Welders arrive on Wandering Dream

Wandering Dream
Steve Litson
Thu 15 Jan 2015 00:35

Not back ache again!! Still hurts, awoke at 0400 in pain little sleep after that. The rest of the day saw progress on WD. welders arrived and offered up the arch for the solar panels, it didn't fit! Mervyn now sees this as a better design, so all the weight isn't just on the top rail of the push pit. It kept rain at least hourly, so they cut pipe to fit and adapt the original design, but could do no tig welding...too dangerous according to Mervyn.

Steve, Robert's friend turned up with the free 240W Solaria PV panel and we swapped it for the first one delivered. Thanks to Robert for organising this. He also sent his technician Dayo who wanted to help with the diesel generator, but was not willing to put his head in the locker. I got in and took photographs to help him and still we couldn't identify the excitation capacitors. He suggested we contact the manufacturers to find out where the capacitor is located. Robert has arranged for the engine guy from his yacht club to visit tomorrow to see if he can help.

Dan the American wood man came out dispute the rain, and fitted the new  port toe rail and repaired stern toe rail. It does look really good. He was able to do a scarf joint right there in front of us, epoxy joints, stick using polyurethane 3M glue and three inch nails...yes everything here is still imperial! Hopefully, this will hold. I have decided to do away with the fair leads and bring the warps over the toe rail from the clear with a stainless steel strip. This will stop the vertical and sideways movement which has ripped it all apart twice now. Dan promised to return and finish off tomorrow. Alistair Garland sadly your beautiful work was short lived.

This evening we were invited to a music night at Coral Cove. Peter another American, a guitarist who has a shed next to Dan asked us along. It was an interesting mix of musicians playing piano, guitar, penny whistle and mouth organ. We thoroughly enjoyed the music despite the rain. We eventually went in search of food, we had no chance of getting BBQ food as we were waiting on contractors all day. Everyone else was hoping the BBQ would eventually burn up, Denis was especially pleased to see someone struggling with a real charcoal BBQ. I wonder how many actually cooked on it tonight? We are in the cafe 'Feel Oh' and then went back to WD.

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