Whitby Fish & Chip Sunday

The Magpie restaurant comes highly recommended and its certainly popular. With a queue waiting by 11am for opening time. We wait and make for an upstairs table overlooking the harbour to get served within five minutes. So many day trippers thronging the narrow streets and piling into vessels to circuit the harbour and coastline this fine weather. Bikers in leathers walking bow legged, hot and flushed in the heat,  focusing on the railway station cafe.
Stopping there in the carpark we get hustled in by a bevy of revvy bikes impatiently following behind.
A walk along the breakwater to the lighthouse rewards us with some lovely views of the coastline and beach where three donkeys give children rides and a lady patrols the sand with a pooper-skooper bucket. In the distance we see a quieter cove and make our way north a mile or so for more wanderings,  tea and cake. Parking charges are higher here than in Devon but not to worry!
Two more days to spend around the coast,  delighted with our new Airbnb. A converted barn amidst farmland down a narrow lane, well secluded and quite spacious. 

Try as I might, the task of persuading Helen to let me call in to a metal suppliers is met with hostile negatives, and it looks as if I shall have to get the metal keel strips for my dinghy build back home in Devon. Up here it is available at a very reasonable price  off the shelf and I try to mollify Helen with the promise of a stainless steel cooker splash back but still no agreement is forthcoming. 

Heading North in a Heatwave

The Morgan 4/4 performed perfectly today after a chilly 6am start from Kenton near Exeter. A fine clear morning with our journey predicted to take four hours with the hood down and wind in our hair. It actually took six hours due to several stops for refreshments on the way to Creswell, Derbyshire. The Morgan was treated to a full change  of engine and gear box oil together with a greasing of the suspension the day before we left home,
M42 traffic and confusing road signs made for some nervous moments. At the point where this road reaches the M1 four traffic lanes need careful attention, not to get onto the wrong road. The M6 toll road north east of Birmingham could easily have been taken by mistake.
Before clocking in to the Airbnb we made a leisurely visit to Creswell Crags where new geological digs are finding clues about the long human habitation of the caves extending back into times of the lion, rhinoceros and cave bear. Animals on the menu of those hunters down the ages.
Tomorrow a family anniversary will be celebrated and the day after, some sight seeing onto the Yorkshire moors.
Our brief tour north extends to the sea later on, including Whitby while warm weather is guaranteed.
Meanwhile records are broken with 46 deg in France and similar highs in Spain. With wildfires in Catalonia global warming can no longer be denied.

Cresswel Crags

Newbuild Dinghy after a few coats of Varnish

On target for launching by mid July for some fishing and pottering.
This twelve foot labour of love is by no means perfect but has been a most satisfying project to undertake in my advancing years.  One of those ideas that seems to seed from reading a small book big on content, that taps into skills fast disapearing in this age of plastic and glass.

And if  I can build it  - I can mend it !

The spoon blade paddles are of ordinary selected deal, but should, more correctly have been of Spruce.

There are a couple more coats required to the interior and thereafter just the hull to varnish and paint. Oh! and the rubbing strips to be fitted to keel and bilge runners.

Seagull 40+ outboard

Spoon bladed paddles

Cathedral TopBar Hive Progress

Approaching mid-summer and looking out for signs of swarming. One hive looks like a supersede queen cell is being made in mid comb so its best left undisturbed. Another hive cropped of my first honey of the season. The 2 combs were removed and the top half  taken while the lower drawn comb was reattached to the bar using a hair slide calliper. A colony that was shaken down into a top bar out of a flat topbarhive is building comb well and looks healthy - I have been supplementing food for them.
I had intended introducing a Nicot cage but due to a clumsy calamity with my smoker setting alight my wood shavings close to the Nicot frame it rapidly distorted and became unusable. I am going to have to replace it right away if the queen breeding idea is to go ahead.

A very full hive

Combe being drawn out

Foundation being drawn from the bottom up

The queen spotted on this comb to the far right

Cold Moulded Ply Dinghy nearing completion

Items soon to be completed on this build:
Seating, timbers beneath the seats.
Attaching knees with coppernails and roves
Fabricate a pair of oars
Rubbing strips of brass or stainless steel to keel.
Sand and preparation for varnish  /  paint.

Floor timbers beneath seats will be steamed and glued into position tapering to a feather edge on top of the existing.

Ply hull is 1/2 in. thick 

Rear seats to be widened and rounded on edge

Dinghy progress and somewhere to venture

Having just added gunnels with their capping of Sycamore and the stem and stern knees, this little craft is beginning to look quite robust. The hull gives a bell like sound if knocked with a knuckle - perhaps the largest wooden bell in the UK !
Next will come the seats and some timbers beneath them, to add rigidity where the trailer meets amidships. Most trips in useage will require towing to a launch site. The local estuaries include the Dart, Teign, Exe and even more appealing is the Salcombe / Kngsbridge Estuary or Ria; unusual because it has no large river feeding it, just a series of small streams from Frogmore, Bowcombe, Batson, East Allington, Sherford and other surrounding villages, rising at springs some 140 metres above sea level.
The Salcombe-Kingsbridge Estuary is tidal up as far as Kingsbridge, the bridging point five miles inland. Like the other estuaries of South Devon, the original deep river valley has been inundated by later sea level rise, with the tide flooding in to create a wide expanse of water. 

I am now  more confident I shall complete by mid July.

 

Seat riser wedged in place

Beginning to firm up with knees in place

Rowlock cheeks added

Transom knee

Dinghy off the mould

Free of the mould at last and ready for the inside cleaning up and preparations to fit the seats.
Beach Bros market a filler Bona Mix and Fill that is intended for use on wood flooring. The liquid mixes with wood dust to form a filler of the correct colour and will serve to seal the grain and indents caused by the staples and their removal.
Scraping and smoothing off the surface inside is slowing progress but hopefully she will be afloat by August.

Mould parted from the hull

Rope amidships to prevent beam spreading

Cleaning up but not yet sanded smooth

Adding on the inwhale

Cathedral TopBar Hive Issues

Now into June and as you would expect the colonies are working at a frantic level to bring home the pollen and nectar and keep all those young ones well fed and watered.

Meanwhile here below is the Video Phil made on his inspection a little while ago: