It has been quite a while since the last update and a lot has happened since (including living in London for 2 years which really slowed down progress). We are just finishing off a few more jobs and we will be ready to relaunch.
I'll try to run through a few of the things that have happened in the mean time.
The photo below shows the boat ready for paint. After the soda blasting we filled, sanded and faired the entire boat back to a smooth finish. The blasting left the hull with a really good surface that was easily hand sanded and didn't cause any big low spots which can occur when machine sanding.
The next big challenge was to get the boat off the trailer so that the boat could be painted and repairs could be made to the trailer. We constructed two big wooden trestles which were just taller than the height of the keel on the trailer. The trestles can be seen standing next to the boat in this photo. The centre column which took all the weight was a length of 8 inch square timber. We also made wedges to slide in between the hull and the horizontal top of the trestle to stop the boat from rolling. In addition, we placed supports between the gunwales and the ground to further limit any possibility of the boat rolling.
We manoeuvred the trailer into the position where we wanted the boat to be for painting and unhitched the car. We then lowered the jockey wheel to raise the stern of the boat. We placed one of the trestles under the stern and fitted the wedges and supports. Raising the jockey wheel lifted the stern off the trailer. We then hitched the car back on and using a modified trolley jack raised the bow of the boat off the trailer. This allowed us to roll the trailer forward until the jack reached a cross member. We lowered and repositioned the jack, repeating this process until the bow was just on the rear of the trailer and we could fit the second trestle under the boat.
This method of taking the boat off the trailer meant that it wasn't dragging on the ground and getting scratched and at any time the furthest it could fall was a few centimetres. It also put the boat into a position that where we could easily paint it without large areas being out of reach.
Putting it back on was just a case of reversing the process and pushing the trailer back under the boat.
