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We are getting there.

I have been trying to work out where to put my herbs and spices.  I'd thought to make a shelf along the stringer, but the stringer was too narrow and it all seemed excessively complicated for what I would achieve.  Then it occurred to me that I didn't really have a handy locker for tea, coffee, salt and pepper, etc, so I had the idea of combining the two.  

One way and another, I seem to have had innumerable distractions since I came back from Nelson and I've realised that when my train of thought gets broken, even for about 5 minutes, it seems to take me about an hour to get back on an even keel.  So I designed, if that's the right word, this little locker with only part of my mind, and in truth, have been worrying that it might look a bit odd.   

 It went together surprisingly quickly - I've had a bit of practice by now.

 Finding the jars was a bit of a mission: glass are nice, but they would have to be secured for offshore work, while plastic ones can fly about with gay abandon without doing any damage.  I saw some of about the correct size at Para Rubber in Whangarei, and bought a couple of dozen.  Then all I had to do was to make some little fiddle rails to keep them in place.  I think conditions will have to be very bad before they start falling off the shelf.

 I'm still ticking off the wiring.  My good friends at All Marine sold me a nice little 600 watt inverter.  This will be more than enough for running my computer, charging battery tools and powering a sewing machine.  I screwed it underneath the counter in the heads, adjacent to where the battery will be situated.

 I ran the wiring for the saloon lights, intending to screw them into place - another job ticked.

 However, the lamps need to be attached to a piece of wood so that the wire can go into the back of them, and the piece of wood needs to be fitted around the deck lining trim and the deck lining trim can't be fitted until all the deck lining is in place.  Net result: I couldn't fit the lamps.

 However, I could fit the transducer for the echo sounder, without committing myself irrevocably to its wiring, although I'm pretty sure where it will end up.  As ever, it was a bit scary drilling a damn great hole through my pristine hull.

 I used some purple heart to support the transducer itself.

And glued it carefully into place over the predrilled hole.  I forgot to take a photo of the finished job.  Apologies.

 Back in the galley, I'd been ticking away at the wee locker, with its various stages of gluing and coating.  Of course I had to fit hinges to the door and have come to the conclusion that my learning curve is completely flat where these are concerned.  I won't say how long it took me to fit the damn things.

 The next job was the really exciting one of putting down tigerwood on the counter.  My friend Murray, kindly gave me a few hours to help me cut up the timber - and by the time most of it ended up as shavings or dust, the weight was reduced to an acceptable level.  I dry fitted it.

 I dislike stainless steel sinks and, besides, they come in a limited range of sizes.  I decided to make one.  At first I thought I'd make it with sloping sides to look nice, but mature consideration convinced me that the sloping sides would simply encourage the water to come out when the boat is heeling.

 My right-angled joinery is usually 'more or less', but I wanted this to be a little more accurate than usual.  Phil and Mark had given me a special clamp some months ago, and this proved to be excellent for the job.  With set squares clamped in place for extra insurance the whole thing went together satisfactorily.

 I filleted it straight away, to ensure that the corners stayed true.  Some of the tigerwood, in spite of having been properly seasoned and properly stored for a few years now (!) goes berserk once it goes through the saw so sometimes it needs to be coerced into cooperating.  I've found I need to pounce on it just at the right time, glue it down and get a coat of epoxy on it to stabilise it as soon as I can.

 But it's soooo beautiful that it's worth it.  I lined the sink up carefully, fitting runners to the long sides so that I could screw it in place.

 Then - sheer silliness this - I used the lengths from the appropriate planks to make the bottom of the sink.

 The base is made from an offcut of 4mm ply. I had glued the tigerwood to it first, carefully marking it to that it would fit snugly, but will admit to being more than a little startled when it did.  I must be improving.

 So then I dry fitted it.  All tickety boo, no?

Well, no, actually.  God only knows how it happened, but when I came to glue it in, it point blank refused to come anywhere near flush and I had to spend ages trimming the runners to get it to fit.  I am still completely bewildered as to what went wrong.  On second thoughts, maybe I'm not improving.

 However, finally I got the planking down and the sink glued in and I have to say that I think it all looks pretty good.  The fiddle is being held in place by clamps, in an effort to persuade it that it would far prefer to be straight than bent like a banana.

So portholes to fit, cabin sole to cover, saloon table to make and then lots of varnishing and that will be about it.  Until I remember all the things that I need that I have so far forgotten!!

The bulk of the galley completed.

I'm sorry that I haven't posted for so long.  I went away to Nelson for a week and it took me two weeks to catch up on all the things I neglected to do in Nelson.  (I'd gone with good intentions of sitting at my computer, writing emails, doing tasks that I had neglected as Chair of the JRA, editing articles for the magazine.  Instead, I chatted with my friends, loafed in the sun, pottered around and did a lot of reading.)

I came back full of energy and good intentions, but although I have certainly been putting in the hours, life and hordes of visitors have slowed down progress.  However, I love seeing my friends and if it means that boat is launched a few weeks later than would otherwise be the case, well so be it.  But there are many times when I wish either that there were a few more hours in the day, or that I didn't need to spend quite so much time in bed!

 The next- indeed, tigerwood apart, the final - big job in the galley was making and fitting all the doors.  My technique, now, is to use Gorilla polyurethane glue for the initial glue up, and then let the epoxy coating finish the job.  This allows me to put the doors together more quickly and with less mess, one at a time.

 Any gaps where the panelling meets the frame are filled with neat epoxy, which also percolates between the plank edges.  The result is a very stiff, very light and very attractive door.  I should like to take credit for this wonderful concept, but in truth, they are exactly the same as the doors we fitted to Badger and China Moon.  The only difference is that this time I'm allowed to make the frame, as well as fit the panels!

 I fitted the slats for the vegetable locker, which, I hope,will help keep it dry.

 And remembered that the end of the counter still had to be cut and fitted.  So that was duly done and glued down over the cutlery drawer.

 The shelves being painted and the slats being coated, finally everything could be glued into place.

 One of the very good things about epoxy is that it doesn't require any pressure to set.  The little lead weights were quite sufficient to ensure a good joint.  The slats simply required pushing into place - and at the last moment I remembered not to glue in the final one, so that I could get my hand underneath for cleaning.

 I made up a tray for the second shelf down.  This is to hold my glasses, some of which are Waterford crystal, bought for 5 bucks each from the market.  Well, why not?

 This was made in exactly the same way as the shelf fiddles and, once again, I relied on the coating epoxy to finish off the gluing job.  It is surprisingly robust, considering how flimsy the materials are.

 Four more doors yet to make, so I set up a sort of production line.  This is the one from the veg locker.

 And these are the frames for the lockers under the cooker.  Made in this fashion, I can be sure that they will fit.  I wouldn't trust my measurements to make them 'on the bench'.

I dry fitted them into place before coating them and then facing the agony of fitting the hinges.

 The 'door' at the back is actually going to be fixed in place.

The only thing more heart-stoppingly expensive than barrel bolts, are hinges.  Some time ago I bought a length of brass piano hinge and I used this to make the hinges for the cabinet.  (This was Paul Marine's brilliant idea!)

 Cutting the rebates on the door was the easier of the two to cut, but I find it very difficult judging the correct depth.  My perusal of You Tube didn't help much (what's 1/32 of an inch in real measurements, for heaven's sake?)  For a start, they all assumed that I'd had the sense to plan the hinges before I assembled the cabinets.  Yeah right.

And then, due to a distraction, I drilled the finger hole on the wrong side of the aftermost (right hand) door, which meant that the hinge had to be fitted on a piece of wood that extended beyond the door.  I won't tell you how long it took me to get from the coated doors, to this stage, where they are sanded and fitted.

 But then, they all had to come off again so that the rebates could be coated.  I debated this, but some of the screw holes had been refilled with so many slivers of wood, that the doors and frames looked as though they'd been attacked by woodworm.  I lived to regret it: another distraction caused me to fit a couple of hinges to the wrong frames (having carefully set them down so that they went back where they came from.)  Because the hinges are individually made - 'crafted', I should say!- they were all slightly different.  But not different enough to be noticeable until I tried to shut the door.  It took all day to put the never-sufficiently-to-be-cursed hinges on the correct rebates.

However, the final result is rather splendid don't you think?

So now, I have a bit of trim and a spice rack to make, the portholes to install and I need to machine up a heap of tigerwood for the galley counter, the cabin sole and the saloon table.  Then I can fit the deckliner and call the accommodation finished.

I had been hoping to complete it by the end of they year.  Ah well, nothing wrong with hoping.

Shelves and more shelves

The galley fitout goes on and on, but I think I've got most things covered.  Some things I've had to accept I can't have - difficult that one! - and some things have morphed into another shape between sketching the idea and making the reality. And some things are still rather nebulous and could accurately be put under the heading of: 'I'm sure I'll think of a way of doing this'.

 One of the things I have successfully avoided up to now is door hinges, but finally, I've had to face up to them.  They are swine for a not-very-skilled woodworker to fit.  You have to chisel out a rebate for them.  If it's too deep, the doors won't close, it it isn't deep enough, the doors won't fit back in their frames.  I have a book that was supposed to help me fit out this boat and is full of ingenious ideas that generally I haven't been able to use.  One of them is a jig you can make for routing out the hinges. However, the jig looked more work than the hinges and, besides, there wouldn't have been room for it.  Well, there would have been, I suppose, if I'd thought about hinges long before I did anything else.

 I carried on making and fitting my kauri shelves, all of which needed coating, which slowed down the production run, somewhat.

 Other shelves are required under the cooker - for pans, for glasses and plates and under them will be the vegetable lockers and a rubbish bin.  The latter exercised me enormously - not only deciding just what to have - and how many - but actually buying something of the right size.  Why didn't I make it? - well, I thought it would be quicker to buy something, but I spent so much time looking, that I should probably have just made it.

 I was just preparing to put in the final shelf when it suddenly occurred to me that once it was in, I wouldn't be able to get in with a screwdriver to fasten the counter under the stringer.  I had actually sanded everything and was ready to mix glue when this hit me.  Thank heavens that it did!  It was something of a shock to realise it was now time to fit the counter, which had been hanging around so long it had become a fixture!

 So I masked everything off and placed drop cloths for the inevitable glue drips, did a mental check - was there anything else I had to do first? - and spread glue.

 The counter is considerably longer than I am, and needed to be manoeuvred around all sorts of obstacles and then pushed under the stringer without (a) getting epoxy on anything else or (b) scraping the glue off the stringer.  I was dreading the mess, but in fact it was all perfectly straightforward.

 Moreover, it ended up fairly level - level enough for me, anyway!

 By and large, there are few advantages to being a hobbit, but being able to get through narrow doorways to the far end of a locker is one of them.  I decided to leave the screws in - wielding a screwdriver was one thing, trying to fill the holes, something else entirely.  The clean-up didn't go as well as I'd hoped - I had a visitor and by the time he left, the glue had kicked off from flexible to hard.

The shelves under the cooker require painting.  I did hesitate over doing this - it means that things have to wait an extra few days - but steeled myself to the delay.  I am going to visit friends in Nelson, next week, and would have liked all the shelves fitted and doors made first, but the time required for painting will probably prevent this.

I cut out and fitted the counter over the stack of drawers and the whole thing is ready for its tigerwood, now.  Although before I can do that, I have to make the sink, something else I'm dithering about, not wanting to waste expensive and beautiful wood making a hash of things.  Why don't I just buy a stainless steel sink?  I don't want one. Yes, I know - me and my aesthetics, but there we are.

The vegetable locker is going under the shelves, under the cooker.  I am hoping this will be the least warm part of the boat.  I'm making slatted shelves - here are some of the slats sawn from kauri siding. I'm going to have seagrass baskets for the vegetables, which I bought some years ago on Nelson market.  The fact that I'm planning to spend a lot of time in shallow water and/or dried out could mean that vegetables don't keep as well as I'm used to - their locker might get too hot.  I shall just have to see.

Yes, I know I could have a fridge, and am contemplating one, but if I do, it will have to go in the lazarette.  I'm not sure if I can be bothered with the added complexity in my life. I think my decision will largely be dictated by space available under the cockpit.

Summer isn't far away.

In many countries, Spring is the cruellest season of the year, and New Zealand is no exception.  It teases and tantalises: warm sunshine and calm weather is followed by days of icy southerlies, which have me scrambling for warm clothes again; my fingers are numb as I handle night-chilled timber.

But last Sunday was one of those special days.  A friend had invited me to visit.  The morning I spent loafing on the verandah soaking up the sun and in the afternoon we drove to the coast and had a wonderful walk up to the top of a headland, where the views along the coast and over islands were sublime.  The green vegetation and the varying blues of the sea and sky reminded me that there is Life Outside the Shed.  We strolled along the beach, conversation rambling over a variety of topics - such fun.  The sun poured on my bare arms and warmed me through and through.  It felt like the first time I'd been thoroughly warm for months.  Such a perfect day.  It really revived me and was a wonderful reminder of why it's worth putting in the hours to get back on the water.

Good friends; beautiful scenery.  And I will get back afloat.  I have so much to look forward to and so much to be grateful for.

A couple of days later, the temperature plummeted, but the weather can't fool me.  Summer isn't far away and like most of those brought up in higher latitudes, I revel in sunshine, even when I'm inside the shed.

 Fitting out the galley is a big job.  There is a lot to think about, although I suspect I'd better make sure I have some spare wood, glue and tools around after I've launched.  There are bound to be things I haven't thought about or that don't work out.  There will be two large, shelved lockers and one will allow large containers, bottles, etc to be stored

 The other will have the shelves closer together.

 For maximum convenience, there would be a locker along the outboard edge of the counter, but the situation of the portholes precludes this.  One has to make sacrifices for one's art.

 Because I coat everything in epoxy, work in progress has a tendency to hang around for days.  The fluctuating temperatures at this time of the year don't help - if I coat wood before about 3 in the afternoon, it blows bubbles in the epoxy, because it is still warming up after the cold night.  So I tend to have big coating sessions just before I knock off. This photo shows the door being made.  I've found easiest way to make sure they fit is to glue them up in situ and then put a dowel through the joint, which makes it nice and strong.

 I then did my usual panelling with kauri. I've been using Gorilla foaming polyurethane quite a lot in the joinery: it allows me to glue things up as soon as they're ready.  I've tried PVA.  It works well, but any spillage makes a light stain on the wood that is difficult to remove and shows up badly under the epoxy/varnish.

 All right.  Don't laugh.  We all know I'm a bourgeoise woman.  But cutlery that crashes and slides about in the drawer is also very annoying at sea or in a rolly anchorage.  And that's my excuse.  Arthur's Emporium couldn't come up with green baize ("Baize?" asked the puzzled shop assistant.  "What's that?"), so I thought I might as well go the whole hog with some nice, girly pink.

 And, of course, everything had to have lots of paint on it.

 And here we are at the end of the day, with various items of woodwork scattered about having just been coated with epoxy.

 The door in place, still requiring a finger hole.  And, of course, hinges.  I know I'll make a hash of these, so am putting it off as long as possible.

 Big lockers allow for lots of stowage, of course.  However, unless things are packed in immovably, they will slide around.  So I'm putting dividers in to control this.  I hope I don't find that all my containers don't quite fit!  I could have dug them out of their various storage boxes and cubby holes but it just seemed too much like hard work.  That's why the good lord invented charity shops, after all.  Those that won't fit can be taken and replaced with some that do!

The area under and around the cooker is still at the planning stage.  Let's hope the plan is clear when I get there!