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This was the sorry sight lying ashore over the winter of 2002-3. As you see, we stripped her down completely and repainted her. A lot of work and a lot of paint!!

Before	After

Here are also a few photos of the making of the masts and sails.

We had the design done by Alan Boswell Naval Architect who designs rigs for the Junk Rig Association.

The design called for 7" masts made of aluminium tube with 1/4" walls. The main mast is 13 metres long and at the time we could not locate anyone in the UK who could or was willing to provide us with this sort of length. After much consultation and researching many avenues we decided to make our own masts sleeving three tubes per mast.

The maximum length of tube we could obtain was 5 metres so we managed to buy 5 metre lengths of 7", 6½" and 6" diameter. With the ¼" walls, theoretically they should slide into each other and form a mast of the size that we were looking for. However we soon found that with aluminium it is very difficult to find a tube that is perfectly round and after some precise measuring we found that we needed to shave off about 40 thou from each of the spigots that we were going to insert into the next size up.

We are very grateful to our good friend George Riches, the owner of the workshop where we did all the work. Thanks George.

Here we have one of tubes on the lathe ready for turning. None of them were perfectly round so it took a lot of trial and error to get them right.

masts02

masts302

To join the sections together we used an old anchor chain coupled to a 4' length of 1" threaded bar and a lump of steel at the other end and literally squeezed the components together using copious amounts of Araldite.

Here the tubes are beings squeezed together with the Araldite. We used Araldite Precision because it was a slow setting compound, which would give us plenty of time before starting to cure. Each joint is a metre long so should hopefully never move!

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workshop2

We also made all the mast fittings, which included the mast partners at deck level, the mast feet sockets, and here I am welding the mast head fitting. All the fittings were made of mild steel and then hot dip galvanised.

Here Pat is putting the final touches to the fittings before galvanising

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Making the sails and spars.

We used normal 8 oz dacron sail material - in tan of course.

sails

To make the sails we needed some space to be able to lay out the material to the full size. For this we were fortunate to be able use the premises of the local Sea Scouts for which we were extremely grateful.

A good friend, Gavin Shaw, who used to be 'in the trade' still had his old sewing machine. He certainly did us proud. In two long days we had both sails all stitched up.

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sails4

It was then back home on the lawn to fit all the grommets. We intended to stay comparatively 'low tech' and use lashings to attach the sails. We needed 170 grommets for each sail!! Long hours!!

The battens and spars we made out of Douglas Fir. This is a fairly strong timber usually with a straight grain and very few knots.

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sails3

Making up the sail bundle. Here we are lashing on the yard prior to attaching the boom and the battens..

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