It’s been a busy business week this week so I was eager to get some build time in today. My intention was to crack on with the other two cabin roof/tumblehome strips. As we’ve had a couple of days of torrential rain here the outside edges of the barn were, as usual after a rainy spell,  pretty wet, so I opted to start on the driest side first i.e. the starboard hull. After about 5 minutes I realised that I was getting more and more annoyed as my head kept coming into contact with the heavy polythene ‘inner roof’ I put up back in July 2007 (I can’t believe that!) Realising that I was in any case going to have to do something about it before I could continue building up the starboard hull cabin top I decided to bite the bullet and do it then and there.

So instead of spending 5 hours building I spent five hours clearing all the stuff from that side of the barn, unfixing the polythene, lifting it further up, re-fastening it and then putting all the stuff back again. It was quite a tough job as there is a fair weight of polythene up there and raising it involved much pulling on ropes, climbing up barn sides and balancing on the very top of ladders about 20ft up.

I have a slight pang of regret that I didn’t make any progress on the boat today but it was a job that was going to have to be done at some point and I know have plenty of space to bring the hulls up to full height and work on deck when the time comes.

The Problem

Down It Comes

Up It Goes

That's Better

Well it’s been a long long time folks but this time I’m back for good!

I hope you all like the new site, please let me have your comments good or bad I’d really like to hear what you think. I had a tough task extracting all the journal entries from my old site as they were locked into a subscription server with no easy way of removing them. Luckily I was able to employ a programming wizard from Vietnam who did a fine job of getting them out and onto this new site. I was desperate to save all those precious journal entries and happy to pay the $200 it cost me. I get great satisfaction from posting all this information and hopefully helping others planning or building their own boats. Now I have full control over this site I want to build it into something of value to others so again, please let me have any thoughts or ideas.

Today I’ve spent a large chunk of the day clearing and cleaning the barn from one end to the other in readiness to re-start the build, it was hard graft but it felt immensely satisfying to finally get back in there and I’m super excited about the progress I’m going to make this year. Did you notice the countdown to launch over on the left hand side of this page? I decided that I wasn’t prepared to leave this project open ended and I needed a real target to aim for, so there it is ….. no excuses!

I put together a little video today after I’d finished just to refresh everyone’s memory (including my own!) of where I am in the build. I plan to include far more video updates so if there is anything in particular you’d like a closer look at just ask.

To watch the video on You Tube  CLICK HERE