After a difficult week where I didn’t get a single hours work on the boat I finally managed today to fix the problems with the setting of the roof frames so in effect I am back to where I was last Saturday night. In fact where I was on the 6th, 2 weeks ago! Anyway, sh*t happens.

As I said I had a difficult week that knocked my motivation around a little. I had a bit of an unexpected business setback, nothing to do with the build but sometimes life overwhelms you and it can either be de-motivating to the build or I use building to forget other problems and I get more done as I immerse myself in the build. I had time this week to do some building but I just couldn’t shake my disappointment and it meant I left the build alone for the week. Totally unrelated and totally silly but I am over it now and today I got back into it.

I was not the only one with problems this week. Unfortunately there have been some problems, misunderstandings, I am not really sure the correct terminology as I want to stay neutral, with the Nine Lives build. The builders and the owner have disagreed on how long the boat is taking to finish. Whilst I am not taking sides, it highlights the importance when hiring a builder to build you anything let alone a boat, of having the exact terms set out on paper so that there is absolutely no ambiguity about what everyone has agreed to. The upshot is that the builders and the owner have parted company with a little over a months work to go, maybe 2 months (that is part of the problem, how long to go depends on who you ask and when you ask!). New painters were in looking over the boat yesterday in order to quote on how much work is required to finish and what it will cost.

I guess when building your own boat and you only have yourself to blame if it isn’t finished on time!

Anyway back to today, I basically had to reset each of the frames. I started by cutting spacers to run in between each frame. I should have done this to start with, it ensures that each frame is the exact distance behind the one in front and is an additional brace to hold each frame square (provided they start square!). Each frame is supposed to be 400mm front face to front face from the next but because I have the memory of a goldfish at times I have inadvertently made some of them 400mm back face to front face and of course once you are out with one and you are measuring off the one in front then all of them become out from then on. Probably a better way to measure them out is to know the exact distance each one needs to be from 0 datum which is the way the plans set out the hull bulkheads but the roof plans did not set that out and I didn’t think to add the measurements up.

Once I had them all reset the correct distance from each other I then set about raising and lowering some so that there are no highs and lows. Last week James took a quick look at was I was doing and could see some highs and lows just by eye, so I fixed them today. The best way to ascertain which are high or low is to run a batten or straight edge along the frames that are the same height and it will instantly show any high or low, and with a batten in place screwed to the first and last frame (the ones all the same size) then lift those that were too low to the batten without pushing on it and those too high needed the frame lowered a little, this is a little more difficult but fortunately I did not have any too high just some too low.

I have run clear tape over the molds so that the planks don’t stick to them when I glue the roof strips together and also around the edges on the ply base. So now I am back to ready to start strip planking the roof. Maybe I can get started on that tomorrow.