Or some progress ?

Oar-some progress perhaps.

Blog time, Pathfinder progress report, end of March 2023. Progress has slowed down again after my hard push with the trailer jobs during early March ; everything is done with that now except for the parts being fabricated, welded and galvanized down in the city. Iv’e made the actual draw-bar extension piece for the trailer which is a 3 meter section of 50 mm square section galvanized steel which now has a towing hitch on one end and just needs the trailer brackets finishing before I can use it. I think iv’e even found a way of stowing it on the trailer which will be a better option than my original plan which was on the car’s roof rack – this way the trailer can sit complete all of the time.

One last hiccup did happen in that I made a noob error when ordering the spare wheel because there are two ‘standard’ wheels advertised on the company’s website and of course I didn’t go check the actual wheels so I went and ordered the wrong ones. The wrong wheels, by the way are wider ‘balloon’ tires and their appropriate wheels which are about 6 ” width rather than the 4″ ones fitted. If I have any problems with ‘soft’ slipways then I might swap my existing wheels to wide ones with new mudguards next winter and just carry one of the ‘narrow’ wheels as a spare – bit like a space saver ‘get you home’ wheel on the car.

The main reason that work outside has slowed right down to a crawl is that there’s a huge depression sitting just offshore in the north Atlantic and it’s been chucking a strong gale (50 mph +) at the west country and it’s raining hard too. When big depressions happen like that they often blow hard from the south east first – which blows straight up the valley here and in one end of my ‘dry’ shelter. Right now quite a lot of the scenery is blowing about the place, small children and dogs all tethered down etc etc.

When it’s been dry enough to work iv’e fitted the Bronze oarlocks and put the new oars on to see how they look – my actual plan was to pull the boat out from under the shelter and fit the oars for width and find the best position for the transom sculling notch – that’s going to have to wait until this gale has blown through but I did make up a couple of bungee slings and mount a couple of eyes to hold the oars in position….that’s the standard ‘stowed’ position I plan to use as in the photograph.

The other job iv’e been doing this week is fitting the transom mounted engine mount because it seemed a reasonable idea to get it done now even though my actual voyaging plans are sail, oar and paddle rather than motor. I think i’m just going to have the smallest reasonable outboard motor I can get away with which I think will be a 3.5 Hp Tohatsu with a long shaft …..to be honest i’m hoping to not motor very much but I can see situations down here where I might want to.

This is the kind of job that would have been far easier had I thought about it and made provision for a motor mount early on when I still had the back of the cockpit open. As it is it took a long time and at least 5 tries before I managed to find and measure a datum line which is formed by the bottom edge of the internal bearer/cleat that the inside seats/deck are mounted on. Every time I measured that I came up with a different answer and it had to exact because two of the fasteners were going to go through the cleat/bearer and then I also had to find the external line to match the internal aft bulkhead because bolts were going either side of that too……I also had to cut another hole in the aft internal deck so that I could get at the bolts and that means fitting another waterproof access hatch – I didn’t want to do that but it will be hidden by the stern deck.

The green tapes mark the datum lines for the seat bearer and internal bulkhead and the plywood pattern is my model taken from the engine mount itself. The bottom outboard hole goes through into the sealed dry compartment which is where a new hatch is going to go instead.

I think there is going to be a delay and hiatus now because I would have been fitting the standing rigging next week and putting the mast up properly for the first time but…..the rigging is now 2 weeks behind schedule which means that I still haven’t measured for the sails which means my order hasn’t gone in and the sailmaker will now be busy with the easter rush. That puts any launch date back by another month I reckon although i’m a bit tempted to splash out on an engine, launch the boat and do some sea trials and tests with rowing and sculling……not in 50 mph of wind though.

Oar-some !