7th August 2019
Delighted to report that the planking which will form the hull of Independence has arrived in American River. Three large and very heavy packs of timber arrived after a long journey from Canada via Otto's Timber in Adelaide.
A lot of tricky manoeuvring was required to get the 7m long parcels of timber into the boat house. Luckily, with the recent installation of the keel some space has become available but it's all gone now!
Thanks to Bob Imeson's skills at driving a forklift, the long, narrow parcels were turned this way and that way to (almost) fit into the long, narrow space where the keel used to be. A little reshaping needs to be done but at least the timber is safely out of the wet.
Thanks also to KI Shellfish for the use of their forklift and to Grant Millard, Peter May, Bob Imeson, Lynton Geyer and David Cowans for their help with the operation.
The three packs of timber arrived in American River. How to get them off the truck and sideways into the boat house?
Loading the first pack onto the rollers so it can be pushed into the boat house.
Grant, Bob and Peter admiring their skill at getting the first pack into position.
The planks are in three packs and need to be stacked in order of use. Here, Bob has balanced packs 2 and 3 which will be stored alongside pack 1 - the first to be used.
It was touch and go but we managed to get the newly arrived planks into the boat house. Going to be difficult to do tours but we'll have to work around that.