Up and Down

Yes… a change in the Blog banner photo.  We got tired of looking at battleship grey with a blue cratch cover.  Another thing which has been annoying me is the way the spelling errors somehow manage to creep into the final draft.  I’m convinced this is occurring after I’ve published the post.  I recheck the draft twice before hitting the publish button and yet they still appear.  I know I’m not the only one with this problem.  But have you ever noticed how others omissions and errors are so obvious; yet you can’t see your own?

The first job for the day was to lightly sand the starboard finrad boxing and give it a second coat of varnish.  Then the rear steps were sanded back to remove all the scuff marks that have accumulated during the past 3 months.  The step were then varnished along with the new pipe boxing made and installed by James.

Darren kindly offered to give the side hatch interior doors and framing their first coat of gloss varnish.  He’s a much better painter than me so I very quickly accepted.

The fore and aft (front and rear) trim on Waiouru continues to concern me.  We obviously need the bow in the water to get effective steerage and we don’t want the stern too deep or we’ll start dredging the bottom.  The current trim (balance) is almost right but I’m mindful the bow water tanks are nearly full whilst the large toilet tank at the rear is almost empty.  After my earlier action in removing nine concrete slabs from under the galley floor there is now no ballast in the rear third of the boat.  Logically the only further action is to increase the amount of ballast at the bow.

Today I went “scrounging”.  Kiwi’s are great scroungers.  Probably because they live in the bottom right hand corner of the map of the world thousands of miles away from readily available manufactured goods.  Kiwi’s will tell you they can make almost anything out of No8 fencing wire and baling twine!

Digging around under the blackberry bushes I stumbled upon some fire bricks from an old chimney.  They still had some mortar left on them during the demolition but I removed this with a club hammer and cold chisel.

Waiouru’s bow thruster locker was emptied and the cleaned bricks carefully stacked at the bottom of the locker until they were level with the top of the tube.  I’m not sure if this has had much effect but the tip of the rudder is just out of the water and the bow is below the waterline by approximately four inches.

The gunwale isn’t level but the bow doesn’t appear to be excessively high.  However the bow tank is ¾ full and the stern empty.

The water level at the stern is just below the lower rubbing strake.  I’m just not sure where a Tyler-Wilson shell is supposed to sit in the water.  If we need more ballast at the bow then the only place left is under the bedroom floor.  Tomorrows walk should give me plenty of time to think about the situation.