activitysteam

It’s taken the best part of the day but the frame for the new hatch is now curing to the deck, cutting the hole was a little nerve-racking but learnt that it’s much better to trim with the router and a flush cut bit, then it’s a good soaking of penetrating epoxy to seal the wood and fair it to the deck. The final finish won’t happen until I’m…[Read more]

Sodablasting is super satisfying if a little messy, nowhere near the abrasion you get with crushed glass or oxide media, but nice and gentle on the aluminium window frame and 100% biodegradable.

Evening folks, whilst I’m sat waiting for the latest round of epoxy to do it’s thing I thought I’d do a little update! So here’s the template and build of a little cuddy to sit behind the anchor locker, it also provides some strength to the bow in the area the windlass sits, the eagle eyed among you will notice that I changed my mind halfway…[Read more]

Achievement unlocked: bow repairs finished! Next up… Chain locker *removes epoxy hat, dons wood working hat* (you need a lot of hats for this refitting lark)

Evening folks, well if you hadn’t guessed the weather has been somewhat hampering progress recently. Unfortunately the work that needs to be done to go forward needs the humidity and temperature to behave itself for a few days and that just doesn’t seem to be on the cards at the moment! I’ve mostly been scribbling down ideas for the cabin layout…[Read more]

What a marvelous birthday weekend and an excellent way to get this season’s rebuild started in splendid fashion. The final bits of bow core are in and ready for glassing next weekend, if you asked me 5 years ago what I’d like for my birthday, 30kg of west epoxy probably wouldn’t be on the list. Hope everyone had a great bank holiday, more updates…[Read more]

It’s official, I shall never refer to going back to sit in my nice comfy clean office as “back to the grind” this was brutal, 5 hours of boat yoga and so much dust, I had to change the pre filters on my respirator 3 times, but it’s done now and I can move on to designing the anchor locker and bed… Definitely earned tonight’s cider time

Evening folks, we’ve actually done some work on the boat!! So here’s the templating and manufacturing of the main support beam for replacing the front bulkhead. It’s a laminated construction with 2x 19mm ply spans with 2 layers of 600gm bi-axial glass Matt forming the center, this makes sure the interface between the 2 pieces of wood have a…[Read more]

Evening folks, we’re fresh back from a little jaunt to Porlock Wier to pick up some lovely stainless steel beaching legs for Merganser, the same fella had some very nice T rail too so we swagged that to make some new jib rails and upgrade the traveller to something a little more beefy. Buying the legs this early has several benefits, they are so…[Read more]

Evening all, Update time 🙂 Nothing significant has happened with the actual build this weekend. I did measure and cut the last bit of the new core for the bulkhead move and that’s about it until the epoxy fairy comes in the week.
We took the tempest out sailing for the first time this season along with the test battery for Merganser and we’ve…[Read more]