Slow Going - too many interests!

The weather has, by and large, been fantastic this last week but unfortunately the combination of work, athletics, decorating and grandchildren has not allowed me to progress on the Potter as I had planned. However I managed to squeeze a couple of hours on Saturday to tidy a couple of areas up and measure the rear bulkhead which is completely missing. It would have been helpful to have an accurate drawing but I guess the manufacturing plans have all been lost to the mists of time.

I also have to find a way of getting at the bulkhead that is at the rear of the cabin, under the cockpit. It looks in poor shape, like all the other wood has been, but I'm not sure how best to reach it. The area under the rear of the cockpit, forward of the rear locker, is stuffed full of polystyrene foam which is jammed tight, but I think I have to remove it to be able to inspect the bulkhead. If I have to replace that as well that is going to be a tough job without taking the top off, we will just have to see. Of course to do this job properly I should remove the upper moulding but that is a major step I don't want to do.

At all three corners the join between the hull and deck has been covered up by a horrible grey rubber pipe. This might have limited the damage that could be done when hitting hard objects, like other boats, but looked terrible. That has all been removed and will be replaced by pieces of ply cut to shape and rounded to match the rubbing strip, which incidentally also needs replacing but will have to wait until the more major challenges have been completed.

So I now have a number of parts drawn up to cut from the ply that arrived this week. It was delivered by Travis Perkins who keep 12 and 18mm thick marine ply in stock. The quality looks to be very good and it is properly stamped. Unfortunately they don't keep thinner material so anyone planning to build a hull will have to look elsewhere. I hope to be able to cut the pieces up today or tomorrow for the two bulkheads I have measured, the rudder and stock, the mast step and supporting pad and the rear corner pieces. Then there will be a lot of planing and sanding to shape – oh joy!

I received a whole bunch of pictures this week through the wonders of Dropbox from Harry Gordon in California. Some of them are already on the WWPUK Group site but I'll work through the others to see what are worth including. There are some old catalogues and instructions which may be worth reproducing – I'll see what scanning and OCR can produce.

It's also great to follow Bill Serjeant and Sandpiper on their travels round the coast from Burnham. He's probably sailing from Dover today round towards Folkstone so good luck, but it's a wonderful day – not sure of the wind though. The next few stretches are pretty exposed so hope the weather holds for him. Follow his exploits on http://bills-log.blogspot.co.uk/.

Finally I had a very privileged day yesterday celebrating a friends birthday. He had hired a box at Lords to watch Middlesex play Glamorgan in a 40 over match. I've always enjoyed watching cricket on TV from time to time but it is only when you see it live that you realise how talented these guys are. The speed of bowling is scary and how the batsmen see the ball in time to hit it where they intended is remarkable.

A fantastic view

We had a wonderful time even if Middlesex did lose, drank far too much wine and ate our fill of wonderful food. The ground was less than ¼ full and from what I understand kids have free entry – compared to some other sports it is a great value day out.

The venerable old and eccentric MCC Pavillion full of venerable old and eccentric MCC members

We were even allowed on the hallowed turf

Which reminds me of an old apocryphal story that we told to one of our party who happened to be from across the Atlantic. 

A bus load of American tourists were visiting Oxford and viewing Merton College. Like most old Oxbridge colleges the Quadrangle has a wonderful lawn and one of the party commented how beautiful and flat it was to the Porter. "How do you manage to make the lawn so gorgeous?" asked the awestruck visitor. "Well," answered the Porter "we mow and roll the grass every single day and after six hundred years it looks like this!".

Isn't history a wonderful thing.