Hardwood curtesy of freecycle

I had a reply last night to my freecycle request for hardwood. A very nice lady had an old door frame at the side of her garage that she said I could have.

It's 2 x (14cm x 6cm x 180cm) plus 1x (14cm x 6cm x 80cm). Should be enough there to keep me going :-)

Oooh a lovely piece of wood

One Sole board complete waiting to be varnished

I have two more cabin sole panels to frame and have started on the washboards, using the old ones as a template.

New washboards in progress

Old Washboard as a pattern

I took down the old headlining today and will get some thin ply to replace it next week.

I still can't find a hull number anywhere, I called the SSR people yesterday, Comme Ci Comme Ca was registered in 1995 but the didn't have the hull number.

With all this woodwork, it's starting to feel like I'm making progress.

Ciao for now

Bring on the summer

An exert from a Hurley 20 review by Alistair Buchan.

"For a small yacht, the Ian Anderson designed Hurley 20 is a wolf in sheeps clothing. Broad reaching in a force six with a rolled main and storm jib she made a creditable six knots so quietly an eight year old could (and did) take the helm, but swap the jib for a genoa and we travelled from surf to surf with the log swinging between eight and nine knots. Beating into a character building force seven gusting eight, her long boomed masthead rig covered four miles over the ground in less than an hour. Yet close reaching in a force four the helm was so well balanced it could be left for an hour at a time. It adds up to a fast,safe cruiser which can be sailed by the family and will not disgrace you round the cans."

I just want to get out and play 8D

Slow progress and water ingress

Hi,  It's been a while since I had anything much to say.  Progress has been painfully slow.  The rudder is now back on the boat although I still have to seat it in sikaflex and bolt it through with suitable fasteners. My neighbour has one half of the tiller attaching block which he is going to modify for me and I have managed to remove the broken bolts from from the other half.  I will use studs and nuts when it goes back together. Should make future disassembly somewhat easier.

It's also nice to have been able to fill in the hole in my lawn :~).  I have also made a start on the cabin sole boards.  I am using 9mm Mahongany marine ply. It's expensive but it does live in the worst part of the boat and I want it to last.  The originals are 9mm ply with strengthening around the edges.  I was going to use pine and encapsulate with epoxy but then I remembered I had an old Mahogany hand rail lying at the side of the house.  I arranged to borrow Dads table saw and got to work cutting it into useable strips. 

I was able to get two 20mm x 20mm strips out of the profile. The rail was about 4m long which would give me most of what I want but not quite.  I have now put a wanted ad on Freecycle for old hard wood bannisters, door or window frames... true recycling.. Dame Ellen would be chuffed.

I then routed a 10mm rebate into the strips to let the edge of the ply into.  This would give me enough wood proud of the ply to sand to a decent finish.

They were then mitred and PVA glued to the edge of the ply and held in place with a miriad of clamps. I was going to pin them as well but my panel pins wouldn't go into the mahogany without bending so I will have to buy some brass screws and screw them before coating with epoxy.

I have also been struggling to find the source of rain water ingress into the bilges.  I think I am going to have to remove most of the deck fittings and reseat on sikaflex... I wondering if it would be worth building a boat entirely out of sikaflex ? :~)  I am unable to replace the rotten floor support until I can keep the inside dry so this is a priority. Better get myself of to TR Fasteners for some gloop and new fasteners. 

Pintle repair

Lower pintle repair, fabricated in stainless, loosely fitted to rudder. I'm really happy with this. Needs to be set in Sikaflex, drilled and bolted through.
It's too cold a dark in the evening so I will fit this on Saturday.
I will pack the tube and stock bearings with Rocol Aqua 2 grease which apparently is suitable for submerged applications.
Other jobs for the weekend are to fit repair kit to my Henderson deck plate bilge pump and source some marine ply for the cockpit seats, washboards, cabin sole and floor support.

I feel drained

Aha... After all the taking apart, it's good to put something back on.
I stopped by the chandlers at Cobbs Quay today a picked up a long plastic skin fitting so that I could put a drain in the outboard well.. Or as I like to call it 'bucket'
I used my biggest hole boring bit (22mm) and wobbled my way through a sheet of Ali, 1/2" of ply, GRP, hard wood, a gap, more GRP and another sheet of Ali.
As my skin fitting was 1" diameter I then filed the hole until big enough.
I smeared silicon along the skin fitting thread and put a bead under the head before pushing into place. A bit more silicon behind the nut, tightened it all up a the jobs a good un.
I also got a call from concept sail today to say my genoa was finished. So I shall pick that up on Friday.
I also dropped the rudder off at the fabricators to have the lower pintle repaired.
It's all exciting stuff.... Well that's what I keep telling Julie:-)

Inspiration from the Dame.

I am not the fastest reader in the world so it was with some relief that, this morning, I finished my latest book.  I have been reading Ellen MacArthurs 'Full Circle'  on and off for the last five or six weeks.   The first part of the book deals with her round the world racing achievements before transitioning to a more environmental focus. All the way through the 'Ellen MacArthur Trust' is a constant passion for her. The book finishes strongly on the matters of sustainability and the 'Ellen MacArthur Foundation'.   I have to say, as much as I admire Ellens achievements I do find her writing a little hard work, but still worth the read. She appears to believe strongly in her work and, having finished the book and feeling inspired, I decided to look and see if there was anything I could do to improve my contribution sustainable living.    I already compost and recycle as much as possible, collect rainwater in water butts for watering plants, washing cars etc.  I recently started mulching the fallen leaves from the trees that border my garden and during the summer we had a log burner fitted to help reduce our fuel bills.  Our walls are cavity insulated and many of our lamps are energy saving.. we still have some work to do here.  

As for vehicles, well I am a petrol head but even here I have a tried to do the decent thing.. I refuse to have a Prius as apart from being dull they arn't all that when it comes to economy.  I have an Alfa Romeo Giulietta diesel which returns over 50mpg and is still fun to drive.  My other car, which my son drives, is a 46 year old Triumph Herald, which returns over 30mpg.  Not great but then again it only does short journeys and even better than recycling has got to be keep using... hasn't it?

Most of my sustainability decisions are based around outputs, what to do with the waste and reducing consumption but as Ellen argues, the answer lies not in doing less and less until we die of boredom as in the take, make and dispose linear model, but by doing more or different things in the circular model.   So instead of going out the front door to work on Ciao Bella I slipped out the back, put my wellies on and dug a vegetable plot.   Hopefully next year I will benefit from home grown spuds, onions, Garlic, peas, carrots, runner beans and what ever else I can coax to grow out back.  So instead of just using my compost to spread around the borders it will go towards next years groceries... waste goes to produce.  There is nothing new here, my Dad used to compost, grow veg and made or repair all kinds of things from what ever he could find, we've just stopped doing it and many people, including myself don't have the skills our parents had.

Ethically renewed, I did venture out to Ciao Bella. progress is slow at the moment. I drilled a drain hole through the outboard well as someone had put some plates on for the outboard clamps but hadn't left anywhere for the water to drain out. I need to put some kind of feed through pipe on though as it is not a solid piece of grp and the water now drains into the bilge :~(

 During the week, in line with sustainability , I did managed to pick up two second hand anchors, a 20kg danforth and a 10kg plough,  along with some chain , for the grand total of £30.

There I was, digging this hole

I have been trying to remove the tiller from the rudder stock for a few days now, but bimetal corrosion has been fighting against me. I need to get it off do that I can repair the lower pintle and assess if the tube needs replacing.

I eventually won the battle with plenty of brute force and ignorance.  The tiller is attached to the rudder stock by the above home made aliminium clamp bracket.  The six holes that you can see contained socket head stainless steel bolts with the head fitting fairly snugly below the face of the block.

Over the course of several evenings I tried allen keys, then an impact driver. I then drilled through the heads with a 5mm drill, it still wouldn't release. I finally drilled the heads off with a 10mm drill and guess what... it still wouldn't release.  I eventually had to get brutal with a Dagenham torque wrench and a wood chisel.  I was worried that I would be causing greater damage with this approach but couldn't think of any way around it.  After copious amounts of wd40 and about an hour of slogging at it it opened up enough to slide off.

The rudder and stock slipped through the hull only to stop short on my lawn.  I tried to tilt the trailer forward on the jockey wheel but there wasn't enough clearance under my storm porch, it's a tight fit on my garden I can tell you... You wouldn't want to run out of the house too quickly, you'd knock yourself out on the transom :D

In the end I held the rudder up out of the way on a rope and dug down about 8", it was enough to let the end of the stock drop clear of the tube and let me remove the rudder.Under the tiller was this tufnol block with a brass or bronze bearing inside it.  The screws had been knocked out of the GRP by my attempts to remove the tiller but there is no serious damage. There is also a similar set up at the bottom of the tube.

Under the collar was a sight to gladden the heart,  it looks like the original galvanised steel tube has been replaced with a plastic tube.  You can just see the end of if flush with the GRP.  I just need to go and see my fabricator and get something made up for the lower pintle, then it can go back together.