Its been a while....

My apologies for not writing up for such a long time.  I have been 'shirking' my responsibilities for a wee while due to having hurt my sodding back again.... Not going there with tales of 'daring do', Ive a F*^&%d back and that's all there is to it life revolves around that.

Well as to whats been happening??  The Lady is still siting almost exactly where I left her two months or so ago.  She has had a daily check on her with an occasional clamber aboard.  She is still at a hellish angle and has got a nice layer of green slime over her making her pretty torturous to get over.  She is looking much cleaner inside so the change in angle has cleaned a lot of the garbage out of her that had accumulated over the previous ten months or so.  She is going up onto the long awaited legs on the next tides in a coupe of weeks.  The engineers are making plates to help spread the weight of the boat on the joists and the delivery of the pine 6x12 legs are semi arranged for then as well.

I plan to use 4 six inch by 12 inch legs that are 15 feet long.  The idea is to use 2 planks bolted together to make one leg.  These will be held in place with two 30mm high tensile (Galvanised) steel bar lengths (A metre is hopefully enough).  I'm going to drill the hull through both the heavy stringer that runs below the deck beams (Yes I know there is a name for this but I'll be damned if I can remember it..sorry Sandy!) and then directly through the rib above deck level.  I'll do this at approximately midships to give maximum benefit to the forces of leverage.

I should say something about the plates as well here.. These are basically made up of 10mm mild steel. They are 12 inches by 12 inches with a 32mm centre hole for the tensile steel and also two 10mm locator's holes for holding them in place while everything gets bolted together.  Its worth noting that because I am doing 99% of this myself you have to think ahead as to how to make life easy for yourself, things like locator's holes mean the difference of things going out of alignment and you losing months off your life cursing and swearing! I'm a believer in doing things once and doing it right.

On the deck and engine side of things.  Bob from Ardishaig (an Engineer Mentioned I have  before) is still after a hydraulic pump from the front of the engine.  In exchange for this Bob is going to lance off some of the derelict and corroded steel work as well as possibly remove the engine if I can open the deck up and prepare the area in time.  He has got himself a lorry with hi-ab that will do the lifting and also take the excess material to the dump.

I have to say a huge thank you here to the skipper of the Rebbecca McLean, who's boat has recently been decommissioned.  He kindly let me go over the boat after she was broken up to get a few parts.  It cant be easy to have people like me looking for a bargain whilst you look upon your life's wok being destroyed because of bureaucracy.  I'm going to rant about the whole decommissioning thing separately as its a crime as far as I am concerned and it certainly is not the fisherman's fault!
Anyway, I managed to get one of her fuel tanks and some other various bits and peaces including, 9 jubilee clips, a tin of black paint, 3 lengths of chain, 5 heavy ropes (Braided as well as ordinary) 3 stainless steel knives (OK they were cheap looking things, I took three that were relatively clean but left at least 20!), a 15 foot stainless steel hold ladder and a couple of wee fittings that were loose.  Oh! and a fishery officer deterrent stick (Story in a second!).
I honestly felt like I was picking over a corpse, if that's how one feels like of course, it wasn't nice but I felt that I was in a position that I would never be in again.  Its not everyday that a boat is decommissioned on your doorstep.

I had hoped that I might have been able to get the helm, as you may know the Lady's was stolen.  But the wheelhouse had already been destroyed so I missed it.  I do hope to get the steering hydraulics though, however I have been advised that it will not fit a standard helm control.

As to the 'Fishery Officer Deterrent stick', as you may or may not know. i was a fishery officer in the home port of the Rebeca McLean.  I used to have collect log sheets as a matter of course from some vessels as they used to play the game of 'forgeting'..... Anyhow... I traipsed aboard the R M asking for said log sheets and here in the wheel house was a hardwood full size sledge hammer handle.  I joked about it being for unruly crew..he joked back about deterring fishery officers looking for log sheets! Touche' methinks
Any way that hardwood handle is now pride of place at my front door for any unruly sales.... sorry its in the workshop as a talking point for the future!

Well back the the lady,  Its caulking tomorrow (Again).  The tides are pretty good just now and the weather is mild so I'm going to make the most of the opportunity and attempt to get some of the work done that was lost during the bad weather. 

A rant and some pictures coming soon!!