Roof

Rosie and I worked solidly from 11am to 7:30pm. We stopped for 30 minutes for a fantastic lunch but other than that it was end-to-end industry. She is an absolute pleasure to work with and really helped the mission run smoothly.

Building this roof is a real milestone. I've never built one before and it had been needling away at me for a while. There were so many questions that were rattling around in my brain in the period leading up to it. Anxieties, that's what they were. So going to face the music to find out how right or wrong my ideas were was a bit daunting. Along with the force making me move forwards, there were also forces pulling me backwards. It was a fight to bring myself to the task.

Measuring the ridge at the centre of the gable roof

Doing everything up a ladder on a floating thing is hard. Look at my face. That's how hard it is.

Half-way house. This was around 5:30pm I reckon.

The ridge should be one continuous piece but we didn't have time for that kind of sorcery today.

James the Pirate loves the boat and spent his afternoon watching us work. It's great to have such appreciation as well as someone who knows a lot about boats

The majority of the day was spent preparing for the main task of building the boat:

We spend the first half of it adjusting the house box as it was not at right angles. The outer mdf walls had to come off as well as they would interfere with the rafters being attached to the perimeter of the top plate. The wood also needed some tinkering - staples and vagrant bits of unwanted material attached to them.

I'm going to stop writing as I have to go to the Post Office now to pick up the heavy duty tarp that is going to keep the already soaking wet boat rain-free. You have been spared the technical details ;)