Tuesday 22 November
Summer weather two days in a row, wow! And more to follow tomorrow. In the shed early today and I started by fitting my prototype footrest. It needed a bit of planing of the corners to get it to slot into the cross beam and slide back into place. Harry watched and I commented it was a bit like being a dentist as the coarse blue floor paint left marks on the new wood indicating where more shaving was needed. Eventually I had a rock solid fit for pushing your feet on. It will need to be locked in position if we put foot straps on it. I later added a bit more glue to one of the footrest’s frames to create a strong and water tight fillet.
The next job was to tape up boat 2 for its thin yellow highlight stripe I used a 10mm wide off cut as a guide to try and keep the tape 10mm from the bottom of plank 2.
JP arrived and took the bronze keel bands off my car and set himself up to drill and countersink the screw holes that will hold it on. He had to get Harry’s help to adjust the drill and countersink bit up in Harry’s other shed first.
Veronica came in with Barney to put a second opal coat on the footrests and the rudder. She gave them all a quick rub down first and then methodically set about painting them. As she was on an afternoon shift for St John she went home with Barney and came back in her uniform to finish the job which she managed to time beautifully with being called in when she had finished.
Meanwhile I got on with painting the yoke yellow stripe. I realised before I put any paint on that I should not have painted the whole plank blue and then tried to paint a yellow stripe on top of the blue. The first coat looked like a mottled green but it had dried fast enough for me to do a second coat which was yellower. At least two more coats required blowing out the turnover day to next week. This might seem a bit fancy but I saw a boat with a similar highlight line somewhere on facebook and took a fancy to it and so did my wife, JB.
After I had cleaned up and left I called in at Pete’s yard to work on my sailing boat, Arietta, which has been seriously neglected during this building process. Water had got into the transom through some old fittings that are no longer on the boat and rot had set in. With my new skills in boat building I now don’t feel at all daunted about doing the repair work.
Rowing day tomorrow. We have two full crews for 9 am and 10 am. I’m looking forward to it.
Cheers Dave