Thursday 29 November 2012

29th November 2012

I went to carry on working on the leaks on her today, I arrived at around 9:30 and dragged the big water pump from the car and carried it down to the her only to find out that she was still afloat! Its been nearly a week and she was still afloat, I was shocked:



   

Although she has been afloat for 6 days she is still very, very wet inside as you would expect after being on the bottom for so long, I've taken a load of photos of the inside. The first three are of the front cabin, you can see the bench seats and also the depth of the bilge as she has a very shark V hull:


   
The next couple of photos cover the toilet that the general staff would have used, you can see the toilet has been removed, however the sink is still in place:

 
Next is the corridor that leads to the toilet, corridor is used in the loosed sense :) It appears that the wall of the toilet is made from some form of metal, when I restore her I'll clean it up and see.  In front of that is the chain locker:

 

Next are some photos of the officers toilet, which appears to be fully intact:

  

Here are some photos of what was the sick bay and the officers quarters, although the officers quarters no longer exist:

   

The stairs used to come down the centre of the boat, hence the raised stringers below, what you can't get a feel for is the depth, its at least 18 inches, rising to nearly 24 at the rear:


Below is the fabled glove that is being used to seal up a 3 inch hole in the side, its actually doing a very efficient job:


The view out the back, last week this contained two x four foot trees and a floating vegetation mat about 6 foot across.  There was also several large piles of timbers. I moved most of the timber, however due to the harsh frost last night I couldn't do them all as they had frozen together!


There appears to be a largish leak somewhere under those planks, when I next go I need to lift them and figure out what and where its leaking, I suspect at that point she will be afloat without the need for pumps.

We have spoken to the company who are going to do the lift and provisionally its going to happen in January 2013.  With her hopefully being towed to the Marina where the lift out will take place either at the end of December or the beginning of Jan.