Progress?

 

The Twilight model is now in somewhat better condition. Everything was pretty much there, it just needed sorting out, glueing back together and a little paint. Bertie Bloomer was a career soldier in the Royal Engineers so she flies the burgee of the Royal Engineers Yacht Club in Chatham. We have updated Twilight's details on the excellent OGA boat register which is a dynamic and evolving source of information, even sometimes for boats that were wrecked 35 years ago.....

Yes, but what progress with Bonita? you may well ask. She is still in her mud berth under her winter covers. No major projects this winter, but I still seem to have been quite busy with minor jobs and regular maintenance. A long term project, both for me and for Dad when he owned the boat was tackling the horizontal cracks that keep reappearing in the cabin side. The lovely oval cabin  is made of a huge plank of wood steamed into a tight curve. Unfortunately this offers less resistance to the torsional stresses when sailing -and when people jump onto the cabin roof -than the usual rectangular cabin. Various filling compounds, hard and soft have been inserted into the cracks over the years with limited success. In the last few years I have been tackling the problem by adding in extra oak stiffening battens, stainless steel reinforcing rods and bolting the brass portholes more rigidly to the cabin sides. This does seem to have helped in stabilising the structure and I hope reducing the risk of deck leaks.

So what plans for the coming season? The St Malo Old Gaffers are holding a rally in early June so we hope to be crossing the Channel to join in. Otherwise, after a few years of longer voyages I hope we may be able to stay in local waters for some gentle Thames Estuary pottering.

OGA AGM, and gaffers big and small

 Things can be fairly quiet in the boatyard in the chilly days of January, but John and I headed off to Gloucester for the Old Gaffers AGM.  It was good to meet up with many gaffers and some old friends. Gloucester may be a long way from the sea, but it does have a dock complex and Nielsens boatyard where they restore large wooden sailing boats. We were fortunate to be shown around by Tommi Nielsen himself and the scale of the work they do, the skills involved and the machinery they use is most impressive.

Bessie Ellen has an active sailing programme every summer, and has just finished her winter maintenance including several new planks in the hull.

We often saw Kathleen and May, a 3 masted 126 ft schooner when she was kept at Bideford in N Devon. She is in the yard for a limited refit, but it seems as though a lot of money will need to be spent if she is ever to sail again.

On a slightly more humble note, I have been given a Falmouth Quay Punt, or rather a 1:12 model of one. This is the Twilight built in 1904. This very detailed model was made by the then owner, a Col Bertie Bloomer who owned the boat for 37 years, and tells the story of his extensive cruises in his book 'The magic that was Twilight'.

Sadly the original Twilight is no longer with us and in a moment of weakness I offered to help with restoring the model. It has perhaps not been cared for as well as it might, and should  provide something to do in the long winter evenings.

Up the creek

 Time to put Bonita into her mud berth for the winter, and Saturday seemed a suitable day. Spring tides and light wind, but not very warm. Luckily I had help from Allan and Toby.

Toby is the one in the rhino wooly hat. With Allan at the helm we got up the creek without any trouble, and the only hiccup came when we had a bit of difficulty getting the bowsprit out of the boat. 

Faversham has 4 community funded rowing boats that exercise going up and down the creek at weekends, and we saw a couple of these on the water. Its so good to see the creek being recognised as an asset to the community.

So we took a lot of gear ashore for drying out, overhaul or repair as needed and fitted the winter covers. 

After so much motoring in the Dutch waterways last summer I thought I should replace both fuel filters. The primary filter was certainly quite dirty.  I put in new ones and ran the engine with the prop disengaged for a couple of minutes, when  for no apparent reason it decided to stop. At first I thought maybe air had got into the system, but after a bit of detective work I found the fuel pump wasnt working. Taking it apart, it was clear a fragment of an internal valve cage had broken off, and the broken piece was still trapped inside the pump. Definitely time for a new one. 

Its tempting to think that this damage was in some way caused by changing the filters, but I dont see how it could be. This fuel pump was the one fitted by a Dutch engineer after its predecessor stopped working when we were off the Dutch coast in 2016. Then we had to send out a Mayday and got towed in by a Dutch lifeboat. I am grateful that this time the pump failed while Bonita was safely tied up alongside, and I was just trying out the engine. The best possible place for it to give up I suppose.

Update on the Gleniffer

 For some time I have been wondering what to do with Bonita's old engine. This was a 2 cylinder  Gleniffer engine of about 20hp, manufactured sometime before 1918 and installed in Bonita in 1927. It could be run on either petrol or paraffin. This was definitely a good quality engine in its day and gave generally good service until we replaced it with a modern diesel in 1983.  The Gleniffer company went on to make large diesel engines until they were taken over in about 1963 and Bonita's may well be the only one of their petrol engines still in existence. However the design of the internal combustion engine had undoubtedly progressed somewhat between 1918 and 1983, and by modern standards the old engine was heavy, uneconomical, vibrated the old boat more than seemed wise and could sometimes be reluctant to start. It is started by hand and you have to prime the cylinders with just the right amount of petrol and adjust the timing first, so it was a good idea to get it going well before it might be needed.  Since its removal the engine had been stored in my garage, although I set it up and had it running about a year ago. But what to do with it?

We made some enquiries and the Maritime Museum at Chatham expressed an interest. There is talk of putting it in a launch of similar vintage and maybe getting it working on the water again.  This seemed like the best hope for the future for the old engine and as a bonus would free up some useful space in the garage. I offered to donate it and get it to them . 

This in itself was a significant undertaking. The engine is very heavy: probably over 400lb, maybe a lot more. With Johns help, a car jack  and many wooden blocks we spent a morning lifting it up and slid it into the back of the van. 

When I got the engine to Chatham I was met by Nick and James and they appeared enthusiastic. We removed the engine using a hoist and fork-lift truck and with this help it came out of the van a lot more easily than it went in. The Museum have lots of projects planned and I was afraid the Gleniffer would join the back of the queue, however we wheeled it into their workshop and they seemed keen to get it going again. 

So I was a bit sorry to see the old engine go. It has given us good service and I have spent many hours listening to its regular beat both in UK waters and abroad. It was in the boat when my father bought her and he developed a profound understanding of its inner workings. Dad could be very resourceful. I was with him once when the engine failed due to one of the teeth breaking off the timing gear. We were coming back to our mooring at Erith in a flat calm. Dad not only diagnosed the problem, he drilled the timing gear, tapped in a bolt and filed it into shape to replace the missing gear tooth, then successfully restarted the engine. All the time he was doing this Bonita was drifting up the river and I was towing her rowing the dinghy to maintain at least some steerage way.

So I'm hoping we might see the old Gleniffer back in action in the river Medway off Chatham sometime.

And modern yachtsmen who can have engine power reliably and instantly at the press of a button don't know how lucky they are. 

The Gleniffer in its new surroundings.....

In the Locks

Bonita is having a well deserved rest while D and I rush around catching up with all the home-based stuff that seems to accumulate when you spend a month away. Readers might be interested in this picture of a group of Gaffers squeezing into one of the many locks on the Dutch waterways. Reserves of skill and patience are needed as most of the boats have bowsprits, many are difficult to manoever and some either cannot reverse, or at least not with any degree of predictability.  As always it helps a lot to have an agile crew who can anticipate problems including sometimes the skippers slow reactions.

The picture below shows Bonita on a previous visit to the Dutch canals. She is possibly in the same lock, the photo taken by our friend Trevor some years ago. D is on the foredeck waiting for the lock gates to open when all the boats will start moving again. D perfected the art of running out on the bowsprit to fend off other boats or sometimes harbour walls that had got in the way. This skill came in useful yet again on our latest trip.