Readers may have gathered that I am writing this retrospectively. We initially embarked on this adventure in October 2019 hoping to be living onboard in time to celebrate Christmas in our new home. This turned out to be wholly unrealistic given the amount of work that was needed. We are still very much in the thick of it and there's still lots to do, but we have turned the corner and rebuild is underway. For tonight's blog I thought I would fast forward and bring you up to date with the work done so far.
We ended up having to remove the whole of the deck structure which, although was unwelcome additional work, will give us the peace of mind that we will have a complete new deck that should outlast us. Removing the deck also revealed a few rotten deck beams and frame heads that needed to be addressed. Thankfully John, our shipwright, is one of those people who appears to be totally unfazed by anything and he calmly set to work cutting out the rot and scarfing in new timbers before completely replacing the shear strakes. We also have removed both Samson posts and both breast hooks and we're awaiting on the arrival of some pieces of oak from which to fashion replacements.
We have also spent many hours scraping off the antifoul coatings and burning back the hull paint. The hull is now fully painted with zinc based primer and is awaiting topcoats. This time of year is not the best for painting, but we have little choice in the matter and we're making the best of a bad situation.
Also, all of the toe rails, rubbing strips and capping strips have been stripped of varnish, sanded back and are now being given several coats of Deks Olje to bring them back to gleaming wood. We're both learning a lot about surface coatings and the monotony of preparation, but we are fortunate to have a group of people around us in the boatyard who are more than happy to pass on their knowledge, and words of encouragement.
Another area of concern was the rudder tube. The exposed part below the waterline looked badly corroded and so the rest of the tube was suspect. If the rudder tube were to fail it would be like having a 3-inch hole in the keel of the boat and if don't think the bilge pumps would be able to keep up with the rush of seawater. I removed the whole rudder assembly and drove out the tube to inspect it. Thankfully the tube itself is absolutely fine so a quick clean and it is ready for refitting.
So this is where we are now at. Hopefully tomorrow we will be able to make the breast hooks and I am also hoping that the back order of bolts for the beam shelf will arrive so that I can get to the stage of relaying the deck. However, we have now made the decision to try and fit a woodburning stove into the saloon, so I am going to have to rethink the layout of the nav instruments. Rewiring will be easier with the side decks off!
More tomorrow...…….
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