Starting

Gentle reader, you have probably realised that the boat build has it’s special B time/ space¹ and the builder has been lost in B space for the last few months.

Nonetheless, I think it’s time that I ensured that B time and space coincides with normal time: after all, it is the start of a new Decade.

I hope you have enjoyed the festive season. The Owners Agent and I have been mildly cultural, taking in a ballet and a couple of exhibitions in London rounding it off with the latest in the Star Wars series. But the boat build has not been forgotten and it’s probably time to get this blog up to real time.

I left you (only last week) in late October, having brought the flat pack boat to the tent in the cow shed, now known as the boat shed. The sheets have been unpacked and some of the parts have been cut out and it is now time to make a start. There’s a lot of gluing to be done.

Several of the components are more than eight feet long ³ ,which is longer than the plywood sheets – so they have to be joined. They have cunningly shaped fingers at the point of the join – the slight snag was that they were cut from the sheet with a slightly under sized cutter, so could not be coaxed together, even with a large mallet. Happy hours were spent fettling the parts to fit. The weather turned cold which would have made the curing of the epoxy glue a long time affair (if ever). So, with the Owners Agent’s permission, these were brought to the warmer house.

The “fingers” forming the join of plank 1 – the bottom of the boat

The gluing went well but there was then the problem of taking these now long and flimsy parts back to the boat sheet. A couple of builder’s old planks⁴ solved the problem.

Now it was time to get the workshop really ready!

Getting ready.

But B time is still several weeks behind normal time.

Notes

1. L space derives from Terry Pratchett and the library at the Unseen University. Time slows down in L space and all L spaces are interconnected²
2. At least, I think that’s the idea – go and read the books yourself
3. Approximately 2.44 metres for those of a Napoleonic disposition.
4. Remember, the boat shed was a builders junk lot after the last calf had left.