New galley

Chuckles new galley. A stainless steel sink which wil be supplied by a vintage brass galley pump and an origo 2000 spirit stove.

On deck

We hoisted the mainsail the other day to familarise ourselves with the slab reefing system which is fairly straight forward. I think the previous owner was using a sail tie to secure the reefing point so have attached a stainless steel hook to the goose neck which hopefully will be simpler and quicker to operate.

Also noticed that there is no way to alter the tension of the clew outhaul. The clew of  the sail was tensioned by a piece of cord tied to the clew and threaded through a block attached to the end of the boom and the cord was badly chaffed.
Have attached the block to the clew via a stainless steel shackle and added a dinghy forestay tensioner. The outhaul can now be tensioned according to the wind conditions!

At the same time have added an identical tensioner to the backstay. Again there was no way of altering the tension or at least not easily.

Chuckle has two anchors, a danforth and a fishermans both of which are set up for immediate deployment and they take up a large amount of deck space. Given that we have hank on jibs and need to get up there quickly and safely without  tripping over and falling overboard the fishermans anchor will be relegated to storage in the forepeak. Likewise the heavy wooden beaching legs which are currently stored on the coach roof and are a bloody obstacle course.

Eventually it would be good to lead all the lines back to the cockpit but will have to wait and see.

.......and more rain

Was hoping to get the first coat of gloss on the hull this weekend but the weather has put paid to that. Did manage the final coat on the doghouse but it rained immediately after so that all needs sanding and redoing.

In the meantime have ripped out the galley. It was ugly, totally impractical and not very well put together.

So now we have a big space to fill.

Made a start yesterday evening cutting an old teak table which was given to me to form a work top. Have cut out two inserts which will will house an Origo 2000 spirit stove from Ebay and a circular stainless steel sink. I'm pleased with the sink which is made from a large stainless steel mixing bowl with a hole drilled in the bottom with a kitchen waste added. A fraction of the cost of a caravan or boat sink - even secondhand. The sink will drain into a plastic container beneath the work surface. I've also bought, again off Ebay, a vintage brass galley pump which should look the part once it's installed. It will draw water from another plastic container under the worktop. Hope to get that done today - if the rain ever stops!

Once that's out of the way I can make a start on replacing the cabin sole which is a real mish mash of ply, pine boards and the odd bit of teak. It will be replaced with some mahogany flooring which I bought - from Ebay.  Should look vastly better.
I also need to address the companion way some time soon. There are two mahogany boards screwed in place which look to have come from an old piece of furniture. I did add a curved teak step - the end of the teak table! - which makes access in and out of the cabin a bit easier and added a iroko grab handle which I fashioned from some scrap wood gleaned from a local window manufacturer. The problem is the access to the Yanmar 1GM. In order to check the oil level the whole lot has to be unscrewed to gain access which is fairly daft.

We also want to do something with the forepeak. At the moment it has a raised platform to accommodate two berths (previous owner had two children). Might look at lowering the platform and installing a porta potti or even a proper heads. It did have one some years ago which was removed but the thru hulls are still in place.

coach roof

Two coats of ivory white marine gloss on the coach roof and cabin sides in between work and rain showers. Will probably need another two so that will be 7 coats in all including the undercoat. I like the ivory colour. Makers her look sleek and spacious. Much better than the dark blue it was painted before. Not the easiest job bobbing about in an inflatable dinghy trying to paint straight lines and avoid being swept away by the tide.

Contrast well with the bright work which has so far had 6 coats of marine yacht varnish. the hull will be dark blue and after that it's just the deck to paint and she's done and ready to sail. I would have liked to have removed al the paint and get her back to bare varnished wood but I think at some point in her life she has been neglected and the coach roof sides - built of heavy iroko - are badly split in places.

more painting

4 hours on my back

Well we've spent the past few months varnishing. There's a lot of wood on a folkboat inside and out and it takes a lot of varnish. So far we've put on about 7 coats and she's beginning to look the part.
Just by the harbour master's office there's a set of drying posts used for scrubbing the very few remaining commercial fishing boats on theTweed. With some trepidation and much internet research we decided to motor up on a high tide and let Chuckle dry out so we could inspect the hull and start applying antifoul and repaint the topsides.
Fortunately all went well and low tide found Chuckle upright leaning against the posts ready for some work. Just by the posts is a small fresh water stream and we used this to wash down the hull to get rid of salt deposits. The hull was in surprisingly good shape. A testament to the original designers, the ship builder and no doubt the previous owners.
In the time between two tides we managed to get a coat of primer and the first coat of antifoul. After that the weather turned and it started to rain ......and rain so we still have to undercoat and paint the hull.

In the meantime I've spent my time renewing the electrics and installing a new switched fuse panel and relocating the engine control panel bought from Japan at ridiculous expense. The old one was knackered and was operated by jabbing a blunt screwdriver into the ignition switch.
In between all of this I noticed the main halyard was lying in a mess on the coach roof. I began coiling the halyard into a neat tight circle. what  I didnt realise was that the the halyard shackle had come adrift and my coiling had succeeeded in dragging the shackle to the very top of the 40' mast!
Back to the internet for ideas on how to retrieve it. As luck would have it Chuckle has another halyard reaching to the top of the mast - not sure of its purpose. The boat hook fastened to this halyard, heaved to the top of the mast and then 4 hours spent trying to hook the shackle and bring it back to the deck. This is not easy" 

Off to Berwick upon Tweed

With all this talk of buying and selling boats you could be excused for thinking that we were experienced sailors. We learnt to sail in May 2015 after becoming members of the Berwick Sailing Club. I think I had sailed once before in a dinghy during a holiday in the Greek Islands but that was the sum total of our experience. And until very recently we had never been aboard a small yacht or had ever left the confines of the Tweed estuary.

Chuckle the Nordic Folkboat was berthed at Eyemouth harbour and she had been there since 2012. It's only a 15 mile trip from Berwick upon Tweed and we did consider leaving her there but in the end decided to move her onto a swinging mooring in the Tweed estuary. A couple of reasons for reaching that decision. Most importantly the mooring in the Tweed was free and she would be unlikely to suffer any damage unlike at Eyemouth where, rafted up to other bigger yachts,  her hull and deck were being constantly abraided from mooring ropes criss crossing her. To be honest, we werent too confident in how we would disentangle her from the other yachts in order to take her out and sail.

Moorings in the Tweed estuary are very difficult to come by. There then followed a lot of internet research on how to lay a deep water swinging mooring. Eventually we came up with this. 

 

It's a railway waggon weighing about 280 kgs with a couple of metres of heavy ships chain welded to it. From the ship chain runs 12 mtrs of 12mm galvanised chain leading to a large orange buoy and some very expensive mooring pennant with a yellow pickup float attached. My idea was the the waggon wheel would slowly sink into the soft mud and would take an enormous effort to move it. Just to make sure I also added a 40llb CQR anchor on a short length of chain. Sort of belt and braces job. One of the local fishermen was kind enough to dump the lot in our chosen mooring spot.

All we had to do now was to move Chuckle the Nordic Folkboat from her berth in Eyemouth to her new deep water mooring in the Tweed. It had to happen sooner rather than later not least because in a few days we would be paying visitor mooring fees of £20 a day.  

Fortunately there was a perfect weather window and so with a lot of trepidation we motored out of Eyemouth on a flood tide and after making sure we were well clear of lobster pots, turned south heading for home.  homeward bound

The entrance to the Tweed can be a bit tricky. There is a shifting sand bank at the entrance and with an ebbing tide with an onshore wind yachtsmen are warned against even trying to come in. But we managed and even picked up our mooring at the first attempt.