Shipwright work begins
December 2020 - February 2021
Happy New Year! (Surely this one will be better!).
Raybel just before Christmas was looking a bit sad with her rail and iconic name plate removed but with a hopeful rainbow overhead.
At the end of the rainbow is a sack of gold and sure enough, shipwrights Tim Goldsack and John Hall arrived on site and started work immediatley after the Yuletide and New Year break.
Hoops over the Raybel
Back in December 2020 we’d had to close down our volunteer operations due to the Covid situation which led to the third national lockdown. From there it was Bosun Rob on board with TG and JH and occasional interruptions from the project manager Mark.
The same steel hoops used on the Cambria restoration were donated by TG and collected from Faversham. TG and JH cut up a steel angle and tube to create sturdy brackets along the port side of the dry dock and sockets on the starboard side. The extended hoops were then dropped in and lateral steel tubes welded on to brace the whole structure. A telehandler was hired to lift off the rudder, drop in the last hoop and lift the very heavy plastic tarpaulin covers up onto the top of the frame.
2 lengths of 3 meter wide reinforced plastic scaffolding wrap was used to cover each end of the metal frame. Positioning the covers on the frame was very exhausting work – above head height – standing on step ladders and pushing hard, sometimes with long sticks. It was secured with blue poly rope. Comedy moments provided when the previous night’s rainfall fell out of the folds to give an icy shower. The edges were trimmed and battens each side screwed through to get as much tension on as possible. A roll up door was created. At last, Raybel was out of the rain.
Two 12 inch diameter steel tubes about 20 feet long – recovered from the dry dock - were positioned vertically as wharfside piles alongside the dry dock. They were welded to metal straps with 12 mm studding, chemically anchored to the wharf.
The scaffolding arrived from a supplier in Essex and the shipwrights started making a walkway around the hull. Two spanners were purchased to do the scaffolding. A fancy ratchet one and a plain old box spanner. As determined by Sod’s Law the expensive one went missing early on and was found hiding in the shadow of the blocks after the job was completed.