I can’t resist this midweek update. Having picked up the engine, anchor, stove and heater from Dartmouth I couldn’t wait to have a look at the slim folder of paperwork that Peter at Wooden Ships had been looking after. Disappointingly slim, no photos and not much detail of her history but it does contain the Certificate of British Registry.
The Original Registration
I love that the first few owners occupations are listed as ‘Gentleman’ I wish I’d realised and I could have put the same. 🙂
Obviously Flamingo attracts Gentlemen Owners…
This surprised me though. In 1963 for goodness sake!
1963 and still a woman is documented by her marital status, a man, his profession…
Some owners inherited Flamingo and couldn’t wait to get shot of her, some owned her for many years. My imagination is filled with the stories hidden in this skeletal framework, this brief snapshot of her life. Family holidays, lone voyages, wet weekends and sunfilled days, dreams fulfilled and dreams lost. Maybe I should write the book….. yuh, maybe get the boat finished first. 🙂
Arthritis is a pain in the arse… or to be more precise, a pain in the hands. Two days of paint stripping has left me swollen and sore but strangely satisfied. I made the decision to strip the whole hull and not just below the waterline to make sure there were no nasties lurking under the layers of paint, and though it has obviously vastly increased the work it has given me a better appreciation of Flamingo’s lines and reassured me that she really is pretty sound despite her tatty looks.
Losing the paint reveals Flamingo’s form and the striping of the planks accentuates her lines.
There seems to be a cove line running just below the rubbing strake. It has been filled in for some reason, perhaps to save hassle repainting, or perhaps for aesthetic reasons.
The cove line has been filled in.
Whatever the reason I think it might be nice to reinstate it.
Despite the aching joints, stripping paint in the warm sun has an almost therapeutic quality about it, my mind drifts to future weekends spent, not scraping and aching but sailing and basking… the sparkle of sun on the water the slap slap of water on the hull, perhaps the soft pop of a bottle being opened… bugger! Another burnt bit!
Taking a rest from scraping I get down below to remove the huge clonky sides of the fore cabin bunks. Very safe and reassuring in the rough stuff I’m sure, but almost impossible to get into your bunk. Anyway they are now removed and I can start to work out just how to squeeze a double berth into this tiny space.
Now to squeeze a luxurious bed into this space…
The blue line hanging down shows where the anchor chain falls. I think some sort of tube will be needed to direct it away from our feet!
All the scraping and stripping has revealed a lot of repairs. I’m not sure whether these are bodges or proper jobs, a question for the Wooden Boat Forum I think.
Patches cut in where the frames are bolted through
Slightly worried about how much the timber seems to have been compressed around the bolt heads!
Further inspection of the fore cabin reveals how the stem has been repaired. There is a solidified avalanche of epoxy resin that has poured down the inside of the bow!
Not exactly in keeping with traditional boat building techniques, but probably very very strong!
As I was stripping I wondered what these filled in holes might be for, a quick look inside and all was revealed, bolts for the running back stay pulleys. I love how the construction of these old boats is all there to see if you know what to look for.
Mysterious filled holesAll is revealedPulleys for the running backstays
Even though Flamingo is outside I’m still wearing a mask, and given the beautiful colour of the flames coming off the paint there is good reason.
Sitting down on the jobBeautiful but probably highly toxic.
In another break from stripping, arms and shoulders really starting to feel the abuse they’ve been getting, I looked again at the oddly shaped winch blocks. They are massive lumps of laminated teak or iroko with really badly chiseled out rebates. In the position I found them the “mouldings” didn’t really make sense but mulling over the issue I realised they had been fixed on the wrong side of the cockpit coaming… not only that but the wrong side of the boat too. 🙂
Big fat winch block in situ and living up to its name by ‘blocking’ the side deck.The odd shaped block for the winches removed.Winch block back where it was made to fit…
OK so it fits, but now that lovely back rest so beloved of my beloved is cramped and uncomfy, not to mention the restriction it will place on the G&T arm movement. No, they have to go, the winches will go back to their “original” coach roof mounting.
Original Coach roof mount for the winches?
I couldn’t resist sanding down a bit of teak just to see that lovely honey colour under the weathered grey…
A little bit of teak in the sun. She’s going to look so good!
A solid weekend’s work to make up for last weekend’s Taxi service and Cactus Hoopla making extravaganza. By the way, the school Hoe Down for which said cactus was made, was a roaring, or should I say knee slapping success. More beans than you can shake a marshmallow loaded stick at, more gold panning and tin can shooting than any child could wish for, delicious soups, line dancing, fire pits, straw bales and a country playlist to die for. Good work The Wells Free School! Worth missing a weekend on the boat for….. well almost.
I suppose Friday morning’s PFA meeting where I found myself volunteered to build a giant Cactus Hoopla game for the fundraising Hoe Down should have given me a clue as to how the weekend was going to pan out. Â Friday afternoon was gloriously sunny and I carried on stripping paint. Thinking about how to maintain the waterline I broke from the Darth Vader mask and blowtorch combo to make a water level. In amongst the collection of old cracked, leaking and slug blocked hoses in one of the many lean-to sheds, I found 12 metres of relatively flexible garden hose and 2 metres of clear hose. Imagine my delight when the clear fitted snugly over the ordinary and with a metre of it at each end I had a perfect length water level.
Water Level
Enlisting the help of Tilly to hold one end we discovered, in between ‘accidental’ soakings, “oh sorry sweetheart, did I get you?” 😄 that Flamingo is about 120mm low at the stern and listing about 10mm to starboard.
A bit more stripping paint helped me mull over the problem. Flamingo is resting on three 150mm x 150mm timbers and it seemed to me that the solution would be to jack the stern up, in order to remove the packing blocks of wood then drop the stern slightly, pivoting the whole boat on its centre support. Once the weight was off the bow I could remove the packing from there and then, pivoting on the centre again, jack the stern up until level. Once level, simply add blocks and wedges to taste… The fact that she is resting on acrow props meant that I could keep her  supported throughout.
So that was the plan, needless to say it didn’t quite work like that. Saturday was spent stripping varnish off the front door… (Of the house!)
The front door after stripping and sanding
Saturday night, impromptu dinner with friends which obviously led to drinks in the cockpit. The phrase ‘bitten off more than you can chew’ wasn’t uttered at all! Perhaps they were being polite.
Sunday, painting the front door with a disappointingly poo brown exterior stain gloop. Heartbreaking really to put in all that effort, sanding and scraping, and get such a rubbish result, but we couldn’t see any way to get rid of the black mould stains, so poo brown it is.
Mouldy old DoorsStripped, sanded, cleaned with white spirit… still mouldy.
Sunday afternoon stripping and varnishing (the back door of the house! I need to sort out my priorities…) and then finally half an hour to put my theory into practice…
Venerable Lorry Jacks still in gainful employ.
The stern is about100 mm lower but there is no sign of the bow lifting. I think far from pivoting on the central support she is just sinking it gently into the ground. I may have to employ another jack as a persuader at the bow to help…. But that will be a job for next weekend, when the boys are down and just itching to get stuck in helping with Dad’s project… Or, as is more likely, just happy to stand around laughing at the old man as he grovels about in  the stinging nettles and plays with bits of hose and old lorry jacks.
So I bought a new toy. Tool, it’s a tool! A propane blow torch with which to strip the paint from the hull. So far so good, I just imagined I would carefully, skillfully, heat (without scorching), the paint and then with marvellous dexterity, simply slide my recently sharpened scraper between paint and pitch pine, and perfect sheets of stripped paint would coil gracefully to the ground…. Yuh right! Firstly the paint is so worn and degraded that it turns to powder under my torch, second, while I concentrate on scraping the recently heated area the torch is scorching the next bit, thirdly, the super sharp scraper, honed on the advice of the wooden boat forum, digs into the wood at the slightest provocation… Actually no provocation is needed… It just digs in. However, half an hour in, and I’m starting to get the hang of it, there really is a fine line between just hot enough and ugly black scorch mark (as you can see!)
Back aching, arms aching, and only about 15% of the hull stripped.
The hull seems to have been painted with a multitude of colours and paint types but the base layer is red and has soaked into the grain of the wood making removal impossible. At least I can see any damage and assess which planks need replacing or patching.
A recipe for scorched planks and singed arm hair in the hands of the unwary
Spent some time with Sarah and Luke removing the safety rail stanchions, a bit more pottering saw the oddly positioned winches removed, and more junk and scraps of wood hauled up from below. The previous curator of Flamingo had hoarding tendencies that endear him to me, but we need it clear down there to see what we’re doing. The rest of the weekend was taken up with apple picking, apple pressing and lawn mowing. Not forgetting a BBQ on Saturday night to celebrate Emma’s birthday, an invasion of many splendid sons… (and one daughter) an escaped rabbit and clearing up after two young kittens who have just discovered the outside, and squeaky food you can chase, catch, and bring home to eat on the kitchen floor! Oh yes and in the process of catching Peaches (rabbit) we discovered a dozen eggs the chickens have been hiding under a bush. Work will be a doddle after this…
So I’ve been playing with ideas for how Flamingo’s name might appear on her transom. I know, I know, this is way off in the future, but I’m itching to get on and the weekend is so far away. Apparently, a steady income is necessary even when you are in hot pursuit of your dreams so I’m reduced to a bit of lunch time graphic design to keep the flame of enthusiasm alight. Speaking of flames… (nice link!)
Nice retro font befitting her era, and I like the floating OAnother retro font and another play on the flaming O gagA more ‘gothic’ font. Is it a bit “dragon slayer’? Perhaps it doesn’t need the flames…?Still like the floating O and kind of like the Flamingo….“Just popping up to the boat….” “just Flamin’ go!”mmmm maybe something like this
The weekend started badly, having grown used to not working Fridays it is always a shock to the system on the rare occasions when I do have to go in. My body clock is thrown, as is my colleagues. The day is peppered with….. ” what day is it?” and “but… but… RR is here so it can’t be friday”
Not content with shortening my weekend with work, fate had another treat in store in the shape of a visit to Southampton University with Toby. Though it was a treat to look around such well equipped  workshops and studios, and to talk to the staff and students who were equally enthusiastic about the course (Mechanical Engineering) it was still another day out of the weekend, another day not working on the project. However, Sunday dawned bright and dry and I set about finishing off the shelter.
Handy Billy
A makeshift handy billy, a kicking strap from a dinghy in a former life, helped tension the triangulating wire as I seem to have lost the fencing pliers and after a lot of wobbly ladder climbing, bruised knuckles and traipsing back and forth to the workshop, why is it that the battery always runs out when you are at the top of the ladder on one leg and just about to get a batten screwed in perfectly? Anyway, finally, I think the shelter is about ready.
Time to carry on with ridding Flamingo of the accumulated junk that is making it hard to see her potential below decks.
The previous owner didn’t believe in throwing any piece of wood away…. no matter how small.
From under the fore cabin bunk I liberated another piece of of mast ironmongery which, like all the rigging is neatly labelled… I sincerely hope the rest of the labeling is clearer than this though…
OK so this is the front …Huh? If that was the front, shouldn’t this be Port?Another Starboard….Well which is it!?
In the process of clearing out all the bits of ply and scraps of hardwood I enlisted Tilly’s help to see if some of the more intricately shaped pieces had a home in the locker as they looked like they’d been cut around the frames to make a floor in there. Having exhausted that activity in about five minutes, Tilly declared, “Daddy, when the boat is finished I think I will like it, I don’t like it now though, so I’m going back down to the house. Exit fickle daughter, stage left, or should that be stage Port?
Another discovery, the ‘Highfield’ Levers that tension the backstays turn out to be Laurent Giles Levers….. is this good? I don’t know but it feels good to have a something aboard from this prolific designer. http://www.laurentgilesarchive.com/the-yachts
A touch of class
Finally, two nice solid winch handles were unearthed but popping them in immediately highlighted an issue with the position of the winches. Every pump of the handle would scrape your knuckles across the guard rail wire! Thinking about it maybe the solution is just rotate the winches so they pump port and starboard not fore and aft… plenty of time to think about that.
I can see some sore knuckles resulting from the position of the winches
Lawn mowing took up a large part of the afternoon as apparently, unfair as it may be, all my other chores still have to be done….. it seems the world doesn’t stop turning just because I’m sitting in the cockpit in the afternoon sun dreaming of muddy estuaries and the smell of the sea….
Wrapping Flamingo up each night and unwrapping before starting work was obviously going to be a pain especially as I invested in a heavy weight tarp. So last weekend’s task was building a frame to support the tarp at a height that allows free movement on deck. This turned out to be rather high! So high in fact that the local timber yard didn’t have long enough lengths of 75×75 in stock.
Itching to get on, I bought what they had and spent hours joining lengths together. I’m hand tools only up in the ‘boat yard’ at the moment and ripping down lengths of soggy tanalised timber was hard work. Still, Sunday morning saw four frames all ready to erect.
As this was definitely more than a one man job I called in reinforcements in the form of my three sons, Toby, Joe and Luke, or, Harpo, Chico and Groucho as they might more appropriately be called. Despite being utterly incapable of concentrating for more than a few minutes without lapsing into some strange code language of FIFA 15 stats, and song lyrics, or leaping onto the deck for a selfie whilst uttering some of Jack Sparrow’s immortal lines, we did manage to get the frame up. All that was missing to qualify the day as a Marx Brothers Tribute, was some swinging plank gags and falling off ladder slapstick.
The reward was a well earned BBQ then some tarp wrestling to finally finish off my sedentary, desk job softened muscles. It still needs tweaking to make sure no water pools collect, and a few more braces for strength, but its not looking too bad.
Today’s task was to get the shed roof on, and weatherproof. I am pleased to announce, after a bit of a struggle, the task is complete. I could, I suppose leave this post there. all the key information has been imparted. Shed up. Roof on. Job done. However what good is this blog if I can’t vent a bit of frustration every now and then? So first I had to take off the tarp that was covering the shed, Tilly and I spent a rainy miserable bank holiday Monday (quel surprise) putting the shed up but ran out of day before the roof went on and had to wrap it in tarp secured with bungee. This is where the willful entanglement comes in. Unhooking the bungee it pinged back and slapped me in the face. As I started to pull the tarp, the wind got up and it slapped me in the face, somewhat annoyed now I yanked on it, it tore. More annoyed I started to pull the bungee cord through the eyelets…. more face slapping, and standing there with the tarp thrashing in the wind, my legs plaited with elastic and my face stinging, I thought, this isn’t boat restoration as I imagined it. No whiff of tar and varnish, no soft swish of a sharp plane blade slicing through wood, no sweet thunk of mallet on chisel.
Despite the frustrations, it was very satisfying loading boxes of rigging and coils of rope into the shed. I also popped over to Queenborough to pick up the acrow props that Jim very kindly offered to cut down to size for me, and stopped off on the way back to order the timber I need for building a shelter over Flamingo. I feel the momentum of the project is good and though winter is perhaps not the best time to be outside boat building I am hopeful that the decrease in gardening duties will mean I can sustain it.
Finally the delivery day is here and I am ridiculously excited. Excited and nervous. I know she has made it as far as Maidstone, Jason the driver text me to tell me that much. The sun is shining the ground is dry, I’m as prepared as I can be with tools, timber, my home made yacht legs, but still I’m worried I’ve missed some vital element.
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Toby is at Reading Festival, Joe is in France with a friend, so it is down to the A team of Luke, Tilly, Tracy and me, and frankly some of us are a bit bored.
The Squirrel Marine truck, inching its way down the hill, and riding high and dry on her trailer is a dream I have been chasing for more years than I can remember.
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After some very skilful manoeuvrings, The Flamingo has Landed.
With the assistance of Jim Brett and Jason Lengden of Squirrel Marine, the boat was safely propped and leveled. I had overestimated the length of prop needed so Jim has very kindly taken away 4 of them to cut down to size in his workshop, saving me hours of sweaty hacksaw and drilling. Definitely a good contact to have, with 30 plus years experience owning a boatyard and the designer of the rig Flamingo was delivered on. I’m looking forward to visiting his yard on Sheppey when I go to pick up the props.
I cant say enough good things about Squirrel Marine, (http://www.squirrelmarine.com/) if you need an expert in getting boats into tight spaces, you can’t get much better. The trailer is backed into position then a scaffold rig built over the boat which is then winched up allowing the trailer to be towed out from under it. You then place your cradle or base under the boat and lower, (we don’t like to use the word drop, Jason tells me) her gently down onto it. Not only were Jason and Jim, calm, professional and willing to spend time getting Flamingo sitting just right in her new home but they were also the cheapest.
The day ended with Tracy having a tour of my dream…. suffice to say it’s not her dream boat yet but I’m hopeful a few more sundowners in the cockpit may convince her…
 
justflamingo.com 
