Winter boat projects.

CLC Boats and other winter projects.

Hi everyone, after a short break from blogging, which even I had thought becoming stale, iv’e ditched a load of scheduled posts and only kept small relevant parts to edit together into shorter and I hope more compact posts. In this post, rather than just talking about one job and one project this post includes several ongoing jobs, two actual boat projects and an introduction to my writing project this winter.

One – clearing the stage and setting the scene.

Blog time : Winter is coming ! It’s late October 2024, as I write, this morning I went out to attempt a short walking circuit before starting my work here. This morning it was dank and chill with the heavy smoke from someone’s bonfire hanging low and heavy over a quiet landscape. It reminded me of times from my childhood when I walked across frozen or freezing fields in an almost mist to the harsh soundtrack of crows arguing away overhead. I think indeed that “winter is coming” and it presents a ‘chess game’ of problems to solve here as I set up for my winter projects.

It’s the kind of game where everything has to happen before everything else as firstly I need my boatbuilding space back for my long workbench so that I can get the soon to arrive Skerry under there but to achieve that the Pathfinder has to come out and go where the long and very heavy workbench is right now – the only problem with that is that the big pile of brush that is the result of my autumn work is right where the workbench has to go and that’s even before I have to heave it across to the other side of the yard such that it clears the space for the big Pathfinder to be rolled out : the only problem with that is that the little CLC Passagemaker is right where the bench has to go to do the Pathfinder move.

What has to happen first is that we have to get the big pile of brush, weeds and tree roots and thus far we aren’t having much luck with blokes with vans and waste carriage licences. Once that’s all gone I have a day of heavy work to do although this time I’ll have to be smart and use the car to move the Pathfinder and it’s trailer with and I also have to work on a method of moving the workbench…….and before that I have to……..

Two –Pathfinder jobs – the big spar shop swap.

I left the Pathfinder jobs alone for obvious reasons although I did have one go at selling her and then recently the jobs needed kind-of floated to the top of the permanent work list here so I gave attention to my logbook in which I recorded a whole list of things that I had to do to take it from just sailable to a functional expedition boat.

So far iv’e moved the motor mount to hopefully cure the leak that wasn’t really a leak and I am looking into having a smaller and much lighter engine hanging off the back. Last month I took the electrics project forward by fitting a solar panel and wiring that into the electrical system. I struggled and then failed with the next stage though which was to give the boat some interior, domestic, lights and a set of hull mounted navigation lights : my problem was that I couldn’t find a position to work in due to my poor core strength and balance and I found the fiddly electrical connections too much for my fine dexterity – I don’t know what or if there’s anything I can do about this.

The next things that have to happen are that the boat comes out from under the build shelter and goes into it’s outside spot alongside – it’s a pain to get it there and it’ll need a new and heavier tarpaulin rigged as a lean to. She’ll also get a wash session as she come out and then I can attend to the next set of jobs which is basically to swap the various spars around except for the mainmast – what the Pathfinder needs is a lighter mizzen mast and lighter main yard but a stiffer, thicker and stronger boom because the temporary wooden one was bending like so much soggy spaghetti.

My plan is to reuse the original heavy mizzen as a new boom, rig a lazyjack system to help handle it and make a new yard out of some thinner tube which I have in hand. My first piece of new work will be to finish the central boom gallows project as I have the stainless steel tube for it’s stanchions and really all it needs is a length of timber to make the crosspiece from.

Three – the little CLC Passagemaker dinghy

having recently completed the rescue/refit of the Passagemaker at near breakneck speed the little dinghy has been languishing on it’s trailer, at one side of the yard, for over a month. At first that was because I was still waiting for it’s sail and now because I made a total noob error when it came to cutting it’s spar tubes to length such that there wasn’t enough mast height to get full hoist on the yard and boom and not enough length with either of those to stretch the sail out.

This month I ordered new tubes and new fittings as I spoiled the Harken eyestraps which I pulled from my various parts bins, at the moment i’m a good few weeks into waiting for the new ones to arrive. Iv’e probably missed my narrow slot to launch the boat, take it for it’s first row and sail and then make my great experiment – which is for it to become my sail and camp or bushcraft boat project….see below.

Mast,yard,boom & sail all together for the first time – the brand new sail will go on the Skerry and the Passagemaker will get it’s original sail back.

Four the CLC Skerry – my main practical winter project.

The temporary end point of all of the yard moves is to be able to accommodate the CLC Skerry that I have agreed to buy – that’s from the same guy who sold me the Passagemaker as a very decent price. When we get it here the Skerry has to go straight onto my big workbench under the dry shelter as it’s going to get a complete refit. The Skerry has been my major boat-thinking project as I know that i’m going to heavily modify it over the winter and I have some ideas about videoing the whole project with the tools that I still have available – my main filming and blogging camera crapped out on me earlier in the year and my current plan is to switch to the little Gopro camera and learn how to use that. At some time I want to buy a new blogging main camera but have put that aside until I have bought and paid for the Skerry.

Right now i’m more excited than iv’e been in a long time as our man Daryl drove from his end of Devon to our end of Cornwall with the little skerry and even helped me with getting it up on the bench. So far all iv’e had time to do is take the gear off – there isn’t very much – give her a bit of a wash out and shoot some footage for the first ‘Sail.Oar & Canvas video’s.

CLCSkerry first look,

Five – the big idea.

A few months ago I had the first of two strokes that were clinically significant – apparently iv’e had a few before – and I used the recovery period to finish the big Pathfinder to a sailaway standard : ready for sea trials that is. While I achieved that I also had a second stroke or CVE and the second one affected me a lot more than the first. What iv’e never admitted online I do now, that for the first event I saw my own GP and was sent to hospital – I spent a tiring 26 hours just sitting around in the emergency department. After the second event I did try to contact my own surgery but failed, the phone lines were just rammed that morning, and I never went to hospital as quite honestly I couldn’t see the point – i’m basically on the right treatment and had no great need of a new medical diagnosis.

In my own life I pretty much came to the conclusion that my outdoor life was over and that I may as well just sell the Pathfinder as that project wasn’t a viable option any more although at around the same time I posted that I would look for a small dinghy that was light enough for me to handle manually and which I could take out on the local rivers – that’s the Tamar, Tavy, Lynher and the Hamoaze – enough to work with in a small craft. That’s how the Passagemaker turned up in my life and which led me on to the slightly longer Skerry – they have the same rig BTW.

The grand plan then goes like this : to combine sailing and rowing the bushcraft boat – which I hope eventually to be the modified Skerry, with what is often called camp cruising – I think of it as foreshore campcraft or foreshore bushcraft as I intend to camp or bivouac in a bushcraft style. The second part of this is that I am writing about the whole project as a post stroke potential book project and as I write today I have around 42* potential book sections already written so for the very first time one of my many book projects seems to have a bit of momentum as I work on it every day.

*Yes…..really 42 without even trying for that.