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....

Well it had to happen........

Our Daddy is 92 years old and we have been happily stripping, rubbish, ropes, blocks, redundant kit, sails, paint, varnish, barnacles etc from her over the last few weeks. We have a shed bulging full of sails, ropes, blocks, various iron pieces and other sundry items.

Mmmm 92 year old kindling anybody?

We were advised by the surveyor to have a look at the stem of the boat, to the uninitiated that is the large timber which helps to form the bows of the boat, so check it we did. Tim started "checking" it last Friday and found the odd soft patch!! to say the least, weetabix was stronger, "Checking" was being done with a 1" chisel and a 1lb hammer, this meant Our D had a stem which looked more like a
game of Tetris with square, rectangular chunks missing. Well after Steve and Tim had a discussion about 'scarfing' in several new pieces of wood to strengthen the stem, they came to the conclusion that the best and long term repair was to be undertaken........ you can see the results of the decision to the right here..

The stem has now been cut back to good solid wood and a we are in the process of sourcing a replacement piece of seasoned hardwood which will be cut and shaped to fit the gaping hole we now have in Our Daddy's bow section. We are pleased however, that this is the only major area

Definitely something missing.....

of rot that we have found on her, a testimony to the build quality by the Cornish shipwrights of Looe that built her back in 1921. Not quite a triumph this one but of sorts it is, as we now know how solid Our Daddy actually is!

Other triumphs of the past couple of days, the hydraulic windlass on deck was looking decidedly corroded and tired, well a few of the nuts and bolts had succumbed to the ravages of time and the sea and were just a mound of iron oxide roughly shaped like a stud and nut. They were duly ground off and the weighty windlass removed. The corrosion on parts of it were very bad so we have had a new top plate made, new hydraulic coupling plate made and the whole thing has beed stripped down and serviced, We will add photos as soon as it is refitted. Not so much of a triumph! we also repainted the boot top line on the hull....... Shame most of it came off when Steve started stripping the paint off the topsides...Oops sorry Andy.

Our thanks again to all our willing helpers without which we would not be as far forward with the Our Daddy project. Role call this week, Cameron, Tim, Andy and Chan, thanks guys we hope you are not getting bored and continue to lend us a very welcome hand in renovating Our Daddy to her former glory. Well that's it for now, more photos on our Facebook and twitter pages.

Blog soon!!

The transformation is beginning

From what seems like an age we are now seeing changes to Our Daddy. The first few weeks were taken up working out a plan of works and moving the things we want to keep and removing everything we don't, there was a lot of that! It was also a voyage of discovery, in every locker, beneath every bunk and seat we found things that our part of Our D'. We found the unusual compass which will be renovated, checked and become our steering compass, a fuly working oil lamp in the aft crew cabin, once polished it will look beautiful plus lots of other bits and pieces.

After the survey we now have clear goals and milestones in Our D's rejuvenation back being the beautiful boat that she is, first up after we had checked nails and chain stay bolts was to replace the nails and fill the areas where we had pulled them. We have replaced the chainstay bolts that were removed after coating them in red lead paint and sealing the holes around the bolts with red lead putty, I was amazed that you can still buy all things red lead, but if you have a wooden boat there is nothing to replace it that works as red lead. The hull below waterline has had all the loose antifoul scraped back and any low spots filled and faired back using epoxy fillers for the deeper ones and red lead putty to fair the joints and any areas needing that little bit of fettlin'. She is now sporting her first coating of antifoul primers and the fist coat of primer for the boot top, it is amazing the difference just a coat of paint makes to the look of her...... I hope you agree. Once the outside of the hull is primered up to gunwale then we have milestone 1 completed..... Woop!

A couple of the Spars have also been stripped of paint and varnish ready for their first coats of many, we will be Dutch varnishing the Spars which will make them gleam in the sunlight, it is a slow process though as each layer has to dry and be rubbed down in between..... The beauty of a wooden classic. We still have the gaff and boom to take off the boat to revarnish but they can wait a while as the two yards for the mizzen, the bowsprit and bumpkin are enough to be going at for the moment. We removed the windlass yesterday, after having to grind off what was left of the bolts that have been there for a few years, it was working ok so just needs a service, removal of all the rust, repainting and cleaning out of the oil reservoir, we will also clean the deck under it and  paint it which will help in future as the deck is quite stained from previous hydraulic oil leaks.

Steve and I would like to thank Andy, Cameron and Tim for their help so far in preparing and painting what we have so far, Cameron also has a large box of blocks that we have stripped down to renovate :-)

Will post the next update next week, once we are hull primed we will be de rigging the masts and cloaking Our D in tarps while we start on the deck area.

Blog soon.