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.

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....

The work starts now....

We have now received the hull survey for Our Daddy and have been able to set out our plan of works.....

There were a couple of advisories on the survey which needed further inspection, one of which were the nails attaching the hull planks to the frames. As you can see from the picture there is some rust staining along her side, this is caused by the small wooden plug that was originally used to cap the nails, shrinking or having fallen out being replaced with filler, water seeps into the wood and starts to corrode the nails. It has a lovely name 'Nail Sick' so because of this we had to pull several nails to check in their condition, now that was a task and a half bearing in mind some of these had been there for close on a hundred years!!

New

Old

We have to say that the nails we have pulled are in very good condition, that is a relief as having to refasten her hull planks would have taken a fair old time, it is not just a case of whack a nail in it is far more time consuming than that! That was one question asked resolved the second was the condition of the Chain stay bolts, well we have removed a couple of these and they are also in good fettle, all in all very pleased.

So the tasks begin, first up is to remove and fair up the topsides and get them primed and sealed for the winter, fair and prime/antifoul the hull so as to seal it, then it will be onto the bulwark timbers, again this is fairing the timbers, priming and top coating to seal the timber....... there is a lot of fairing and finishing to be done!!

Well enough for today, next Monday we are taking down the topmast so that can be..... you guessed it, faired, painted but 6-10 coats of varnish this time!!

We will be posting up the sailing schedule in a couple of weeks time so keep your eye out on here and the websites for the interesting places to visit and sailing trips we will be offering in 2014.

Blog soon

The next chapter is about to start.....

Our Daddy will very soon be making her trip round to her winter home. On the 15th of October Our D will be making the trip with Steve and I and a few willing volunteers round to Galmpton to be hauled out for her winter refit, paint and varnish.  I have uploaded a few photos to the Gallery page of how she is now before any work has been done to her, click the photo below to go there.....

The plan of works has yet to be scheduled but obviously there is plenty of work to do to her ready for next season.

We will be repainting her hull in the original Pengelley family colours for Our Daddy which we understand were white boot top, pale blue topsides, Dark Blue bulwarks with a yellow pinstripe. The decks will be cleaned and the insides of the bulwarks painted in the cream of the coachroof, all the varnishing on deck will be stripped and replaced, all fittings on deck cleaned/polished if needed and painted if not.

Down below we will be refitting the galley, repainting, revarnishing, polishing, recovering and making sure she has a welcoming and comfortable feel to this beautiful boat.

Steve and I cannot wait to get started on Brixham Sea schools new flagship, Our Daddy FY7, we will be looking forward to working her out of Brixham in 2014. From now on the blogs will be coming fairly regularly as she transforms into the stunning boat she once was.

Keep checking back to see her progress and if you want to see where we are going next season why not sign up for the Our Daddy newsletter, we promise not to bombard you with them, we will just send them with information and latest offers.

Thanks for reading

Blog soon

Steve & Tim

A fantastic original of Our Daddy....

When Steve decided that he was going to buy Our Daddy we asked our friend and local artist, Toni Knights, if he could do a line drawing of Our Daddy so that we could create our logo. Well Toni came up with an absolute cracker... we currently have the originals which we will be having digitised and printed onto various things and you could also have them as a signed limited print from us.

Thanks Toni......We love them, they are true to Our Daddy in her current form and will be looking great adorning the walls of our office once we have them framed....

We will hopefully be bringing you news regarding Our Daddy in the very near future....

Blog soon.

It is hot hot hot

Not that I am complaining of course the temp readout in the car says 28º and the sea breeze is strangely quiet at the moment. One brave sole in the Bay trying to sail...

Website moving on......

And we also have our Facebook and Twitter accounts set up. Please like our Facebook page and follow our Twitter account

Facebook is - Our Daddy Classic sailing
Twitter is - @OurDaddyFY7

We will be updating all of these with the progress of getting our beautiful boat Our Daddy FY7 back to concourse condition. It is going to be a busy autumn and winter for us but it will be worth every minute of it to see this classic boat sailing again.

Blog soon

Welcome....

to the new blog for 'Our Daddy' our soon to be classic Cornish Lugger.  We will keep you updated on progress of her winter works and once afloat again we will be posting here all of the antics we get up to aboard this 1921 Classic.

Check back soon or add us to your blogger list to see how we are getting on.

Blog soon