25th January 2008

There are no photos for this update, I visited the boat after having not seen her since last year and spent a couple of hours pumping her out. Not having a roof on her, but having a tarp in place stops most of the rain, but some still seeps in and its been a couple of months since she was last pumped out.

I spent the day making a paper template of the front side panel, when I pulled the boat apart I deliberatly left the starboard side intack, knowing full well I would have to dismantle it at somestage, but not having any way of make a new panel as the existing one disintergrated when dismantling it.

It took four attempts to get the template right, a lesson learned is not to attempt to do this when stood on the side of a boat, four feet in the air, with a high wind and a 25 metre roll of paper.

One thing that I didn't realise is that the panel, because of the curved shape of the boat is actually at a slight angle. Once I had realised that and split the template in two things were a lot easier.

I then spent Saturday using the template to cut up a sheet of marine ply, I decided to leave a 1 inch border around the paper so that it would allow me to adjust it onsite at the boat, without having to man handle a 8x4 sheet of ply next to the boat.
I also spent the day striping the paint off the root supports, two will need to be remade, plus all the supports for the sliding roof so I will be taking them to Rotherham next week to get remade.

I went back to the boat on Sunday and dry fit the panel, I needed to trim it off in various areas and it fits pretty well, I need to make an adjustment to the front slope of it so that it fits a bit snugger, once I'm happy with the panel I can cut the other one out and remove the rest of the front.