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Archive Category: Boat Building
Holey and windy and blah
Saturday, 1 July 2006
The weather today is probably my least favourite flavour. It’s howling with wind, but there is no rain to justify all the angst, it’s just blowing a gale. It’s not even that cold. Over at the ShedSpot at about 8am this morning, it was quite sheltered. M and I continued from yesterday, measuring and spading out 600×600mm squares that are right now being attacked by a post hole digger. Poor M. He’d already dug all these huge holes for the shed supports about two weeks ago, using nothing but a spade, a shovel, a maddock and his own grunt - but on Wednesday the site was levelled out with a whole lot of dirt, and all his holes got filled back up. Soul destroying. What’s more, the new dirt is almost all clay, and fairly undiggable - thus, the post hole digger has been hired.
I just checked the Bureau site and there is a strong wind warning for this area. I really have to start work scraping all the paint off the Sunliner, but it conflicts with my scenario of being outside with my radio, esky and armed with a scraper in the warming winter sunlight.
So here I go, experimenting with YouTube (I’ve been having lots of fun watching old Cocteau Twins video clips…)
(…if you have eyesight trouble, just click on the tiny arrow in the bottom left hand corner - I had to make it small to fit my new page design. Sigh.)
Visual Shed Progress - Part 1
Tuesday, 11 July 2006
An uber-cold and sporadically rainy day. I moved my work days around to spend two days helping M with the shed. It was definitely a two-person job! He had spent quite a while cutting all the side supports and roof trusses in half and welding in extra bits to increase the height and width respectively.
He then had to re-dig all the holes (remember the saga?), pour concrete in them all and mount bolty things in the concrete. (Here’s where I come in…) We had to bolt all the side supports into position in preparation for the roof trusses to be hoisted up on a crane and in turn be bolted to the side supports. Getting the side supports on to the bolty thing was one thing - getting the side supports level was another. Big thanks to our friend Spirit Level and to the little stainless steel washers we used as chocks to get them level.
Where it’s at
Sunday, 30 July 2006
M and I have been living a life of shed-building. For all the socialising we have done since the time we have moved into the trailer, we almost may as well have been in Hervey Bay. Some people get it, and some don’t.
“What have you guys been up to? We haven’t seen you for ages.”
“Shed. We’re building a shed.”
I can see their eyes glaze over, and I can tell that they really don’t understand the scale of what I’m talking about. I think they assume we’re building something the size of a double garage. But the truth is, we’re building something that’s more like a small aircraft hangar and we have spent a bomb on a catamaran kit that is sitting under tarpaulins as we (mostly M) hurry to build the shed around it.
So here’s a re-cap
When we bought it, the shed was 15 metreslong, seven metres wide, and three metres high. It was in Point Cook and it looked like this:
We attacked it over about four or five days until it looked like this:
And then we hired a truck, loaded it up, put the trimaran trailer behind it and loaded it up too, and drove it across Melbourne to Cannons Creek.
M spent several weeks cutting posts and trusses in half, then welding inserts to make the whole structure wider and higher. Two metres wider and one metre higher. A lot of welding. Another factor was that the shed site wasn’t great, and needed a truckload or two or fill to build it up to a decent level. This all took A. Very. Long. Time. and a Lot. Of. Work.
And then there was the hole drama.
The holes needed filling with concrete, and bolts were positioned in the concrete (pointing up) and we (after a bit of mucking around) slotted the side supports over the bolts and spent a lot of time getting the absolutely level. Which made the job much easier when it came to getting the crane to put on the roof trusses:
While I was working in town for four days last week M somehow managed to get the roof on. I have no idea how he did it on his own…
Over the weekend that’s just been, we’ve put on the majority of both side walls. The shed is now 15 metres long, nine metres wide and four metres high - which gives us a metre and a half each side of the boat and two metres in front and behind in which to work.
So that’s where it’s at, and where we’ve been.
Shed life and a drop in
Saturday, 5 August 2006
Back working on the shed - it’s close, it’s very close! Today I handed large sheets of tin up to M who was perched at the top of the ladder. He would then secure it with one tech screw, while I checked it and tweaked it with the spirit level. When I wasn’t doing that I was going around the shed and putting in tech screws where we’d missed them in our hurry to get the walls on. It took quite a while.
Just as I was walking past the car I heard my phone ringing - it was Christian! He and Meegs and little Fynn dropped by (dropped by? nobody’s done that while we’ve been on shed duty - freaky) and we showed them around. It was great to show them the little trimaran moored in the creek, because the trimaran lived the first three years of its ‘being built’ life in their front garden! When we arrived back at the trailer, Fynn took one look at Jake the ostrich and insisted on getting out on the other side of the car - he was wary. Scones, beer, fish and chips and a fire - a lovely unexpected end to the day…
Weather it.
Tuesday, 15 August 2006
Today was the most divine sunny day that I’ve had since living in the trailer. Sublime. I worked the second time this week on the caravan - I’ve scraped back all of one side and removed most of the cupboard doors. More scraping, sanding and painting looms.
M was busy, taking excess tin to the tip. I helped take tools and boat building ingredients to the shed (which will be finished when we get six extra bits of tin on Thursday). Our last trip was taking Oomoo to the shed, where we are going to rehabilitate him from his trip up and down the coast. There needs to be some grinding, bogging, sanding and repainting (*groan* - it sounds just like the caravan, but it must be done). I notice, from the sidebar, that it’s a two years to the day that we bought my boat from the tip! This is what it used to look like - frightening, I know. Here’s an ‘after’ shot.
So we were hanging around the boatyard just on dusk and the light was fabulous. The tide was high and the creek was a mirror.
And if you’ve been wondering what’s become of the trimaran? It’s here!
Checking out the end product
Tuesday, 9 January 2007
After joining me for trailer lunch today (I am working at home this week), M took me over to the boatyard to tour a Schionning catamaran that’s just two metres bigger than ours is going to be. I am hoping those two metres will be eye snappingly obvious, as this boat today was almost too big for me to take in. God knows how M can even bear to look at it, because it must make his job seem almost insurmountable. It was a hulking 13.2 metres long - ours, obviously, is a marginally more manageable 11 metres. Inside there are three double beds, two bathrooms, lounge/dining area, kitchen (galley) and chart table.
The kitchen and the lounge were uber-sexy. The whole thing was just a headf!@k. M kept looking at me expectantly and saying, “do you think you could live in one of these? Ours is a little bit smaller you know.” And I kept looking back at him with a look that said “Move from trailer in the middle of horse property into a luxury wind powered float-o-matic with my very own bedroom? Do I have to even think about it?”
I will train the cats to liveaboard and like it. I will find somewhere cosy for the Humber and the Caravan. And I will ESPECIALLY try to come up with a wily crafty ways to help us own it outright - ’cause you can’t cruise and make loan repayments at the same time. Unless you are wily and crafty and clever.
We brandished the camera and took photographs of cool design ideas that we can shamelessly steal for ourselves. It was like having a half glimpse at the future.
London O Hull TWO
Sunday, 27 May 2007
For the past fortnight, M has been on fire for the lord of catamaran. (How does this relate to the title of this post? Um. It was the only musical reference I could thing of that contained the word ‘hull’. I desperately wanted a wordplay on Mull of Kintyre but just couldn’t wrap my head around one.) He finished off the roof in less than two weeks, beginning with this (which took a few days in itself):
…and finishing with a roof that resembled a large slater bug (this pic taken from the opposite direction):
…and then a week ago, took apart the base that he’d used to build the roof (thus providing fuel for our wood fire) and began work on Hull Number 2. This is what he’s done in about seven days. The hull on the left is the first one that we flipped and moved over a few weeks back. The beginnings of Hull No.2 are in the foreground - being constructed upside down.
In the next pic the completed first hull is in the foreground, while Hull No.2 is at the back.
So that’s where it’s at. Of course, it’s much easier building something for the second time when everything is in place, but still. He is a shed demon!
Hull 2 - About face!
Thursday, 9 August 2007
I was looking at where we were at this time last year. It was this week that we had finished the shed in which M was going to compose our Schionning catamaran. Well. Three hundred and sixty five days later we have two hulls flipped and waiting to be joined. It happened today!! M is a !! It has been a ENORMO job - and I know the second hull was a real slog for M. He literally had to do the same job he’d just finished All. Over. Again. Of course he was able to implement some things he’d learnt on the first one, which was a bit of a help, but the slog was almost more mental than physical.
The bits of wood that were perfectly level (called the strongback) was pulled out by M yesterday, and the hull looked strangely naked…
This picture is from the back of the shed, with the first hull ready and waiting for its friend.
The turning of the hull. I’m not sure how they managed it, but it was M and two guys from the boatyard, a few mattresses, winches, ropes and grunt!
Of course my role is to swan in holding cake after it’s all over, and grab a photo opportunity 
The hulls are spaced as they will be once they are joined up. This thing is unexpectedly BIG!
I have bought M a few bottles of Guinness and baked a chocolate cake. It feels like we’ve crossed a large hurdle.
The floor
Wednesday, 15 August 2007
This is the floor that M has been whipping together. It’s upside down at the moment. Do not email us asking how it will be flipped over. That is currently being worked on by our strategic planning department.
Tres Excitement. A boat shape!
Monday, 1 October 2007
Took M his lunch today at boatland as we are running with one car at the moment [snuffle] and he wasn’t in the boat shed, so I wandered in to have a look. The last month has been kind of blurry, but I am having some kind of spaciousness injected into my headspace this week, as I Don’t Have To Drive Into Work At ALL!! I just stay home and try and work my way through this pile of files for three days. I don’t know why that makes me feel better, but it does.
So I go into the shed on my own, and it’s quiet, dusty and somehow, all of a sudden, FILLED WITH BOAT. And I’m talking a BOAT SHAPED boat. Not two hulls on opposite sides of the shed. Not two hulls on opposite sides of the shed with a floor in between them. I’m talking two hulls, joined together, looking like a MOFO CATAMARAN. Holy shit! As I am suffused with pg hormones, I looked misty eyed at M when he walked in a few minutes later, and asked him how he had managed to achieve this all on his own, as he (and I) are famous for our non-existent shoulders and should, by rights, both be allocated a pygmy helper by the government to help us with tasks that require the extra oomph of shoulder power.
He just looked beguilingly at me and shrugged. The boat dwarfed him. The boat dwarfed ME (and I am known, around the trailer, as ‘Jennings’ - as in Waylon - yes, whale jokes are our current occupation du jour here in trailerland - at the moment I have a pathological fear of Japanese restaurants and the thought that chefs may pursue me with harpoons for ’scientific research’ purposes. I digress. Because it’s ALL about ME. Sorry.)
Suddenly we have a Large Boat. With a lounge room, cockpit, bedrooms, kitchen etc. that were all identifiable as I stood on the chair and looked over at it (it’s not quite all secured yet). The change of perspective involved in getting it all joined up and off the ground cannot be understated. I think it must be a great relief for M, who is really looking forward to getting stuck into stuff like the furniture and interior fitting out, rather than dealing with the mega jobs like the hulls and the big bit in the middle.
I am going down the street to spend some of the money I unexpectedly earnt today being a Macintosh facilitator and data analyst assistant (i.e. helping my dad do his work at the trailer as his home phone line blew down and killed his dialup) and buy some CHAMPAGNE of which I will have ONE GLASS. I will even retain my wondrous humour as I let M gargle the rest and run around being obstreperous. Because we also got the all clear on the new car yesterday - it’s roadworthied and ready to be registered, and M did all the car stuff on his own. The ReMarkables - they’re a mountain range, you know.
All joined up.
Monday, 8 October 2007
M is about six foot two. The boat is substantially bigger. But check it out. You can tell it’s actually a Very Large Catamaran now!
