17th February 2008

I spent the afternoon on the boat stripping half the front deck off and cutting out a new panel to install in place of the rotten piece. I drilled some holes either side of the deck support so I could align the cut, it was just a simple case then of running the circular saw down the line.

Removing the old panel on the other hand took a lot more effort than I expected, like most things on the Sabrina, where she is rotten she disintegrates, where she is solid she is very solid. While stripping off I noticed two other patches of rot on the side decks, where they joined the front section.

The plan is to cut all the new pieces to size, dry fit them and then seal them with epoxy, infact seal all the pieces of wood before refitting. Once refitted I'll put another two coats of epoxy, which will hopefully stop her rotting again in the future,

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.

12th September 2007

You can see from the pictures that it was another long day of removing the rotton wood, a couple of times I did think to myself that maybe I had bitten off more than I could chew.

As most of the panels literraly disintegrated when removed I have no patterns to make the new panels from, so I have left one side intact so I can use brown paper to make patterns for the new panels, rebuilding the port side (left) first then the starboard side.

A lot of the boat is made of hardwood with marine plywood. I have managed to find a local carpenter who has said he will remake any of the support pieces that I need, if I give him the old ones. For example one of the roof supports is completely rotton though, but has come apart cleanly in two parts.

I need to get a larger tarpaulin or maybe a marque so I can work on her in the winter months.

25th August 2007

spent a day starting to strip of the vinyl roof so I could assess the damage to to front cabin, but was hoping that at worse it would only be the window frames at the front that would need to be replaced.

The more I stripped off the more it became apparent that the whole of the front was going to have to go.

The main problem I had was striping the vinyl off as it had been overpainted at somestage with roofing paint. I tried a paint scraper, but that didn't work so I ended up using a blow torch to heat it, then using the striper to remove it.

If you are going to try this then my advice is to wear gloves as I managed to burn my hand a couple of times.

12th August 2007

The boat had been moved the week before to hardstanding so this was the first chance I had to go over her with a fine tooth comb. Unfortunately things were far worse than I expected, the rot had been painted over and been badly repaired over the years. I knew the doors would needt to be replaced and maybe the windows at the front.

In reality from my proding and poking it was going to need a new front cabin as the roof had leaked and rotted more of the boat than I first saw.

I took the photos as a reference so that I know what she looked like at the start and hopefully will be able to do before and after shots once she is complete.

Don't get me wrong there is a lot of work that will be needed between now and then, but I'm going to take it slow and steady and hopefully do the old girl proud

16th June 2007

I work as an IT contractor, spending most of my working week working away, living in hotels or rented houses.  While working away I got talking to a contrator that I worked with and he said that what he did was to stay in his caravan, when I queried it he explained that he had bought a caravan and just parks it on a local caravan park, when his contract ends he takes it home and then moves it to the location of his next contract.

This got me thinking and after a while I hit upon the idea of buying a boat and moving it around as I moved around contracts, looking at the map of inland waterways it became apparent that there are more than enough places to put it when I was contracting.

The next problem was, what type of boat? It had to be reasonably inexpensive as the whole point of getting it was for it to be cheaper in the long run than staying in hotels or renting a house.  I drew up a list of what I needed and it was quite simple, somewhere to eat, sleep and shower.  I searched around and saw a couple of boats that fitted the bill but they were either too expensive or too far away, for example one that I viewed was in the isle of whight.

In the end I came across the Sabrina Swan, she was located in Tetchill, about an hour away from where I lived and also fitted the bill, she needed some TLC, but I thought it would give me something to do in the evenings.  I tried to email the owner to arrange a viewing before I placed a bid as she was on Ebay, but didn't get response so I pulled out my maps and worked out roughly where she should be and headed off.  I managed to find her without too much trouble and instantly fell in love with her.

I went home and set Auction Sniper to auto bid on her an then left it in the hands of fate.  A couple of days later she was mine, I arranged to meet the owner at to pay for her, the owner explained that she had inherrited it from a friend and that it was too much work for her and it was with reluctance that she had put her up for sale.

So, there I was the proud owner of the Sabrina Swan, a 25' Ormelite Cruiser, she was looking a little sad and tired, but I could see her true potential.

Now comes the funny part of the story, I'd done all this without telling my partner who I had lived with for many years, I knew that she wouldn't approve and would not support me doing her up so I thought it would be an interesting surprise for her....

Little did I know that the company that managed the moorings that she was at had sent an invoice offering me the mooring, unfortunately the invoice was in the same format as that of my cleaners so my partner opened the envelope in my absence assuming it was the bill for the cleaners.

That was an interesting "surprise" for me when I got home from Sheffield that week...