I’ve been working on the rudder again today. First I had to remove the old one, which meant I had to dig a pit under the boat so I could pull the rudder stock out, then I set about routing the new rudder so the fork on the stock would fit it. I decided it would be easier to route it before I’d put the profile on the rudder.

I made a right mess of the routing. Firstly, the height adjustment kept slipping, then once I’d sorted that, the routing bit kept pulling itself out and making the groove way too deep so I ended up with a right mess of a slot for the fork. In an effort to fix this I managed to break the router, which was borrowed, so I’ve had to buy a new one to replace it; given the state of my finances, that was really quite painful.

I’ve used filler to sort out the pits that the dodgy router decided to start digging, and the fork now fits! I just need to sand a profile on to it now, lay up some epoxy roving over it all, then sand and paint. Sounds easy, doesn’t it.

Guess where?, originally uploaded by nathanleefloats.

I arrived under sail, but not on kudu.

Got a cooker., originally uploaded by nathanleefloats.

I finally gave up with balancing a pan on my msr pocket rocket, and have bought a cheap microwave. It’s currently sat where the engine should be.

Correct use of an outboard, originally uploaded by nathanleefloats.

Somebody in the boatyard seems to have misunderstood the concept of outboard propulsion.

Saturday update, originally uploaded by nathanleefloats.

Only a few more pieces left to fit to complete the chart table. It’s rock solid now. Designed to sit on.

Non stop rain, originally uploaded by nathanleefloats.

It has been raining all day, and Vreli is getting wet. Nothing too bad, but the washboards are letting it a fair amount of rain. See, if they can leak like that with premature April shower, then imagine what the Atlantic could do!

Ideas for a redesign would be appreciated.

Just a test, originally uploaded by nathanleefloats.

All will become clear. that’s where my engine should go by the way.

Edit: I added this bit after the test.

So what was this about then? Well, I’m being a bit technical, but I’m trying to take advantage of ‘geotagging’. When you take a picture on a GPS enabled camera (a modern mobile phone for example) it can record the GPS location. In all digital photographs there is hidden data contained in the file, this is known as exif data. The lat and long are included within that data, and so it’s possible to extract that and in theory automatically include a map of the location it was taken. Obviously this test seems to have failed, but that’s ok because I now know why.

Don’t worry, I’m not going to be turning this into a technical blog, I just thought I’d explain it for you.

Sad, isn’t it., originally uploaded by nathanleefloats.

It Is a bit for me anyway, although i’m getting more and more excited about things i’ve missed on land.