Teals life in Ireland

Yielding no results

2012-02-24T14:20:00.001-08:00

So phone call after phone call but still no keel, We drove out to a local saw mill
on Monday also, but the only piece there is a few feet short. The most promising
one had logs long enough but on cutting they were poor quality.
I'm going to contact the local builder providers again tomorrow and if the lengths
of Iroko they had are still there we might pay the extortionate price that their
charging for it just for convenience and the ability to move on. With the saving in
fuel and the fact that the off cuts will be very useful it might work out well,
we'll see tomorrow.
On the plus side we found a forge that are going to replicate the Iron floors
for us, albeit in steel which we'll get galvanised.
I hadn't realized that wrought Iron was no longer readily available.

Waiting

2012-02-19T09:40:00.000-08:00

So the waiting to find out about some Oak goes on, Every week I
call places back they say another week so not much I can do. Hopefully
tomorrow morning I will have some news on it. In the mean time I've
made some false "kind of half garboards" to fill the rabbet, I really only
did this firstly to practice spiling and secondly it gives me the true size
and shape of the keel prior to rebating.
I also went and cut templates for 5 of the Iron floors because unfortunetly
when the rust came off they have thinned quite a bit and will need
replacing as well. We're going to try and find a blacksmith to replicate
them but failing that she will probably get welded steel plate floors instead.

New Tamar Lifeboat

2012-02-15T08:25:00.000-08:00

Took a break today to go have a look at Baltimores new Tamar class lifeboat
the "Alan Massey" arriving. Its a big beast compared to the last one.
As nice as it was to look at, lets hope she spends most of her time high and dry
in the boat house
http://www.baltimorelifeboat.ie/welcome-home-alan-massey/

Need to start putting stuff back

2012-02-14T13:48:00.000-08:00

We went down today and done what we could,
The guy who had been laminating up the stem before we bought it had
stopped the plank end fastenings with epoxy so Ken began uncovering
them but after a chat with Liam we decided just to change the lower
bit of the apron and leave the laminated stem be as its not a bad job
and just needs finishing off,
Then we set about dropping out the deadwood, which after removing
the concrete either side and putting it mildly "removing" half of the stern
knee came out quite easily.
Now we really need to press on with the keel before we can continue with
frames, floors etc

Aft deadwood

Cans sealed down and filled with diesel to try and loosen old keel bolts

Why the keel needs replacing

2012-02-12T03:01:00.000-08:00

The aft end has lots of repair patches and actually broke off as I lifted it on to the stand so I had to nail it back on.

Rotten frame fastenings were protruding from the center here


Splitting and rot under the bow knee, it no longer held the dumbs attaching the bow knee

The keel was made from Elm and is showing its 98 years of duty

Here ya go Leo

2012-02-07T11:40:00.000-08:00

Got a nice bit done today, Ken removed the cockpit, I cut the keel loose.
We got the keel out without much hassle and finally got to have a look at
the 98 year old floor bolts. They were as you would expect.
Best of all theres not much left to remove.

Some Progress

2012-02-01T15:36:00.000-08:00

So we got down as planned on Tuesday morning and despite the forecast for
imminent rain it actually stayed dry. The boat had already been moved so we
got on with shoring her up.
The keelbolts opened without any hassle bar one which we had to chisel into
the keel and cut off with the saber saw, The aft keelbolt which was hidded
under a metal plate had apparently been replaced with a wooden dowel, not
ideal.
We lowered off the ballast without much hassle and left it aside. I went back
down today and finished shoring her up so we should be able to jack her
up and remove the blocks under the keel when we're ready to slide it out
and just block it back up with a 9x3 in place of the keel to carry the load.
Also I finally got hold of a camera so heres some pics of this and that.

1 1/4 ton of cast iron

Not much good there

The bow knee was very weak and brittle

Wooden keel bolt !!!!!!!!

All striped out

All shored up and a bit of primer on the bare wood

Whats going on

2012-01-23T15:45:00.000-08:00

I've been contemplating writing a post for the past two weeks but I wanted
to have some progress made and some photos taken, Unfortunately the
camera charger has yet to reappear,
I've contacted a man who says he will have the keel timber for us but when
I rang yesterday he said maybe next week so We'll just have to wait and
see with that one, It will be worth the wait if he has it because his prices
sound very good indeed, less than half what I expected.
We went to the boat last Friday and took templates of most of the starboard
sawn frames, They should be close enough to use for picking the grown
crooks for both sides, We also took down all the timber for the stand we
need to build, Unfortunately we didn't have everything as Liam offered
to move the boat for us, Anyway Ken wasn't feeling good and that was
apparent from the gas leaking from his rear end, and the weather was crap
to boot, Its probably a good days work to get it done.
I went to town to today to get the Iroko to make the new rudder as I can
get on with that at home but when I got a look at what they had in stock
I decided it wasn't good enough for what they where charging so there
going to order in a few lengths of good quality timber for me, Its only
two lengths 2.300x200x80 and 2.500x200x65 and that works out at 150
euros. I know the rudder isn't a priority at this stage but I can make it
at home and I would like to see some progress and at the
end of the day we need a rudder.
I also picked up 5 lengths of M12 treaded bar, 10 bolts and 50 nuts and
washers for making the stand so I think we're ready to go with that.
One other thing we got done was to cut out the steel compression post,
It had to be removed to get the bow knee out and the floor bolts under that,
We also uncovered the mast step so she did indeed have a keel stepped
mast originally as we had expected, We plan to return it to a keel stepped
mast but thats a long way off yet.
Hopefully my next post will show some real progress and have some
pictures as well.

How she looked

2012-01-12T13:17:00.000-08:00

Just a pic or two of Teal, The first one was taken on the Baltic in 04 or 05,
Images borrowed from www.midsummerenergy.co.uk
Just to give you an idea of just how pretty a boat she will be when restored.
The second pic was in a 1914 issue of yachting monthly, Her original owner
Percy Woodcock wrote an article named 'Our new ship' which was featured.

Looking for Oak

2012-01-09T04:33:00.000-08:00

So can't say a lot has been done since the last post but there is a definite plan of
action at least, The yard is pretty busy with trawlers and such so Teal still sits
on the forklift, Once some space has been made we're going to make up a frame
to support her in a way that leaves the keel free to be removed and as we sit her
on to it we'll let the ballast come away. For the keel we need a length of Oak
15"x5"x15' . It will probably take a bit of searching to get hold of that and quite
a few phone calls as apparently people who sell timber don't respond to emails.
The only other job I've done was to measure up the rudder for its replacement
and scraped some paint off of it to see what timber it was made from. On doing
that I found a nice crack running right a long the lower rudder plintel , Could
have been nasty had it failed at sea.

From what I can make out her rudder, keel and deadwoods are Elm, I know her
original transome was wych elm so the rest are probably the same.
The new keel will be of Oak but the rudder will probably be of Iroko.

2011-12-29T10:41:00.000-08:00

Garboards out, Nice hole in the deadwood, On the plus side the garboards themselves are in really good order, Got some measurements so time for timber shopping.

" Do ye want to make a right job of her "

2011-12-27T12:51:00.000-08:00

So first job we done was packed up all the rigging and loose gear, brought it
home and put it away. Next up was to rip out all the fixtures, Bunks, sea toilet
etc and give it a proper inspection,
On doing that Liam stuck his head in for a look and on seeing all her doubled and
frankly quite messy looking frames in her rear quarters asked if we want to make
a right job of it, to which we nodded a "yes" . There goes sailing in 2012.
So whats on the agenda now.
Well with it being Christmas there is not a lot happening at the moment but I did
go down on Christmas eve and done some measuring and documenting of things,
She has 22 sawn frames made up of two futtocks with a butt joint and a doubler,
9 of the lower futtocks are soft or split, we may end up changing all of the lower
futtocks if we decide it would be worth while.
Between each set of sawn frames there are two steamed ones, 40 in all, 10 of these
have doublers and will have to be removed and replaced with new.
The first job and this is a big one, The keel needs replacing. Liam has already
condemned the bow knee because someone has cut the bolt heads off and a notch
has been taken out to accommodate a shorter Keelbolt , We also need to take the
ballast off to replace the bolts through the floors so they will also be out of the way,
Then we will have to see what condition the deadwoods are in and hopefully just
replace the bolts through them but thats probably wishful thinking.
The sternpost and transome I will look at when the keel is done.
So yes we're going down the rebuild route, We hadn't ruled that out anyway and
at the end of the day we feel the boat is well worth saving.
The next thing I'll do is remove the garboards and get a proper look at the keel,
We also need to get the ballast off so we can get her covered up and remove the
cockpit. I can't wait :D

Its arrived

2011-12-19T11:35:00.000-08:00

Finally after ferry delays and Lorry trouble Teal finally made it to Oldcourt and is now sitting on a forklift waiting for some space to be made.
We started by wedging the car full of all the bits and pieces we could get into it but we'll need another trip to get the rest of it put away.

Never saw a boat moved like that before

Ken gets to see what I spent his money on :D

We're going to start by removing the rest of the interior, the sea toilet and the cockpit to make room for
repairing the frames, She has sawn frames with two steamed frames between each of them, a few of the sawn ones need work, two due to rot where the cockpit supports attach below the companionway and a few others have splits, four of the steamed frames in either rear quarter have doublers and we'll probably remove all of them and replace , I'm sure there will be more on closer inspection.
The ballast keel will probably be the first thing to come off, The keelbolts are new by the looks of them but they only go through the wooden keel and that is then separately bolted through the iron floors, The bolts through the floors are a complete unknown and probably 98 years old. Without them the ballast would essentially be hanging from the garboards so we're going to go to the effort now for the sake of it.
Wonder what we'll find in the process ?????????????????????????????????????

Classic boat Magazine

2011-12-10T14:27:00.000-08:00

There was this write up on "Teal" in Classic Boat in 2007 following her quick fix and trip to the baltic.
I got a copy with the boat which was nice.

Update

2011-12-09T00:59:00.000-08:00

Looks like the boat will be on its way by next Wednesday evening, and in Hegartys Thursday morning. Our Christmas present to ourselves for 2011.

Intro

2011-11-30T13:10:00.000-08:00

This is the long boring bit, My introduction to the blog ,

Its my first blog and our first wooden boat,

This is how it came to be and what we plan to do with our new boat, a 1914 Falmouth quay punt named

“Teal”

I'll build a clinker dinghy I thought, I bought the book, set up a workshop and even dragged some 15ft logs of Larch out the woods. This was the answer, build the dinghy, learn the techniques and some time in the future buy a project boat, Probably a folkboat and restore it. Great

First problem as it turns out, I don't really want a dinghy and secondly I don't want to wait, Not that it

would make a difference as I have no money to begin with.

Finally after many, many a evening sat in Ken's kitchen going back and forth over what we

wanted and how we could possibly afford one, a utterly useless attempt to beat to weather in Ken's

Mirror offshore put the final nail in the coffin and we put it on the market with a rather low price tag

and made a sale, so we now had about half enough money to buy something worth while so the next option was to sell the only other thing I had of any real value and got rid of my van.

A trip straight to Hegarty,s boatyard planted a new seed, maybe, just maybe we could afford a traditional boat, perhaps a Gaff rigger , a prewar Hillyard or something even more interesting,

We heard about falmouth quay punts, Liam Hegarty was expecting to get one in himself but she

turned out to need more work than we were really up to. We watched and waited for something to turn up but lost hope of finding a quay punt and turned our attention back to folkboats and various other

rotting hulks, but not much was turning up and we had become more and more sided towards a gaff rig.

Eventually a boat turned up in Scotland, A quay punt at that, So I made several phone calls and inquiries about transport and decided to go have a look, We narrowed it down to a few dates that suited to travel but on looking at the cost of flights they had sored up, Ken decided to take a quick glance to see if anything else had popped up, and there it was, TEAL just up for sale and at a price we could afford.

I had read about Teal on several occasions but had looked past her as she was way out of our price range but had a very interesting history and a lot of pictures of her looking very pretty under full sail.

Although I had previously stumbled on a forum post saying she would soon be for sale again I hadn't realised that the previous ad was several years older and she now needed work again.

Contact was made and flights booked without delay, I took a one day trip to London where her owner, A very nice guy called Rob collected me a drove me down to Kent to see her.

There she was, just as described and looking surprising bigger than her 21'6” but with beautiful classic lines. Shes a gaff yawl, built in 1914 for a writer named Percy Woodcock and has had an interesting life, she was sailed engine less to the Baltic and spent two seasons there before she was put ashore this time. I won't go too in dept into the history at this stage as most of it is already available on line and it'll be more interesting when I have got some good pictures and the work is in progress. Any way the story goes on and a deal was made and I flew home ( bit ironic flying to buy a boat that was built long before you could have flown anywhere I thought).

For now thats where the story ends, Hopefully in the next week or two she will be on the back of a lorry on her way to Hegarty's where we can get stuck in and try and bring her back to her former glory

or at least get her back on the water for the time being.

I'll be keeping the blog up to date as we progress from here for anyone who shares an interest.

Welcome along.