Southern Tiger gets a rebuild in Hout Bay Harbour.

Here in the Western Cape timber built trawlers and fishing boats are a part of our wonderful heritage, they last decades and of course do need repairs in the off season.

Not your average work shop.

The wood is Keruin which I used to stock for such rebuilds, it takes steaming very well and comes quite flexible then.

The team looks to be about five strong, needed to handle such bends in this very heavy and strong timber.

Freddy, a past customer, is the chief carpenter and a top man at his trade.

He told me the other day that this is hard work but he can still do it.

Good man!

 

 

 

Note the correct pink undercoat, always the best way to protect such timber if your not going to use epoxy.

 

Roy

Custom Rudder and Foil manufacture

Seen here is a new rudder to an Irwin 54 which lost the lower rudder pintal off Cape Point, That bent the rudder shaft where it exits the boat.

 Hout Bay was not that far away and they managed to enter the bay. It was blowing a good fifty knots at the time, Jean phoned the NSRI, station 8 Sea Rescue and they went out and brought the yacht into the saftey of Hout Bay Harbour.

The boat was a member of the then ARC World fleet, it was a few days before the trade closed for the Christmas break, we got the materials into stock and worked over the period and got the boat back into the water in time for the restart of the rally.

A new shaft and lower pintal were made locally, an engineer fitted the gear and rudder, plus quite a lot of  upgrades were made around the area where the rudder shaft entered the boat.

Note: the cut out in the rudder allows the rudder to be swung to either side and dropped.

We now have the CNC cut files to the Irwin 54 rudder and can fabricate to order. Shipping world wide should not be a problem.

Roy

Taylors 30L paraffin stove in Cape Town

This should be on offer by next month and here in Hout Bay, Cape Town.

(now here, August 7th 2013)

http://ckdboats.blogspot.com/2012/08/taylors-30-l-paraiffin-stove-for-sale.html

The Taylors 30L stove comes complete with a remote 1.5 (about 8 litres?)gallon fuel tank and 1.5 mtr supply line.

The stove has been collected by our courier, it will be with us this week,
Once its here I will sort out the required new burners and sell it on for the owner.

We have contacted Taylors in the UK and asked for prices on new burners and a service kit, once the couriers have delivered the stove and parts are here, the refurb will be done.

How about that!

http://www.taylorsheatersandcookers.co.uk/index.html

When new, lets see how close this good condition stove we will restore will come to the one in this picture.

Due to the size of the stove and its tank, this would suit a new owner who already has a boat here, or one that was passing through, it will of course also suit a camper or cottage some place off the Eskom power grid ( that's most of us in winter?)

For those who are in South Africa, we can send the refurbished stove to you by courier for around R400, the cost to the stove will worked out when we have the cost to the spares required to service it.

Roy

Island deliveries of kits and materials

With another order of okoume  marine plys to BS 1088 due to ship to a customer in Mauritius, it reminded me of some of the other islands we have shipped to from Cape Town.

The Marshall Islands, which was materials to refurbish a French made yacht around 40ft long. Johnston Athol, a Didi 38 kit, which included the mast, sails and engine, Honolulu, a Didi 26, come to mind. We also filled an order to Wilbur Smith when we traded as Commercial Lumber cc, was he building a house on an island in the Seycheles, I believe so.

Johnston Athol, this is as far away from Cape Town as its possible to find land, almost dead center and opposite Cape Town on the globe!

http://ckdboats.blogspot.com/2009/03/didi-38-kit-to-south-pacific.html
The fact is that with a global view of the map South Africa is central to the world, we are well connected with shippers and their agents world wide.

The Didi 38 kit being built on Johnston Athol, note the Yanmar engine, we shipped that also.


Plus its no more expensive to ship from Cape Town to California by sea than to move the same order from the east coast to the west cost of the USA by road.

Your order does not have to be for yacht and boats, we can normally source most materials, construction types also.

Roy

This is the latest island order shipment, it was collected today and will next be fumigated before being shipped to Mauritius, the top and bottom plys are pine exterior, the rest is okoume marine plys to BS 1088 standard.

Before we made boat kits they built the HMS Warrior

Yes and by a hundred & fifty years and more!

News in from George Dore, he is an expat from the UK but lives here in the cape also.
I have posted a picture of my own that I took when in Portsmouth myself, this shot is far better and the boat looks as if she had recently been slipped and painted?

Roy

Hi,

    a friend living in London sent me this excellent photo of HMS Warrior taken at Portsmouth.She never fired a shot in anger. 

Regards,

Warrior the first RN armour-plated, iron-hulled warship was built in 1860 had a two-cylinder trunk steam engine,  that drove a single propeller using steam provided by 10 rectangular boilers.During Warrior's sea trials on 1 April 1868  she had a speed of 26.08 km/h; under steam alone.The ship carried 867 tons of coal, enough to steam  3,900 km at 20 km/h.

Click on the picture for a larger view.

The ironclad was ship rigged and had a sail area of 4,497 m2. Warrior reached 24 km/h under sail alone. Her 26 ton propeller was designed to be hoisted up into the stern of the ship to reduce drag while under sail, the largest hoisting propeller ever made, it required 600 men to raise it into the stern. To further reduce drag, both of her funnels were telescopic and could be lowered. Under sail and steam together, the ship once reached 32.4 km/h, against the tide whilst running from Portsmouth to Plymouth.

Dark room photo enlarger kit

I have this mainly complete dark room kit set doing nothing and looking for a new home, it includes the developer tanks, timers, thermometer, enlarger and stand, light box and lots of other gizmos.

The light box and the enlarger lights both work.

The enlarger is branded Meopta, Opemus 111, it is well made and comes with a spare lens and required swing out red filter.
Contact me for more info, the price is R1500, which is U$150 only, we are in Cape Town and can ship to most places.

Roy

Enough blue sky to make a Dutchmans shorts

Dutchman's breeches


I heard this on 567 Cape Talk radio a few weeks back, I have heard it before but why the term?

Roy

Marilyn Kloss wrote:

"The clouds will clear when there is enough blue sky to make a Dutchman a pair of pants." My mother (born in 1913 in northern New Hampshire) has been saying this all my life, and she learned it from her mother (from Nova Scotia by way of Lowell, Massachusetts). Recently an aunt by marriage (from Waterbury, Vermont) mentioned the same expression (with the variation of "britches") and said that she had learned it from her mother. Yesterday I was with some friends (about 60 years old) from Liverpool, England, who know the same expression, but the variations are that it is an "Irishman" and his "trousers." Where did this expression come from?

Read more here:

http://www.randomhouse.com/wotd/index.pperl?date=20000712

The licence plate for me

This would look great on my own Ford ldv?

The owner of this is an OCC member, also a surfer!

Roy

St Helena Island gets a RO-RO terminal

That sounds a little grander than the truth but truth it is. Word was out some time back about a new hardbour wall construction for the island, I had always expected it would be in Ruperts Bay but what size will it be?

http://www.sainthelenaaccess.com/news/temporary-jetty/

Check the link, its a great idea and one that allows all kinds of heavy equipment to be off or on loaded.

The ship being used is the NP Glory 4 and has the contractors name Basil Read painted in hugh letters on the side of the ship.

RO-RO stands for roll on roll off, what they have done is build a narrow harbour wall, say 20 meters wide and out far enough into deeper water. Then the airport contractors have leased a very special cargo ship, the bow of which is quite flat and opens by folding out and downwards.

http://www.sainthelenaaccess.com/news/temporary-jetty/

I wonder will they ever remove all this hardware?
With the bow of the ship moored port & starboard and with two pick up bouys at the stern, its possible to take the ship in bow first, lower the bow onto the dock and drive the ships load right onto St Helena Island, very cost effective and very neat!

It will be suitable for smaller vessels to tie alongside when the chartered ship is away?

This is a picture I took back in 1977 and from the decks of Brer Terrapin,  Ruperts Bay is just around that headland and after that Jamestown. We were 13 days out from Cape Town.

I think this is the selected site of the airport?

Roy

Dragon class yacht, circa 1956

This yacht was given a major facelift last year, we supplied a lot of the materials used, fairing epoxy, Dow-Corning sealant, mahogany veneer and teak wood solids.

 

The decks were already in laid teak, the Dow-Corning sealant was for a re caulk of the joints.

 

Mahogany flexible veneer went on the coach roof.

 

 

Teak solids were used inside the cockpit and as floor covers.

 

 

As far as I know this Dragon was sailed in the 1957 Olympics in Melbourne, Australia and came third in the event for Sweden.

 

Click on the pictures for a larger image.

 

Roy

 

Drop keel and foils

Seems there are not that many companies out there who can specialise in such items?

This is made from solid Iroko, jointed and glued up with the correct phenolic glue suitable for such work. The foil is a drop keel for a Didi 26, we also make the rudder. Its a stock item in our cut files.

Roy
 

Cape Town, a view from Blouberg

Seen here and looking across Table Bay is the Table Mountain with the city below it.

Nice beach and very popular for wind surfers.
 

B&G Network VHF radio fixed

Well almost, we now have it recieving but not transmitting, check the updated link.

http://ckdboats.blogspot.com/2012/04/b-network-vhf-fix.html

The VHF will go back to the guy who installed the Toshiba amplifier chip for me, can he make the set transmit is the question now, is it repairable and at what cost?

Roy

Do it with Superform bending plywood

This has been a front runner and top seller for many years, developed over a long time untill perfection was possible with each sheet.

Image provided by our suppliers.

Roy

When we were rich in 1989

The fact was we could buy a brand new and sailaway Endurance 37 from the Knysna Boatyard for around R47,000, that included a Bellamy mast, Hood Sails and a Perkins 4105 47hp diesel engine!  Today and in 2013 you would pay twice that just for a similar sized engine.

I suppose some financial bod will tell me this is all relative, back then when the price of gold was fixed at U$35 and today its around U$1210 or so but read below and tell me what you think?

Notty,

I should frame this as a reminder as to when we were really well off?

You will need to click on this to make it readable?

Its from the last century and 24 years ago, this is the slip I got for the money I took on the trip

That lasted a year, thirteen months in fact, I still had some left over when we were collected at DF Malan airport

By yours truly!

That’s a rate of R2.69 to U$1.00 and R4,22 to GBP1.00 only, even those rates had moved some from the better days, they are for

Travelers cheques, we saw a better rate on cash? no it’s the same.

I still have the quote from Elvstom Sails that Andy Mitchell did for me, that was in his Loop St days, R4700 for nine sails. A main sail then was R450, the  cost for the GRP hull for my Endurance 37 was R4500, the fact is we could buy a lot more with our Rands back then? GST was still 4%, Vat is now 14%.

Looking back and I am pleased to say we both can, we did ok to do what we did and while we could, hindsight is a wonderful thing and it would be a shame if we now say, if only we had done this or that then, I could have built my own yacht and gone sailing, well we did do just that!

Mate, it’s a pat on the back for us both, have a great day!

Roy

Note, now in July 2013 we see the Rand currency trading at around R10.00 to the U$ and R15.07 to the British Pound, see what I mean!