On Schedule !

Work Starts

By the time that we'd completed our inaugural trip we'd spent in excess of £700 on the wire that we needed to run out before we could start work on the lining out process. Why, you may well ask? Because it made sense to collect the wire as we passed through Braunston. Whether we should have used the same excuse to collect the toilet retention tank, the calorifier, the stove, the cooker and, possibly, the boiler remains to be seen when we attempt to load these items into the car in a few weeks time. It would certainly have saved at least a couple of car journeys.

We had a few jobs to do before we could even start to run out the wire that we'd just bought.

The first job was to try to temporarily stop the ingress of water through the windows and vents. We knew that the boat was to be painted within a couple of weeks so it didn't make sense to get the builder to fully rivet the windows and vents, only for the rivets to have to be drilled out within a few weeks. We told Reeves that they only needed to fit the minimum number of rivets - enough to stop the windows falling out during the inaugural journey.

As can be imagined, the dryish days of summer and autumn ceased as we got the boat into the water. Consequently, we experienced several minor leaks as we made our initial journey. So, as soon as we got to our destination we taped up the edges of the windows and vents and this appears to have stopped the unwelcome ingress of water.

The next job was to trim back the foam insulation. Reeves had fitted battens to which the lining material will be fixed. As it appears that spraying foam insulation is not as controllable as would be desired, there are places where, without trimming, the foam insulation will interfere with the close fitting of the lining material to the battens. With battens every few feet on both the hull and cabin sides, plus five longitudinal battens the full length of the cabin roof, there are a lot of batens surrounded by foam. The excesses were only minor amounts but they had to be removed. This job looked like consuming something in the region of five person days to complete and caused a few grazed knuckles into the bargain.

We also played a game of touch up. The boat had suffered a few knocks and bruises on the journey from Stockton and, despite all the red oxide that we'd seem applied during the build, one or two places were showing early signs of rust. Even though we only had a few weeks to wait before the full paint job, we decided to apply primer over the worst affected areas to stop the rust developing further.

We also turned our attention to the water tank during interludes from removing the excesses of the foam. A stainless steel tank had been supplied but not plumbed in - it was simply placed under the fore deck. It was free to move about and needed to be made secure. It was also felt advantageous to place it on a simple wooden framework in an attempt to minimise the risk of condensation and any consequent rust problem.

We thought that would need to temporarily remove the front two pieces of flooring to enable us to extract the tank and measure it so that we could construct the appropriate size frame. As supplied, the inlet and breather connections are on the top of the tank, at the back. However, the tank is only 30 inches from front to back, whilst the fore deck is 54 inches deep. If we located the tank towards the rear of the fore deck, the deck connections would be almost against the front wall of the cabin, and we'd lose almost two feet of potential storage under the fore deck. If we secured the tank towards the front of the fore deck, it would be easier to drill the holes for the connections but those connections would be midway between the front cabin wall and the back of the bow thruster locker. We'd also gain quite a bit of storage under the fore deck. The extra storage would be quite useful as we'd had to minimise storage within the cabin in order to fit everything else in.

We thought we had one other option. We could turn the tank around. This would mean that the connections were at the front of the fore deck, out of the way. Drilling the holes for the connections would still be easy and the connections would be out of the way and less likely to get trodden on. It isn't specifically the treading on them that is a problem, it's the dirt that might accumulate around the connection and fall into the tank when the filler cap is removed. We'd have the extra storage space but, and it is a big but, the outlet connection would then be facing forward making it more difficult to connect the pipe that would bring the supply into the cabin. It would also make connecting the tank feed and bleed connections to the deck fittings much more difficult as they would be over four feet away from the nearest point of access.

Oh well, back to the foam removal while we ponder the fate of the tank.

In the end, the foam removal took about seven person days, but that included tidying up - it goes everywhere. And our days possibly aren't as long as other people's. Anyway, whilst some of us were tidying up, others were looking at the water tank again. Not just looking, either. We removed the to floor panels nearest to the tank with the intention that we could extract the tank from under the fore deck. However, when we tried to do so, we discovered that the tank must have been positioned before the floor bearers were installed because it would be necessary to remove part of those bearers to remove the tank from under the fore deck.

We spent some time re-visiting all the options that we'd previously considered and yet we still had concerns over the location of the deck fittings. Closer inspection of the tank also revealed that it would be virtually impossible to get any fittings onto the tank and have the previously proposed wooden framework underneath.

Our final decision is to lift the tank as high as we can and slide some felt underneath it and then lower the tank onto the felt. We'll then fit the relevant couplings onto the tank and push the tank as far forward as we can, wedging it in place to prevent movement. The filler connection will now go on to the gunwale, slightly back from the front of the cabin - a short length of the pipe work will run behind the cabin lining. The vent will also be brought back to a similar position on the opposite side of the boat. However, the outlet will be placed in the side of the hull, just below the gunwale but at least twelve inches above the water line. A short length of this pipe work will also be behind the cabin lining.

As part of these plans, we've also decided that the water pump and the accumulator will be positioned under the fore deck, behind the stove. We can't sensibly use this space for storage so moving the pump here will free up some cupboard space in the galley. Access to the the area under the fore deck will be behind the steps that will connect the cabin and the foredeck. At least we appear to have solved one problem.

Although we'll be going shopping soon for the fittings for the water tank, it may be a few days before they get installed. In the meantime, we'll start on the work that will enable us to lay out the wire runs. We've discovered that the cabin is only around fifty five inches wide at roof level. The roof battens also run the length of the boat, rather than across the boat. This means that the roof panels will need to run lengthwise but, being only four feet wide, they'll leave a three to four inch gap down each side. The current thinking is that, rather than cut strips of lining material to fill the gap and have to add hardwood lipping to that, we'll probably make the hardwood lipping wide enough to bridge the gap.

There is one good advantage of having roof battens that run lengthwise. The wire runs can go between them. Although there is insulation between the battens and the roof, it will be possible to run the wires behind the battens and then down the cabin side. Therefore, the next job is to purchase some thin strips of wood - probably about 12mm thick, cut them into short lengths - to be an interference fit between the two outer roof batten runs (on each side), and run the wires beneath the insulation, supported by these wooden strips. However, this is a job for next week. For now, we need to spend a bit of time scanning through the Screwfix catalogue to order tank cutters for the deck fittings.

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