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.