Browsing articles from "November, 2007"

PREPARING FOR SPRAYFOAM

Nov 22, 2007   //   by admin   //   BLOG  //  No Comments

It’s been over a week since my last visit and the boat build is continuing to progress. The concrete slab ballast has been added and the floor laid over the top. It’s important that the ballast is installed correctly taking into account the type of fitout for the boat. This boat will predominately have a starboard fitout, with the majority of the weight from fixtures and fittings being on the right hand side. This means that more ballast needs to be placed on the port side to ensure the boat doesn’t list when fully fitted – although it’s not unusual for a boat to require additional ‘Trim’ ballast when fully fitted and launched. This trim ballast is normally hidden in the engine bay or under cabinets & access steps etc. Power lifting weights (the ones covered in plastic) are ideal for this as the come in various signs and can be hidden easily, they also won’t rust (cast iron) or chip & dust like brick ballast.
The wooden battens have also been screwed in place. These provide screw and nail points to attach the sheets of oak veenered plywood that will line the boat. You can see from the photo that the battens and window apertures have been covered with clear tape & plastic, allowing the person sprayfoaming to totally cover the inside of the boat. Afterwards these strips of plastic are removed to leave clean and smooth battens, without the need to scrap off the foam.

The windows have been fitted too together with the steel stable doors at the bow of the boat, which look great. The windows are currently in the process of being fitted with the plastic strips that hide the rivet points attaching them to the shell. The strips are added and then left to hang oversized for a short period to allow for shrinkage before finally being trimmed to size.
I’ll be back at the boat shortly by which time the sprayfoam should be complete!

NARROWBOAT STEEL WORK COMPLETE

Nov 6, 2007   //   by admin   //   BLOG  //  No Comments

The majority of the steel work is now complete and the boat has been moved out into the yard so the rest of the fitout can be completed. As mentioned before the green paintwork seen here is just a quick flash coat to keep the boat tidy whilst being fitted out. We’ll be painting her in the same colours as H3O, with a cream cabin roof and sides with a full length panel of Oxford Blue with red coach lines. The paint work will be completed at the end of the fitout, which should be in early February 2008.
We’ve had a few small changes to this shell from experience learnt from H3O. The main change is that we’ve decided to go with steel stable doors at the bow as opposed to timber, the reason being that we’ve had a few issues with the oak stable doors warping and expanding which has resulted in them being constantly trimmed (Colecraft are in the process of replacing them). The new steel doors will have gold windows in the upper sections to match the main windows in the cabin sides and they’ll be lined internally with solid oak paneling to match the lineout.

We’ve also specified recessed side fender eyes (where the fenders attach to the boat) in the gunwales (the narrow flat sections that run down either side of the boat). On H3O the fenders hang from the cabin roof on 4ft lanyards – these work fine but have more of a tendency to catch against the lock sides and pop off! You can just make out one of the recessed eyes in the foreground of the photo opposite.
I’ll be back at Colecraft early next week, hopefully the ballast will be in and work on installing the timber battens will have also commenced by then.
Over the last week or so we’ve been busy organising updates to the website to reflect that H2O will be leaving us shortly (more on this on the next blog entry). The site now provides photos of H3O and the layout plan for the boat featured here. We’ve also officially launched the ‘Name that Boat’ competition on the site with the winning entrant receiving a free short break on board our new boat (fully completed of course!). So why not e-mail us your name suggestion for our boat, just check out our website for further details and terms and conditions. Good Luck!
Justin & Jane.