More shed work - roof iron repairs.

The wylo shed's main corrugated iron roof needed some maintenance. 14 or so years near the coast is a fair time for secondhand roof iron that may have been slightly corroded to begin with, the outer edges needed replacing.

Last years  roof extension makes a handy platform at around wylo's deck level , on which a small  ladder can now be used for the remaining short climb up.

The variable speed drill was good for the 2 sized tek screw bits I used for fastening removal and re-application.  Extended the top hats at both ends to square the roof and get a better overhang past main 6" C-section steel beams.

Sheets were inspected and rusted ends cut off. Some sheets came down and i replaced these with new secondhand sheets. Sheets needed one overlap to cover the 6.5 m wide roof.

Following final tek screwing, old holes were caulked.

The repaired main shed roof

Recycling the existing sheets saved a bit but took allot more time than just getting brand new 6.5 m sheets delivered by truck in one go. I did several ute trips to bring in the shorter second hand sheets too,  6.5 m is too long to carry on the ute twin racks (would need a 3rd rack at the front of car)

In retrospect if I ever built another flat roof i would give it a bit more slope say 15 degrees overall, so that crevice corrosion between sheet overlaps might be reduced. I made the roof flat because it was easier to build the frame - each roof beam end was pulled up to its pole top by a block and tackle.

If the boat's axis is N-S like mine then a gable roof would be ideal,  but getting the beams-frame up would be more difficult than with a flat roof.

Sailing again aboard trailer yacht "Teria"

To cover new sailing times which are happening here, I set up a  a new blog called "Waterways -sailing an Investigator 563 trailer yacht"(and a Fatty Knees 8 dinghy"). In 2013 we bought an old Investigator 563 (18' 6") trailer yacht to do some cruising locally. The blog covers places visited, things about the boat and maintenance work needed to keep her operational and safe. Other craft such as our Fatty knees 8, kayak and  trailer sailing in general are also in there.

We bought the boats so that we could enjoy sailing now and learn more about it along the way.

Nick Skeates recommends getting a "sanity machine"  while boat building and it is definitely sound advice, keeps your mindset in the right place. Though in my case our small sail-boats do get a lions share of the spare time.!

Investigator 563 Teria (18' 6" LOA) on our first sail off Townsville. Magnetic Island in background. It can sail at 4-5 knots.

Fatty Knees 8 foot dinghy sailing - Cape Palleranda

The fatty knees 8 is one of the best dinghy's I have ever owned. It gets along at a respectable 3-4 knots and handles with a solid reassuring feel, a real micron-cruiser. It should be well suited to being a wylo's tender.

Fatty knees 8 capsize test

The "Jai Dee" a Fatty Knees 8 is a great sailing tender, simple seaworthy, reliable and easy to hand by myself if need be.  I like to take Jai Dee out upto 1 mile off shore in about 15knots but if something went wrong you could probably drift back to the coast. I was also wondering what an unlikely capsize would be like..

So carried out a capsize test in a safe place. An unusual NNW wind left Palleranda beach's waters flat with a slight breeze. It's not that easy to capsize a Fatty knees but i stood on the leeward gunwale and over she went. Its a different story to most buoyant racing dinghys. On the Fatty knees the buoyancy chambers are relatively small so she floated just above half way out, the keel and center board about 4 inches above the sea. It's easy to right just a push your arm down on the centerboard and by grabbing the gunwale from windward.

When she is upright, its about half full of water and is fairly unstable. I got aboard from windward  by sheeting in the main and floating over the windward gunwale. Its easy to roll back to windward.

Once aboard, kneeling amidships seems stabler. Found my 1.5 litre bailer was a bit small but got it bailed out in about 5 mins. (This is a bit long so added a 4 litre bailing bucket to the inventory). More capsize practice would be good. With 2 crew it might be easier, crew1 to windward and other crew 2 to lee ward could stay inside the hull as it came up, then do the bailing while crew 1 acted as sea anchor on the bow during bailing.