Hello, I Love You

When she arrived from her 3 hour motorway journey, to her new home in Sawbridgeworth, we found a 75 tonne crane waiting to do the lift, when we had ordered a 100 tonne. We also found a crane driver (seen in orange) who did not think the lift was possible.


So we had our boat loaded onto a truck, complete with driver. We had our pitch complete with fresh timber sleepers. Now all we had to do was convince the crane driver not to go home and leave us in a world of shit. The acting site foreman, Andy (seen in blue), insisted that the lift was possible having done this several times previous with his preferred crane driver, who was unavailable due to ill health.

The point of disagreement surrounded the cranes maximum distance on a pivot from the truck to the sleepers. The driver finally and begrudgingly agreed to set up to lift, measure out and prove Andy wrong. He huffed and puffed and paced out the distances before accepting that it might just work. So we went ahead.

Many thanks to Andy, without him, we would have been helpless.

Last Goodbye

As with any project you look for milestones and today was certainly one of those. The boat, formerly known as 'Boaty', would now pass from the experiened and wise hands of XR&D to a pair of charlatans masquerading as boat builders.

Walker Cranes provided the initial lift, out of XR&D HQ in Nottinghamshire. A 100 tonne crane lifted the boat onto a low loader, which would be driven down to the A1 / A14 / M11 to Sawbridgeworth.

We followed our driver, Ben, down the motorway and supposed that this would probably be the fastest that our boat is ever likely to travel.

We would like to take this opportunity to say a massive thank you to XR&D, particularly but not exclusively, Garry, Lee and Abdul. We are so happy we chose to go with them. The process was relatively stress free and quite often enjoyable. They made every effort to accommodate our 'on-the-fly' approach to design and guided our aesthetic ideas without compromising functional considerations. We found them to be reliable, trustworthy, personable, professional and talented. Hope to see you guys again soon, perhaps for a jaunt down the canal...

The Heat

As we edge closer to moving the boat down south, it is going through the final stages of the build - as far as XR&D are concerned. The pictures show the control panel for the BETA Engine, the internal battening and foam insulation. We also decided to insulate our water tank, which should minimise the condensation that usually drips down the side of these stainless steel tanks.

The foam insulation is sprayed in, at a minimum coverage of 25mm in thickness, which is a fairly modern technique for boats and will help to retain the heat.

Still Grey

As the boat is nearly ready for the second stage of the build, which will involve it being fitted out on hard standing in Sawbridgeworth for the next 6 months (MINIMUM!), we wanted to get a coating on top of the primer. XR&D graciously let us use their hanger for the weekend, though our target was to get it done in a day. We set up camp on Friday evening in Travel lodge Retford, after making the long drive up North.
With Adam as lead painter in tow, we arrived at XR&D base on Saturday morning at around 8.30am.
The first stage was prep, which involved lots of sweeping and then using tack rags to get the surface clean. Then taping from the end of the blacking, we would paint everything above the gunwale. Then we painted: the idea is to keep the wet edge moving, only letting areas dry as you finish them, but this gets complicated by the fact that you don't want to over roller any particular area and ruin the finish. Then add in the fact that you have to walk across much of the area you want to paint, it becomes a harder tasks than it looks.
We had to work out a methodical to route to take when painting, with surprisingly minimal arguing we found a rhythem and worked our way through the boat.

The shopping list:

• Jotun Hardtop HB BS381C 676 Light Weatherwork Grey 5l - x7 (worth noting we only need 2 tins for 1 coat). 
• Polyurethane Thinner 1.0l 
• 4" and 9" foam rollers 
• Tack rags