3158Hrs – Ramping Things Up Again

A decent day today with six hours of boatbuilding work completed.

It always takes me a while to pick up momentum again after any prolonged break and this time has been no different. I’m not really working to any plan, there are loads of jobs to go at so I’ll just pick and choose according to my mood and the weather.

Today it’s been pleasantly mild for early October so I opted to carry on with work on the stern ramp.

I got it sitting nicely on trestles with the lower face upwards and set to glassing the joints, filleting and coating all the exposed timber with epoxy. I also fitted two cross braces to add strength.

The ramp shown in the plans simply has netting and a rope ladder fitted into the big hole in the middle. I want something a little more substantial, and right now I’m thinking of using two aluminium ladder sections positioned with a gap between them that will take the keel of the nutshell pram dinghy.

I’ve got a couple of tatty ladders at the barn so I’ll have a bit of a play tomorrow.

Here’s a piccy of the ramp after todays work:

To finish off the day I knocked together a couple of steps to go inside the deck pod. Because I’ve lowered the deckpod floor it’s a big step down from the side decks into the pod. These steps make the journey a lot more comfortable and I’m also going to cut away the fronts so that the space underneath the step can be used for stowage.

Finally I’d highly recommend checking out the new blog I’ve added to the ‘Wharram Builders’ blogroll. It’s called ‘A Cat Named Dog’ and documents  Chuck Valleys Tiki 38 build. Actually there’s nearly as much content about his house as there is about his boat, but don’t let that put you off, the work he’s done is amazing.

I love how Chucks writing reflects his sense of humour, it’s a great reminder that none of us, and I’m certainly including myself, should take ourselves too seriously, oh and there’s some cool new music to discover on there as well.