Its all happening!

Oak splines glued in place.

 So, things are progressing and I am still enjoying working on the boat. Life has been a bit difficult recently though, what with Rae becoming ill. She has Reidel's woody thyroiditis. Its pretty unpleasant, and needless to say Rae is off work. At least we know what the problem is now. For a short while we were really scared, you know the kind of thing; a lump appears, you feel rubbish, you have palpations, night and day sweats, no energy at all, you just want to sleep, but you can't cos your throat hurts so much and your short of breath and the lump continues to grow in size and you can't help but wonder if it is cancer. Oh, and then a bearing in the gear box in the Land Rover began to make nasty noises. Turns out it is the input shaft bearing. basically the truck needs a reconditioned gear box, plus all the welding we already new about. So the truck has had to go and we have had to go car shopping with Rae feeling bloody awful. Still we now have a new second-hand motor, a Citroen Xsara Picasso, its hopefully cheap to run, practical and it is ok to drive and unlike the truck, the sun roof does not leak!

First coat of primer.

Nice!

Taking out the old Ducati engine 

Paul and Steve (the forklift driver) lend a welcome hand.

Engine out.

Cleaning the bilges, a foul job!

See what I mean.

Stripping paint from the inside of the transom.

Priming as I go.

A bit of rot that needs sorting.

The pitch pine planking looks in good nick.

I don't mean to be a grouch but this blooming weather is very frustrating!!

Repairing Zephon's transom

Well, I guess we are reaping the rewards of the exploitation of our beautiful planet, I am not blaming anyone in particular, we are all guilty to a greater or lesser extent. Our summers for the last few years have been wet and windy and these changes in our weather patterns seem set to continue. These past few weeks the weather has been unseasonable to say the very least. Today we are experiencing force 6 - 7 winds and this is only one week-on since the gale, where we had winds gusting up to 70 mph!

Zephon is in an exposed position in the yard and last week, when I was away visiting family, her cover blew off. Fortunately there was no damage done to her or the surrounding boats, although when I got back there was a substantial amount of water in her bilge which took a while to pump out.

Working in the wind and rain is so much harder and means that every job takes longer than it should. This blustery and wet weather means that it has not been possible to glass sheath Zephon's deck. This is not a problem as there are plenty of other jobs to do some of which are unplanned such as when  I  found rot in the top section of the transom which has meant making a new transom top. As well as this rot, I have found two larch splines running athwart ships in the oak transom. These larch splines, in water, swell much more than the oak transom and this increased pressure of the swollen splines has caused the oak transom boards to bulge and distort. The distortion in the transom  has been sorted out with the aid of a plane and belt sander. The larch splines have been routed out and oak ones glued in their place using Balcotan a polyurethane glue.

My next job is to remove the old Duccatti engine and clean and paint the bilges. By the time the bilges are finished my friend Tom will have his beautiful 28' Hillyard called 'Waif ' back in the water, and he is kindly donating me his shed. This will be a luxury for me and so in about three weeks time Zephon will move into Waif's old sheltered spot and the deck can progress. By the way, if you are looking for a beautiful 28' wooden boat to buy I would recommend you take a look at Waif. If you are interested contact me and I will pass your details onto Tom.

Removing the spongy wood

New transom top

New transom top seen from aft deck

Transom laid bare and unfair

Transom after a spot of fairing, note the larch splines

Larch splines removed

Working on Zephon

The mast is almost finished.

Mast ready for varnishing.

The hatch glued and clamped.

Removing the rubbing strakes.

Zephon 

We went fishing yesterday evening. This is the fish Rae caught, the only one sadly, but very delicious.

Fishing near the castle.

Zephon's new mast has now had seven coats of varnish, hopefully an eighth coat will be applied today.  I completed stripping the teak fore hatch and I have epoxy glued the hatch back together (the hatch had been damaged when an oak tree fell clipping Zephon's bow last November. The hatch itself is constructed using loose tongue and groove. Its amazing how over the years the outer thickness of the hatch has been reduced by the zealous sanding of previous owners. A friend of mine said he has often seen this kind of thing and has suggested, over the next couple of years, routing out grooves and gluing in splines to these worn areas.  I contemplated gluing in splines now as the hatch is off, but quickly changed my mind, as a line has to be drawn somewhere, and the thing is, we actually want to go sailing.  My reasoning for this is that if we tackle all the jobs that could be done now then the boat won't see water again for a very long time. Both Rae and I feel it is better to just tackle the jobs that definitely need doing. This is a wooden boat after all, and there will be a rolling programme of work which is based on maintaining the structural integrity of the boat, so the splines can wait.

The fittings have almost all been removed from Zephon's deck along with the rubbing strakes. I have to remove the chain plates to the starboard side, which I hope to do today.  I am looking forward to the next stage of belt sanding, plugging holes, making graving pieces where needed and lagging linseed oil on the deck.

Giles, a friend of ours, is also undertaking a project restoring a beautiful working boat called Ajax. He said yesterday that it is going to be a great summer boat building and working on our projects. I think he is right, we are exceptionally lucky.

Work begins on Zephon

Zephon was craned out on 22 April. She is now safely ashore and I am currently building her new mast in the slipway shed. The mast is progressing well and I am really enjoying the process. The mast is a hollow box section with a conduit for electrical cables running up the centre. The wood being used is Oregon pine, ideally it would have been sitka spruce, but there just happened to be some 30 ft lengths of timber left over from constructing Pilgrim's deck. So having this timber to hand at almost the right length is too good an opportunity to miss. Last Wednesday Rae and I glued the mast together using resorcinol. The gluing went to plan and I am looking forward to the next stage, cutting the mortice for the mast sheave block and then routing the radius'.

In preparation for beginning work on the deck I have removed both the fore and the main hatch. Both these hatches are in a bit of a sorry state and I have begun stripping the flaking paint and varnish from these. There is a bit of repair work needed to both teak hatches and I will detail this in the forthcoming days.