Professor Pickles

This is the latest addition to my space saving/creation.
Its a bulhead locker which hides the back of the gps and associated wires and gives me a place for my binoculars and various other odds and sods.

I'll start with the finished result, look below for the before....



In the shed after painting,


What it looked like before;

Just reconfigured the sheeting system which works a lot better.



The mark II version will use a longer alloy I track and I'll remove the main beam as it's really not needed plus it will lower the overall height a little.
The track ends to deck fittings will have to be remade and I'll make these from Glass fibre again but I won't use the foam sandwich system I used first time round.
I'll make the Mark II version a lot more repeatable as a number of people are interested in having a similar solution on their boat.

I find it annoying that in such a small boat there are a lot of areas of dead space I can't get to.
So I've targeted some areas, marked in red, where I'm going to gain access too.

I've started making some shaped drawers so I can get to stuff without having to lift up the seats all the time.

I really don't like the standard position of the mainsheet.
Slap bang in the middle of the floor and always seems to be in the way.

So a centre mainsheet traveller is the solution.
Strength won't be an issue as the mainsail is almost half the size of my Javelin Dinghies mainsail.
Making the brackets will be a bit tricky but as most of the things I make go through three or four versions I find the best trick is to crack on with the first idea rather than trying to design the perfect solution first time out.

The system does work well and has been well tested this year and a Mark 2 version will be made at the end of the season.

Here's the Mark 1 result.

This I fear is going to be a long running story until I find some money.

The issue is how I keep the battery charged up.
I have been lucky to find a Autohelm 2000 on ebay we won for £25 and a GPS and fishfinder for similar amounts.

I fitted a rectifyer to the engine so there is some charging from the outboard but it's not much so this is going to be very much a stop gap solution along with a car battery charger I can plug in when I'm laying at our marina berth.

Wind turbines and Solar panels are the real solution once I find the most cost efficient way of doing it.

Here's my best friend george.

One of the first things I noticed was just how noisey the 8hp Yamaha outboard is, especially sitting in its well.
Plus the fumes seemed to just waft about the cockpit and then go into the cabin.

So I needed a solution.
Buying a quiet 4 stoke was not an option as our budget is very tight so some sort of soundproofed cover was needed.
I built the cover below from Plywood lined with £30 worth of engine bay sound proofing.

I've subsequently modified the cover with an exhaust outlet which then carries the fumes out of the cockpit.

We decided to moor Stella at Neptune Marina, in the heart of Ipswich.
Living out in the sticks it was sort of novel that we now had a little place in the city :)

Whilst Netune is not cheap it was much cheaper than Wolverstone and Foxs and a little more flexible than Ipswich Haven.
With Suffolk Yacht harbour having a three year waiting list and given we wanted to start our new cruising life on the Orwell, Neptune was really the only option.

Here she is on her new berth.

We bought Stella, a Pandora 700, from Pin Mill in September 2009.

She had been sitting in the yard there for around 12 years and David, a local guy had taken her on to breath life into her once again.

We happended to be down at Pin Mill on a cycle ride and a meal at the pub when we saw her and fell in love.
The result was a month or so later we returned to pick her up.
These photos were taken on the day I picked her up.