Not Pretty.

2009-07-17T07:07:00.001+01:00

But it works. Perhaps I should explain, anyone who has had the misfortune to have stayed on board with me will know that for months, no, years now there has been a perilous gap between the original bridge floorboards and the steel cabin floor. All of us have grown exceedingly used to stepping over this space, so much so that when I fitted this partially prefabricated step yesterday I found my legs still automatically wanted to bridge the certain depth. With the lack of any real power on board at the mo the frame for this was welded up at home out of bits of scrap angle found on Becky’s new stable yard. The grating material has been on board for months, just waiting for me to extract a finger. With a nod to practicality and unlike my usual approach this is probably going to be a temporary/permanent fix, meaning that hopefully one day it’ll be replaced with something more glamorous but right now I couldn’t think of a more elegant solution so this one had to do. So. It’s not pretty, but maybe has a certain sore-thumb charm, whatever, at least the danger of death (or at least broken pelvis) has been removed.

A Rhapsody on Teak.

2009-07-07T23:19:00.004+01:00

Here they are, the last two pieces of exterior woodwork to do on the bridge and cabin. Yep, it's the bloody return sills. Only took four days to make the buggers, a timescale made longer by the fact that each piece was laminated from three bulks- which is what you get when you’ve got a load of reclaimed teak but none of it is quite big enough, and you refuse to go out and spend a fortune on new three inch stock. If you look closely at the picture you might see that I made a much better job of the starboard sill (it’s the one on the left) probably because I’d had a good nights sleep before cutting the joints on the other one. The only problem with this kind of work is that it takes an awfully long time and plenty of patience to get it right, and all those complex joints have to fit together perfectly so the hard work becomes invisible… which I think is why I’ve just realised the cabin work has taken us almost a year to complete, either that or we’re just really slow, which is always possible.

Mind you, it’s looking not too bad really, at least from a distance, which has the benefit of being further away and therefore harder to hear the swearing. As a bonus the original engine room skylight is all done and back together too. Trouble is it looks absolutely ace with the windows open, as they clearly aren’t in this photograph, but it was getting late and the leaves were all locked down for my departure.

Teak is the loveliest, most rewarding material to work with, and after just a few shucks with a really fucking sharp block plane it’s easy to see why it is so revered- and therefore so expensive- as a boatbuilding timber. It has this wonderfully close, even grain which makes it incredibly stable, yet it yields so beautifully to the blade. Workability wise it beats the pants off of Iroko which is harder, but also much more fractious with a tendency to split- a quality which is not helped by the wandering nature of iroko’s grain. Seriously, sometimes the grain starts wobbling about like a drunken Glaswegian for no reason at all right in the middle of an otherwise perfectly straight grained section. Both timbers can contain carbonate deposits, which is as a result of the tree not knowing what to do with the stuff after it sucks it up while it’s growing and is the reason why as many cutting implements as possible should be tungsten carbide tipped, but contrary to my researches before I began all this I’ve actually found more of this incredibly hard, chisel edge blunting stuff in the Iroko. Maybe I just got lucky? When all is said and done though, they do look quite similar when finished, a fact which still amazes me considering the bright yellow colour of Iroko when freshly cut, handily it changes dramatically on exposure to the air.

So now those sills are fitted, sanded and oiled, and there are two hardboard templates waiting in the back of the car for me to take along to our long suffering glazier. Soon the bits of glass will go in and Wendy Ann 2 will have a complete set of windows. With that it’ll be time to leave the hardwood alone for a little while in order to concentrate on other matters.

One last thing before I left for home. I decided it was about time that folks in Littlehampton knew the name of the black vessel that’s screeched up on the mud. So after months and months of wondering when, I got on did the naming on the bows on Sunday afternoon; in stark contrast to all the poncing around with woodwork it took me about half an hour.

Big Springs.

2009-06-26T10:14:00.008+01:00

My dear friend and co-conspirator, boatbuilder in arms Mark is leaving me. Together we were the evil geniuses behind building that cabin, and he’s taught me literally everything I know about working with fine hardwoods, which is not a lot at all really. We’re a bit like a real life version of Pinky and the Brain in some respects- the lab rats you know, ‘What're we going to do tonight Brain? Same thing we do every night Pinky, make big bits of hardwood smaller’. He doesn’t want a divorce or anything, it’s just that he’s finally plumped on a long held idea of his and has decided to give it a whirl. So at the end of July after twelve years in the big smoke he’s off back to his native Scotland, which will leave me bludgeoning bits of wood with badly sharpened tools on my own.
This week saw us in the rare and surprising situation of both being off work simultaneously- with the predictable result that we both decided to get together and go down to Wendy with the express intention of working on the few remaining really nastily complex bits of exterior woodwork together, while we still could. Looming large in Marks mind was a repair to the main engine room skylight, which he started like, ten months ago. Me? Well, I’m just worried about everything as usual, and having a friend with me to fend off the awful feelings of regret at having parked Wendy in such an unsuitable mooring, with difficulty of access and no power blah blah blah (you’ve heard this before) was pretty much exactly what I needed.
There was a pressing need to finish off these woodwork bits and bobs so that our boat can finally be considered weathertight without the assistance of tarpaulins or stapled on bits of plastic. In three days you’d think we could do that wouldn’t you? Well, maybe you would, except for Marks multiple sets of head bending compound angles, my decision to make the two remaining sill pieces by laminating up three blocks of teak for each, the complexities of getting clean wood stock out of screwy and holey old reclaimed stuff (I reckon a good 60% wastage at least), the joys of window glazing, and so on, but by Wednesday a good deal of progress had been made, even if we were forced to cover the engine room skylight with tarp one more time before we left.

None of the preceding text goes any way whatsoever toward explaining this photograph:

Whoops.
Apart from providing a good illustration of why spirit levels aren't much use on boats, this week saw the arrival of big spring tides, which gave us the opportunity to float for more than about half an hour each tide. Over the months since we arrived at Littlehampton Wendy Ann had slowly worked her way closer and closer to the old wharf which we were tied up to, and recently she’d started to get too close, and was in danger of climbing and eating the rotten old timbers which comprise this wall. I decided to do something about it, and having got muddy setting the ropes on the starboard side at low tide we waited for that lovely big water to come in. At high water she pulled away from the wharfside no problems and sat proudly in the middle of the berth. We tied up the ropes tight and waited for the water to go away again, whereupon this photograph happened. Over the months our boat had carved out a Wendy Ann shaped hollow in the mud, tied up in her new position Wendy Ann decided she’d much rather go back into that hollow thankyou very much. So as the tide receded the starboard side ropes went tight and she took on this alarming looking list, which prompted a group of passing schoolchildren to call out “did you crash?” which I guess it looks like we did, I certainly feel that way sometimes. The boat is currently sitting on a hump of mud that she’d pushed out of her way in her previous position. Because of the recent equinox, the big tides are sustained for the rest of the week and I’m desperately hoping that a lot of the list will naturally disappear as she moves up and down in her new spot and hopefully pushes some of that mud out of her way and makes herself a new hollow. If not, I’ll have to think again, which will probably involve using a high volume water pump or worse, digging. Right now though I’m back at work, so have been unable to remain with my vessel to ensure success. Predictably enough I’ve not slept that well the last couple of nights, my dreams being filled with crazily leaning boats and snapped ropes, but Becky and I are to journey down there tonight to see just how much of that list still remains and if there’s anything more we can do about it, hopefully we’ll not end up sleeping on the walls.

Unfurling.

2009-05-26T18:42:00.005+01:00

Since arrival at Littlehampton, and unless it’s a special occasion (like arriving) our vessels woodwork has mostly remained shrouded in a motley collection of roped down tarps. Not exactly the look I have worked and longed for. The reason for this rather pikey method of weatherproofing was simple; we never quite got the roof finished before our big launch did we?

Obviously I’ve been away lately as well, not in the sense of having gone on holiday to the bahamas, more like repeatedly bashing myself over the head in small private hell, at least I didn’t need to bother to pack my passport I suppose. Anyway- this minor nervous breakdown has thankfully passed, I hope you all enjoyed your choc-ices. Becky has been a really patient woman in gently steering me through the shoals of my latest little episode, as if various other aspects of our life changing forever weren’t enough she had to deal with me throwing a big wobbly too. Enough said, now we’re back on track for a bit of bloody progress, and not a moment too soon,. So. Here’s a bang up to date picture of the wheelhouse and cabin- Spot the difference folks.

No? oh well, it’s a bit of a cheat without a proper ‘before’ pic anyway. The portholes are now fully fitted with their little eyebrows made out of sheet bronze. The roof has been trimmed to shape, rounded over and fitted with edging strips, and the whole lot has been waterproofed by fibreglassing with epoxy resin and glassfibre cloth. The skylight is reassembled and in position. And the double glazed windows are now finally installed at the back of the cabin. The only significant hole where the rain can still get in is under that black plastic wrapper, where another set of five windows lie that still require some fairly proper woodwork to the frames before they too can be glazed and the whole assembly can be declared weathertight. Notwithstanding that sodding strip of black plastic, this is a grand moment. We can now sleep at night, or leave Wendy Ann without always having to completely wrap her up against the elements for the first time, it’s more or less a proper ship’s deckhouse at last.

This One's For Mark.

2009-05-06T18:57:00.003+01:00

And it's helping 'cos it's got fuck all to do with boats.
Enjoy.

Intermission.

2009-04-20T17:52:00.000+01:00

There will be a short break in posting while I try and figure out how to recover from a recent personal meltdown.

Go and buy a choc ice or something.

Things Ain’t What They Used to Be.

2009-04-06T18:41:00.005+01:00

After weeks of going barking mad- also known as trying (and failing) to rest and enjoy the solitude and scenery- I’ve decided I just can’t take it anymore. It must be about time to get going properly again.
After a couple of unbelievably frustrating attempts at working inside the vessel, (never mind cat swinging, things were either too cramped with my tools, materials and domestics all jumbled into one space post launch, or else everything became extremely dusty immediately upon switching on any kind of large woodworking power tool whatsoever.) I came to realise that I had to regain some of the things I’m missing about our old home at Saxon Wharf, starting with having the space to work efficiently. My idea is to employ a kind of best-of-both-worlds approach if you like, blending the lovely views and idyllic peace of Littlehampton’s west bank with the frenetic pace, noise and creative stay up all night chaos of our old shipyard/workshop. I know, it’s a potentially odd mixture, but Wendy is a strange and unusual vessel, and one of her owners is definitely going to become a lot odder if he doesn’t make some real progress soon.

With this decided, but with no-one around to lend me a hand, I woke up on Saturday morning to discover it was bloody raining. This was not a good omen for my planned frustration busting exercise, so I just sort of stood there damply staring at the rain and feeling broken by circumstance again. Not good.
Two cups of decent coffee, one enormous poo, and a reluctantly devised back up ‘work inside after all’ plan later- it became apparent that either my prayers or my offering (in a bucket, naturally) had appeased the weather gods for it had miraculously ceased to precipitate! Or maybe it just stopped raining. Whatever. What happened next was this….

Yas. I grabbed the nearest vaguely sharp handsaw and three boxes of 80mm screws, and built the bastard son of our dearly departed Wendy house, this time smaller, and on deck. And I only made a tiny dent in the wood we’ve got stored on board.
That’s better, It’s going to be the new fit out workshop once its clad and covered, somewhere the big tools can live and that the big work can be done in- which will free up some important living space inside some of the vessel. It’s ugly, but I’m done with admiring the look of Wendy’s exterior and have a real need to crack on with sorting things out inside. Anyway- I’m trying my best to persuade myself that there’s some sort of Chinese Junk aesthetic at play here? Ok then, just junk. I don’t care- it’s not permanent, but I’m building it with the intention of it lasting as long as it needs to, I do NOT want to be tripping over stuff whilst I try to find things in six months time.

Then I fed the swans. I’m aware that my own experience of the boating life has not been exactly elysian thus far, but in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary gained over the last few years I’m willing to give it a go. And the sunsets are nice too, with all the gulls wheeling around and local fishermen phutting up and down the river while the neighbourhood hooligans throw bicycles off the wharf on the other side. Yep-it’s the Great British Seaside alright.
Next weekend… it’d be nice to have some company for spring tides, light progress, and with a bit of luck weather wise a barbeque of some description. Oh, and remember to behave and feed the swans like a good boat owner.

The Littlehampton Rest Home for Lost Tugs.

2009-03-22T16:18:00.010Z

We made it. The Pilot and Harbourmaster boarded us while we lay at anchor about a mile off the harbour entrance (where the above pic was taken), and Storebror delivered Wendy Ann 2 to Littlehampton at spring high water on Wednesday 11th March. Becky, Mark and Pete were all at the berth to take ropes and pull us in. There were no problems, but you’ll have to wait for all the action pictures.

Clearly, I’m a little overdue in reporting this fact, various friends and family members are already aware of this rather old news. This is largely because I chose to remain on board and keep an eye on our treasure while she settled into her new home- when the tide goes out, Wendy sits down on the mud and is left high and dry- so amongst other things ropes needed adjusting. And everything has changed- so much that I dithered over whether to title this blog entry ‘The End’.
Certainly I’ve recently gone through a bit of a personal apocalypse, from a couple of weeks before the launch where I felt I could accomplish anything; to now, when a sense of powerlessness prevails. All the recent internet chat about engines, which although I know is well intentioned, only serves to add to my current frustration- here’s why.
The first ten days at our new home were a literal return to the dark ages; unforeseen problems with obtaining shore power meant that when the sun went down, that was it. Candlepower was all I had. No toilet on board meant long walks to find the local public loos, followed a few days later by constipation, resignation and the use of a bucket. Becky thinks I’m obsessed with poo, maybe I am (a bit)- but there’s something satisfying and poetic about having a dump on your own boat, and anyway I have a suspicion that the bucket bit at least is an experience common to many liveaboarders at some point in their life on their vessel.
After a week of coming home to darkness after work, Jan kindly lent me the small emergency petrol generator that Storebror keeps on board, and I lugged it on board Wendy Ann before starting it up, plugging in a bunch of lights and a stereo, and rejoicing. This took some time. The next day I enjoyed discovering which power tools it’ll run.
So the only engines we'll be getting for now will be for a generator, however, even that will be a huge investment for us.
The financial times that Becky and I are currently enduring are seriously not pretty, the launch and all the final mad dash that led up to it was Expensive to say the least. I ran out of gas earlier in the week, and was too scared of bouncing loan payments to buy any more for a couple of days. Therefore I didn’t eat (in the dark), I just went to bed. We need our wallets to recover a little before embarking on the next step, so for now I’m commanded by employers and partner to rest, relax and enjoy the scenery. Something I’m almost managing.

Flying Solo.

2009-03-09T12:09:00.003Z

Certain logistical facts regarding Wendy being back in the water are proving to be a bit of a culture shock. Some of these are probably blindingly obvious to the knowing outsider. But in our haste to transform our vessel from a gracefully shaped lump of metal in a huge shed to her proper status as an actual floating boat in the big wide world we overlooked a lot, so a few basic lessons are being learned in a hurry. Jan kindly allowed me to climb the first mountain last weekend by granting me the use of Storebror’s RIB tender. I’ve driven it before, but only twice- and then briefly, and only under the watchful tuition of my employer. So my heart was in my mouth last Friday as the sun was setting and I found myself lowering the small boat into the water from the tug’s HIAB crane. After carefully making all the checks I could think of I started the recently serviced outboard motor, cast off, and opened the throttle extremely gingerly. I crawled across the river Itchen to a waiting Tim, and two fine steel vessels.
Over the course of the weekend I made three more short trips, one of which involved collecting Becky (!) and with each I learned something new, and I’m filled with the newly acquired knowledge that this pocket rocket must be treated with the utmost care and respect.

Thanks to Tim, and Jan, for providing me with some valuable insights in order that so far, I’ve not had to learn the hard way, mind you- there’s a first time for everything.

Other news this week is that the weather forecast is looking encouraging for taking Ms Ann round to Littlehampton on Wednesday. Not only am I nervous as all hell, but I’ve an awful lot of preparation to do, not to the boat itself, she’s as ready as she’ll ever be- but I’ve crews to organise, both for the actual trip, and to receive us on arrival, pilots and small workboats to arrange, and a myriad of other details, not one of which can be overlooked.

We live in interesting times indeed.

Work will make you Free.

2009-03-05T21:07:00.004Z

Sometimes you just really need to bring in the money. Thankfully Jan and BP Norse Marine are lately keeping me busy as fuck. Takes my mind off the fact that Wendy Ann is stuck powerless in the middle of the river Itchen waiting for the spring tides and good weather for her home berth. Illustrated is a recent short tow of the laden hopper barge VR49 out of berth 202 in Southampton as the sun sets on a marvellous force nothing sea, promising an easy ten hour trip with the tide. Please gods, let the weather be like this next week for Ms Ann’s big tow.

Wendy has left the building.

2009-03-02T07:34:00.005Z

In the dead of night last Wednesday we brought the work tug Storebror alongside Wendy Ann 2, tied on the spring and bow lines, made fast the stern line, cast off Wendy’s mooring lines and sprung my absolute pride and joy away from Saxon wharfs launch berth. I was so busy that I got precisely no pictures whatsoever. It was dark anyway. She’s on her way to Littlehampton, but due to things like work going bananas, spring tides for Littlehampton not being until 11th March, and not least the uncomfortable fact that the launch berth weighed in at a hefty £85 a night- she’s going to do the trip in stages. Maybe she’ll send us postcards from where she’s been.
So guess where we put her… Go on, guess. She’s not gone far, yet.

Yep. She’s temporarily rafted in the middle of the river Itchen next to a distinguished host, and one you’ll likely recognise if you read the other boat blogs- Lady Jane. My employer Jan’s crane barge ‘Norse II’ is currently enjoying the welding attentions of the gifted Mr Camilleri, so Jan kindly agreed to allow Wendy to occupy the barges usual spot for a week, arrangements were made with Associated British Ports and Southampton Vessel Traffic Service, and the next thing I knew I was ringing Timzim on Friday to beg a lift across the water in his Rib to the two fine old ladies, who’d clearly got together to have a party without us.

I had things to do, and I guess I got some of them done, but for a large proportion of the time I stood still and marvelled at Wendy being afloat. Being able to see Lady Jane for real (my last visit was AGES ago) and clearly being able to compare the two vessels side by side was inspirational to say the least. Tim and I ballasted ourselves with a few glasses of good stuff during the evenings and he and his boat introduced me to the possibilities (and potential limitations) of a life afloat. It was just what I needed. The last week or so I’ve been boggling at the utter change of rules that Wendy Ann becoming a real boat has imposed. Away from her awesome presence in the tent and all that convenient (but cold) workshop space the inside of the vessel is cluttered with hastily packed tools, ballast and materials, shore power is obviously no longer available, and bugger me but she’s alive again, she gently moves around in response to tides and other boats, I’m still trying to get used to this seismic shift in my world, and it’s a profoundly pleasant sensation.
The Harbour masters paid us a visit on Saturday morning and were hugely complimentary, I was only slightly unhinged by the fact that Jon (who occasionally skippers Lady Jane) seemed to know far more about me and Wendy than was strictly necessary for a first meeting, it turns out he reads this blog, he was full of encouragement and gave me a tour of the Harbourmasters launch ‘Portunus’ just for the hell of it. This was an absolute blast. We backed up from Wendy Ann and Nigel showed me around Tims other neighbour ‘Laligina’, a wooden vessel which needs someone to show her a lot of love, throw their life savings at her and/or a bleeding miracle, as she is going rotten bigtime but is nevertheless pretty incredible inside.

Leaving the two grand old girls was very hard indeed this afternoon, but Storebror was tied up maybe a quarter mile away and in direct line of sight, and I needed to get back on board, start the main engine pre-heater and fill the air start tanks ready for a short trip up to berth 202 with the silt barge. After doing the other checks I finally opened the air start valve at 3pm and fired 825 horsepower into life, and off we went again.
What a world I’ve chosen to live in, its hard, often dirty, and absolute magic.

Wendy Ann Flies Again.

2009-02-20T22:42:00.010Z

S.. It’s been a long and excellent three weeks.
I’ve never been so tired. And I’m so, so bloody proud.
Thankfully men can’t bear children, but if they could, they’d probably feel like I do now.
We have a new fifty ton baby, ain’t she gorgeous?

Fuck it. Words fail me. We finally launched little Wendy Ann 2 at about 9am on Monday 16th of February 2009. Here are some photographs.

Somehow we did it, the last three and a half years I mean. And by god we got away with it too.
My most sincere and heartfelt humble thanks to EVERY single person that has helped us along the journey to achieve this. You are too numerous to mention, but be told you must know who you are. Thank you all for giving me something to believe in.

Wendy Ann comes back from the dead. Part One, Job Done.

B here, I still can’t believe it. To the point where it still makes me kind of jump when I round to corner into the yard and she isn’t where she used to be…who the fuck has nicked my boat?! Then this immense sense of pride as I walk down the jetty to the launch (yes LAUNCH) berth and see our boat tied up there smiling at me. Yes- it is going to take some getting used to, the fact that I nearly ended up in the drink by forgetting that when you lean on a boat that is floating it will gently move away from you is just the start.

Nice one guys. Loads of love from Seb and Becky. X

Cats and Pigeons.

2009-02-01T23:01:00.003Z

Writing, creative or otherwise may be a bit thin on the ground for the next two weeks; she's a going in the drink. Ready or not the big day is booked for Monday 16th February 2009 at about 8am, and there's so much to do. I pray to the deity of my choice that we have enough time to get it all done. Now where'd I leave that coffeepot...

Reduced to Tears.

2009-01-26T21:51:00.000Z

It’s all systems go in our lives at the moment, and has been just too much of a whirlwind to write anything down beyond lists of more things to do; which may either a) explain the lack of recent blogging or b) sound like an excuse, but if I could truly communicate what life’s like for us now you probably wouldn’t believe me. Since the New Year we’ve discovered B and I are about to be made redundant and we may well lose the flat that comes with the job so we’ll be homeless. I’ve been back to see B on Thursday and Friday nights only, the rest of my time and all my energies have been directed at frantically working on Wendy or zooming across to Portsmouth to work for BP Norse marine. Life doesn’t get any easier does it? I’ve compounded the demands on myself by adopting an attitude of ‘whatdya mean it’s getting late? Brew some bloody coffee’ which has seen me pushing work on the boat ‘til gone midnight on a regular basis. It’s going quite well, but I’m beginning to get a little tired now.

According to our diary this regime is set to continue for three more weeks. I’m extremely hesitant to declare this in public after what occurred last October, but fuck it, what the hell, it should be obvious anyway… Yes we intend to Launch Wendy Ann, Yes we intend to do it mid February. Yes we think we have somewhere to take her, and No we will NOT be cancelling at the last minute this time. There, said it. All this may have a lot to do with the possibility that if we leave it any longer we won’t be able to afford the craneage fees for the launch anymore.

The hard part of the roof is now installed over the cabin, and for good measure the wheelhouse too, the old one being too rubbish for me to accept having to look at all the time and therefore having succumbed to one of those late evening caffeine fuelled crow bar benders that I seem to have developed a penchant for. The crappy old pine 2x4 structure of it has been replaced by reclaimed teak beams and purlins which I made up and dovetailed into the original wheelhouse sides. And last weekend Mark and I got the new BS1088 ply roof into place. It’s made of two layers of 9mm ply, with all fixings through the first layer, the second layer has staggered joints and is laminated up with vast quantities of cascamite wood glue (we used rollers to apply it), and held in place with panel pins driven far enough to provide clamping yet not so far as to penetrate the lower layer. It’s currently weighted down with large ballasts while I wait for the glue to cure and the edges are left over long so we could screw around them to provide more clamping pressure.
But none of that was the hard part.
Our tent was in the way of all this work and access to the cabin roof was tight but just about ok. We did however have to butcher a couple of the tents rafters and jack them as far as possible against the shrinkwrap cover in order to work on the wheelhouse roof, even so our maximum working height at the centre of the bridge was just over two feet. I spent hours lying down up there screwing, gluing and pinning. Which sounds like fun. It wasn’t. At about four yesterday afternoon I was experiencing constant cramps in my left hip and right knee, I was battered from fighting to push the tent up each time I wanted to insert one of four hundred screws, I ached from the previous days efforts anyway and I was filthy from accidentally wiping the tent clean with my back. My sense of humour already lacking, I then fetched my middle finger a right clump full on with the hammer. After hurling a torrent of the worst kind of swearing at my hammer, my finger, my boat and everything else I could possibly think of the tears started rolling and I had a damn good cry. All the stress and exhaustion brought on by the last few weeks, and indeed the last three years came out at once. This took some time, and my friend Mark later said that he felt it better to leave me up there to get it over with than try to extract me or make the rather self defeating inquiry of ‘are you alright?’ which is just as well really. After drying my cheeks and rubbing my eyes I felt a whole lot better and finally managed to finish the job before crawling out from the tiny space I’d been stuck in for most of the day.

We have a roof. No, we have two. One big step closer.

Eight Days A Week.

2009-01-22T20:39:00.000Z

Normal service will resume at some point soon.

Shack-Whacky.

2008-12-08T14:32:00.005Z

Title pinched from Canada…Nice one Tana!

As threatened, More (bang up to date this time) snaps published here. Hope you like them, I set up the scaffold tower special and everything.

So passed another weekend of what’s beginning to feel like engineering in wood, as illustrated by my first porthole surround, fashioned from six precisely shaped pieces of teak, and the fact that I am finding the 0.3mm imperfection in the join on the left of the circle immensely annoying. I have a suspicion I’m a little short-fused at the mo.
Eagle eyes may also spot the torn corner of the return lintel on the port side after we dropped a critically and immensely carefully shaped piece on the deck on Sunday morning, it’s fixable (requiring cutting out and fitting a patch before assembling the mitre, and planing flush after), but my, did the air turn briefly and deafeningly blue, then thundery quiet after it happened. This led to the introduction of a New Rule: Don’t fackin’ let go, Alright?
Indeed, getting all those raked window frames and all their compound angles to fit just so is providing just the right conditions for creative and colourful expletive practise.
Speaking of conditions I’m told we experienced temperatures of four below on Saturday night. This presented two new and interesting experiences for us. Firstly the propane bottle that fed our big space heater froze up and prevented sufficient gas pressure from getting to the burners, with the result that after 10pm we were all froze up too. Bed inevitably followed soon after. Secondly, on waking Sunday morning Mark and I decided to get inventive in our thermal solutions. In a process known as ‘donning the tramps underpants’ we took reams of newspaper and shoved it down our trousers all around our legs, where it remained for the rest of the day. It proved surprisingly effective and warm once I got used to feeling like a walking recycling bin.
So. Still not done yet, but next weekend it’s theoretically possible to get the window section screwed, glued and finally beaten.

Boatbuilders.

2008-12-05T22:25:00.005Z

Part the first.

Becky has just had her operation, and is therefore laid up (all went well thankfully). She is so crabby and bored already that she's started going through the league of photographic records that currently clutter up our hard drive; and defining where they should actually be filed in real life if it weren't for the influence of me. When she's discovered one out of place I know about it because I experience ample botheration and earache. Anyway, from this noisy process gems are already appearing, so maybe headaches aren't so bad really. For example this photo here published. Maybe this should be the start of a daft series, a pre-emptive retrospective like. Here's Jan and I (without hair)- Love ja baby....

Cabin Fever.

2008-11-25T09:11:00.013Z

Couldn’t resist the lame pun, but it does at least cover subject matter and level of personal obsession fairly neatly.

After long wrangling about how to write about it - and almost to remind myself of where we’ve been lately, I’ve given up trying to find the right words. So here are a few fairly low quality pictures of the recent progress cabinwise. They convey little of the transformation taking place, and less still of the awesome effort that everyone’s putting in, but they do show Jan and I getting stuck into cladding the structure out. Doing the whole thing in wood has to be THE hardest and most time consuming way I can think of building this new space on board, we’ve recently taken to working ‘til past ten or eleven at night (partly because it’s so damn cold and at least graft helps keep the blood warm, partly ‘cos time is not on our side and Wendy eats deadlines.) But I must say I’m very happy indeed with the way it’s taking shape, particularly the sympathetic match of the new cabin with the original wheelhouse. That reclaimed teak tongue and groove seems to have repaid the effort, and Wendyann looks like she’s reasonably happy with her new deckhouse. What’s not pictured is Marks recent attack of the complex series of compound mitres that is the new windows round the back, Becky’s double glazed (!) porthole, and my own beginnings of the porthole backing panels. Much more better pictures coming soon after I find five minutes during daylight to take ‘em. There are now three weekends available until the C word is upon us (publicly enforced unpaid holiday, nine letters). I’m hopeful we’ll have it finished ready to take the roof by then. On the other hand, you know what happens when I go making ambitious statements like that one…

As a postscript, Mark returned from the states wearing his latest defence against the winter cold, a bright red all in one thermal underwear known as a Union Suit, Makes him look like a hillbilly superhero.

Only question is, Is the world ready for SuperCletus?

Winter.

2008-11-09T17:30:00.001Z

Here's the latest weather forecast summary:

Selsey Bill to Lyme Regis
Issued by the Met Office at 1700 UTC on Sunday 09 November 2008

24 hour forecast:

Wind - Southwest 7 to severe gale 9, perhaps increasing storm 10 at times.
Weather - Rain or squally showers.
Visibility - Moderate, occasionally poor.
Sea State - Rough or very rough.

Outlook for the following 24 hours:

Wind - Southwest 7 to severe gale 9, veering west 6 to gale 8.
Weather - Rain or squally showers.
Visibility - Moderate or poor, occasionally good.
Sea State - Rough or very rough.

I am not impressed. Looks like work at Storebror may be a bit all over the place this week.

Here’s one we prepared months ago.

2008-11-03T08:36:00.009Z

With our radically revised plan for our vessel we had no scheduled launch last week after all, but we’d both already been granted time off of work in Epsom in order to be ready for one. With the opportunity to work together for days and days and days we decided to get happy and call it our ‘Happy Not A Launch Then Even if You Were Praying For One’ week.

It was great, the boat and tent which houses her once again started to feel like home, ok, a half finished one but home nonetheless. I was getting in the car and going to work at Tug Storebror from our new home. B went to the supermarket and came home to Wendy Ann. We both went to the hardware shop and came home to the boat. The only small fly in the ointment about this arrangement was that since winter seems to have arrived bigtime, it was getting seriously Fucking Cold every night. I’m talking wearing thermals, long johns, all the jumpers you brought with you and two sets of overalls at the same time as well as various strange hats levels of cold. And then bravely stripping only the minimum of all that off at the very last minute when ready to dive under five duvets for sleep. There were a couple of evenings when it all got a bit too Ray Mears’ Shipyard Survival, and I quickly discovered that drinking a glass or three of (naturally refrigerated to far below the optimum temperature) wine and finding areas worth sweeping vigorously would help keep the body warmth going. Various bits of the boat and tent floor are spookily clean and tidy all of a sudden.

To Do:
Winch.
Chain.
This represents just two lines on that godforsaken list of B’s, but it took the entire week to finally be able to cross them off. Let’s see why… First we made new shoes for the anchor winch to stand on from iroko stock and soaked them in creosote. Went to engineers suppliers in Portsmouth and bought a load of 3/4inch by 4inch coarse thread bolts and nuts. Jacked whole winch clear of (already painted) deck with two 20 tonne bottle jacks and a load of chocks. Covered both faces of new shoes with bitumen sealant and slipped into place, inserted nice large bolts and tightened up. Spent an hour wiping away excess sealant. Congratulated selves at having finally reattached winch to boat. Painted chain (which should itself be in neon capital letters a foot high, it took AGES, and was actually started months ago. Sam, B and I have all done turns on the thing but B went for it and I pitched in again at the end so we finally finished the final link at 19.37 last Saturday.) Heated up and freed all the bearings on the winch when we discovered it had seized, made mental note to borrow greaser gun from work. Wirebrushed and chipped all the flaky burnt stuff off. Two coats of intertuf all over. Two coats of intertuf inside already intershielded chain locker for good measure. Neoprene gasket cut for chain locker cover, and found bolts lurking at bottom of tool box where they’d been ever since Robin made the cover two years ago. Greased up winch with gun borrowed from work. Enlisted help of Dave and Diana. Loaded well over a ton of chain through winch, two people at winch handles, one on floor feeding chain off pallet, one in chain locker flaking it out neatly. Sweated a lot. Bolted locker cover down. Painted black top coats on winch. Painted remaining exposed chain white. Cursed the sodding list and crossed off the words winch and chain.

We even managed to get a load of other good stuff done as well, various blanking plates were finally married with new gaskets and bolted over various deck fitting holes that otherwise would let the rain in, a ton or two of ballast got it’s final coats of paint and then stacked up all neat and tidy like. The wooden (oak?) parts of the mast were sanded and coated with three coats of shiny yacht varnish. Dave offered to pressure test our water and diesel tanks. I ran out of oxygen whilst cutting the rubbish steel off the towhook arm. My mum and her friend David came to see us for the launch that wasn’t and stayed for the day helping out instead. David installed some handy site lighting using new fittings we found stored in Wendy way back when we bought her, my dear mum helped paint the winch’s first top coats and inflated the tender, which we discovered only has a very slow puncture and therefore may be serviceable, which is a bleeding miracle considering how much blasting, grinding and welding has happened near or around it over the last three years. Robin received a phone call asking his advice on drilling large holes in steel and what best to use, happened to be local and very kindly offered to drop in and drill ‘em for us with his rotabroach, which saved me killing a drill that wouldn’t be up to the job and enabled us to bolt this back down:

Our H bollard (H should stand for Heavy) had been loose on the after deck ever since before we purchased the vessel, thus rendering it fairly useless as a mooring point, but now it’s properly bolted to a deck that I plated and tacked in, that Larry welded, with bolts Becky purchased, fixed in holes that Robin drilled. The devil is always in the detail, and I was so happy that Robin offered to help us do it the easy way, it meant that by 8pm that night we’d finished that particular job and a load of others too and I hadn’t sworn once.

I forgot to mention something strange about the dreaded list, the problem with crossing stuff off is that usually by the time I'm ready to do so, we've found a couple of new things've popped up overnight like mushrooms, so actually the list has remained more or less the same length for a couple of years- about two and a half pages. I guess it'll always be there, a permanent feature of our lives with ms Ann. Oh Bugger, time to get back in the forepeak already.

Fuses.

2008-10-18T22:29:00.001+01:00

I have been meaning to post an entry myself for ages. I thought of so many great, funny and sharp things to say that would blow Seb's writing right out of the water, but I have been so tied up with other shit that I have forgotten most of it so you are stuck with this; a thoughtful piece according to me, B:

Funny isn’t it that whilst the world is full of people suffering hunger and war that our own problems seem bigger than any of these and we just can’t seem to overcome them. Striving for a dream and an unusual lifestyle is hard graft. I don’t mean just tough going I mean soul destroying, exhausting and bank breaking graft. Funny how a project that starts as a dream together can pull you apart and together at the same time and so often that you feel like a pushme-pullyou. How do you balance working to earn money, finding time to work on the thing that is costing the money and working on the career you hope to have established by the time the thing is finished?
Well it is October again, I say that with feeling as if you look back in the archives you will see that it was around this time of year when everything went tits up last time and so here it is again- no money, no time, too much work on and now an impeding forced period of rest due to surgery (I’m due to have horrid bone crunching on dodgy feet, nothing life threatening). All I can say is… oh fuck. Whilst I am struggling to reconcile the need to work on the horses that were due to be sold (and therefore lessen the workload) with trying to work on the boat all before the impeding hospital date, Seb is going mad. I don’t mean in the need to be committed sense but in the same way as an amplifier…Seb goes all the way up to 12 but his fuses blow at 11. He is struggling to stop panicking, worry keeps him awake- where to moor her, what about the timber, what about the paint etc etc. So worried about the bigger picture that he just can’t get on with the job in hand or should I say thing things we can get on with. It is so hard for both of us to be living through the weeks that we should have been preparing to launch but not being able to and at the same time staring down the barrel of another freezing winter….
I was looking at the (gorgeous) aft cabin timber structure the other day and thinking that it pretty much summed up my life at the moment- a giant game of Jenga. One false move or one crucial piece pulled out and..JENGA! All I can say is thank fuck for the clamps of friends and family that are holding our fragile structure together.
If anyone reads this and is thinking of undertaking anything similar, be it a house, a boat or simply relocating to a new place be prepared for it to take 5 times longer than you think and to consider carefully, not in the brave ‘we can do it’ sense but really be critical- can I do this, can we and will we survive?
War leaves scars and so does being hungry, whether that’s for food, for love or for a life you dream of. Make damn sure you can survive but also that you can heal.
The most valuable lesson I have learned so far is that it takes more strength to admit defeat when you are broken, to cry, to stay positive when bitter cynicism stands in the way and do all of this together without blame or criticism. That is harder than anything an angle grinder or a cold winter can throw.

We’ve got a can of Intertuf.

2008-10-13T20:09:00.001+01:00

And we’re not afraid to use it.

This weekend Becky continued to attack the huge list of so called ‘small’ jobs. All of which sorely need doing, and together add up to a huge difference in the overall state of our vessel. The latest in pictures:

The Mast, after its first top coats of white.

A water header tank, and its inspection hatch, the old flaky paint came off in seconds and underneath it turned out to be galvanised on the outside.. luckily the inside is in surprisingly good nick too so its going to be useful.

Two blanking plates which I made for the starboard fuel filler hole and forward flue opening, neither of which had anything sensible ready to put in them.

The mast foot… Which prior to cleaning and painting had to be burned off the scrappy piece of wood that it’d been screwed, bolted and mastic’d to. God bless oxy-propane.

A finished blanking plate installed over an opening at the back of the (dusty again) engine room superstructure.

And inevitably, some more ballast because we mixed up too much paint as usual. Acquisition of ballast kindly arranged by Mr Twine.

Becky often feels like a bit player in the background of this blog, because despite my best efforts I seem too often able only to write things from my own point of view, which gives the impression that there’s less going on than there actually is. I’d like to take the opportunity to make it absolutely clear that it takes two to tango. B may not have the inclination to throw power tools around for days and weeks on end, and she is painfully aware of her need to request some skilled things to be done for her. But it’s clear to me that it’s often her tenacity and vision that forces the whole thing forward. She is a determined woman alright. I tried to explain to her last night that, had I been left to my own devices, the new cabin would have been made of steel. Sure it would likely be finished by now, but it would also probably be an ugly thing possessing none of the sympathy our cabin structure has with the original wheelhouse and none of the grand aesthetic that the resulting edifice is developing. This is only as a direct result of Becky’s input to the design process, a fact she needs reminding of.

There’s also a bit of upset kicking about due to the fact that I reduced the significant, and long awaited installation of our spiral staircase to a few glib lines at the end of my last entry. My apologies, sometimes my twisted and inappropriate sense of humour runs away with me. But the pole dancing really WAS fun, did you really need to read about every nut tightened?

Sometimes we fight because we’re both quite headstrong and wilful people. Hey. Couples probably should have a good fight now and then, I’m always a bit suspicious when I hear someone claim they and theirs never do it. We just get scared when we argue a lot without seeming to resolve stuff. But it is a strange thing indeed to subject a relationship to the prolonged pressure testing that rebuilding such an old wreck of a vessel dictates. I remind myself that no reasonable couple would’ve voluntarily walked into the situation we find ourselves in, so somehow we should expect things to occasionally become distinctly unreasonable.

I tend to get shirty as well, all by myself, with no help from anyone at all. Basically the whole thing has become an immense source of personal frustration, our boat is a dream that's become a prolonged nightmare from which there seems no waking up. I just want to get the sodding thing on the water and begin a life of sorts, the limbo of our current arrangements has gone on far, far too long (trust me- I'm talking about more than just the boat here) and it just drives me a bit bonkers, the waiting, the working, the constant obsession. Not to mention the frankly scary amounts of cash that fly around (usually it migrates south). On the other hand, like Becky, I want to everything done double properly as well. It’s a case of one or the other, and usually the latter wins simply because I seem to have ridiculous issues around perfectionism, and because we still have a dream which we just refuse to give up on. Dammit. I gave up an old imperfect life on two wheels for this and it's been a long old journey. Things should be perfect, and they will be. One day. One day soon.

Ha ha!

2008-10-11T06:59:00.004+01:00

Guess what?
We’ve officially delayed the launch. Again.
So Bzzrrrrp.

I feel much, much saner now that I’ve fallen off that particular fence.
For a start, I’ve decided to stop worrying about what everyone else thinks- boat not ready equals so bloody what? I’ve never done this before, and am therefore entitled to be completely wrong. Sorry if I you got all excited and that by my naïve hopes but.., Three years (scratch that, nearly four years) have elapsed and we’ve sacrificed too much cash and sweat that I’m damned if we’ll throw the baby out with the bathwater now. The vessel is safer (albeit drier- not necessarily a bad thing) with the devil we know for the winter, and we want to finish this properly. That means completing things, not fudging them for the sake of desperation. So. Me finish woodwork. Me put roof on cabin. Me weld up hook and sort out mast. Me do much more other stuff. Me have time occasionally for long lie down with feet up and bubbles coming out of my ears going ‘burbleburbleburble’. Yarp. Here comes winter.

Never mind; as a consolation prize, Here’s some pictures of the most recent dog-tired drives to get things done. My thanks to B, Jan, Mark and my father for helping me to see sense.

Whilst installing the spiral staircase last weekend we found ourselves unable to resist the temptation to indulge in a little light pole-dancing. It started out well, but then went rapidly downhill.

Complexity.

2008-10-01T19:55:00.005+01:00

Or- Getting the job done right, on time.

I’m starting to become incredibly nervous that we won’t be ready in time for the launch. We’re working so hard that we experience moments of zombie like tiredness, you know, blundering about bumping into stuff whilst unable to put one thought in front of the other. But we’ve regular day jobs to look after as well so almost every waking moment is occupied more than ever by work or by boat. God, how has my life become so much fun? In this headlong dash I’m finding it all too easy to concentrate on the details which are in front of me but lose sight of the bigger picture, i.e. what’s going to happen on the 27th of THIS BLOODY MONTH! Also, when I’m not actually at the boat I’m completely preoccupied with what I’ll do next time I get the opportunity so I’m dazed, exhausted and bumping into things at work too. I should be used to it by now, but I swear it’s getting worse. Every night sleep folds her arms around me and I fall in to them gratefully, only to be tormented with nightlong dream visions of the whole thing going horribly wrong in some new and ridiculous way. So I wake up almost as knackered as I was the night before but with my tired state now seasoned with a liberal sprinkling of grumpy and bad attitude that all the good coffee in the world will not shift.
Technically we’re pretty sure the boat will float, and now most of the holes in the superstructure are sealed up. But it’s October already. The cabin construction, whilst it’s progressing really well is become the latest new eater of time- we’ve worked out that in total it’s so far consumed 34 days. That’s at least 408 hours of work. I should’ve built a sodding shed to live in. Although the window frames are now starting to take shape we reckon there’s still another 6 days before all the pieces are made and fitted and it’s all ready to be glued together*. I may well end up undertaking these days alone. So far I’ve been incredibly privileged that an old friend has been on hand to teach me the required skills and to share the workload, but it’s looking likely I’ll have to take these new skills and push them as hard as I can because the dear Mark is off on holiday to America soon. Therefore I’m feeling lightly terrified about getting it all done in time. It almost goes without saying that I’d like my man to be present and part of the dismantling, gluing and reassembling process, but time is running through my fingers like dry sand, and launch dates now absolutely cannot be moved for all sorts of reasons…

I’m not even going to mention all the myriad other tasks that need our attention because if I do, my head will explode.

* It’s going to be a massive assembly job, and will take a whole day. As a bit of gentle homework I’m doing some research in an attempt to find a SLOW setting waterproof wood glue. So far I’ve identified two possibilities. Either the Expensive West System epoxy using their slow hardener, or a cheaper powdered product which used to be known as Cascamite ( I think it’s a urea formaldehyde based resin which is water activated) but now seems available under various different names. My chosen adhesive must remain workable for as long as possible, ideally six hours or more in order to allow jigging of the structure, and it must set properly weatherproof. Talk about gonzo boatbuilding, this is it. If you have any ideas or suggestions for a suitable solution at all then I’d really really like to hear them.

Wendy’s Got Wood.

2008-09-19T08:12:00.005+01:00

Thought some better pictures of progress on the cabin structure might be in order. Here’s some, stolen from Mark (ta bruv), which fit everything in a bit better, and show the state of play as it stands at the end of Sunday afternoon.

It’s about two thirds there, with the sills and window frames still to do, which will dictate the after end of the roof structure. And of course nothing’s glued together yet, doing so will require us to dismantle the entire structure before gluing, this part of the plan is going to be the sticking point. Oh, and the entire structure will obviously need cladding in hundred year old reclaimed teak (courtesy of Halifax, it was expensive but we didn’t think it’d break the bank) that’s so hard it’s practically fossilised. So maybe it’s not actually two thirds there at all. Why I always think these things should be easy and quick I’ll never know.
While I’m at it here are three more pictures (also pinched- ta bruv), from the previously blogged nine days of chaos which started all this.

Believe it or not but once upon a time in a past life I was a photographer; things have come to a sorry state though with my cameras long broken and languishing in a drawer, so I usually document our boat efforts on a mere camera phone. Mark on the other hand, owns a lovely digital Nikon SLR, which is the only reason you’re looking at pictures now at all.
But last weekend was all a bit heads-down-and–charge, and because wood dust fucks Nokias, no-one including me took any action shots so I’m forced to confess I don’t have a single picture to describe what is already affectionately known as the ‘B’ deck (or was it J deck, or the B-J deck? Ahem) that Jan and Becky constructed. They made an excellent temporary/permanent timber and shrinkwrap rain cover over the generator compartment at the stern. Best not to ask too much about the ‘Gimp deck’ that now covers the hatch too and is sheathed in black rubber… And neither do I have a pictorial record of the child labour which we found ourselves employing* on Sunday. Chris was definitely exempt from the laws regarding minimum wage, and had become bored of helping his parents to antifoul their big plastic boat. So he decided to offer us his services instead, our site being noisy, dirty, dangerous and made of metal and dust- most boys like this sort of thing, some of us never seem to grow out of it.

*He was very cheap, we paid him one family size bar of dairy milk chocolate which he bolted down in one go, after which he did an awful lot of hoovering.

Marbles.

2008-09-10T21:30:00.001+01:00

I have these weird hopes, ambitions, things that fill my imagination which I’d really like to pack into my futile little life before it’s all over. Some have come, some have been and gone, some are yet to be. I present them in no particular order:

Tattoos
Steel
Wedding
Spiral Staircases
Order
Banjo
Welding tickets
Boat-House-Boat
Lanterns
Engineering
Anarchy
My past life
Tug Driver
Sharpening Good Tools
Friendships
Lots of lovely woodwork
London
Piracy
Future
Nab tower
MDMA
Tandem Bicycles
Family
Sunrise

These are my marbles, I may have temporarily lost them. Never mind.

Nine Days. 200 Hours, and a lifetime.

2008-09-02T20:00:00.005+01:00

The enormous job of getting Ms Ann ready for her long awaited (and now postponed- see below) plunge has begun in earnest, and we need to seal her topsides up against the ingress of rain or burglars. This started last week with porthole installation and also finally beginning the construction of a replacement after wheelhouse cabin, yeah- that big hole in the deck in front of the funnel where the yellow peril of an old cabin used to be.

I’d designed the cabin months ago after a heated discussion (argument) with B during which we discussed the choice of materials with which it should be built, I wanted steel, she wanted wood. I lost the argument (sorry- discussion) and began sketching our ideas down on the back of welding stick boxes. Slowly my brain began to hurt as it tried to contain the complexities of our proposed design so I moved on to graph paper and pens and eventually came up with something that I thought would suffice, drawn to scale. We had some more arguments as Becky struggled to interpret my chaotic drawings and I struggled to put descriptive words around them. Then I had an argument with myself as I attempted to calculate a cutting list with which to reliably order the correct amount of timber. After taking some headache pills I threw caution to the wind and went ahead and ordered the stuff. Two thousand pounds worth of sawn Iroko bulks. After getting off the phone I numbly decided to take even more headache remedies and went to stand in the corner of a darkened room with a bucket over my head until I felt better. This state of suspended relief was not to last however, as when the huge pile of timber arrived at saxon wharf the following week I found myself scrabbling around for my cutting list (and the pills) and wondering why I’d ordered five times more wood than I required. Luckily this was to prove a false panic in the end, but I aged about ten years in an afternoon, especially as I was on my own at the boat and faced dragging these enormous lumps of tree across the yard and into the tent alone, if it hadn’t been for some Very Helpful fishermen on the boat next to me I would’ve doubtless provided some interesting entertainment for the shipyard staff- and probably also have snapped myself in half.

Now, an event such as the one all this was leading up to was obviously not planned overnight. I managed to fluke a week off from both of my jobs and persuaded my dear friend Mark (he’s the Scottish wood expert, I’m the numpty) to come to the boat for the same week. Getting these arrangements to align neatly with things like actually having the timber in my possession, remembering to buy glue, screws and pencils, and making sure my thicknesser blades were sharp as hells teeth was some sort of mission, but in the end it all somehow fell into place like some big happy accident.
So I found myself doing a lap of the M25 last Friday night to collect Mark and all his tools, loading a borrowed pick up with even more tools AND Supersam, B and Jan the following morning and driving in convoy through the bank holiday traffic to begin a frankly industrial amount of wood butchery and porthole fitting.

While everyone else cleared the engine room, installed those portholes and the restored aft ladder and made a temporary timber cover over the bosun’s hatch Mark and I took THREE entire twelve hour days to bring the gargantuan pile of rainforest down to planed and sized lumber suitable for our plans. The tent floor quickly became swathed in mountainous drifts of very expensive sawdust. Unfortunately for everyone else it wasn’t until they had to leave us on bank holiday Monday afternoon that we were actually ready to begin chopping iroko up to length and preparing all the complex joints.

The rest of the week was a bit of a dusty blur. One thing that had really daunted me for some time was the knowledge that whilst I’d learned a lot about working with steel over the last few years I still knew not very much at all about wood techniques, and I was about to undergo a crash course. With my own stock. Which was worth two grand. Ooooh bugger. This was a large part of the reason why I was so dependent on Marks assistance, at least to point me in the right direction. To his mild annoyance though I’ve got to say I quickly found out which way was up, and enjoyed working with a new material rather a lot. I decided upon a theory that whilst steel can to a certain extent be bullied, wood has to be persuaded, and also seems to talk back. But once I learned how to sharpen a chisel properly I was away after a fashion, and happily chopped away.

Two days after we finished thicknessing the timber we were finally able to haul some of it up to the deck, we’d got lucky and had two pieces of heartwood that complemented the colour of the existing wheelhouse nicely and after hours and hours of preparation we tested our back muscles and heaved the first one up. Then we heaved it down again for some major adjustments. Then up again, then down. Inevitably some time elapsed and by Thursday morning we only had two structural members clamped where they belonged. This was however, a bit of an optical illusion, as M kept assuring me that the greater amount of work was in preparing each piece- and he wasn’t wrong. When B arrived late on Thursday night bringing our relief rations and beer she was treated to a viewing of our first attempt at dry assembly, comprising of most of the new cabin walls, door jambs, bottom and top plates, posts and stringers.

As my efforts with a chisel and router got neater our physical state was starting to get distinctly ragged. We’d been working ‘til gone nine every evening, so when B arrived and we started into the beer the results were a foregone conclusion. Yep, Hangov ers all around. Friday was an utter mess, I think I spent three hours just working out how the frame should interface the after bulkhead and another two hours cutting a single piece of wood. Most of the time I just gawped at the wood, then the drawings, trying in vain to understand why all the numbers wouldn’t stay in my frazzled little head. We stopped work at six that evening as our dribbling and pencil dropping had clearly got the better of us.

Over the weekend our dry assembled frame was partially dismantled and the first curved rafters prepared for addition to the structure, the realisation dawned that we weren’t going to even come close to finishing all the components, so we staggered to a Sunday afternoon finish satisfied just to reassemble with no glue, what we’d done so far, clamp it in place and begin the process of extracting ourselves from the boat which for the first time felt as if it had started to become home, albeit temporarily.

I’ve just experienced something that will live forever in my memory as one of the hardest, but most enjoyable weeks of my life, to have shared the experience with an old friend made it utterly unforgettable and the return to reality has been tinged with that quiet sort of culture shock you might sometimes feel after a really good holiday when on your return, even the familiar seems strange.

Mind you, we worked so hard our grandchildren will be born tired. I drove for over five hours on Sunday evening to get Mark and his tools home, and somehow thrived my way through work yesterday with no apparent ill effects whatsoever. Today however was a completely different story, forced out of bed too early I quickly began to feel very odd indeed, like I was coming down with a bug or something, it rapidly became apparent that I was suffering from a deep exhaustion and I was left with no choice but to make my excuses and crawl back under the duvet, where I remained for the entire day. The price exacted so far for my nine days of mayhem has been a total of 18 hours sleep since last night. I’m awake now but fuck me do I feel weird, and I have a feeling my body is still not done settling the debt. I’ve worked out that we’ve invested 214 man hours in the cabin construction so far, and that there’s probably about the same again before we’re done. Never mind the ‘sleep when I’m dead’ philosophy, I feel halfway there already so I’m getting back under the duvet now while I have a chance. Night night.

Launch Date Changed.

2008-09-02T19:21:00.002+01:00

Already. Bit of a false alarm the previous post was. Due to many various factors and a lot of discussion we've decided to change the launch date to give us a little more time to make everything a bit closer to perfect. The new date set for the launch is Monday 27th October. Sorry to get all excitable and then go and shift the goalposts so soon, but these things happen.

The News.

2008-08-18T08:45:00.003+01:00

BONG…
And now Here is the News at Nine, BONG…

Slack Jawed Staff at Saxon wharf as Seb makes Startling Statement Shocker!

Staff at the shipyard found themselves frozen in the act of taking mouthfuls from their lunchtime sarnies last week as Seb chose the wrong time to have a meeting regarding the relaunch of Wendy Ann 2. Eyewitnesses said that Ron, the yard foreman, dropped his chocolate biscuits and was so overcome with the giddies that he had to have a sit down. The tea went cold and diaries were drawn on both sides of the table as complex plans and stupendous costs were discussed. After the summit Seb was reportedly seen wandering around the shipyard and muttering to himself in what confidantes have described as a ‘dazed and preoccupied state’

That’s right. After much deliberation on all sides I’ve got a date officially fixed and everything. Our Vessel will be lifted into the rolling hoist on the afternoon of Friday 12th September. She will remain suspended in the hoist over the weekend in order that we can get to the areas of the hull bottom currently occupied by blocks.
She will be launched into the Itchen River at 0800 on Mon 15th September. The damn thing had better bloody float else there’ll be trouble.

Obviously we’ve rather a lot to do before then, I shan’t bore you with the list, which is still long, but you can imagine that we’ll be extremely busy indeed. The date set is only a month away (!!) so I’m vascillating wildly between states of excitement and blind panic.

In other news this week, here is a picture of a porthole.

Now let’s take a look at the weather in your region.

Wendy Ann's New Clothes.

2008-08-15T14:07:00.004+01:00

I'm home for less than 24 hours, so in lieu of words here's some pictures of the paint program that's currently under way.

We've been busy.

Grotbusters.

2008-07-31T23:00:00.003+01:00

After a month of weekends where our attention has been required elsewhere (Employer got married, B turned thirty, and I went for an extremely long overnight bicycle ride with some friends) we finally got to do something sorely long awaited last weekend. We turned up at the boat and after throwing off the dust sheets we plugged the pressure washer in and hosed everything down to remove all the filthy black dust, a remnant from grit blasting which inevitably got past our aforementioned defences. It was a fuck sight quicker than using a hoover, and Becky made up a silly song that went along the lines of "I feel yachty, oh so yachty, I do" in honour of the strange sight of us doing something recognisably boaty to our vessel for a change. In a matter of moments it seemed like everything we’ve battled to achieve was finally revealed to us- a glorious, silver and white vessel, all the way from stem to stern (except for the anchor winch, I really must do something about that this weekend.)

My girlfriend is clearly mad, not only does she somehow put up with me most of the time, but also as soon as I’d done with pressure washing the topsides she grabbed the machine off me and spent the next three hours cleaning up the entire floor of our boathouse- her explanation was a reasonable one, that she didn’t want me walking filth back onto the deck, but I know that secretly she’s just as sick of all the bloody dirt as I’ve been and all that stable manager stuff has therefore left her with a weird compulsion to hose things down.

It’s a shame I can’t bring myself to use the pressure washer inside the boat as well because it’s dusty as hell inside too and it’s taking ages with a bucket and sponge- on the other hand, someone did suggest filling her up with water to see if she leaks, and I’m sure I’ve got a pump somewhere…

All at Sea.

2008-07-31T22:57:00.002+01:00

In the interest of illustrating related topics here are a couple of pictures of a recent tow undertaken by us at BP Norse (marine), the strange object under our charge was part of a submersible dry dock developed by a firm on the Isle of Wight. We towed it in two parts to Portsmouth, whereupon it was loaded on a freighter for delivery to Dubai. I love this kind of work because it’s a trip out of the ordinary silt disposal work that we normally deal with, we steam around in strange tides, and get to meet loads of interesting people along the way.

Neighbours.

2008-07-31T22:24:00.002+01:00

(music tinkles)
Neighbours,
Everybody needs good neighbours,
except I haven’t bloody met them,
‘nd they’ve been out a month,
Neighbours, built a fancy tent around it,
and they’ve just gone and blasted,
another tug,
O Neighbours,
When do I get to meet you,
and maybe, buy you,
a damn good drink.

The vessel is apparently known as the Susie B, and is intended to become a houseboat, there are some spooky similarities with us which is an odd sensation. More I cannot tell until I’ve had the chance to grill the individuals involved.

Can’t fit it all in.

2008-06-30T07:45:00.006+01:00

The following photographs completely fail to capture the scale of what’s happened to Wendy Ann. I need a wider lens/camera that is not also a telephone. When I went for a look yesterday I walked into the tent and just stood there slack-jawed for a long moment, then Tim Zim stuck his head in and we both stood there gawping a bit longer.

The first coats of paint are ON the hull! As you can see she’s a sort of fetching two-tone scheme at the moment, I wish I’d seen her on Friday when she apparently turned blue all over after the first coat… Anyway, the shiny black stuff you can see covering our boat below the (generous) waterline now is the much coveted high build epoxy, interzone 954. God only knows where Steve managed to get it from but I’m very happy to see it applied to our pride and joy where it counts.

She’s been flash blasted, so a layer of coarse black grit covers absolutely everything except the hull, and the floor of the tent looked like a volcanic beach before I started laboriously sweeping up into piles yesterday. Today B and I intend to scream round work at 100 miles per hour, then run away to Southampton for the evening and get all of it barrowed out into a skip. Ooh. Romantic.

A Day Off.

2008-06-28T22:13:00.002+01:00

You heard right, we're currently indulging in the unthinkable. With the painters from SBS on site in Southampton, all there is for us to do is rest, and wait. Thank fuck for english country pubs.