James Silver Western Isles Chance Restoration

 Over the couple of weeks we have been able to get a replacement Baby Blake sea toilet for the fore cabin of Chance. The only set back with the toilet is that it need stripping down and servicing and any worn parts replacing. The difference between a new Baby Blake and getting an old serviceable toilet is about £5000.00 which makes restoring an old toilet a good deal.  Also we have been able to pick up a complete set of stanchions for Chance as they came off an James Silver which was changing them for a set of bronze stanchions and they were surplus to their needs and wish them to go to a fellow James Silver owner.  So we keep our eyes and ears open for period parts for Chance as we are trying to put as much as possible the original parts back on Chance as we restore her back to the way she was originally build in 1948. So if any of the readers of this blog know of any James Silver's replacing the old fitting or any James Silver's are being broken up as they are beyond repair p

  Now I have one project where I need it to be work on the Chance restoration can get underway again. Now we have after three long days, we now have Mai Star II in the shed she should have been in for a long time. Because we have not been hard enough on customers making decisions about work being done on their boats. We finally had enough of waiting and got the boats removed from the yard so that owners wishing to have work could have worked done on their boats who had been waiting for the other boats to leave. With this extra room in the yard, boats that have been held up by other boats not been worked on because their owners not making up their minds what they were going to do to their boats. We gave them a time to get their boats out of the yard or get the work done. Now that Mai Star II is now in the temporary semi permanent grey shed there is now room in the yard for the Morgan Giles 30 to go once it comes out of the Workshop into the yard before it goes to the local marina to be

  Just got home after spending a couple of long days in Woodplumpton working on My James Silver Western Isles 'Chance" clearing out rubbish left behind by a previous owner. Once the rubbish was cleared away out of the cabins it made it easier to start to remove some of the smaller items such as locker and cupboard doors as well as other items to make it easier to view the hull from the inside and be able to make repairs to the hull and bulkheads as necessary along the way. One of the larger jobs to do is going to be removing the engines, sterner and tanager over the coming months. A lot as changed these photos were taken, Chance as moved from Woodplumpton to Walton n the Naze. The interior of Chance as been stripped out back to the bare hull. The worse of the removal of the rotten and broken parts are removed ready for the reconstruction of the hull and superstructure can begin this summer. We are fund raising to get the materials to start the next stage of the restoration pro