Batavia

If you can find one to borrow, an MICC cable straingtening tool works brilliantly. Otherwise, as Chris says, unroll it carefull by hand with an assistant and then use blocks of wood (gently) to achieve kink-free perfection.

I have found lengths of string and a roofer's square to be easy to use and accurate. If the floor will eventually be covered up, paint it with something light and cheap (like white emulsion) and set out the plan in pencil. Also use it like a carpenter's rod to set out key dimensions and angles, so that they can be taken off quickly, without having to find the key scrap of paper that the dimensions were written on. The first thing I build is a "sacrificial" bench (top from a couple of layers of shuttering ply, elgs from 4" x 2"), firmly bolted to the side of the boat. This saves hours of squatting down on the floor, leaping on and off the boat and chasing a Workmate (note tha careful use of the capital W) round the boat.

But trying stop can be quite exciting.......

Steel prices from a couple of weeks ago, for a somewhat larger (and thicker-walled) tank (26.5 m dia x 16.5 m high): Carbon steel approx £500/tonne, stainless (316 or 304, can't recall) approx £2,400/tonne. The only downside that I have seen with SS holding tanks is a couple of tanks which have failed along the top weld - probably resulting from a combination of excessive flexing due to insufficient rigidity under the seat, thin SS, wrong weld procedure and/or poor welding.

Should i ask about the KY?!? Roy. Hopefully to provide good acoustic coupling between an ultrasonic thickness measuring device and the steelwork. If not, certainly don't ask!

I don't think that anything you say can make the share price go lower! (BP Employee)

Our Taylors diesel stoves have flame failure devices (just a thermocouple in the burner pot and a solenoid valve in the fuel line) which have saved us from a couple of potential diesel spills over the past 20 years, when the stoves have blown out at night. Just a mess, rather than a safety hazard, but not pleasant to have to deal with. An alternative to a fire valve (or an additional safeguard) is to install a restriction orifice (just a plate with a small hole in it) in the fuel line, with the hole sized such that the maximum flowrate cannot exceed what the stove consumes on full output - hence no chance of thermal runaway. There are some issues to do with the changing viscosity of fuel with temperature, so it is best to install it where the fuel is already part-warmed - i.e. in the cabin, rather than a cold engine room, but sufficiently far from the stove to avoid positive feedback. Chris

Until recently, I would have described the green boat (Daedalus No.2) as tug-style - josher-ish bow (based on ex-FMC Kimberley), reasonably deep-draughted, portholes, flat deck, etc. However, Batavia (the one in primer) must be more tug-like - deper draughted, riveted tea-shed as a cabin (splendid phrase that), very low in the water (the bow will go down another 10" when ballasting is completed) - but it will be grey, rather than Matty yellow. As many others have said, beauty is in the eye of the owner......diversity makes life more interesting.. Just one further thought - how long before top-flight builders start making replicas of early Springers - and woud they have the wavy plates and lumpy welds, for true versmilitude?

Tongue in cheek, the answer is simple, if not cheap..... The tug is a thing of beauty, for fun. Have a second boat for practicality (ours is Daedalus No.2, also a Roger hull)!

Yes, it is based on the Pacific which John Pattle now owns - Roger Farrington had owned before him. We decided to pass on the twin headlamps - that was a step too far! And our rivets should not get knocked off - they are CNC machined ones, with real sized and shaped heads, but with a 5mm shank for ease of drilling the shell (this saved about 1,200 12mm holes, which Roger was not that keen on drilling)!

Fully agree that the "Tug Style" thing is weird. Last year Roger Farrington completed the steelwork for our tug Batavia, which is loosely based on the Stewarts and Lloyds tug Pacific No. 4. In our eyes, it look splendid, but seems to inspire liking and loathing in equal measures in other people. It certainly looks different to other boats, but there seems to be very little true variety in boats being built these days - when compared with, say, 20 years ago. Are costs so high that people are too worried about re-sale value to buy boats which are different from the norm? Chris