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NB 'Talpidae'


Moley

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Hey Moley :)

 

Sorry to see you've got problems with the boat but great to see you back on here.

 

I'll check out that brewing forum later - we've done a little bit of home brewing on the boat and Dave's dad has been making his own Kentish cider for years.

 

Love to the other Moles

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Bit personal me thinks.

 

 

Not really, in this case, you had to be there. laugh.png

 

 

Yes, we're talking about the tea towel drawer, the drinking glasses and spare mugs drawer, and the other drawer full of clingfilm, tin foil and all the other galley odds and sods. When several people board the boat at one time and come down the side corridor, the resultant list sends the drawers flying open with a fairly alarming crash.

Mrs. Mole's drawers have been the butt of many wise cracks ever since.

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Thanks folks, it is a little stressful time and our thoughts at the moment are very much doom and gloom. We are hoping the fix is easy and relatively painless, but the worst scenario does not bear thinking about! Will keep you posted on events. Hopefully back on the water soon ( Please!!) sad.pngfrusty.gif

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With pleasure Peter, it's thehomebrewforum.co.uk and we offer help and advice for beer, wine and cider from absolute beginners to craft brewers, kit mixers to microbreweries.

 

Here's a beginner's guide to a quick, easy and cheap white wine, which is very popular.

Ta muchly sir, i hope the leak is sorted, cheaply and quickly.

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Oh dear, I'm gutted, and so is my poor boat:

PB13060701_zps606460c8.jpg

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Now with indoor paddling pool:

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... and outdoor water feature:

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This was only a rapid drip before I dug the corner of a scraper into it.

Survey commented on worn chines and some fairly severe pitting. If you remember, the last time she was dry docked and blacked we found some horrible electrostatic pitting, and then discovered a voltage difference (1.2v) between our mooring pontoon and the water itself. I stopped using a chain between boat and mooring cleat, and this pitting now appears to be dormant.

However, a few of the other pits must be deeper than our surveyor thought, and pressure washing has blasted through at least one of them.

So, do we spend a few hundred pounds getting the worst pits filled with weld, or do we spend significantly more and get angle irons welded along the chines, but how long is it going to be before any other pits break through, and we're back in the same situation?

Or, do we bite the bullet and get her overplated now?

This is largely rhetorical, we couldn't sell the boat as she is, we could cut corners now and be in the same situation in another couple of years' time, and we wouldn't have any confidence in using the boat as she is or would be terrified of scraping (for example) the Shroppie shelf.

I think we've decided it's bullet biting time.

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A set of photos to strike terror into any boater's heart, to be sure. Makes me doubly glad that Melaleuca made is back into the water today without problems, and I'll stop begrudging the cost of the new anodes I've just fitted if we're saved from water features in the future.

 

Good luck in making the right decision, and I'm sure it'll turn out all-right in the end.

 

MP.

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Well...

 

I would get the holes plugged with weld

 

If you are worried about the chines, you get shoes welded on - flat bits of plate fixed to the baseplate that project out to form a new chine

 

Tawny has shoes

 

Richard

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:(

 

 

Oh no!

 

Those photos are horrible. You must be gutted after spending time and money blacking her to find this.

 

It makes me wonder on the value of the survey. Clearly no one would have spent any energy on getting a bottom blacked that was not going to survive refloating.

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Echoing all the posts above, it's great to see you back here on the Forum but awful to see the pictures of your poor boat!

 

Our previous boat had strips of angle welded along the chines, and they lasted at least 10 years before the rest of the bottom wore out (it had only been 6mm when new) and was then overplated.

 

It may all seem disastrous at the moment, but I'd go for the easiest, quickest (and cheapest) solution.

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Thanks Allan, but the chines aren't the only concern and angle irons or shoes might not solve the issue.

 

That leak pictured is about half an inch above the chines, and I've now poked a key into the hole and made it even bigger. I will discuss options with the boat builder / welder tomorrow, but probably not until I've whacked a few of the other deepest pits with something hard and pointed. There was another weep at the front right.

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Thanks Allan, but the chines aren't the only concern and angle irons or shoes might not solve the issue.

 

That leak pictured is about half an inch above the chines, and I've now poked a key into the hole and made it even bigger. I will discuss options with the boat builder / welder tomorrow, but probably not until I've whacked a few of the other deepest pits with something hard and pointed. There was another weep at the front right.

 

Have you talked to Andy Downing about it, Moley? He's very sensible and can usually suggest an answer. It is beginning to look like an over-plating job but perhaps new shoes and some patching might suffice.

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Bringing someone else in isn't an option. Besides which, when she was dry docked in Stourbridge and we were questioning the need for overplating then, it was Andy-the-gas who called Steve (from Ashwood) in for an expert opinion.

 

If the work needs doing, she's in the right place with the right man. I will be seeing him today to discuss our options, and need him to give us a firm quotation, but the figure he has guestimated wasn't as scary as we expected.

Edited by Moley
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Goodness gracious me! That is epic. I am very pleased to hear you have her in the right place with the right man. It is good you have someone you can trust right there to do the work and advise you. I hope it all works out ok!

GREAT to see you back!

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Making my way from page one of this topic, as I've been meaning to for years now. Just a couple of things to say so far.

 

C01040602.jpg

Oh god, that's not me is it?

At least my grammar was alright. Not too sure about the spelling though.

 

 

Our son gets a 'double-whammy': As there were two Bens in his first school class he got called Ben ‘D’ to differentiate from Ben ‘K’. Being thin and flexible, this seemed quite appropriate, and he's been Bendy to all his schoolmates ever since. At home he's Bendymole.

Thanks for that, by the way. So very appreciated.

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Wherever does the time go?



It's strange (and somewhat frightening) to think that young lad pictured above is now fully grown, away at University and starting to forge his own way in the world. For the record, we're quite proud of how he's turned out.



But Ben, I hope you can now understand why I didn't like the idea of you and Emma taking the boat out over the Summer holidays. It's not that I wouldn't trust YOU, but she's an old and delicate tub with structural weaknesses and mechanical foibles, and I wouldn't trust ANYONE else to take her out.



When we've had the work done and she's toughened up again, then you might be allowed to borrow her.

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Well looking at that photo it appears Ben has suitable footwear for crewing Talpidae........oh! I don't suppose they fit any more ;)

 

When Moley says he is quite proud - would it be too cringmaking to Ben if I pointed out how the pride was shining from your Dad's face when he was telling us how you were getting on when we met him at Pelsall - keep up the great work!

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  • 1 month later...

So to recap, we had the options of either spending a few hundred pounds having the worst pits filled with weld, some new shoes attaching and re-launching on the first Monday in July, but wouldn't know how long those repairs would last before we were back in the same situation, or we could spend a few thousand on the full overplating job but were told from the outset that wouldn't be possible for a few weeks. However, the marina's July crane-out wasn't fully booked so the boat could stay out until the first Monday in August.



As I removed side panelling and lifted or cut out the flooring I found that all the paving slabs were wet and some of the flooring had white mould growing on the underside. Quite clearly, through condensation, rainwater seepage (I have discovered a couple of leaks around windows and damage behind panelling) and maybe even the start of some slight weeping through the hull, it has been permanently damp below the floor for quite some time, particularly in the back half of the boat. We found another suspicious looking pit on the other side of the hull, also about an inch above the base plate, I tapped it with a nail and it went straight through.



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As I scraped, wire brushed and shoveled sheets of rust away it rapidly became apparent that option 1 had expired and that most of the damage has been coming from the inside.



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When he has had some spare time in between other jobs, Steve the welder has ground off anodes and made a right old mess of my new blacking below the first rubbing strake.



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He has compounded the felony by cutting a sodding great big hole in the back end, because if there's any slight air space between the new steel and the existing skin tank, it's not going to cool the engine.



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Last Monday the steel was delivered and the first section of the new base plate was levered, hammered, jacked into position and tack welded.



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On Tuesday that was properly welded across the front end and the second plate offered into position, jacked and tacked.



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The chair is only to stop people from walking into it and cutting themselves off at the knees. We are thinking of leaving the wings for extra protection in locks and to see if we can get her up on the plane.



A couple of side panels were also cut and tacked into position.



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On Wednesday the new back plate was positioned, jacked and tacked ....



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.... and most of the other side fixed in place.



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My main concern has been the bathroom, which I really did not want to have to strip out. If you remember (or go back to the first couple of pages of this blog), I insulated below the gunwales with two inches of Rockwool, but I had also painted the inside of the hull with a domestic bitumen paint. The Rockwool should be inert, I have previously tested it by holding a blowlamp against it, but the paint was a worry. Well it seems to bubble, melt, smoke and stink a bit, but hopefully behind the Rockwool it is starved of oxygen.



I removed some insulation after a test weld and it shows some scorching, but hopefully that's as far as it goes. Steve seems happy with that, but I won't be happy until he has finished welding the sides.



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On Thursday he did most of the final welding along the chines and they fitted and bent the tricky bit at the pointy end.



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And by Friday they had had enough, or did something else, somewhere else.

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