River Lark Timelapse

I did some timelapse recording while cruising about during our month aboard.  I used a GoPro camera in timelapse mode taking 1 x 5mega pixel shot every 2 seconds.  In this video the final edit there are 7515 shots. These are then reduced in size to 1024 x 768 which takes so long to do I set the PC to do this task overnight.  Also for the assembly software to compile the images they have to be consecutively numbered.  The software used to reduce the size and re-number is Infranview.

The next stage is to compile the stills into a movie.  For this I use VirtualDub  The result is this:-

 First cut

Theres still a bit more to do to this so check back for sound and titles.

I have now been told  3.5 mph over 3.5 hours = 12.25 miles travelled which is about right . To cover that distance in 2 minutes youd have to be doing 367.5mph (12.25 x 60/2)

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A frame goes up and an auspicious arthropod goes down

Frame 5 is the first to go up!

Floor 5 was situated about a quarter of an inch too far aft. One solution (and probably the proper solution) would be to replace the floor. I just shaved a quarter inch off of the timber real quick with a Skillsaw and chisel. Ramon was my hero in making it plumb with the plane when I got too frustrated to continue.

Treating bare wood with copper napthenate preservative.

And shes up! Three 3/8" bolts on each side. All wood-to-wood contact surfaces were soaked with copper and bedded in tar.

The "X" bracing and the cross beams at the sheer and just below the chine are temporary bracing.

Not the neatest job, but shes strong and deadly to fungi.

The first frame went up last night after a bit of a boat hiatus. Some coaxing with a Skillsaw and chisel got the frame to where it was supposed to hit the rabbet. Its nearly plumb, too. I apparently did a horrible job installing the floors, as three or four of them are not plumb nor flush with the station lines drawn on the keel. Ill be spending a lot of time over the next few days correcting my mistakes with a plane. This part of the boat building process has become tense as I anticipate bending a batten around the chine for the first time. I hope Luna will be beautiful.

Lucky for me, the universe sent me an auspicious sign this morning to calm my nerves.

I woke up at about 4 am this morning to a smelly, wet substance on my arm. I flung on the lights and, without my glasses, saw a blurry yellow puddle with a long, black swirly piece of business on my sheets where my arm had been. My mind immediately thought rats!, as I do have a history of sleeping in places were rats attack me in the night. Given this, and the series of rabies shots that followed, I am deathly afraid of rodents. I decided that, judging from the size of the mess on my bed, this rat had to be HUGE.  I frantically called Ramon to come over.

When I went back into my bedroom the turd was gone! I decided the rat must have come back and eaten it. I freaked. I had a monstrous, shit-eating rat in  my bedroom. I noticed a dark blurry mass moving slowly toward the corner of my bed. Rather than get closer, I decided to get out of there and start doing internet searches for, "feces consumption in rats," worried that there was a correlation between this behavior and rabies. Very productive.

When Ramon arrived, bleary-eyed and sweet as could be, we searched my bedroom with no luck. Ramon suggested the turd was in fact a culebrilla and that there was no rat. I was somewhat comforted by this possibility.

Culebrilla-- apparently common in the Valley, though sightings are rare.

But still-- the smelly yellow stuff made no sense. I resorted to Googling things like, "fat worm smelly yellow liquid" and finally came up with this:

A giant millipede! When stressed or injured, they secrete a pungent yellow substance that contains hydrogen cyanide. We never did find it, and these things live for 5-10 years. There was a lot of yellow stuff though, so one can hope it was fatally wounded. Ah well. Despite the long-lived monster spewing cyanide in my bedroom, I did sleep a little sounder knowing it wasnt a rat. 

The the silver lining in this early-morning fiasco? Apparently millipedes are good luck. Perhaps the chine will be fair after all.

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Down To The Finishing Off Jobs

Forgive me readers for I have sinned. Its been nearly a month since my last blog.  I am now just doing the last few little jobs that have been hanging around.

I had the final bit of skirting board made by DW Wood Mouldings and fitted them along with the final bits of plinth.

Same both sides

I have fitted the rear door vents.

 16g SS special order, nice and thick

Still need varnishing

I have fitted the front button.

Ready for some bumping now ;-)

And finally Ive fitted a warning LED to the dash to confirm the alternator parallelling is locked in.

A horrible job which I didnt photograph was the removal of a spill of 2.5L of tar paint in the chain locker.  I decided it would be better to let it dry then use a hot air gun to melt it into manageable slices.  It worked but took about an hour and the last bits in the corners was a real job.

I have decided to move the inverter inside under the rear stairs.  I have had a couple of comments about it and I was a little unsure if it was a good idea when I decided to put it in the engine room  I will probably do this next week.

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Down The Tubes

Ive decided to totally replace the flexible rubber sanitary hose because of the smell it was leaching.  I was going to just replace the long run in the saloon and kitchen but decided in for a penny etc.

Initially I thought this would be a complete nightmare, but a bit of thinking about it and a plan came together.  

The worst part was drilling a new 2" hole in the rear bulkhead.  This of course was in a very awkward position and took about an hour as I had to keep resting because of the horrible position I had to get in made me all hurty.  I lost a bit of knuckle skin in the process of course.  I wasnt able to use the original hole as I wanted to maintain the current system until I was ready to chop it out as I had no idea how it would go and I wouldnt be able to re-fit the flexible one.

A week or 2 ago I removed a bathroom cabinet and a section of wall to gain access to part of the system. Link here.

One of the main problems was going to be turning the corner to the right about 4" above where the vertical tube disappears.  I was going to simply draw the tube back and wrap it in aluminum tape to add another barrier which was suggested on the canal forum, then connect either side, Instead as I drew it back and forth I realised I could get a new piece of plastic sanitary hose round the bend.  I already had a piece of this in the system near the toilet and this hadnt developed any smell.  Indeed even when this 9" bit was removed after the previous tube purging of a dozen or so fresh water only flushes there was no smell even from the inside of the tube.

I also had to cut a 6" hole in the electric cabinet in kitchen to get my hand in to guide the the new plastic tube through the bulkhead and its onward journey.  In doing so I shorted the Cat5 cable to the inverter against a mains wire and have damaged my inverter network bus, PC/USB interface unit and the remote panel, 1 Cat5 cable and 3 mains cables.  The cables were easily repaired as all of them were only slightly nicked, but just enough to short across the cutter :-(

Similar to this 

The new pipe was easily installed from the toilet all the way to the tank.  The whole system was replace in about 4 hours. Its also now easy to inspect, remove and service and only has about 2 of flexible plastic pipe throughout.

This is the only photo I took

I withdrew the old "No Smell" tube which stunk and put it outside.  To my surprise there was a lot of fine bits of lime scale grit about the size of large tea leaves inside the tube which were brown like teas leaves when wet but curiously almost white when dry.  These didnt smell at all when dry.

Next morning I noticed the smell in the saloon had completely gone and the back canopy area was where the pipe passes under the floor was also smell free.  Long may it remain.

Total cost of the replacement tube and fittings cost about £70, damage to the inverter and accessories?  Ill let you know.  

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