Progress?

What progress since the last blog post? you may reasonably ask. At this point in the winter there often seem to be more problems than solutions.   The consolation is, I suppose, that problems you know about are an improvement on problems you havnt yet discovered.

I managed to get some 22m diameter wrought iron rod for the keel bolts, but the next difficulty is finding someone to hammer out the boltheads for the lower end. Heating rod of this size up to white heat and then riveting a head on it is not really the sort of thing you can do at home with DIY tools. William Crossfield would have just had a word with the friendly local village blacksmith; to do the same thing today requires spending a lot of time on the internet. I contacted a number of people who dont do this sort of thing, or who used to do it once but not anymore. However I think I have now found a blacksmith who can do the work but can't start for several weeks...

The cause of the leak that started this chain of investigation wasnt just deterioration of the keel bolt, it turned out that the keel band at this point had also rusted away.

Bonitas hull was built on an iron keelband, 5 inches wide and as long as the boat. This would have been the first thing that was laid down when they built her. It was probably a plate about an inch thick originally. Holes were drilled in this to take the keelbolts. The keelband is impossible to keep painted and has been gently rusting away for over 130 years. I knew this problem was coming but I had hoped that its replacement might be something that Bonitas next owner would tackle. Theres a section of keelband about 5 ft long that has perished and needs replacing this year and I think we can do that in steel plate. The rest of it should last a few more years. I think it should be all right to have the keelband in several sections- to renew the whole thing at one go would be a major undertaking.

I dont get the old boat lifted out very often, so it makes sense to look at any other jobs that need doing. For some months there has been a scraping noise when moving the rudder. The rudder head comes up onto deck through a wooden rudder trunk, whose diameter is only about 20mm greater than the rudder head, so its impossible to inspect with the rudder in place. I had hoped that the scraping noise might be due to a trapped piece of driftwood or perhaps a more adventurous than usual barnacle, but poking in the gap with a stick didnt help.  The only way to get a proper look is to drop the rudder out. Dropping the rudder out requires digging a hole about 3ft deep under the boat for it to drop into. I started on this a few days ago but with solid persistent rain the hole kept filling up with water and after a bit I decided to go home. I will try again when and if we get some dryer weather.

On a brighter note there is good progress with planning OGA60, the celebrations to mark to Old Gaffers Diamond Jubilee, and for the Round Britain Cruise for which Bonita has entered. It all has to come together for the start in Ramsgate on 26 April!

Winter projects

 Thankfully the blog IT problems should be now resolved (thanks, John) even if theres not much excitement in the content.

A few days ago Allan helped me get Bonita up the narrow winding Faversham creek. It was a nice sunny day but was blowing about force 5 SW which is more than I would choose for this manoever. We succeeded in not going aground this time, but we did have to negotiate one bend in reverse as we couldn't manage the tight turn going forwards.

The next day Bonita was lifted out by the yard. It always makes me a bit anxious seeing her dangling from a crane and it seems a rather undignified way to treat an old lady.

However the yard are always very careful with her. Here Bonita is being lifted by a 70 ton crane over the top of the motor boat with the stripey topsides to be settled down on the blocks in the foreground. 

The main purpose for having her lifted out this winter is to investigate the leaking keel bolt. This was removed without too much trouble.... 

The picture shows the bolt after it was extracted and cleaned up a bit. Although much of the strength is still there, the metal has corroded to produce channels along the length of the bolt, and clearly this is why the water was getting in.

What to do? Could I get away with smothering the bolt with some kind of water repellant goo and putting it back in?  Well, perhaps it might work for a bit. There is one firm, maybe the only one left in the world that still produces wrought iron from recycled material ( thanks for the tip, Kevin).  I bought from them some 7/8 inch diameter rod to make up into a new bolt.  Cutting threads on iron rod of this size with hand tools definitely gives healthy exercise. 

And what about the other keel bolts? I dont like having the boat lifted out more often than necessary, so it makes sense to look at them, too.

Shorter days

Apologies for the lack of blog posts about Bonita recently. There are two reasons for this - firstly that we havn't been very adventurous recently - just day sails from the Swale. A greater worry however is some IT difficulties with the blog. Unlike on the boat, the application of common sense and traditional skills dont seem to sort out the problems. Skilled IT help may be needed..... There are still some good sailing days after the equinox, but inevitably as the season comes to an end thoughts go to planning the work for the winter. This summer I began to worry about the keelbolts. Bonitas lead keel is held on with six bolts, each 7/8 inch diameter (22mm) and 20 inches long. Originally these bolts were of wrought iron. This is a marvellous material, not as strong as steel, but much more resistant to corrosion - the SS Great Britain was built of wrought iron in 1845 and much of the original structure still survives today despite decades of neglect before she was rescued. The wrought iron fastenings - probably of bog iron- are the only bits of the seventh century Sutton Hoo ship that have survived. Unfortunately wrought iron is almost impossible to obtain now, and people who claim to be able to supply wrought iron may well turn out to be selling something different. We think that Bonitas original keel bolts lasted until my father got them replaced in 1968. By then the 7/8 inch bolts had decayed to less than pencil thickness in their mid sections, so the job did need doing. The 1968 bolts I then replaced in 2003 with material that was sold to me as wrought iron. Over the summer however there has been a leak and ominous rust stain from around one of the bolts.

The picture shows the bilge with a floorboard lifted. The black patch is pitch that was poured over the nut and threaded end of a keel bolt. The rust stain has only appeared in the last few months and there is a slow trickle of water. The leak is only about a bucket-full a week, but its more than there used to be and clearly all is not well. The plan is to have the boat lifted out this winter, remove the bolt and have a look at it. They may all need to be renewed. And with what? Real wrought iron is even harder to get now than it was in 2003. Stainless steel might seem the obvious choice, but it is prone to unpredictable corrosion in the absence of oxygen. I suspect the best answer will be to use galvanised mild steel, and accept that the days when keel bolts could last 80 years without giving any trouble are probably gone for good.

Home

Sadly we were running out of time so we eased our way out of the marina at Pin Mill at first light and by the time we had got out of the river Orwell a moderate NE wind had developed. The persistant easterly winds day after day seem to be as much an unusual feature of this summer as the hot weather. We spent the day running with all sail up accross the Thames estuary and into the Medway, eventually picking up a buoy at Upnor in tbe last of the light. While we were off the Maplin sands we were fortunate to see the sailing barge EDME tacking up in the opposite direction, presumably to her home port of Brightlingsea. The sight of a championship barge making good speed to windward and thumping into the waves was very impressive. She soon disappeared into the distance.

On Friday morning John had to leave us to help out at a friends wedding so we deposited him on the marina waiting pontoon at Chatham at 7am and within half an hour he was on the train to London. Allan and I then tacked out of the Medway, with a bit of engine assistance against the persistent NE wind and spring flood tide. By the evening we were back on our mooring on theSwale. During this hot summer there seems to be much more growth of seaweed and sea grass than usual, and there seems to be more of this on the Swale than some of the other rivers we visited, though I gather there is a lot in the Solent as well. We had only left our mooring for a short week but during that time it had collected a huge mass of waterlogged weed. We were quite unable to lift the buoy aboard due to the weight of weed until it had been cleared off with the boathook. We hope to get in a few more days sailing in cooler weather later in the year, and with luck resolve the IT issues to add a few pictures.

Pin Mill

We got up at first light and left Walton Backwaters as soon as we felt the tide was high enough. We had hoped to get to the Deben, but our progress against wind and tide was too slow: you have to get through the narrow entrance to the river Deben before high water, and it became clear we weren't going to make it. Sometimes the best answer to a frustrating sail is to redefine your objectives. 

We decided to have a look at the rivers Stour and Orwell instead, so we eased off the sheets and had a fine sail with a moderate NE breeze. We anchored in the Stour for lunch then sailed up the very pretty Orwell as far as Pin Mill. 

We had booked in for supper at the renowned Butt and Oyster pub and took a visitors mooring buoy off Pin Mill. However we found it was too close to the next buoy, and with a wind over tide situation only constant attention with the boathook prevented the boats colliding and causing damage. The man on the next boat sounded apprehensive. It would have been a long row to the pub. So we dropped our (free) visitors mooring and instead took a berth at the nearby Woolverstone marina. We were still able to get to the pub on time - packed out on a Wednesday evening.

Coming into the marina Bonita was ably helmed by Allan - more challenging than usual as the new propeller doesn't seem to have the same power the old one had. While this is an annoying problem that needs to be fixed, it is good to have discovered it early when it can, I hope, be fixed relatively easily.