Thread: Another OZ MK2 PDRacer build in Sydney "Wood Duck"

Originally Posted by Sumbloak

The birds will love that. And the wasps. And the spiders. Maybe a bit of mesh on the inside of the holes would be worthwhile.

Looks good though.:2tsup:

Hi Sumbloak,

Thank you for your kind words :).

I originally had mesh designed into the end-plates for just that purpose, but I can't now remember why I decided not to (the justification is buried months ago in this thread ;).

Cheers,
Alex.

Originally Posted by Theodor

Nice job Alex. It looks great. No doubt the bush turkeys will appreciate a drier location to roost under your new roof! I'm now keen to see the boat getting its final fixes completed. Summer is coming down under, right?

Hi Theodor,

Thank you for you kind words, too :). Access to the Terrible Turkosaurs is a bit restricted, but I have seen small birdies eyeing it off ;).

Cheers,
Alex.

Originally Posted by Theodor

Nice job Alex. Do you have a pic of how the roof is lashed down?

Hi Theodor,

The Accursed Roof is so heavy that it would take a very high wind indeed to dislodge it, especially in its geographic location. As a result I've decided not to do anything with the lash-down unless - and this is highly unlikely - I take to towing the boat with the roof on it. Options for lashing down include either rope or the ratchet straps that are holding the boat onto the trailer. I may do it as a "proof-of-concept" as some point, although not at the moment: I'm too busy dealing with the sordid aftermath of the boat- and roof-building <violent shudder>.

Cheers,
Alex.

Originally Posted by woodeneye

It looks great Alex. I'm gobsmacked really. Just in time too, with 100km/h winds forecast for tomorrow :U

Hi woodeneye,

Thank you for your kind words as well. I'm gobsmacked as well - that I've got the thing finished and out-of-doors. Operational, even. The high winds as forecast didn't reach this neck of the woods (in fact, they may have been slightly less strong than forecast where they did hit in any case). It was windy, but nothing out of the ordinary; I also cheated (at the Boss's suggestion) by putting a car cover over the roof to reduce scratching of the nice paintwork ;).

At some point I'll need to finish off the 'Duck's foredeck, but that will have to wait (see my reply to Theodor above ;).

Cheers,
the alex.

Originally Posted by pindimar

Fantastic effort Alex, how do you get the roof on, is there some kind of tackle? Very impressive.

:)

GregF

Hi GregF,

Welcome (officially ;) to this thread, and congratulations on being the first post on page 220 (eek!). Hopefully I'll get the boat in the water before the end of the page! That's my intention, anyway.

I dare say that you remember your (off-forum) advice to me about using Colorbond in the "design" stages of this Thing , some time ago now ;). Even with Sumbloak's comments above about its resilience, I'm still not sure about using it. At this stage is six of one and half-a-dozen of the other: if something really heavy descends upon it and totals it, that may be another bucket of snakes. I'll face that if it happens - or unless I get sick of hauling the thing off and on the boat. I have used the justification of weight-lifting to maintain the status quo, but that was a rather post hoc excuse ;).

Congratulations also on your and Ross Lillistone's Michalak Scram Pram build :).

Cheers,
Alex.

I should belatedly thank jmk89 and Adam for their offers of help: I got impatient to get on with the workswamp re-jig and decided that it should be done as soon as possible rather than wait for this weekend - so Adam ended up being the poor bunny (and he was rather taken aback at how heavy the Accursed Roof was!). Jmk's offer was somewhat derailed by our recent short holiday to Wagga, and a long weekend.

Just to prove that I have been hard at work on the workswamp since the removals:

1. Some floor-space again at last!





2. Extra room to work on the mill base - and mill


Follow this link to my Flickr account...where Flickr appear to have made a Head-Bangingly Difficult(TM) "improvement" to the method of assigning photos to sets unless done in one or other of their uploaders (i.e., from the Flickr page itself) :(((. I found the way to do it under "keyboard shortcuts (show all shortcuts)" - it's "e" (not "E", btw)...



Don't worry, I'm not going to fill up this thread with any more stuff on the mill or workswamp ;).

Hello Alex

Well....tidy and roomy compared to our garage which is full, and I mean full, of stuff! Well, it had the Scram in it for ten years plus a runabout and Goodness knows what else ( no cars, of course), not the most organised of garages, but I wouldn't dare post any pictures.

You can afford to, whereas . . .



GregF

Well, after quite a bit of rain since I got the roof and boat outside, the inside of the boat has remained as dry as chips. No sign of condensation runs on the sanding DUST that had collected on the inside of the boat during various construction projects :).

I'm also extremely pleased with the Norglass enamel, as it continues to look 100 %: a smooth even gloss, and there are no signs anywhere of roller marks! I wish I'd taken woodeneye's advice and used their varnish on the topsides - and the enamel on the water-sides as well. Live and learn.

Unfortunately, I haven't had time - for various reasons not associated with the weight of the roof - to take boat sailing. I had been hoping to take the boat and trailer to Adelaide for a holiday, but hot weather across Southern Australia during the available time-window put paid to that.

Happy New Year and all that,
Cheers,
Alex.

Happy New Year to you too Alex.

Thanks AJ :)

So...here's what's been happening o' late wi' boat and why, well a bit, anyway:


1. Where is she? Where's she gone? What's happened to her? And why is this area so unusually neat and tidy? (see caption to photo 6 below for the answer to the last question ;)





2. Here she is! She has a new - albeit temporary - home





3. Another view of Wood Duck nestling in her new home





4. Close-up of the tie-downs holding the roof - and the boat - onto the trailer. Worked a treat over 100+ km distance. This snap is especially for Theodor, who wanted to know how it tied down. Here you are, Theodor :)





5. It was raining slightly when I took these snaps: you can see the water dripping off the edges of the roof. The inside of the boat is (still) nice and snug and dry :)





6. Why the new home for the boat? Well, we are on the move out of the place, finally - to the Lower Blue Mountains Fire Zone, in fact ;)





7. Everything's even more of a mess at the moment than it was when building the boat&#x27;s roof. Believe it or not, everything is being sorted into categories, boxed up and stored. Another advantage of moving, although I'd rather not be moving in many respects! NOTE: Yahoo!/Flickr are stuffing about royally with their sites at the moment, and any ability to parse Unicodes correctly (other than Arabic numerals and the Roman alphabet) appears to be lumpy at best (hence the weird code above, which I've left for everyone's enjoyment - and Flickr's shame). I am very much not at all amused, along with many other people...





8. Piles and piles o' stuff. This was my welding/soldering bench - now a repository for all sorts of unrelated stuff (although to be honest a lot of it predates our decision to move). Note that the 'Duck centreboard and rudder, along with mast and sail/boom/yard are now with the boat :). Actually, since this snap was taken, I've done quite a bit of sorting and sifting, and jot looks quite a bit better. In fact, the whole area looks much improved (mostly) - and so it should, given the silly amount of work that has been put into it recently. And I have even been throwing stuff out!



Follow this link to my Flickr account. Watch out for the mountains of rubbish.



In the tidying process I've move and restacked my stock of expensive marine plywood, and was reminded of the Rheem "technicians" flooding my wood storage area when replacing/moving the HWH a while back, and watching on as I desperately tried to mop up. The plywood was, of course, some of the stuff most immediately and directly affected. I dare say that they found it amusing. I dare say that I will be looking very carefully at non-Rheem options in the future.

All sorts of long-forgotten and useful stuff is coming to light in the process of sorting and throwing, as might be expected: the new place has a largish shed with a concrete slab and a high peaked roof with accessible rafters - just the thing for storing things flat and out of the way of flooding HWHs. I'll have to inspect the roof for leaks first, however! There will be good room for machinery, storage and actually room for working in. too. A lot of the space - with my setup - is actually wasted on account of the chimney base smack in the middle of everything. The latter was removable, but at more expense and disruption than we could countenance, as it is a structural element of the house. The new shed is a standalone affair that does't affect the rest of the place (at least not directly).

There are a couple of areas for sailing nearby (relatively speaking: nearer than to the current place, anyway) to where we are moving: the Hawkesbury/Nepean River, and the former Olympic Regatta Centre, which latter spot is also home to the Penrith branch of Sailability.org.

Wood Duck is probably also going to be appearing at the Concord and Ryde Sailing Club on March 15 at an 8' dinghy sailing day.

Oh well, back to the tidying, there's another Open Inspection for this place on the weekend...

Alex,

That delighted to here you may attend our event at CRSC. Congratulations on the practicality of your cover and storage arrangment.

Congrats on the move Alex.
Or perhaps commiserations.
I absolutely, positively dread the thought of moving from here, and I wouldn't have even a half of your accumulation.
Or at least, I don't think I do.
All the best with the opens.

Originally Posted by RossV

Alex,

That delighted to here you may attend our event at CRSC. Congratulations on the practicality of your cover and storage arrangment.

Hi RossV,

Welcome to this thread :). Thank you for your kind words; I'm looking forward to attending and giving the boat another outing.

Cheers,
Alex.

Originally Posted by b.o.a.t.

Congrats on the move Alex.
Or perhaps commiserations.
I absolutely, positively dread the thought of moving from here, and I wouldn't have even a half of your accumulation.
Or at least, I don't think I do.
All the best with the opens.

Hi AJ,

It's a bit of both.

It's amazing what one accumulates over twenty years or so. The heaps o' stuff get a bit smaller with each pass: the wood stack is going to get sorted and strapped into movable bundles once I have some floor space to carry out those activities! I can actually see a bit of concrete here and there, so that mightn't be too long. And I also need to learn to use the strapping machine: the first attempt resulted in the "auto-trimmer" chopping straight through the poly tape, so I must have done something wrong. Don't know what quite, I'll leave the trouble-shooting until a have a clear(er) space in which to work!

Cheers,
Alex.

I have to get started soon too Alex as we begin rebuilding our house later this year.

Good to hear you are going to the CRSC 8 footer regatta to fly the PDR flag. it should be a lot of fun. Good luck!