Working black locust and fitting it to the boat. The deck rails/stringers make a massive difference to the solid feel of the deck, and will certainly enable me to remove some material from the deck supports in the galley area, freeing headroom there.

I've said many times now that I am not using any newly-sourced tropical hardwood on this build and that remains the case - I feel that it should be possible to build a durable boat from (relatively speaking) locally source woods, and so am restricting myself to woods of European origin/growth. A couple of weeks ago, I bought 3 largish boards of black locust wood (known here as robinia, or robinie, and otherwise known as false acacia). This has properties that compare favourably with the properties of teak and yet is grown commercially in Europe (and reaches maturity in 25 - 30 years). My intention is to use this wood for various pieces of exterior structural members and trim pieces. It does, however, have a reputation for being quite hard to work, so I must admit to having had some concerns when it came to ripping these 5cm thick boards down to the dimensions I require, particularly considering the cheapness of my table saw!

I invested in a new ripping saw blade to give the poor saw a bit more of a fighting chance, and set to. The results can be seen below!

I was very saddened to hear, last week, about the loss at sea of sv Bertie. As far as I understand, Bertie and her owners were underway on the east coast of the US, when they met some unsavoury conditions and were suddenly gybed by a big squall. Bertie capsized and, for whatever reason, didn't come back up again (she's a Spray, which, as far as I understand, don't have self-righting and probably has loose internal ballast). Fortunately, after a dunking, the owners were able to get up on the hull and, after a while, get to and activate the EPIRB. They were rescued by the US coastguard.

We saw Bertie in Half Moon Bay on our trip down the Pacific coast. She was a striking vessel, with a big junk mainsail, a lug mizzen and two jibs/foresails out on an enormous bowsprit. The fact that she had a stayed mast was probably instrumental in her downfall, as the junk sail was resticted in how far it could swing out to feather into the wind, but the owners had certainly sailed plenty of ocean miles in her. Of course, they have now lost nearly everything and have started a "GoFundMe" page here

Please donate - every little bit helps!

I wish them every success in whatever comes next.

Who'd ever have thought it, eh?? 90 episodes of the boatbuilding video series! Wow!

And.... Here it is!!

Last weekend, we were invited to have a look at 2 things. Till had seen us on our YouTube videos and got in contact. A few weeks ago, he came down to visit Tapatya and we spent an enjoyable afternoon chatting about boating and European inland waterways in particular - Till has travelled these fairly extensively and had a wealth of good info for us. Then, last weekend, we went up to visit Till and his boat - a very pretty Dutch-build steel motor yacht.

He has this moored at the confluence of the River Elbe and the Elbe-Lübeck Canal, in an old working boat boatyard. We had a tour of the boatyard facilities and then a good look around Till's boat. 

The boatyard is ideal for us as a launch site. It boasts a huge hall with 2 gantry cranes of 32 ton capacity each. At the river end of the hall is a launch pool, with a big door that opens up to let boats out to the river and canal. The yard is only some 25 mins drive from our place, so about as good as it gets in terms of location. Excellent!

This week's video shows that and the recent progress on the boat. Enjoy!