Huge apologies for the lack of updates...... read on

First up we must apologise for the lax way we are running the blog..... I hope the explanation below will go some way to repairing the wrongs....

Alongside for the winter

Since our last blog back in September last year Our Daddy has been tucked up alongside the middle quay in the inner harbour, opposite the Sprat & Mackerel..... The decision was made by Steve and I that she had to come off the mooring and go alongside for the winter refit which was originally to be a review of what we had and how to improve it.... Mmm that went well as you will see.

Our Daddy is still alongside the quay and will be until April at least!!

After much deliberation, cogitation, discussion, decision making, decision unmaking... we had plan A, then plan B etc etc... we are now somewhere around plan T+1 having gone round the alphabet once already! The main decision was that we could not expect our clients to try and shoehorn themselves into the bunks we had inherited, I got in one and wondered how I was going to get out!! Steve looked at them and said No! Take a look at the few photos we have.... Sorry that they are not very good we have more but they are across computers phones etc... These are from when we started to open out the three cabins, one was accessed from the saloon, the other two and the forward heads meant taking a trip on deck through the forward companion way to the two forward cabins/cupboards, this was part of the big NO that Steve and I had decided on.

This is where the small refit turned into a major one!! they had to go. We stripped out the cabins up for'ard, the heads also needed to go as it was just a waste of space.... enter through the 16" wide door, close door, turn - just, do what was required while standing/sitting in a coffin/cupboard... not a nice place to be, believe me. The cabin off the saloon was similar but better... as it had light! but still had to go, after four + days we managed to remove all the bulkheads, head, bunks, miles of cabling/piping which left us with an open plan hole.... see the picture below to see what we had to start with. It is difficult to really see what we had and what we have to work with as it was difficult to photgraph the cupboards without a seriously wide angle lens!

When we looked back at the open space we had arrived at once all the excess baggage had been removed we moved to plan V+1... we had already gone past U+1... OK what was V+1? well your guess was as good as ours.

V+1 was hatched- strip out everything, pipes, lights, cables, sole plates and anything else we could find and paint the inside of the hull.... that then bought on the next plan W+1! What colour? White? Black? red?... thoughts on these... White? - Our Daddy is 94 years old, she was a fishing boat until the mid 70's, iron nails, iron fittings rust streaks and years of stuff soaking into the timbers meant bleed through from the timbers... white was a no go, Black? - a morgue, dark, unable to see any issues as they would be hidden... a possible. Red? brighter than black, we could still see issues against the colour and it is available in a resin based paint... decision made! we painted out the hull in red... very fetching I hope you agree.


The next discussion point, roofing battens to be painted white? that was soon pooh, poohed as it was not in keeping with our beautiful boat, it had to be oak! now the issue with that was where to get it? and more importantly at what price? this is why I love the traditional sailing people... suggestions and contacts came in a plenty, all sadly pretty costly, one contact came up with a fantastic lead, oak from a saw mill that was scrap to them!!! well that had to be investigated, so I did, contact made and agreement reached we came away with about 1.5 tonnes of green oak for a very reasonable sum, now all we needed to do was cut it.

Oops!!

Now for those of you who follow our Facebook page you will know what happened then...I managed to take my eye off the ball for two seconds and got my finger snagged in the table saw... an operation god knows how many stitches later I had one fat finger... now repaired but next to useless, fortunately my left hand. That is by the by, a flesh and bone wound and Our Daddy now has part of me in her, I do love this boat....
I know I really should be more careful! Onwards and upwards, with all this timber we needed it cut! Steve and I spent two days cutting chunks of oak into battens, then ran them through a thicknesser to get them to a uniform size, we then made sole boards out of the bigger timbers... all with a fat finger! we ended up with a huge pile of them, the picture below is batch number two, 120+ battens and 15 sole boards.

Well I have rambled on enough today, to say that Steve and I are very happy with the way Our Daddy's forecabin is coming together is an understatement. What was a dreary, closet like space is now light, airey, spacious and warm feeling with good lighting and a feeling of space, ok so we don't have bunk cabins/cupboards, but what we do have is a great pilot berth cabin for up to six guests. We still have to finish the woodwork but I am sure you can see what we are trying to achieve. The bunks will be comfortable with plenty of room when they go in this is a picture of what 25 days work looks like, battened out in oak, panelled out in tongue & groove - to be painted white - The oak will be oiled with finest tung oil which will waterproof the timber and add depth of colour to it.

Enough now, when I have time and have got all the pictures together, I will upload them to gallery on the website, this will be of how we progressed through the fore cabin strip and build, I promise I will be more regular with the blogs as Our Daddy gets closer to being where we want to be.

Just to say she will be ready for the Regatta season, we now have a live booking system on the website, we will be offering day/half day sailing trips throughout the season and our beautiful boat "Our Daddy" will be seen out in the Bay and at festivals and regattas around the SW coast and across the Channel.

Be part of it!!! Look at our schedule.

We are on still the middle quay in #Brixham, if you are passing and the hatches are open give us a call and if you fancy the leap of faith aboard if she is on the bottom come and see what we are up too.

Blog soon!

Our Daddy FY7 is now ours...

Our Daddy under full sail

This week we finalised everything and took ownership of Our Daddy FY7 our beautiful Cornish Lugger. Now the hard work starts! in the next few weeks you will see Our D out in the Bay as Steve and I get to grips with the idiosyncrasies of sailing something that weighs in excess of 35 tonnes, has a small rudder, an engine that has a 26 degree offset, lots of string and lots of sails..... we are looking forward to the challenge.

We are getting ourselves organised and have put some dates up on her website for some of the festivals and Regattas that we will be visiting in 2015. They range from long weekends to a nine day trip across the Channel, we will of course be sailing out of Brixham for Day sails, half day sails, Pirate thursdays during the season and many other excuses to get out there.


A quick run down of what is involved in Our Daddy's winter refit this will include refitting of the generator, sadly the old one went to great generator scrap heap, due to seawater ingress from the heat exchanger, so we have a nice shiney new 6kv generator to be installed, the eberpacher heater will need to refitted but will probably have to move from it's present position. Other things to do are, new

Stunning angle of Our Daddy

elecric oven and gas hob in the galley, large larder fridge to be fitted as well, new tiling around the galley bulkheads, non slip flooring installed and a refresh of paint and varnish. The saloon, will have more storage made behind the saloon seats, as currently there is a lot of wasted space in the original design, new cushions and coverings for the seats, refresh of the paint and varnish work, new oak flooring, revamp of the lighting in both areas. Forward of the saloon we currently have a heads & shower, this is staying but will be facelifted, we then have three guest cabins with two bunks in each and a seperate head, this is where the major changes are going to be as the cabins feel to cramped, we will be opening out all of the cabins, removing the forward head creating a light airy feel to the area with bunks and lee cloths.

That is a quick rundown of what will be happening to our lovely boat. There is lots more to do externally but that can be done when the sun shines during winter!!!! Hopefully.

Keep an eye on the blog as we will be updating it as we progress. If you can spare some time to come and help us the rates of pay are a pastie and tea, get in touch if you can.

Wish us luck
Blog soon.

What a great feeling......

to finally get Our Daddy sailing. After all the hard work of the last few months to get the bowsprit and the bumpkin rebuilt, all of the pile of blocks we had that were seized up repaired and rebuilt. All of the missing lines and purchases replaced, making various parts to make the launching of the 'sprit and bumpkin easier. It was time to go sailing!!!!

We perhaps could have chosen a better day for it but hey the thought of getting Our Daddy out to air her canvas was to much. The weather had been blowing a good F5-6 easterly, north easterly for a good few days, those of you who klnow the Bay will now that that means swell!!

Our D's bobstay sything through the waves

Our good friend Fred came out to give us a hand while Steve and I worked out how this did that and so on, thanks Freddy. We slipped off her mooring and set off down the fairway so that we could get the bowsprit launched having already set the small mizzen sail, Steve shouted up from the stern to hurry up as his steerage was a bit iffy! or was that no existant? Fred and I tensioned the sprit and hoisted the Jib, with the jib unfurled the old girl answered the helm and her head started to come round in the right direction, out into the Bay we headed. Within a few cables of exiting the fairway the bowsprit was disapperaing into the swell.... we ll it needed a wash. Next up was the mainsail! between Fred and I ut went up... sort of! we decided on a reef as it was still pretty gust out there, being used to single line slab reefing it was a wake up call to tie in every pennant on the main to reef it, it is a big sail. Reefing done we set the main, you could feel the power as we came onto the wind even with reef two in. We set off across the Bay towards Ore stone, as her head came down into the waves the bobstay sythed a cut into the water, it was great to watch, but we needed more sail. Fred was now on the helm as Steve and I set up the Staysail, up that went, a couple of adjustments of the sheets and that too was set....... god she was looking good! Vigilance popped her head out for her thursday afternoon sail it was a call of "lets gybe her over and say hello"... Had any of us ever gybed such an achreage of sail? No! oh well in for a penny in for a pound! She came round beautifully and we headed off towards Viggy at an impressive 6.5knots, not bad for virgin gaffer sailors, another gybe and we were above and slightly ahead of Viggy and that is where she stayed, we matched her speed and held her off. Mind you with all the hands she had on deck it would have been light work. Mentioning light work we decided it was probably a good call to head in for the day as we still had all this sail to put away and the sprit and bumpkin so in we headed.

The debrief was in the 'Blue' a well deserved pint and a discussion on what went well and 'what is a work in progress' there was definately more of the later. We al agreed that she is a magnificent lady, beautiful to look at, wonderful to sail, we can't wait to take her out again and are looking forward to ther 2015 season and all the trips we have planned.

I will put the other photographs we have on the website when I get time, have a look at the OUr Daddy Classic Sailing Facebook page as I have uploaded a timelapse video of one of our slick tacks.

Blog soon

The day has come....... We are going sailing

After weeks of work we have now got a fully working boat. Our friend Tom went up the main mast today to return the jib halyard to it's rightful place... Not the deck! After a few failed attempts to launch it properly we have the furling gear all set up and ready to go. We have set up the staysail halyards and sheets and even better it all works.

We just need to lash on the small mizzen sail to the yard and we are go..... The forecast is giving us F4 - 5 from the east so it will be sloppy but hey who cares. I am taking timelapse photos and videomso will try to hash them together and put them on our FB page and website.

Wish us Luck.  

Blog soon

New images added of relaunch day.... Latest Update!

It has taken a little while but here are some of the photos of Our Daddy's relaunch day back in april, complete with it's motley crew. I hope you will agree that she looks beautiful on the water in Galmpton Creek. You can view all of them on the website HERE, thanks to Sylvia and Dennis for the images.

Latest news is that we have about two days work to go to have her ready for her first sail with us and we will be able to put up the lot, after months of stripping and rebuilding blocks we are getting very close to Sailing day. If it goes well we will be out as often as possible getting some air in her lungs to make sure that she is ready for when we hope to take her down to Looe in October to meet some of the Pengelly family who actually used to own her. We will be posting up dates for the 2015 season very soon so do keep checking the website.

Blog soon.

We have been a bit lax in our updaes....

Apologies for that..... Work has been progressing on 'Our D' after we bought her back round to Brixham in April.... has it been that long! Unfortunately as we also run an RYA training centre the work has been a little slow but we are getting there. When we took Our D over she was in a pretty sorry state, unloved for a few years and blocks were seized up, ropes were chafed through or that full of salt you could do the Indian rope trick with them, or poke someone in the eye from 10m...

A lot of the work we have had to do is time consuming, such as stripping the seized blocks down, turning new pins, bushing some of the badly worn sheaves, the refinished blocks are looking smart I think. We have both had to work on our spicing skills which have been long forgotten as we had a box of seized blocks and very little information on how the bowsprit was set up, some head scratching was done and trawling across the internet to find any old images of how she was set up, we found a lot of great pictures from a french photographer called Francois Madic, we are trying to contact him so that we can use some of them on the website, but they were good enough for us to see the way that the bowsprit was set up, well we got it all sorted a couple of weeks ago after having to have some new parts made.

All in all with the Sea school, which has been really busy this season and working on Our D it has been a hectic few months but we are really close to getting her ready to sail, maybe next week!! so if you are around Torbay and you see her blue hull and red sails out there give us a wave.

Blog soon....

Relaunch day is getting ever closer.....

Our Daddy is to be relaunched on Good Friday next week, after a, to say moist winter, we have a weather window for a few days to hopefully get the painting completed before she is relaunched. Steve is out on the water training so it is up Tim and our band of helpers to get it done. No pressure then.

Tim is concentrating on getting the stem scarf completed by the end of this week so that it can be sealed, painted and capped with the bronze alloy bow protector, this has got to be polished and lacquered before refitting. The baby bowsprit can then be fitted and the main forestay attached and tensioned. All the spars which we have not managed to varnish because of the awful weather will re put back on deck and the engine test run innthe yard before launch day.

There is still a mountain of work to do but at least our lovely Lugger will look great in her new colours, keep your eyes peeled for the gleaming Daddy coming round the breakwater at about lunchtime on Good Friday. She will be alongside the Heritage pontoon in the near future as the new generator needs to be fitted and a few other bits and peices need to be done while alongside.

It has been a journey of discovery for Steve and I and the weather gods have not been kind to us, but we hope to have Our Daddy ready for the summer holidays and will be involving her in Brixham's Pirate Thursday's and running half day and full day sailing trips around the Bay. We will also betaking her down to her original home port of Looe hopefully to show her off to the locals who love her dearly.

Apologies for the delay in the blogs but they will be coming thick and fast as we near relaunch day. Wish us Luck!!

Blog soon