On Schedule !

Week 6

Our sixth week of working on the boat was actually going to be the seventh week since we'd started. The delay in the delivery of the remainder of the plywood couldn't really have come at a better time. Christmas was fast approaching and the annual round of family visits needed to be made. So we'd packed our bags the previous Monday and headed off to Cumbria, far from canals, boats, plywood and varnish, to see family.

We returned home on the Friday of the same week and contacted the plywood supplier. Alas, their new stock of plywood wasn't due for a further two weeks. What were we to do? Fortunately, we also had other engagements planned for the Saturday and then the wind blew. This ruined a fence panel at our daughters, which needed to be replaced as it was laying across her neighbour's garden. This scuppered any plans for a Sunday visit to the boat.

To add to the misery, the non vertically challenged member of the team broke a tooth on the Saturday after our return and needed to get that fixed as well, This meant trying to contact the dentist first thing on Monday, by which time it would probably be too late to go to the boat, assuming that it wasn't possible to get a dental appointment on the same day. Tuesday was also a non-starter do to work commitments.

In the meantime we considered our options. We had five sheets of 12mm plywood and twelve sheets of 9mm plywood. The former was intended for the hull sides and the latter for the upper cabin sides and the ceiling. Could we make any progress on the boat, using what we had, if we forgot our plans to get the initial varnishing done before we started making too much dust? We looked at the pros and cons.

Our initial plans centred around fitting the 12mm sheets first. This would allow us to lay in the 230 volt cables. However, with only some of the 12mm sheets available, we couldn't easily do just part of this wiring task, unless we left cables lying on the floor. This wasn't a good idea as we'd need all the floor space we could get when we started varnishing the rest of the plywood. In addition, we needed to plumb in the water tank filler and vent fittings before we fitted the hull lining, as these would be behind the plywood. Although we planned to provide access to these fittings from within the cabin, the gunwale fittings would need to be removed in due course, when the outside was painted. The painting should have been finished by now but an illness in the (painter's) family has delayed the start of work.

The next option was to consider fitting the ceiling panels. This required the temporary 230 volt lights to be taken down. We had nowhere else to fix them out of the way and we couldn't install of 12 volt lighting because we hadn't lined the cabin sides and, thus, couldn't install the combi unit and associated switch / control panels or the cabin switches.

Finally we looked at fitting some of the upper cabin lining. The problem with this option was that whilst it wouldn't necessarily make fitting the hull lining impossible, it would certainly make it more difficult because the lower edge of the cabin lining was going to overlap the hull lining to form the channels that would ultimately house the gas and 230 volt supply runs - these two supplies being separated by a lengthways partition within the said channel.

Some things are not meant to be. The dental appointment couldn't be arranged until the Friday. Before that there was an osteopath's appointment on Thursday and, to cap it all, we had a letter in Monday's post saying that our car needed to go to the garage for an urgent safety check, and this was arranged for Wednesday. So the earliest that we'd be able to get to the boat was going to be Saturday, and that was only in passing, as we were working that day!

It was over two weeks since our last visit, and nothing had been done on the boat. We may not have done anything on the boat but we had done some other things, one of which was a bit of woodwork for the local church. This gave us our first opportunity to work with a veneered wood - MDF, actually. We got the opportunity to experiment with fixing a real wood edge to the MDF. We used both glue and pins, filling the resultant holes afterwards. We also had a chance to use a few screws and plug their holes as well. An interesting experiment, if nothing else. The plugged holes have set us thinking of the way we might fix the real wood trim that is to cover the joins in our plywood panels. We also realised that using oak instead of ash would have made the boat too dark inside for us.

Finally, to end the week, we checked the visitor statistics for the web site. We doubt they'll ever be startling, but there does appear to be a healthy number of people who are following the plot. To each and every one we can but say Thank You. We hope you're finding the story interesting and, if you're tempted to try something similar, we hope you find it useful.

Our big question for next week is - "Will the plywood arrive (on schedule)?"

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