Drizzly Day
I had a few jobs to do in Ashton before starting work on "Hazel" today, and had a pumping crisis to deal with at Portland Basin as "Elton" was trying to play submarines as a result of a faulty pump. When I eventually arrived Stuart was already busy strengthening up the moulds for shaping the fore end planks. I had a look at the job of fitting the stempost, which I had removed a few days earlier to do a bit more work on the hoodings where the top strake fits in.
I trimmed a bit of old planking away to make it possible to slide it right up to the end of the new keelson, then thought about bringing it over and offering it up. I wouldn't be able to carry it on my own and Stuart was still busy with the moulds, so I decided to go and work on the sternpost.
After a little while alternately cutting with the power saw and hacking bits out with the adze to rough out the hoodings on this post.
Ryan arrived, apologising for his lateness. He and Stuart had been
to a charity pie tasting at the buffet bar the previous night. http://www.beerhouses.co.uk/pub/stalybridge-buffet-bar/
He
got stuck in to sorting out the electrics on the 3 phase table saw
that we recently collected from Ashton Canal Carriers.
http://www.brocross.com/canal/joel.htm
It is run from a 3 phase converter, enabling it to run from a single phase supply, but had been running backwards. Ryan tried swapping wires around until eventually it ran smoothly in the right direction, then blew a trip to cut power from the whole boatyard.
Giving up on this, there was some discussion about other jobs that Ryan could do, but none of them were quite ready to be started. I had reached the stage of preparing to cut another slice off the sternpost with the chainmill, but decided to leave this and get Ryan to help offer up the stempost. In fact all three of us worked on this and soon had the stempost in place and fitting quite nicely. When Stuart checked it though it was way off centre at the top. This seemed to be because the right hand (starboard ) side of the bow had moved and was pushing the stempost out of line. Ryan and I started cutting away the other side so that we could get a prop in place to adjust the side of the boat. Part way through this job Ryan's mother arrived and we stopped for tea and a chat. When we had finished, Jessica, Adeline and Elouise, Stuarts wife and two daughters arrived and we were surprised to see that it was nearly time to go home.
All day the grey sky had been crying a constant fine drizzle over us. It was the sort of rain that gets you really wet without you really noticing until it's too late.