Shed plans

All being well, work will start again soon on my boat shed. The long section will house Daisy G with room to move around her. It has to be quite a lot longer than the boat to allow for the trailer and the projecting rudder. I want to just be able to back her in without having to take any part off. The offshoot on the side will act as a workshop. Come the summer I can even park a car in her! There is room at the front to park a car behind the stone wall.

The intention is that the building will just appear as a small wooden shed, set behind the trees. We live in the Cotswold Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, so the planners want as little visual impact as possible. Hopefully this will keep them happy. We will soon hear.
I have to decide if I should have a workshop stove. It is so cold in the  winter that any work using epoxy is near impossible. A stove burning sawdust and offcuts might just make it possible.

Weekend jobs progress bit by bit

The long dark nights in these northern climes mean that evening work is a non-starter, at least until my shed eventually gets finished. In the mean time, bits are done over the weekend, other activities permitting. Most of the time is spent pulling the tarpaulin off and then back on again.
I have built a completely new stern platform for the boarding ladder out of good quality 18mm marine playwood. Five coats of teak stain and now it is in place. Still needs to be bolted on with some new, correct length stainless steel bolts. I need to build up a shopping list of screws and bolts and then order them in a single post. They become impossibly expensive otherwise.

I have finally seen sense and thrown away all of my "car boot organiser" bags and bought a proper marine cockpit bag from Blue Performance. It fits under the companionway perfectly and it will hold the gas bottles, sail ties and sun tan lotion. What else do you need in a cockpit? It did just fit in place, but I have cut back the central duckboards a bit so that it has its own space.

I have also roughed out a template for the extended bulkhead I am planning. It should give a modicum of privacy to the fore berth. At the moment, if you are on a pontoon, anyone walking by can see the entire interior. With a full height bulkhead to port there will be "somewhere to go to pull up your knickers" as my wife delicately puts it. The plan is to build it out of tongued and grooved matchboarding (9mm thick) backed by thin plywood. It will take a deal of head scratching to sort it all out.

Start of Winter Work

Daisy G is back home from Swallow Boats after some expert work. Sitting under a tarpaulin for now as we await sorting out the planning for her new shed. All being well that will be within a couple of weeks and she will be under cover not long after that, weather permitting. The shed base gives a place to stand her and it is very sheltered. Just not much fun for working on her.

New work by Swallow Boats: Two extra cabin top hand grabs just by the hatch. I have wanted these all year. This is just the spot you grab for when getting in from a dinghy, and there is nothing there. Now there is, and they will provide a place to tie the dingy to when loading it as well. I had planned to fit them myself, but decided that a professional job would be stronger and better looking.

Second new bit: a proper bow roller, as is fitted to the latest BayCruisers. The alloy one I fitted was a bit rough and I really need a strong one as I keep her ona swinging mooring. This should do the job.

First of my jobs: swapping the hinges across on the anchor locker lids. Now they hige outwards, which means they are out of the way and don't keep falling shut. I still need to drill new finger holes, but that shouldn't be beyond me. I had to plane the opening edges so they didn't bind. A bit of epoxy needed over the exposed plywood and the old screw holes filling. I am planning to repaint the whole boat in March, so it will all be tidied up then.

I have also cut out a new boarding ladder platform in thick marine ply. The old one was delaminating. That all needs glueing up and finishing.

End of season summary

The season is over and Daisy Grace is back home awaiting winter titivating. A summary of the 2010 sailing season from Poole:

View 2010 cruises in a larger map

Number of visits down to the boat: 22
Total distance sailed: 417nm (I drove 10 times as far as I sailed...)
Nights on board: 16
Crew on occassion: 1 daughter, 1 wife, 1 sister and 5 friends
Cruising range: Swanage in the south, Wareham in the west, River Medina in the East and Southampton Water in the north
Biggest Cruise: English Raid for five days, sailing to and around the Western Solent
Oddest cruise: modelling for the Practical Boat Owner photographer for the Baycruiser review.
Best anchorages: Studland cliffs, anywhere off Brownsea Island, in the shallows below Shipstal Point.
Best Marinas: Parkstone Bay, Poole; Bucklers Hard, Beaulieu River
Worst anchorage: Swanage because of the disco on shore.

Plans for next year? Motoring down the Thames before relaunching at Poole. Getting at least as far west as Chapmans Pool and maybe even Weymouth.

Season well and truly over. Daisy G out of the water and back home

I was lucky for once. The weather has been atrocious, but it broke just for one day on Saturday which is when I went down to fetch Dasiy G back. If it had been stormy I just couldn't have done it on my own. As it was, the only problem I had was the Baiter slipway at Poole. It was as slippery as oil and I fell over twice, running from clipping her on back to the winch handle. A kind soul held her straight for me as I cranked her on. The only small problem was that the winch webbing strap kept going off centre and over running the gears, but she came on fine. I was able to haul her out in shallow water with the trailer still hooked to the car. Everyone else was having to unhitch and push their trailers into deeper water. The shallow draft with the ballast pumped out is a real blessing.

This photo shows her all loaded up,ready to roll. A couple of thoughts. She was so "nose light" that when I unhitched her to get the engine off, I didn't have to push the hitch up, it went up on its own. Made getting the motor out easy, but I have heard that the weight on the hitch should be about 50kg, not 0kg. When I got her home, I loosened the forward rollers (she rested on the keel roller), then loosened the winch post and moved it 200mm closer to the car, and then retightened the forward rollers to just prop her in place. Should imrpove the balance a bit.

I also noticed that the mast could be slid further forward, to come within the rudder projection. The two part mast really ins't necessary, it stows like this fine.

You can see the wet mark showing the difference between the ballasted and unballasted draft. The CopperCoat antifouling is brilliant, nothng but a bit of slime on it. But where the water touched the green paint or white boot top, green weed grew happily. I shall repaint the boot top with white antifoul over the winter, and maybe make it a bit wider.

Daisy G's shed is far from finished, so she will have to sit out for a while.