It’s was an exciting autumn! It is so wonderful to see progress being made with the renovation as well as to welcome more people to share in her story. We now have a small team of wonderful volunteers who come along to help Chris, the boatwright, to work on Jane Hannah. Each week we update on our Facebook page so that everyone can follow the adventure.
Progress
The first volunteer day a Tuesday at the beginning of October. It was amazing to see just how much can be achieved when working as a team. The team have been meeting every Tuesday.
Scraping may not be a skilled job, or a glamorous one, but it is essential to clean the wood from years of paint, check the quality of the wood underneath before repainting in RNLI colours.
What a difference a day makes!
Scrapers receive a much needed incentive to keep going. It is only when working on the boat you can fully appreciate the size of the boat; what it must’ve been like to row her in a storm to stricken vessels!
Andy also showed us how to make an ingenious wooden clamp to hold pieces of wood when planing or cutting them.
Presently the boat is held aloft on the massive yellow steel frame fabricated by Harland and Wolff. It also has support in the form of baulks of timber beneath the main and ballast keels and at strategic places along the hull. The job we are working towards is removing the iron keel so that we can inspect, and in all likelihood, replace the main wooden keel. To do that the present supports under the main keel will have to be removed.
The wooden cradles being constructed will therefore support much of the weight of the hull when the keel is removed and also ensure that when that happens the shape of the hull does not distort. The cradles therefore have to be very strong and fit the hull precisely
