The Gleda Project

It’s been a long time coming but I’m finally moving towards a project re-start. Over the past two weeks I’ve been clearing the barn from one end to the other getting rid of 4 years worth of accumulated crap, sorting tools and equipment, making an inventory of my timber and epoxy supplies and making improvements [...]

Well here we are, the start of another year, the year 2012. Is it just me or does that sound weird? Twenty twelve, is sounds ridiculously futuristic, or maybe it’s just because this will be my fifty fifth year on this planet and when I talk about things I’ve done in the past it now sounds like [...]

I came across this short photo blog the other day and it got me thinking. The post was written and photographed by Magda Biskup and placed on her Destination World blog (links at the end of this article) She tells the story of a guy called Peter, he’s now 74 and spent 38 years constructing his dream [...]

A really busy day away from the boat today with lots of things occupying brain space. It could easily have been a day to skip work on Gleda but I’m determined to stick to my plan to make some progress every day. Something has to be sacrificed but Gleda comes first now. I was happy [...]

A fun session today playing around in the toilet shower compartment. First job was to finish off the steps, I made the #3 step in exactly the same way as yesterday and got that glued in and levelled up, then I mixed up a batch of thickened epoxy so that I could fillet around the [...]

An enjoyable work session today. The paint in the sail locker had dried nicely so I moved aft into the next compartment which is the ‘Heads’, my separate toilet and shower compartment. The first thing I needed to do was clear it out a bit so that I could get the plans out and start [...]

A good session today. I started with an hour spent sanding the entire sail locker compartment before having a mega clean up and then wiping down all the surfaces with acetone. I then got the paint out again and got a first coat on the beam trough, forward bulkhead and underside of the deck. I [...]

I had a mild panic this morning when I got to the boat and found that the second coat of paint I’d put on the forward watertight compartment was still wet, but it didn’t take long to realise why. The wind dropped overnight and there was quite a bit of fog around this morning… high [...]

Another dark damp January day but I had a bright day working inside ‘Gleda’. It was one of those sessions where the work seems to flow nicely and there was plenty of satisfaction to be had not least because I got the paintbrush out and got two coats of my new Acrylic paint onto the [...]

I was up early and cycled (Landy back tomorrow) up to the barn in the dark for a short work session that allowed me to get four of the timber fillets into place. But before I started sanding back the areas to be glued I thought I’d temporarily get the watertight hatch into position so [...]