Lulworth

[peter radclyffe]

http://i791.photobucket.com/albums/yy195/helpME7/img262.jpg

[Peerie Maa]

http://i791.photobucket.com/albums/yy195/helpME7/img262.jpg

Fragile.:eek:
Could you salvage any of the timber?

[MarkH]

aye, them scaffolding planks would plane up and make nice bookshelves :D

[peter radclyffe]

the hull timber was all shot, we saved a bit for half models, we saved about a quarter of the honduras mahogany interior and all the teak skylights,doghouse, hatches,

[dhic001]

An incredible boat and a stunning restoration. A vessel that I lust after. If was very very wealthy I would have her as my racing yacht, Shenendoah as my cruising yacht. Incredible vessels.
Daniel

[rufustr]

Could you tell some of the stories associated with the restoration from your perspective?

Absolutely stunning job.

http://www.lulworth.nl/main/main.php

[peter radclyffe]

The last time I’d prepared my 3 ton collection of heavy wooden ship builders tools for a build was for the Kathleen & May, it never happened instead she went to North Devon where I’d built a picarooner for Clovelly, & where Aello Beta had languished outside my window as the pre restoration 110 foot wood composite Max Oertz, Xenia, I realised that week the Big Class restoration I was now put in charge of would be my Xenia. I set the hull up level, it’s not easy to do this on your own on a 120 foot pre-war yacht which ranks alongside Britannia in Englands maritime heritage, after 3 meetings with the designer from Chancers of Distinction of River Amble I knew they were out of their depth, they’d had 2 support frames welded far too close to the hull to facilitate rebuilding the centreline construction, framing & planking, they had not set the boat level & they’d put 2 ? Strings on the centre line which were not in line, I changed & corrected all these things , now I could start work, their CEO, DSC, BBC & ITV was so full of himself he put the project- miniature- hatchet managers nose out of joint ( you just knew there couldn’t be space for 2 of them), with his prancing & preening & how he’s going to do this & now he’s going to do that etc, wenk, wenk that most fortunate of men etc, he would send us comatose with tales of how the worlds classic yacht owners would crawl across broken glass to invite him onto their boats, how we are not worthy to touch the ground he walks upon etc, yeah right ,he told us an old minin’ song joke, yours out, mine in, but he got it wrong, suddenly he’d talked himself off the job, his sly designer was retained to copy the original Nicholson drawings, I figured he couldn’t screw them up, I was wrong

[peter radclyffe]

sorry folks, heres another whinge & bleat, but throughout the thread it may become apparent why i need to tell this story

[peter radclyffe]

I started fairing the hull & patterning the frames, the old hull was so badly distorted due to losing it’s strength from age, rot, corrosion, weather, the usual villains & losing & half its planking, I had to invent a system overnight to fair the hull & pattern the frames externally, there being far too much clutter to pattern internally, chainplates, cabin sole stringers & beams, floor flanges, frame flanges, rudder head blocking & gussets, rivets, horn timber, beam to frame gussets, mainsheet reinforcing, engine & generator beds, sterntube log etc, I chose to pattern the starboard side, it being clear of the project hatchets amphetamine bull**** ratrun , undoubtedly a lot of the yard visitors were just as full of **** as he was , & they’d stop me working whenever they could to ask me if I didn’t know who they were , inadequate , unsure of themselves & completely oblivious to their obstructions to me doing the most difficult job in a shipyard on my own, I realised all these armchair experts needed a place to puff out their chests & shoot their mouths off, so I cordoned off an area to contain their bull****, which had to be swept up every night, while playing at boatbuilders he & his mates Dippy, Grumpy, Narcissus, Snorter, Bleeder , Arroganza , Psycho , Malcolm Mellow, Iffy, Dodgy & Scamp had put waterline marks in the hull with a laser, all the marks were wrong I had to remove all 220 of them before I could start.

[peter radclyffe]

http://i791.photobucket.com/albums/yy195/helpME7/img264.jpg

[peter radclyffe]

http://i791.photobucket.com/albums/yy195/helpME7/img263.jpg
i reshaped & aligned the 7 metre , 2 ton new teak & bronze rudder, changed the bearing patterns, patterned new for castings,i fiitted the steering gear & supervised digging a hole under the boat to fit the rudder,7-12 men

[peter radclyffe]

http://i791.photobucket.com/albums/yy195/helpME7/img265.jpg

[peter radclyffe]

http://i791.photobucket.com/albums/yy195/helpME7/img266.jpg
some of the 180 tons of woodwork & metalwork i patterned on my own, as well as being in charge of 120 people on the 80 % new construction

[Larks]

By coincidence I have just been reading through an old copy of an article on Lulworth from September 2006 (looking for a hull sheathing article for Rick) so was quite interested to see this thread pop up at the same time.

For anyone who may not be aware of Peter's involvement with the Lulworth restoration, here is a scan of part of the article (It's a big article and I'm loath to post too much for fear of getting into strife with copywrite):

http://i260.photobucket.com/albums/ii11/Larks_01/Lulwortharticle.jpg

It is an amazing restoration Peter, it must have been a terrific job to work on, despite the problems. Looking forward to hearing more about it.

[peter radclyffe]

thanks mate,

[Don Kurylko]

Incredible Peter! The mind bogles.

[peter radclyffe]

I cut off all the old planking, external diagonal strap bracing, bilge plates, engine bed plate doublers & keelsons , I angle grinder nick mark every plank edge on the frames at the frame stations, I fair in a section of hull with ribbands, wedges, cramps & dogs, then mark on the old frame with a laser, string lines, centre punch, felt tips, water levels, spirit levels & plumb bobs, waterlines, buttock lines, centreline, on the curtain plate mark the deck offsets, then make a female master pattern then 75 female patterns, then transfer all these marks onto the patterns plus number all 36 plank edges & bevel boards every 2nd, 3rd or 5th plank as required, take care, steel composite frame bevels are usually plus 90 not minus 90 degrees as on timber frames, the hull was asymmetrically 3 cm fuller at the mast on the stbd side, & badly distorted 2/3rds aft on the port side, original riveted problems, I had to alter & correct the shape of the original hull, try making that decision on your own when your supervising 60-80 shipyard workers who have never built anything like the worlds biggest wooden gaff cutter, I’m used to these decisions but time & again apart from inexperienced people the worst problem by far is the hangers-on, the vascillating, useless troublemakers who quickly need to find something to do with their time rather than waste mine & yours, the parasites who attach themselves to most projects like barnacles or poison ivy slowing you down & suffocating you with all the empty internationalism of an airport lounge as Jah Wobble & Justin Adams put it on the nail, not for nothing do I wear bull**** blocking ear defenders on my hard hat, I couldn’t concentrate without them distracted & irritated as I would be by the tiresome waffle & energy sapping drone pervading the air by the endless stream of, Don’t yer know oo eye ams creeping round the project hatchet, for many weeks I was working on my own putting the whole boat in order & patterning deck beams, curtain plates, bilge plate stringers, cabin sole stringers, frames, floors, keel plates, double keelson plates full length from stem head to sternpost head, horn timber plates , transom plate, lead keel bolt plate doublers, bowsprit heel plate doublers, deck support pillars, whisker shroud stemhead plates, all the attendant aforementioned framing, maststep framing, intercostals & doublers, martingale, the original bobstay had entered the hull thru a watertight gland above the waterline to be tensioned with an internal bottlescrew, we changed this to an external fitting, I rejected the surveyors weak bolted thru wood stem design , instead I asked for a 98 ton snatch loading heavy plate to be welded to the stem, it wasn’t easy

[peter radclyffe]

it wasn’t easy identifying the errors on the original build but once realised it’s simple to correct them, I set up a centreline on the ground full length 2 metres beyond bow & stern, it’s not easy to angle grind this into the floor cross steels because of the keel blocks, this is the most important datum, the other one is the load waterline, this one is continuously being removed by the welders who are so thick they don’t even know what it is, so it’s an ever vigilant job to transfer the dwl to the scaffolding then back to the hull inside & out over 2 years , when you know for sure if you don’t do it no one else will, the key points being the stem, stern & the big web frames at mast & frame 45 or near the boarding gate 2/3rds aft.

[Larks]

thanks mate,

No worries Peter, I'm off to Melbourne for a couple of days for a school reunion so I'm looking foward to catching up on this when I get back
cheers
Greg

[peter radclyffe]

After I’d been in charge of the steelwork subcontract gang for 3 weeks, I had the measure of them, they told me they reckon the steel work will take 6 months, I make a note I think it will take them 18 months, I’m teaching them in Italian as fast as I can learn it, the framing was going well, then I made patterns for the wood centreline structure, in order that these may be taken to the sawmill, the timber to be cut out rough to dry out , 3 stem pieces with 12.1 scarfs & attendant station moulds square to keel not vertical, 2 keel pieces, sternpost , deadwoods, all the rudder & rudder head blocking, steering & gusset moulds, the horn timber/ boning piece & the many arch board & transom plan, hood & knuckle profile, camber, quarter badge, fairlead & scroll work , stanchion, bulwark & taffrail .

[RT MAN]

Peter, your one lucky guy to have this position and obviously a very knowledgeable and diserving.

Hell yah.

[peter radclyffe]

thanks R T
as well as my relentless quality control, cutting lists, work programmes, teaching joiners to be shipwrightshttp://i791.photobucket.com/albums/yy195/helpME7/img277.jpg

[peter radclyffe]

http://i791.photobucket.com/albums/yy195/helpME7/img271.jpg
we worked to the original specifications, except primarily
khaya not honduras mahogany hull planking
finger jointed teak on ply, not pine deck
welded not riveted
extra keel wing bolts
iroko not oak & elm centreline structure
plastic top hat planking washers
epoxy paint , not galvanised steelwork

[pcford]

Amazing work!

[BETTY-B]

LULWORTH has got be the single coolest thing on the entire planet. Amazing.

DAN

[peter radclyffe]

you are most kind fellas

[peter radclyffe]

http://i791.photobucket.com/albums/yy195/helpME7/img276.jpg
i have to translate it all into italian, i teach it as fast as i can learn it, & almost all the words are not in daily use

[peter radclyffe]

http://i791.photobucket.com/albums/yy195/helpME7/img278.jpg
& while all this is going on, for the first of these 4 years i have to supervise the new masting, sparring & rigging , & various other jobs, on the restoration of Iduna, a 120 ton, 85ft, 1939 dutch steel de fries lentsch,ketch,
the designer who knew his stuff died mid restoration & left his idiot son mr bean to f... it up
i rejected 80 % of his designs, & redesigned them so that they would work, he had been taught how to draw pretty pictures but unlike his father he had no common sense

[peter radclyffe]

incredibly i had worked on iduna in brightlingsea, when she was owned by the guys who had soren larsen, which i worked on, & i knew her from antibes, that yachting ghetto of the western world, & i knew lulworth from working a mile away from her on the hamble river, where my family had a yacht before the war, & here they both were stuffed in italy needing tlc to say the least

[peter radclyffe]

in the same shedhttp://www.woodenboat.com/forum/images/icons/icon14.gif

[peter radclyffe]

http://i791.photobucket.com/albums/yy195/helpME7/img279.jpg
and also in that shed i had to rebuild patience
i was busy

[peter radclyffe]

http://i791.photobucket.com/albums/yy195/helpME7/img274.jpg
when she arrived, i was the first person to start rebuilding her after 12 years, gutted, abandoned, with her wood keel missing & half her planking

[peter radclyffe]

i just heard my uncle died in france,
so im playing , against the wind-bob seger

[Hwyl]

Sorry to hear that Peter.

[peter radclyffe]

thanks Gareth
oWhile all this was going on I lined out all the hull planking runs & made a new hull planking butt plan, extending the old butt pattern from 6 metres to 14 metres and drew up a cutting list so if we could just get some khaya now it could be drying out ( the subcontract gang didn’t know to do this ) having spent half my life nurse maiding these & other trades I could see I was going to have to do it again , I made copies of all plans & patterns & sent them to my boatyard on an island, I then drew up a loft floor full size & laid down all the frame shapes & floors, & made a lines plan & body plan incorporating 75 frames on the scrieve board , & accompanying offset tables, sheer heights above d.w.l & keel depths below , outer keel, stem & deadwood steel widths, diagonals, buttocks, bevels, etc for historical purposes, all the yacht models & more pressingly to loft out the new lead keel( as the designer was incapable of measuring & drawing the keel to the original Nicholson designs, I told him as I was making new frame patterns, it was easy enough for me to make a new lines plan too, when he copied my offsets tables , he put only his name on my lines plan , I rang him up & asked what he was doing, he then put my name on my lines plan ,cute doesn’t begin to describe these crooks

[peter radclyffe]

This idea of combining all the frames & the body plan is not new, I learnt it from Aurthur Payne & Charles Niicholson, I also used a 1919 Lloyds Building & Classification of Composite Yachts rule book, once you know the station to station frame spacing & profile & you add diagonals it gives all the information you need to loft out full size & saves you lofting the frames , the frames are to inside of plank so for clarity you choose one line, to outside of plank, the body plan, 4’000 measurements on my own, in this case reverse lofting, from boat to loft floor then offsets tables, when my lines plan was featured in a magazine they trashed my 4 years endeavours of being in charge of 100 people building this yacht as no more than ,” a computer attempt to join the dots”, I read this in hospital when I was trying hard to stay alive, talk about kicking a man when he’s down, I had to wonder, how many big wooden gaff cutters had that reviewer built , can you guess the answer? It’s not like his wife had seduced me when she was carried away by the gentle sound of the whispering rushes in a gun punt in a creek off Breydon Water in the long hot summer of 1973 when I was replanking a wherry yacht at Carrow Road (I didn’t know she was married) or anything like that so what’s his problem.

[pcford]

It’s not like his wife had seduced me when she was carried away by the gentle sound of the whispering rushes in a gun punt in a creek off Breydon Water in the long hot summer of 1973 when I was replanking a wherry yacht at Carrow Road (I didn’t know she was married) or anything like that so what’s his problem.

Whispering rushes, eh. Ya never know what'll get a woman going.

To use a term which is very overworked on this side of the pond...your work is truly awesome. In this case it is warranted!

[Lucky Luke]

Most wonderful rant ever!


....their CEO, DSC, BBC & ITV so full of himself he put the project- miniature- hatchet managers nose out of joint ...... with his prancing & preening & how he’s going to do this & now he’s going to do that etc, wenk, wenk .... he would send us comatose with tales of how the worlds classic yacht owners would crawl across broken glass to invite him onto their boats, how we are not worthy to touch the ground he walks upon etc, ....
...project hatchets amphetamine bull**** ratrun...
...inadequate , unsure of themselves & completely oblivious to their obstructions...
....armchair experts...
....puff out their chests & shoot their mouths off...
....playing at boatbuilders he & his mates Dippy, Grumpy, Narcissus, Snorter, Bleeder , Arroganza , Psycho , Malcolm Mellow, Iffy, Dodgy & Scamp....
....the hangers-on, the vascillating, useless troublemakers...
...the parasites who attach themselves to most projects like barnacles or poison ivy...
..waffle & energy sapping drone pervading the air by the endless stream of, Don’t yer know oo eye ams creeping round the project hatchet.....
...cute doesn’t begin to describe these crooks...

:D:D:D


not for nothing do I wear bull**** blocking ear defenders on my hard hat........

..... it wasn’t easy!

Understandable!:rolleyes:

Thank you for the beautiful English language lesson to me poor froggy!

....and congrats, MASTER shipwright !:)

[Candyfloss]

I don't know what I can say, Peter, that won't sound trite or dumb. Thank you for posting. I hang on every word.

[peter radclyffe]

thanks guys.
, & another thing, rant , rave etc

[peter radclyffe]

He & his squirming posse were at a gala dinner one night when Dave Widdop asked him if he could tell him something to say in Italian as his Italian wasn’t good, he tapped his glass, quiet descended over the assembly,” thank you for inviting us this evening, fare mi a pompe”, the crowd at their tables were stunned ,translated as –give me a blow job- ,the project miniatures idea of giving a fellow yachtsman something to say, to this day he hasn’t spoken to the cont ,he told us this tale one morning at coffee & the only people laughing who weren’t shocked were his posse .
Dear reader, is this how you treat your friends? no, I thought not, so its not hard to see why I chose not to socialise with the scum. After months & months of costing both yachts on my own I was exhausted, his wife gave me one of the yachts new t-shirts, when he saw me wear it he threw all his toys out of the pram & lost it completely, he stamped his foot, his face was apoplectic “ who gave you this t-shirt “-,er, your wife . One day a journalist arrived & started talking to me, the weasel squealed “don’t talk to him talk to me, talk to me, it’s my yacht, mine all mine do you hear, don’t talk to him, loog ad me, me loog ad me, me “,he was coming down from last night’s mixed dose of class a’s & boy did he look evil, self loathing, hates me, hates you ,off his face, cant function without a line or 2 of coke in the morning & once the cont starts functioning look out, a cocktail of drugs every night ,hard to cope with this jumped up jerk who put the c nt into wannabe country gentleman, the journalist was severely shaken by the raging vermin he’d stirred up, he rang me the next morning to confirm his notes, unable initially to believe what he’d seen.

[peter radclyffe]

i read that the novelist beryl bainbridge had writers block which was released by her heart attack

[peter radclyffe]

and what would the story be without the most important of a queue of papa ratzis http://i791.photobucket.com/albums/yy195/helpME7/img282.jpg

[peter radclyffe]

models made to http://i791.photobucket.com/albums/yy195/helpME7/img283.jpgmy lines plan, from the old honduras planking

[peter radclyffe]

i had to get all the bronze parts made for 2 new tenders, & teach a gang how to restore the old one, i had to bore the sterntube, & install the engine, the tender was from scotland around 1920, maybe, we dont know, so if anyone knowshttp://i791.photobucket.com/albums/yy195/helpME7/img291.jpg

[peter radclyffe]

kiwi alan cartridge, aussies glen gary & glen ross had worked together in a partnership but by the time they started working with us, they'd stopped talking to each other in the same workshop, i was the go-between, as if i hadnt got enough to do, i asked them to help me pattern, they screwed up & some 1000's of euros of wrong patterned plate later,
that was the only time i asked for help patterning
after that chaos
i patterned everything
mostly they worked on iduna, under my direction, they were good joiners
but not boatbuilders, it all comes out in the wash, when they tell you they can do it all

[peter radclyffe]

http://i791.photobucket.com/albums/yy195/helpME7/img286.jpg
its always christmas on board
until you get fired and kicked in the gutter

[peter radclyffe]

i bronze patterned, rudder bearings, fairleads, bitts, sterntube logs, & the prop a-bracket
seen here with one of maines finest riggers, sailors & all round good guys nat lemieux
one of 20 people who asked me for a reference
when they were pushed, jumped, shoved ,freefall etc
its only life
we cant take it too seriously http://www.woodenboat.com/forum/images/icons/icon7.gifhttp://i791.photobucket.com/albums/yy195/helpME7/img288.jpg

[peter radclyffe]

after jj i never wanted to caulk another big hull, i left that to brian & his french mate vincent, who was a good caulker except for the medication he was on because his brother had just killed himself
he missed gaps in the caulking which i had to find
but hey, you cant do enough to help the guy
nothing we could do would help

[peter radclyffe]

http://i791.photobucket.com/albums/yy195/helpME7/img289.jpg

[peter radclyffe]

http://i791.photobucket.com/albums/yy195/helpME7/img287.jpg

[peter radclyffe]

what the locals had'nt nicked arrived in containers, as the foreman yacht joiner i had to work out where it all went, i set up the interior on scaffolding & using clues, photos, deckbeams, camber, sheer, beam, deck heights, frames, reconstructed the scene of the crime, i personally rebuilt most of the sheer angled saloon furniture , i patterned the rest of the furniture then taught several furniture makers how to build the rest, i had to teach them what sort of fastenings,joints, where, why, strength, watertightness, grainplugs, skylights, hatches, vents,doors, she'd been built before dorades but we put some in
then i had to design the floor & hatches, inch & a half honduras pitchpine
& thousands of other details, cutting lists & ordering materials for everything on the boathttp://i791.photobucket.com/albums/yy195/helpME7/img290-1.jpg

[peter radclyffe]

http://i791.photobucket.com/albums/yy195/helpME7/img285.jpg

[peter radclyffe]

http://i791.photobucket.com/albums/yy195/helpME7/img299.jpg

[Lew Barrett]

This is over the top. Peter, you are making the rest of us feel inadequate.

[Bob Triggs]

Heroic.

[peter radclyffe]

hey Lew, i thought you wanted tales from the river bank http://www.woodenboat.com/forum/images/icons/icon7.gif

[WX]

Just a tad gobsmacked. My struggles would be such a non event in your day.

[peter radclyffe]

He deliberately fabricated the crapfully worded lie that all the 97 people who built the boat were specifically invited to the launch, so 34 of the world’s yachting journalists printed this as fact, when in fact only 5 of them were, the rest of us having been mercilessly booted aside, dumped in the gutter like so much detritus. ” These yachting journalists, their all facking idiots,” spat the project hatchet, “oh yeah , I tell them I just happened to find 40 tons of 60 year old, air-dried Honduras mahogany for the hull planking, 2 kilometres away from my owse, when we all know I could only find green khaya mahogany ,and we got a good CIM rating cos I told them the boat is 75% original, when we all know it’s only 25% original, yeah they just believe anyfing wot I tell them, cos their all stupid”. So how do you think they’ll respond when Lloyds, Bureau Veritas, Germanische Lloyd, RINA & the ABS find out these things aren’t true, that & the skipper, er, mechanic running on a bent 200 ton ticket, “they’ll never find out “,he sniggered, deranged & cocksure . But when you meet him you’ll understand, during these 4 years building, I was so stressed out doing the work of 2 or 3 people I used to joke that when the job was over I wouldn’t be going on holiday, I’d be going to hospital, I wish I’d kept my mouth shut. But being in hospital, the thought of dying & the attendant abandonment can be a powerful trigger to let you know what it’s really like to build 2 beautiful vintage yachts with a bunch of violent clowns & drug addicts riding on the back of your knowledge, in 30’-40’c in the crazy med, all the cocaine in Spain snorted directly into their brains, a modern parable, altho’ I have to tell you, some of the people I met & worked with were very pleasant & knew their stuff, we’d often go to the bar after work, have a few beers, then home, they’d often ask me how they could cope with the hatchet, I told them, they will always meet conts like that in life, concentrate on the work, one of the hardest things in life is to find out what your good at, when you find out, practise it till your as good as you can be, it will bring its own rewards & not just financial, it will nourish you thru’ hard times & be a constant, some thing you can always rely on.

[peter radclyffe]

You must only go to sea with people you trust with your life. If you fell or were pushed overboard these clowns would laugh about it. Harry Bricklesy , after 18 months on board broke his arm lifting a spinnaker, he lost his job before the plaster set. James Stone was fired for having dinner with Bob Roberts who was fired for having dinner with Eve Regan who was fired for having dinner with George Thorogood who left, what did it matter to the scum in charge who work their way thru the population, after all there’s plenty of crew out there & what are they anyway to him, this vicious Chelsea headhunter, people! crew, fairers, painters, mechanics, carpenters, riggers, shipwrights, their all disposable to him & his wife, business is business, cold blooded thugs, for whom humanity & compassion are water off a ducks back, chancers of spin & presentation, failures of glamour over substance, glittering like a trinket in a sewer of their own making, Brenda Gleniffer was the latest victim crying all the way home to Adelaide, where she spilled her story to her father, a police inspector who until that day had been a mild man, who’d just emigrated from Bristol, the little cant was, making enemies far & wide. Every few weeks the miniature would return to Greer& Dworkin, his psychiatrists for an indefinite, pointless lost cause of a programme specifically designed for this subject to recognise & absorb words like humanity, responsibility, compassion, generosity, honesty? what the feck’s that, giving rather than taking, but he’d been seeing these shrinks for 20 years with no progress in sight, a lost cause. He proudly told me he & his gang of violent psycho’s would steal tools from builders vans in Bristol & sell them in pubs in the 80’s & 90’s, if he ever had to build something rather than destroy everyone around him, he’d realise what damage he’s done to those builders who had to scrape & save for those tools with no insurance to replace them,

[peter radclyffe]

Back on board, Camper than a row of Nicholsons, which is where he served his time, enter now a rigger into this increasingly depraved scenario, he tries to put several things past me, I’m not fooled, he puts what he likes past the chosen fawning few crew , pig ignorant as they are of vintage boats , what do I know after 50 years on them. He set bobby Reudersblock up to steal my notes which he copied verbatim for the website, he later threatened to wrap a crowbar round the project hatchets head, all these violent people were getting me down, I met that guy later at a wedding, I certainly wasn’t going to disrupt the wedding, although at that time my notes weren’t copyrighted, I didn’t expect him to steal them.

[peter radclyffe]

i had to assemble the old teak counter block, aft stanchions, & scrollworked, bulwark quarter badgeshttp://i791.photobucket.com/albums/yy195/helpME7/img303.jpg

[peter radclyffe]

A lot of the things your reading, I found out years later, such as my bonus from the owner, for masting & rigging the 30 metre steel schooner Herga, (after Mr Bean comprehensively facked it up) which I never received, which turned white & went straight up the project miniatures nose, as they hid every thing they could from me, but, early on, after a few weeks into the job I realised what I was dealing with, so, as well as writing articles, job lists, corrections ,survey notes, subcontractors & in house production rates, costing, ordering all materials, weeding the chancers on the make, quality controlling the so called engineers who’d been waiting tables last week, vetting the chipwrights, I also wrote down workers & yard visitors names, where they were from, the towns, companies, names of victims, boats, etc all their scams they bragged about in Oz, N.Z, the U.S, Africa the Caribbean & Europe, what they said they’d done , what they said they’d do, what they did, what they didn’t do, & every few weeks typed it all up, photocopied it 3 times& sent 2 copies to my solicitor in Suffolk, with clear instructions for Scotland Yard . People who hide everything & lie all the time are terrified of silence, because it’s then that you can see thru’ them , that’s why they loudly shoot their mouths off all the time, to distract you, bad actors are everywhere, but if you have to organise what I have to organise there’s not much time left for wasting my time & your time, talking about nothing..

[peter radclyffe]

if i had been invited to the launch, i wouldnt be writing all this, but i have been so deeply hurt i just had to let you know
whinge, bleat ,moan etc

[cookie]

These yachting journalists, their all facking idiots,” spat the project hatchet, “oh yeah , I tell them I just happened to find 40 tons of 60 year old, air-dried Honduras mahogany for the hull planking, 2 kilometres away from my owse, when we all know I could only find green khaya mahogany ,and we got a good CIM rating cos I told them the boat is 75% original, when we all know it’s only 25% original, yeah they just believe anyfing wot I tell them, cos their all stupid”. So how do you think they’ll respond when Lloyds, Bureau Veritas, Germanische Lloyd, RINA & the ABS find out these things aren’t true, that & the skipper, er, mechanic running on a bent 200 ton ticket.

:eek::eek:

How did the boat turn out in the end? Would you trust it to do well in an 8bft storm with 20ft waves and all?


Interesting read, as always.

Thanks

[peter radclyffe]

if the topmast & the spinnaker boom are lashed on deck, she will go almost anywhere there is no ice, in bad weather, you'd have to stash the interior safely-
signed a winging pom yesterdayhttp://www.woodenboat.com/forum/images/icons/icon14.gif

[cookie]

Ah well, that’s human :)
Should you ever feel the urge, post scan be edited within 24hrs I think. This can be done by clicking the edit button right next to where it says Quote.

[Lucky Luke]

.....one of the hardest things in life is to find out what your good at, when you find out, practice it till your as good as you can be, it will bring its own rewards & not just financial, it will nourish you thru’ hard times & be a constant, some thing you can always rely on.

Could be carved in ebony, gold leafed and affixed above the entrance of all schools....or perhaps only Chelsea high schools, if you prefer;)

[Lucky Luke]

if i had been invited to the launch, i wouldn't be writing all this, but i have been so deeply hurt i just had to let you know
whinge, bleat ,moan etc

Sound more like an accumulation of frustration, during four years, that was as deep as your commitment to good job is: a nasty combination that I am not surprised takes you straight into the doctors hands!

How are you these days, young man?

Good that you reveal all this, Peter: go ahead, let it out, and don't let lies live. I have been through similar times - although far from yours in both length and depth of hurt - but I know it does help to find someone who listens. We do!

And thank you again for the lessons of English language to us, poor non English speakers, and of proper nautical terms;).

[peter radclyffe]

thanks Luke, & since i'm in a hole, i might as well keep digging http://www.woodenboat.com/forum/images/icons/icon7.gif
then theres all the headaches with bad designs, epoxy, bad fabrication, roll on
The sailors claim they cant get the right stuff
Even tho’ their up to here with stuff about how to use the right stuff
If they could just get some stuff to rely on, then they wouldn’t feel stuffed
By the designers who don’t give a stuff about the sailors, the staff or the stuff
As long as they get paid the right stuff by any staff, right or wrong
The makers claim it’s been designed by the wrong staff, using the right staff but the wrong stuff
The designers claim it’s been made by the right staff using the wrong stuff
Then they claim it’s been made by the wrong staff using the right stuff the wrong way
The insurers claim the other stuff stays in the bank
Until it’s found out why the stuff broke, when the boat heeled & all that stuff
The inquest claims it was an act of god
When it really was the act of a designer who doesn’t have the right stuff,
theres one in every regatta

[peter radclyffe]

where in france are you from Luke

[Lucky Luke]

where in France are you from Luke

France? French although not even born there, and now I am afraid Saigon is a little far away from anywhere in France!

I have been on the "Cote d'Azur" for a while though: did deliveries all round the Med, raced on 55' SS design "Chrismur II", then 57' Carter design "Coriolan" as amateur crew, then paid hand, then skipper, ran a boat charter business based in La Napoule (bay of Cannes), had my little "yard" (just a little boat repair facility) there, then did aluminum passenger vessels "Nautilus" and "Ville de Toulon III" and a few motor-yachts, a time during which I turned to design only, then had my design office in "La Rague" (Bay of Cannes again). Lived aboard my "Stow & sons" built 18m. schooner "Morwenna".

Know well the "Antibes ghetto" ;)

Started sailing (actually as a - very young - apprentice rigger) in Reunion Island, was apprentice shipwright on the construction of a couple of "Tahiti ketch" in Algiers, (and sailed along the Algerian coast on a...stolen boat - not a very good idea, specially in war time!), worked in England for a short while at Moody's and then in Newport (Is. o' Wight) as a deck caulker, built large yachts in Thailand (as head of design office: not hands on), and now have my little design facility in Saigon but also got a nice build - in wood - to take care of !:) Been around a little.

[Candyfloss]

WOW. Luke. Stunning resume.

[peter radclyffe]

danny & kasper with an admiralty black & decker drill i got in crediton, devon , last service date 1http://i791.photobucket.com/albums/yy195/helpME7/img312.jpg974

[peter radclyffe]

Luke you have a wide experience, i have learnt of your design work, grand, did you learn more about stows in shoreham, i only know a bit about the rosalind, can you tell us more about morwenna

[peter radclyffe]

http://i791.photobucket.com/albums/yy195/helpME7/img315.jpg
Ursula & Eric decking

[peter radclyffe]

http://i791.photobucket.com/albums/yy195/helpME7/img313.jpg

[peter radclyffe]

How different would the work have been for a shipwright, plater, blacksmith or joiner! No welding machines, all steelwork was riveted, no angle grinders, maybe a bench grinder, no stainless steel, a blessing and a curse because stainless steel is very hard to drill; maybe no electric lights, I don’t know, no halogen lamps or strip lighting, no plastic for washers or bedding.

For the joiners and the shipwrights, no chop saws, bench sanders, biscuit machines, modern glues, crosshead screws and cordless drills and torches or routers, all moulding was probably done on a spindle router and with hand moulding planes, no electric planers or hand circular saws, no chain saws most large pieces were worked by axe adze, chisels. Spars were either steel or drawknife and hand planes, the mallet and chisel is still one of the most versatile ways to remove wood, combined with saw cuts, it’s way quicker, safer and cheaper then a router where a large chunk of wood is to be removed, it can then be finished with a router, caulking mallets and iron haven’t really changed in 100 years, but the mastic and glues have.
Most decks, today, are ply and teak, whereas then they were solid teak or pitch pine or kauri etc. No glues guns then, no plywood for patterns and construction, no fridges or washing machines, or electric cookers or microwaves, no video cameras , or mobile phones or camera phones, at least that meant that the men were more likely to work instead of playing with phones. No plastic conduit or modern electrics, plumbing systems or hydraulics, no hand hydraulics jack or power packs, no small tank trolleys for heavy weights, no fork lift truck or pallet trucks( the forklift is worth ten or twenty men) ; no modern bearings or seals, no little bench band saws , no electric tool sharpeners, no modern rigging or modern sails or plastic …. Sheaves , no G.P.S., radar, sonar, anemometer, ships telephones, V.H.F. distress channel , no… although these only affect who build the ship in as much as they have to install them, no top hat washers or portable hydraulic presses, these for punching the steel frame holes, although the original steel frame planking holes were almost certainly punched out in the blacksmith’s shop, I chose to drill these holes once the frames were welded in place as I was dealing with an Italian steel working gang who had never built a ship like this before, so should have they put a frame in the wrong place, the holes would be out of line. One great advantage, I presume, perhaps wrongly, is that the gang who built Lulworth originally, probably spoke one language instead of two or more..

[peter radclyffe]

http://i791.photobucket.com/albums/yy195/helpME7/img314.jpg

[peter radclyffe]

http://i791.photobucket.com/albums/yy195/helpME7/img328.jpg

[Candyfloss]

No battery drill. I have four!

[floatingkiwi]

It takes quite an arse, to grow any hair on.

[andrewe]

Peter,
Only just read this, and the JJ thread. I can't say how much I admire your dedication, on many levels, to the restoration projects.
Courage.
Andrew

[peter radclyffe]

thanks Andrew, then there are the manifest problems with stainless
Stainless steel
may be the grace jones of marine metals, a shiny, expensive, brutal, sexy, diva, unforgiving, cold , brittle & inflexible, it thrives on constant attention, oxygen & exposure, but if you cover it up or ignore it , it may snap on you when you least expect it, & may break your arm or leg , it lacks the strength of grain found in copper , steel & iron, such volatile behaviour is at odds with most of the reliable, comforting , dependable materials on most wooden boats

[peter radclyffe]

Kerry, W D F you on about

[pcford]

Stainless steel
may be the grace jones of marine metals

Funny Peter...and true.

[peter radclyffe]

No laser levels or electronic levels for building, no walkie talkies, it’s unlikely most men in the yard had their own car , motorbike, TV or radio, perhaps bicycle, but maybe they walked to work and back, after a hard day’s work. The work was very hard and labour intensive; so many things being done by hand: drilling holes, for instance, and there are 10000 to drill, through wood or steel , I presume the bronze frame bolts were made by hand, as they were tapered, but I don’t know.
Did they have a big electric or compressed air drilling machines in 1920 to drill 2 meter deadwood bolts ? If not, can you imagine drilling these holes by hand ? And haw did they drill the lead keel?
No two part paints or hull filler, also I presume, they had very little in the way of hard hats, goggle, masks, air fed masks, ear protectors, earplugs steel toe capped boots , bureaucratic officious Italian health and safety inspectors, little awareness oh how dangerous white lead and red lead paint is, no hoovers ….
Imagine cutting up a tree weighing 10 tons with a hand pitsaw : 2 guys, one month – I guess. Those guys were as strong as oxen, they had to be! And life was extremely dangerous in a yard, mostly for the same reasons as today… a few ignorant, idiotic, brain -dead workers, ignorant and disdainful of safety and inconsiderate to their fellow workers; possibly some of those men were drunk when they worked, as the beer gave them the energy to work, but inevitably caused misjudgement and accidents . The lifting equipment blocks and tackles etc. has evolved a bit, but I think they had chainblocks then, probably mostly ropes and chain sling , no loctite thread lock, all these things, if you add them all up , save thousands of hours work, maybe men took more care of their tools then, I don’t know, but sharp drills then meant easier work, whereas today if a drill is a bit blunt it will still drill a hole with on electric drill.

[Larks]

It takes quite an arse, to grow any hair on.

What the..?????:confused:

[Candyfloss]

Please Kerry?

[peter radclyffe]

Luigi Gradjuali from Yarmouth the latest casualty an ex-marine said he’d meet me at the launch, I told him I doubted I’d be invited, how could I have known, the train had pulled into the station, I’d got on board, I hoped against hope I wouldn’t be kicked off before the destination, a week before the launch, after 4 years in charge of 100 women & men, & quality controlling & rejecting again & again the often suspect offerings of another 140 people, I was booted out, I wasn’t invited to the launch, have you ever heard of a shipbuilder not being invited to the launch? 3 weeks later I had a heart attack, it literally broke my heart that I wasn’t invited to the launch, I couldn’t believe they’d be so selfish & ungrateful for all I’d done for them, what, do you think would be a just reward for being in charge of construction of a 75% new , 175 ton, 36 metre gaff cutter, & a 95 % new teak, C & N ,1930’s cutter, a sail? an invite to the launch? not a bit of it, if they had invited me to the launch I might not have written this , but it hurt me so deeply I just had to let you know about it, the violent jealous reptile of a violent junkie project manager frothing with hatred, as normal, crawls home after another sick days shafting & instead of going into his house, crawls under his rock & slavers there half awake with one eye open for all the people he’s turned over, not one rotten core crew or owner ever sent a message to wish me well in hospital.

[peter radclyffe]

It seems part of an inherent survival mode in a body, that humour can kick in just when you need it, my wife & I play guitar, on April 1st we put the guitars & our children in the car,( were headed to some Canadian friends who’d been fired in the latest cull, as they put it ), for a party , I suddenly feel what exactly? catarrh, nausea ,it probably doesn’t defy description, but how about an analogy that a pregnant woman never felt that way before, I go upstairs, lie down, drink water, there’s an awful pain in my arms like someone’s standing on each one, only much worse, the blood’s struggling to get thru the veins, I’m having a heart attack, the doctor puts a pill under my tongue to reduce blood pressure & he’s pacing round the room, I’m carried down the stairs in a hospital chair, I don’t want our children to see but they see, on the way to hospital we go in an underpass , I kick myself for not bringing my phone to try to ring my mate as the klaxon goes off, in hospital I ask my wife for her phone, I ring my mate & say sorry I cant come to your party, I’m in hospital having a heart attack, yeah sure he says, when you coming up, but no really, he doesn’t believe me, I say don’t you have April fools in Canada? I knew god had a sense of humour, he still doesn’t believe it, I hand the phone to my wife, her face is drained, he still doesn’t get it, “do you want to talk to a nurse”, she says, now he’s got it, I couldn’t resist it, I couldn’t have written that joke, how close to the edge can you get when your dying of laughter. I wanted to tell them they’d made a mistake not inviting the shipbuilder to the launch, but I knew it would be better if you told them, have you ever heard of the shipbuilder not being invited to the launch? The project hatchet miniature manager denies its his fault I had a heart attack, but, incapable of accepting what he sees when he looks in the mirror his whole life has been denial, but when you meet him you’ll see why, perhaps you’ve already met him, maybe he’s slavering opposite you at the table right now as you read this, waiting to destroy you?

whinge, bleat etc

[Lucky Luke]

65, double by-pass (over twelve years ago), 2 x 2 stents, but still cutting wood and still horny when my beloved wife gets a bit close!

Don't get down, dear Peter! Some arsses may get kicked hard, one day, don't worry:" what goes, comes back!"

Still: this is from the "Lulworth" website: http://www.lulworth.nl/pages.php?id=1317#Peter

Peter Radclyffe

Peter has been a key player in the restoration of Lulworth, combining the roles of yard foreman, chief shipwright, loftsman and joiner. A renowned shipwright with 25 years of design and construction experience, Peter’s career in building and restoring yachts has included the 25.90m ketch Irene and 33.50m motoryacht La Venezia. Prior to joining the Lulworth team, he was a foreman shipwright on the brigantine Jeanie Johnson, the replica emigrant ship completed in 2001.

"Despite the mix of boats with which I have been involved, gaff-rigged boats have always had a special place in my heart. In the 1970s, I worked on the River Hamble less than a mile away from where Lulworth was berthed. I visited her regularly and went on to study Lulworth and the whole classic movement. It proved a prescient move."

Peter has another spooky link with the work of the Classic Yachts Darsena yard, having worked on Iduna in Brightlingsea back in the mid-1980s. "I couldn’t believe my ears when Giuseppe told me that both Iduna and Lulworth were here in Viareggio, lying side by side. It has been a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to work on a boat like Lulworth from start to finish."

[peter radclyffe]

shhttp://i791.photobucket.com/albums/yy195/helpME7/img343.jpge had been built to lloyds

[peter radclyffe]

http://i791.photobucket.com/albums/yy195/helpME7/img344.jpg

which offered some guidelines to her restoration

[Candyfloss]

Yeah. I also note on the Lulworth site, your trade is listed as "woodworker", & you appear on the list after the waitress!

[peter radclyffe]

Supervising the exterior & interior joinery Honduras pitch pine cabin sole, all honduras mahogany, tulip wood, hornbeam, cypress, pine, bulkheads, furniture, bunks, lockers, work surfaces, shelves, cupboards, fids, racks, trim, doors, thresholds, skirtings, divans, chaise-longues, wine cupboards. The owner had 240 wine glasses made to my hull construction body plan, taken from my lines plan, writing desks, fascias, soffits, brass & silver catches, hooks, hinges, handles, locks, striker plates, door stops.
Teak skylights, square & round hatches, hatch coamings, companionways, handrails, doghouse, dorades, vents, windlasses, fife rails, cleats, bitts, Highfield levers, hinged scuppers, eyebolts, deck blanks, sheet leads, mast collar, winches, 148 blocks, mainsheet buffer, boom crutch, deck: boat , spar & anchor chocks, davits ,boarding gates, stanchions, fairleads, storm shutters ,watertight doors ,portholes , winches ,anchoring gear, chain rollers, guides, stoppers, cathead davits, swivel shackles, hawse & spurling pipes, hull & deck flanges, chain lockers, tanks & tank room, batteries& space, engine & generator; beds, bolts, mountings, driptrays,

[peter radclyffe]

we must never underestimate the considerable charms of a good waitress http://www.woodenboat.com/forum/images/icons/icon14.gif

[peter radclyffe]

Measuring & ordering all the bronze, stainless steel, copper & brass, fastenings & patterning fittings, 2 , one metre bronze fishplates for the 70 ton lead keel, centreline structure, deck, & interior, the tank room, the lazarette, mast, mast step, boom, gaff, marconi topmast, spinnaker pole, crosstrees, racing scorpio spreaders 360 ton shrouds, channels, chainplates,120 ton bobstay, hull fittings, dolphin striker, bowsprit, cranse , gammon , heel, whisker, shrouds, spreaders & forestay fittings, mast & spar fittings.

[peter radclyffe]

”Fuggedabowderox I got” screamed the diva from the Bronx, Shere threw the radio through the skylight where it landed in an open diesel tank.
5 Bright as a button, as cold as Sweden and with a face like a busted orange from the drugs , Janet Shriek Distorter who would kill a man for a giro, & who should have been chained up in a junk yard , was working her way round the men & the drugs on the decks of the med, she was on a down road & she knew it, when she ran into Benny Flashback who had been a mercenary in Angola, so called because every once in a while he’d spray the yard with imaginary bullets from his imaginary gun when he had a flashback from his days of gory ,while singing that song , this guy couldn’t get out of bed without a lump of dope which he’d chew all day long, lucky for us it mellowed him out, because without the puff there’s no telling what he might do, one week we had to shut the yard down, ostensibly on the directions of the local safety elf because, like his dick, his backhander didn’t quite fill his hand, but it was actually because Benny Flashback had run out of dope & it was too dangerous to work with him on the loose , just another one of the hatchets deranged lieutenants, who would of course blindly follow his leader round the bend , she should have run away from him but she knew- she was going down, she’d have to leave it till the morning after.

[peter radclyffe]

not all of the above post is true, but you get the idea

[Eric D]

love the story Peter, please do keep telling it. Wonderful pictures of boats and also "pictures" in my head from the words you write. Thank you!!!

[peter radclyffe]

Tino Rawnsley one of 5 great brothers I grew up with very kindly arranged a job in Italy for me, he had become skipper of Tuiga & mate on Adix , we had lost touch when he met a friend of mine Tina in Southampton on Adix & his brother Sean was looking for a boatbuilder for Mohican, so I headed south, ( but that’s another Portuguese, project manager, classic yacht cocaine saga, what is it with these classic yacht cowboys & cocaine ?), later I was working in a yard, called the Frank Of Charleys ,(before I joined they’d repaired the Blue Peter , it didn’t take too long to work out why she never returned to that yard), who were making new spars for an old schooner ,I was putting the spar fittings on with a mellow if dozy shipwright Di Pietro obsessed with clean hands rather than getting the work done, like too many guys at SYS ,but I got so sick of the way the Italian workers do things & their absence of logic , I left, because they can’t stop shouting at each other like kids, I jumped ship to be in charge of construction of this big class yacht which I’d learnt about from my father & John Leather while I was at school , I knew the history, I’ve always preferred gaff rig & here she was after being beached in the Italian sunshine for 12 years, we’d just missed out on restoring her when I was working at S Y S, or Suits You Sir as I heard them called after the sketch , at the BMIF trade stands, I’d heard the Italian yard had given a quote of £3 million but when they got her to the Reckonyourbleedingnow yard ,surprise, surprise it became £12 million, the owners lost interest in taking the local gangsters to court ,while the fierce Italian sunshine & the crude peasants stripped her bare, I never imagined I would be the first person to work on her after 63 years,& be put in charge of her construction, everything I’d learnt from & the thousands of hours I’d studied & practised the work of my father, a marine engineer & skipper, my brother Stefan Proszynski, another boatbuilder, skipper & musician, John Leather, Colin Archer, Bob Simper, Robert Maltster, Norman Skene, Hervey Benham, Anker & Jensen, Uffa Fox ,Fred Shepherd, Harley Mead ,C&N: Charles Nicholson ,William Fife, Alfred Mylne, Edgar March, Chapelle, August Turtu, Greenhill, Aldous, Johnny Mitchell: Bideford Shipyard, Philips-Birt, Adlard Coles, Paul Alenson, Alan Hinks, Des Sleighthome, Philips & son, Alex Stephens, John Woolley, Dan Hatcher, Charles Radclyffe: Priory of Sion, Jesus & Mary Chain, Robertsons, John Alden, Jones of Buckie ,FAO, the Nottage Institute in Wivenhoe where her original racing skipper was from & where I’d grown up, Summers & Arthur Payne, Charles Grenaa, J.G.Fay, Hillyards, John Harvey of Wivenhoe, Rowhedge Ironworks, Hendersons: Glasgow ,Maurice Napier: Arbroath, G.L. Watson, Rod Watts: SFIA, Paumelle: Le Havre, Alexander Paris, Henry Gruber, Dixon-Kemp, Max Oertz, J.S.Whites , Cornu, Steers, Cary Smith, Soper, A Strange, Sibbick, Michael Ratsey, Lawley, Logan, Gardner, Bowdoin Crowninshield, Jacques Boudoin, Sparkman, Stephens, Burgess, Potter, Rhodes, Abeking & Rasmussen ,Gibson, Fender & not forgetting of course those past masters of timing & design Beavis & Butthead.

[peter radclyffe]

http://i791.photobucket.com/albums/yy195/helpME7/img357.jpg
the transom block goes on

[peter radclyffe]

thanks folks, theres a time to complain
& a time to shut up
so for my safety, i must close this thread,
signed -a wingin pom yesterday

[Candyfloss]

Thanks for the ride, Peter.