Last year a good friend of mine, a chap I’ve known for more than half my life, decided to ride across the country on a bike as old as I am. More friends of ours filmed it, and then produced a short documentary to a standard that I can only dream of creating.
This is well worth watching.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9ki8aJnXIE
Well done Frank!
It’s just gone 0730 and I’ve been up for a couple of hours. I didn’t sleep very well, you see. I couldn’t find the heating when I arrived yesterday afternoon, and I left my sleeping bag behind, so I’ve spent the night under a hand towel. Oh well, one must expect certain hardships in life occasionally.
I never thought I’d be here again.
You see, this life of freedom that I adopted was a bit imaginary. I suppose, if I’d started on an even keel, then it would have been possible, but I didn’t. I went for a jolly big sail up the East coast, and was very inexperienced when I did it. As such, it took much longer, and cost much more than I imagined it would, and when I finished my trip in September 2009, I was quite deeply in the red. I’ve managed to hobble along for over a year, but no matter what I did there seemed to be an undercurrent of financial entropy.
I was living, for a prolonged period, on no more than £50 per week, usually just one meal per day, and lengthy gaps between any sort of work quickly diminished any savings I managed to cobble together while I had work. Add to that a project boat, and, well, it’s hard.
When push comes to shove, as my old man says, you can’t exist without money, and I certainly couldn’t go sailing without any. I was prepared in every way to set off on another adventure this year, but the cold hard facts of the matter were that I’d have to get a full time job for a while first. I knew this, but I kept delaying the inevitable, hoping that I’d find an alternative way to fund whatever trip I was about to embark upon.
Then something strange happened. I got a phone call from an old work colleague. He, along with two other guys, were busy planning a very interesting start-up. Investment was all but secured, and they needed somebody to build the technology for them. Well, it’s worth a trip South to find out more, I thought.
I would have never moved back to London for a mere job, but this is more than that. We have an idea, an investor, and some of the most talented minds in the industry, and I’m here at the beginning helping to turn it all in to a working product. It’s not quite the adventure I had in mind, but it’s certainly going to be an adventure nonetheless.
As for Kudu, she’s still going in the water this year, but not until mid summer, and she’ll only get a few weekend trips. The adventures of Kudu are most certainly not over, just paused for a while.
Now, it may seem apt to thank everybody for your support over the years, but I’m not going to do that just yet. Of course, I do thank you, but wrapping up this post with such statements suggests it’s terminal, and this post most certainly isn’t the end of the matter.
As a well known hero of the eighties said…
I’ll be back.
In response to a few comments I thought I should write a post.
I am still alive, but I have things to deal with at the moment that don’t allow for writing about it on the internet, hence no posts.
Progress on the boat has been slow, but not non-existent. The forehatch and weather were proving tedious, so I gave up trying to make it look good. The problem was/is, each batch of epoxy filler is taking between 24 hours, and 48 hours to go off to the point where I can sand it. I’d fill a bit, wait two days, then sand it and find it needs more filler. After several attempts, I gave up trying to make it any smoother, and painted resin over the lot of it to seal it up.
Once painted, whenever that will be, it won’t look great, but it’ll be strong and water tight. Show boats never go to sea anyway.
I’ve started on the fore hatch properly now. The original hatch opening was sanded down to GRP with a belt sander, then the new 18mm ply template was epoxied to it. I added a bit of silica to the epoxy just to thicken it up a bit and create a better bond.
Since this picture was taken, I’ve sanded the template to shape and added some epoxy filler to blend it in with the existing deck structure. Once this has gone off, I’ll sand it again, then paint the whole lot in epoxy, sand, paint, and bolt the new hatch in. The bolts will run through the deck, so it will be a mechanical attachment too. Not that the epoxy will be weak, of course, but it doesn’t hurt to have a little more strength.
The rudder is still in progress to. The annoying bit is waiting for epoxy to cure. If it wasn’t for having to wait 24 hours each time, I’m sure it’d be done by now.
I’m not sure how the rest of the UK faired today, but in the North West we had sunshine. Warm sunshine at that! I have for sometime insisted that I am solar powered, since when the sun is out, I work much harder and feel much more motivated. Probably like everybody else, but dark, short days really do take their toll on me, especially when my “indoors” space is so confined.
So, the rudder stock has now been bolted and epoxied, which is yet another step closer to having that finished, and I’ve done a bit of interior trimming and finishing of woodwork. The cabin currently stinks of drying Deks Olje since I attempted to do it inside where it would dry better, but have had to give up and put all the wet bits outside after being fumed out.
I also sold the wood burning stove I bought late last year, today, so that’s a bit more of a comfort in the money stakes. I’ve celebrated by spending a whole £3.70 on a curry and a loaf of bread for my dinner. Yum!
I also had a huge tidy up today and got rid of a load of rubbish from under and in the boat. I hope tomorrow is a similar day, I’ll be done in no time at this rate, but alas, this is Britain, so I’m quite sure it’ll change. The barometer is already dropping. Yay!
I’ve been attempting to teach myself how to splice three strand rope this evening. Three strand is apparently the easiest of the lot, but I’m struggling a bit. I’ve created a loop, but I’m not convinced I’ve done it correctly.
My first splice was, although forming a loop, a tangled mess of confused strands. My second was better, but I think I managed to have two strands following each other. My third seems to be ok, although I’m not sure how to tidy the ends up.
I think skills like splicing are best learned from an old hand, rather than a book. Still, I shall persevere, then move on to double braid when I’ve cracked three strand… and have sourced a tubular fid.. or made one out of the scrap steel box.
In other news, the rudder is coming along nicely. It’s almost ready for the epoxy!
This rudder lark might get tedious. However, it’s comforting to keep posting these things since you lot tend to yell if I’m doing something entirely wrong 
I’ve promised corribee.org that I’ll condense the whole Corribee rudder affair in to a single post for other owners once I’ve finished (and tested it).
The follow is a picture taken while I still had enough light to take it. Progress is considerably further now.
The above was done entirely with a belt sander, but I was lent a power planer with sped the job up. I should have the profile complete by tomorrow, and then I can epoxy it. Annoyingly I’m running out of epoxy, so it might be a while before I can totally finish it, but apart from the forehatch, this is the last “big job” on the list.
My finger in the air deadline of early March is still looking promising. I’ve invited two friends over for a beer at the end of Feb, which will be the shed dismantling weekend.
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.
This has been one of those jobs that’s seemed to take forever for one reason or another.
Still, it’s all in order now, and I only need to make a few final touches to finish it totally.
The brown non-slip tape was from heskins.com, and you can just make out the drip tray for the tap in the top left of the pic.
Underneath, that’s routed out, and channel directs the water to the sink, below the step.
It’s a bit of a windy one this evening!
Despite the fact that Kudu is in the lee of a 40ft container, under a shed, and on the ground, we’re getting buffeted about by the gusts. Still, my makeshift shed proved itself during some hefty gales in the Autumn, so I’m not too worried about tonight.
I do wish I was on the water though. I miss the lapping and the rolling, and the looming sense of something exciting about to happen as you check the warps and stow anything that will blow away. It’s not pleasant and it tends to get annoying after a while, but I do miss it. Oh, to be on a pontoon.
Yikes! The wind is getting quite bad. I’m off to put extra nails in things.
