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.