Where have 4 (yes that's four) years gone?

Looking back at my blog, I see that my entry for 1st May 2007 was Real Sawdust!
Where the time has gone I don't really know. That was the start of the build and what seemed like a pretty quick project to complete has turned out to be anything but! OK, so I shut up shop all winter, so my build window has really been April - October, so we're  only looking at 2 years work
Yes 4 years later and I'm still making sawdust and shavings. There really is very little needs doing, it's mainly fitting out rather than building, but today and yesterday I was still cutting wood, planing and sanding.  This was for the fabrication of the ballast supporting structure. This believe me is pretty critical. Those lead pigs are seriously heavy and I don't want them moving around.

I built some retaining boxes after glassing the bilge for abrasion resistance and extra strength. Each "box" is lined with closed cell foam to further reduce any possible movement of the lead pigs. There are 3 compartments each side,  two behind bulkhead 3 and one forward.

Here we have three little pigs mounted in their pen. The straps are left in place so that I can actually lift them out again. Even with this aid it's hard work. There's no way I can get my fingers in and gain enough purchase to lift these without them.


Here we have the starboard three clamped down with 12mm ply using 6mm bolts. it just needs a coating of epoxy and some tidying up to complete.
Whilst waiting for epoxy to go off, I also gave a lick of paint to some of the outstanding smaller items. This turned out to be not such a good idea. The wind increased throughout the afternoon and I've not got a lot of gritty  paintwork to rub down and repaint!

I also spent some time doing a couple of modifications to my trailer. When I loaded the boat on, which I did single handed winching straight off her temporary trolley, I encountered a bit of inconvenience with the rear rollers. I've now made some improvements and added a couple more rollers at the same time. I'll have to wait till I launch and recover to see if the mod is completely successful.