A quiet Day 30th September 2011

A quiet Day

After the hectic activity yesterday it was quite a quiet day on "Hazel", just me Reg and Ryan. Reg left at dinner time to go and visit his daughter in Leeds. To be honest, there's not much of "Hazel" left now. The new bottom forms a base to build the boat up on, but we've now removed most of the sideplanking after carefully spiling it and recording the plank edge bevels. Highlights of the day have been offering up the new stempost, it looks like it will fit, and removing the old sternpost to make a copy. As usual there was a bit of forensic archaeology involved, working out which bits of the boat have ben replaced in her 97 year history, and which bits (not many) are original. As I removed the bottom strake at the stern end I was surprised to find that it was made of oak and about 60mm thick.I was expecting 2" pitch pine. I decided that it had been replaced at the same time as the bottoms as there was only one set of ironwork in the wood, indicating that it had never had replacement bottoms fitted to it. The question is, when was this done? It looks likely that the sternpost was renewed at the same time. Was it 1951 at Rathbones dry dock in Stretfored or 1970s at Ken Keays in Walsall.