Marc

It’s not quite been the summer we planned for has it? Merganser has had to take a bit of a back seat this season because my lovely partner and I thought it’d be a good idea to try and buy a house and that’s turned in to quite the expensive saga!
We’ve been doing bits and bobs for the various boats but more in a maintenance aspect. Last weekend we…[Read more]

This project has legs! (See what I did there?) I needed a 1-day job to get back in the zone and thought fitting the legs would be a great place to start. Apart from having no idea where I put any of my tools it all went pretty well. This is only the first part, now the measuring and first fitting is done I need to:
1. Machine delrin inserts for…[Read more]

Good evening folks!
We’ve been down to see the boat for the first time since lockdown happened, mostly because we’re the main point of contact for my grandparents so need to stay fit and healthy for them. So the damage… Surprisingly absolutely non! I was worried that as the new hatch is unsealed the bilge pump would have given up and filled the…[Read more]

Good evening folks, so there’s not been much progress on the autopilot as I’ve diverted project time to help manufacturer PPE for a local group distributing in the Bristol area. Here’s hoping normal service will resume as safely possible, stay safe folks.

Lockdown project week 1:
Whilst waiting for the Pi and arduinos I’m cracking on with the hardware for my wifi Autohelm 800 to pypilot conversion. I’m using a pololu SMC G2 to handle the motor control which has all the endstop, current sensing and various other things on board and configurable via serial and USB. This does mean my pilot won’t have…[Read more]

Evening folks… Well ummm I don’t think there’s going to be much happening for a bit! To top it off my work have announced redundancies set to happen in the next week or two so project funds may dry up rather suddenly!
I’ve got a few low budget and socially distant projects in mind to keep things ticking over, including ripping the guts out of…[Read more]

Progress! Feeling much better today so did a few bits and bobs on the wagon and headed off down to the boat. I spent a few hours sanding the area the beam will go and got the template made, jury is still out on the material I’ll use for the beam, I’m leaning towards either a traditional laminated hardwood all varnished up and pretty looking; or a…[Read more]

Morning all, I hope everyone is having an excellent Christmas 🙂 annoyingly I’ve decided to have been struck down with some kind of Peruvian murder flu (just bit of a cold apparently). Anyway I’ve been spending a lot of time planning for the next stages, trying to avoid the naivety of some of the previous stages so I hopefully won’t hit any snags…[Read more]

Evening folks! It’s been the cars MOT month so not much done on the boat in the last 2 weeks, I have got the stern tube adaptor finished and ordered up the next lot of glass.
The bi-ax is just for general tabbing and laminating and the combination mat is going to be used as a single polyester resin layer to reinforce the hull from the inside, I…[Read more]

Evening folks! Had a surprisingly pleasant few evenings working on the boat this week, sadly it’s too cold to get the epoxy involved but I’ve got a plan for that which involves a 3kw heater, lots of bubble wrap and doing a science. We’ve had to revert to plan b for the Cutlass bearing, I’ve bought a standard sized bearing and a bronze tube which…[Read more]

Evening folks, it’s templating time again, this one was driving me slightly insane! When I did the last few they lost the curve of the hull when I released them so I’ve been putting much more thought into bracing it to retain the curve. This is the first of the sections that will make up the bed. The curves get a bit less dramatic further aft so…[Read more]