On Baked Beans and Productivity

I have a funny relationship with money. Love-hate, one might say. I love it, it hates me; or to put it another way, we are diametrically opposed in our outlook and aims in life. This year I've so far tried several different ways of charming it into my loving embrace, but as usual en route to my locale it either made like Brigadoon and vanished behind a cloaking mist, or pulled the old fairy gold trick- turning into something completely different as the sun rose. Progress for me therefore rarely looks like a row of integers on a bank statement, but instead takes on the more prosaic form of car parts, workshop tools or, err, boats. Vast quantities of tinned beans also are a common end product of my travails, and a decent proxy for how I forecast the coming week's liquidity. Good job I like all these things, although brake pads don't make for such a tasty meal when they call to be the 'in stock' items.

Where, you might ask, am I going with this? Well, to the yard as usual. To crawl underneath one or other of my ailing vehicles, and swear at rusted bolt heads. It's a shame that I don't remember the first time I saw someone working on an engine, though my childhood was littered with potential candidates for the role. Whenever it was, young Richard clearly spied a pair of boots protruding from beneath a machine of some kind and thought "that's the very life for me!". Oh but to have stumbled across a highly successful musician or artist, or even moderately business-minded beforehand on that fateful day. My life since may have been filled paying other people to do the things I automatically do for myself to this day.

So yes, it's been a month. It has, in fact, been two months long, this one. For the last 5 weeks every spare moment- and several that were not, in fact, spare, have been taken up resurrecting our beloved "Bluey" van, whilst duct taping the little car together with the other hand. The van, erstwhile sidekick to joint adventures Europe-wide and recent adoptive "main works vehicle", is showing signs of strain. But to build a boat, you do need a big van; and in a fit of blind stupidity I opted last year to part with my Land Rover, so while I bought the Transit back to life, everything else had to be paused.

To say it's been an uphill struggle would be an understatement, but with some help from father and partner (thanks both!) I'm now mobile again. With a huge sigh of relief I have turned my attention to the work boat at last. During what has felt like the world's longest side-quest I've been itching to get going, and only staving off despair with baby projects on board Murphy’s Game, none of which amounted to anything remotely worthy of a photograph. Now, at last, the work has begun in earnest.

First up, the roof has to be made, and fabricated from "other things" away from the boat at that. The process involved cutting up the roof from an articulated lorry trailer, plus three galvanised steel barn doors.

In short, the process takes us from this...

Through this...

And so far to this...

Murphy’s Game isn't straight or square in any of it's dimensions, being a 40 year old work boat with a long history behind it. Complicating things further is the need to fabricate this roof around 12 miles away from the boat, and then lift it in to place in one go, by hand.

The centre roof, the first major piece of structural addition, is now nearing completion in frame form. In the last of the images above you can see two timber 'end frames' which are templates of the inner sides of the cabins between which this roof will bolt; the best compromise possible to predict the position of each of the securing faces as they are made. Once the ridge beam is made and welded onto the ends of the rafter steels (seen protuding upwards at an angle here), this half section will be bolted into the top of the open hold, leaving half of the roof exposed. From here I can measure angles and take in the vagaries of the old boat all in one piece. This part structure therefore represents a 'control surface' of straight steel from which everything else can then be more accurately measured. Or at least that's the plan. Building stuff in this ad hoc or iterative manner is less than ideal, but generally the best way to attack it.

Once the first part goes in, the forge will be dug out of storage and dropped in under the open side, before having that piece bolted in over the top and preventing anyone coming along and having the forge away whilst I'm not looking. The next weeks will therefore be a bit of a dance as all these things are readied, checked, painted, and then all dropped in in short succession. Watch this space, the busiest part of the build is now well underway!

Thanks to everyone who continues with the support of the newsletter and project through paid subscriptions; to my Dad for spannering assistance on the van, and to Willow and Simon for helping to finance much-needed van parts and beer respectively. The pay off to it all is now much closer than ever before.