Life's a Gamble, so lets take a Chance Restoration Project

This last year as been a busy year in lots of ways, Especially with regards to Chance and her moving down from Woodplumpton in Lancashire to Walton on the Naze. This was a logistical merry-go-round to say the least. Getting the timing correct so that the jobs that were needed to be done to Chance before she was transported down from Lancashire to Essex. Picking the right time and having the funds available to move her when we did. Over the course of the spring and summer, when we both had some spare time together between my work as a boat builder and my wife Tricia as a Nurse we spent the time driving up to Woodplumpton and worked on Chance. Removing as much of the interior furniture and other items such as her old engines, fuel tanks,water tanks, black water tank, ballast and many other items in order to make her as light as possible to give her a chance to make it possible to move her without stressing her already weakened hull a chance to survive the transport from Lancashire to Es...

Over the past year, we have achieved a great deal of work on Chance while  working with the restrictions of the Covid pandemic and working as a full time traditional boat builder work on my clients boats and their projects.   Now it is time to take stock of what we have achieved in the way of dismantling Chances' interior and doing some of the smaller jobs on Chance, such as dismantle the Blakes sea toilet which is in need of a full restoration as it as not been restored for a long time. So many of the moving parts are either corroded (bolts and nuts holding the parts of the toilet together) or harden up due to not being used and lubricated and so the rubber parts will have to be replaced as part of the toilet restoration. Another smaller project is the diesel cooker restoration ( the fire brick will need refixing and cracks filling and the burner parts which have corroded from use and age will have to be ordered from Canada after Christmas.    After the Christm...

Its cold outside, so it is time to go indoors and get a number of smaller projects underway and ones that can be done in the workshop. Two projects that spring to mind are the diesel cooker, the Baby Blake Toilet which both need a lot of work done to them to get them both back into working order. Then they will be able to put back into Chance later on in the restoration project. The diesel cooker is a Dickinson Bristol cooker which as been neglected and the electrical parts have not survived the years of neglect and water damage. The parts will have to be removed from the cooker and recycled at my local recycling business. So not in land fill. Inside the firebox there is a small area of missing fire cement which can be easily sorted by making up some more fire cement and replacing the missing area and letting dry off. the other item that is missing in the firebox is the part that makes the diesel cooker work. I have been informed by Dickinson's the cooker manufacturers that as lon...

Some of the work that can and will be done over the winter will be to tackle the shelves full of parts that came out of Chance before she was transported down from Woodplumpton down to Walton on the Naze for her next stage of her restoration. There are a number of drawers that came out of different parts of Chances' interior, some of the drawers are in poorer condition than others. Some will just need a couple of parts re-making while others will completely apart from the drawer fronts which is the only part that can be re-used.  Other parts such as steps just need stripping of old varnish and sanding down and new varnish applying. One job that is going to be interesting is going to be making a new saloon table from scratch. I will have to source a set of the plans and make a replacement table,     After a lot of taking with people in the know about the diesel cooker and whether it was worth replacing the worn out parts that had given up the ghost and after a long de...

The original Baby Blake toilet has been removed from Chance to under go a complete overhaul and be brought back into commission with new parts that are still available from the manufacturers of the Baby Blake toilet who are still in business to this day. A major result, a new Baby Blake toilet is over 4k to buy today. The repair kit is a little over £200.00 so it is no contest. Repair the toilet.  The same goes for the diesel cooker, the replacement parts are going to cost in the region of £250.00 from Canada where the cooker was originally made and the parts are available from the Manufacturers Dickinson who have been very helpful with getting the spare parts we are going to need to repair the cooker to full work condition  This is the galley area which has been stripped out and with a bit of re-organisation, the cooker will be fitted in this area.  

  We were going to go down to Chance this morning, however, the weather is against us working on Chance itself today as it is very damp and wet on the boat especially the decks, which are like an ice staking rink as it would be not good to work on even if it was dried later on in the day.  So it was decided to do some work around the workshop instead. Since we had been working on the deck of Chance removing the butterfly hatch lids  and the aft hatch lid and bring them back to the workshop. Simon has had a chance to dismantle the butterfly hatch lids and remove the glass out of the hatches and start to sand down the hatches removing the moss and other discolouration on the outside faces of the hatches to get back to the clean teak under the discolouration on the surface of the lids and remove all the old putty and sealant holding in the glass into the frames.  The butterfly hatch lids are in good condition given the fact they have been neglected for the past 20 years...

This certificate shows that the National Historic  Ships UK see Chance as meriting inclusion on their register of Historic ships has Chance is of merit as Chance is a historic ship of note and as such needs to be restored to her original condition and preserved and restored.  To this end we are in the process of trying get funding for funding bodies in the maritime sector to help us achieve Chances' restoration and have her once again sailing the high seas. 

Having removed these lids off the butterfly hatch bases at the weekend it was time to dismantle the lids so the extent of the damage if any was present in the lids  The surface needed to be given a heavy sanding to get rid of the grey surface oxidation and the moss that had grown on the surface after years of neglect.   Once the splines and putty was removed from around the glass it just needed a little pressure and light tapping with a leather hammer and the glass came out of the frames  Then it was a matter of cleaning out the old putty from the frames to let the frames start to dry out after years of  neglect and lack of varnish and a lot of TLC that they need them to keep looking good  The four lids now sanded down and ready to put on the selves in the workshop to dry out until they are ready to be restored along with the bases which are still on the deck of Chance. Once we have got the bases removed they will get the same treatment as the lids and then...

It has been a busy week at Chance Restoration HQ, because the last few days the weather as been not so good for working outside, we took the chance to sort out the parts of Chance we brought back from Woodplumpton when Chance was transported down to Essex. There was a large amount of parts that were loaded in the two box trailers, some of it is little more than firewood, however, there are a number of important bits which can be used as patterns and others that need cleaning with degreaser and then cleaning down to get rid of any oil and grease before drying off in the workshop before being repaired and re-painting and putting away or putting back in the boat. Such items such as floorboards which need to go back so we can walk around the inside safely. One of the items that was brought back was the over a ton of scrap iron which made up Chances internal ballast. This will need sandblasting and then coating with epoxy tar and then stored and when the time is right re-fitted to the boat ...

 It has been a busy week at Chance Restoration HQ, because the last few days the weather as been not so good for working outside, we took the chance to sort out the parts of Chance we brought back from Woodplumpton when Chance was transported down to Essex.  There was a large amount of parts that were loaded in the two box trailers, some of it is little more than firewood, however, there are a number of important bits which can be used as patterns and others that need cleaning with degreaser and then cleaning down to get rid of any oil and grease before drying off in the workshop before being repaired and re-painting and putting away or putting back in the boat. Such items such as floorboards which need to go back so we can walk around the inside safely. One of the items that was brought back was the over a ton of scrap iron which made up Chances internal ballast. This will need sandblasting and then coating with epoxy tar and then stored and when the time is right re-fitted t...