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Three more sessions like that and it'd be well sorted. One more session would make the difference between it seeing the water this season or not.

However, we were well aware that we did cause the other occupants of the shed some issues. The noise of a dozen or more people working on just one boat is quite something. The people on the boat next door almost abandoned their plans for the weekend with so many of us in the way!

They were all very understanding though. 

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So...how do I start to thank so many fantastic, marvellous people? By saying thank you, of course, but words cannot express the surge of emotion that an event like this past weekend produces. Saturday morning arrived and it was like the roughest crossing of Breydon with waves, tides and currents made up of euphoria, love, melancholy, joy, amazement and gratitude. Of course there was a lot of wind and water too...but that's only to be expected when you get boaters altogether in one place! I suppose the best place to start is at the beginning and thank someone whose friendship and help has meant so much to me over the past few years.

Without Doug, Royal Tudor (RT) would have been at the bottom of the basin in Wayford years ago. While I was at my lowest possible ebb he reached out the hand of friendship and has been a true friend, mentor and a source of good old fashioned common sense ever since. To be honest, without Doug's kindness and patience it's not just the boat that would be in a sorry state. Passing on just a few of his skills gave me a new lease of life. He taught me just about everything I know on the subjects of boating & woodwork...of course not everything that he knows. So a very big thank you to Doug for organising and suggesting the event and of course working like the veritable blue bottomed fly!

Next we have a couple who typify what the Boating Community and particularly that of the NBN is all about. Mike was one of the very first friends I made on The Broads back in the days of hiring. Needing to print out my forum logos and not having a printer Mike offered to print them for me and post them to me.
“What's your address? asks Mike.
“Gainsborough.” says I.
“I'm eighteen mile up the road in Scunny.” says Mike.
Not only had Mike printed out my forum logos but he passed a cross a printer he had spare and enough ink cartridges to cobble dogs with.
Uncle Mike and Aunty Pat are never far away if you need them and check up on me regularly. This weekend they provided the food tea and coffee, enough to feed an army. The do say that an army marches on it's stomach and apparently so do boat builders!

 

Alongside Doug we had a resident expert in Dave (Janet Anne). When I first got involved with the Broads boating community Ellie had feared I had fallen in with a group of cross dressers. I mean Doug was known as 'Doug Perfect Lady', then there's 'Peter Jenny Morgan' and of course there's 'Dave Janet Anne'. Of course, although Dave does have the luscious locks, the beard and King Charles Moustache sort of gives the game away! This weekend was the first time I had met Dave...but like so many members of the NBN I count him as good friend. After all, I think we must talk on the telephone at least once a week! Not only using his skills and knowledge to fit heating systems and fuel tanks he also calmed a few natives and provided pipes, fittings, fixtures, paint designs and redesigns and worked long into the evening while the rest of us had retired for a shower and the nearest pub!

Dave comes as a triple act you know. Well he does now! Along with Dave comes the lovely Ally. So, with the state my head is in these days I was calling the poor girl Sam all weekend. Ally is now the leader of the Goons. Goons slave away in the dark shoving putty into the cracks of boats for hour after hour after hour after hour. And she says she enjoys it! I have to admit that when I joined the rest of the Putty Goons under the boat I found it quite relaxing laid flat on the floor in the cool! Well, just for the short time that I was there.

Working with Dave was Sellsey. Piping, plumping, braising, building and slaving away in RT's hot bilges.

So we had the Goon Gang and we had our 'House Elves' Pauline and Lulu. The ladies slaved away from morning till evening, frying bacon, buttering bread, making sure everyone was hydrated and then clearing away and preparing for the next day. They'd also been busy baking way before we had arrived for the weekend! Thank you ladies! Just as a follow up I did tell Ellie that in future I expected to be fed and watered on demand with cake twice a day. Do you know, I think she's taken to the idea. Well she did say 'yeah right'!

Now many of you will have realised over the weekend that I'm crap with names. Isn't that right Sam? So bear with me if I can't remember everyone's names. I can see all of your faces and remember and appreciate everything that you did.

We had the Bakewell Tarts...three fantastic gentlemen of the Broads that fitted new cabin sides, the cooker and the fridge and quickly must have realised by my blank expression on several occasions that...I'm an idiot.

Pauline confirmed my idiot status and got the best blank look from me when she told me that I 'tended to think out of the box' and asked 'what would you do about President Trump?'. I get the feeling our Polly is putting a 'team' together. A team with 'skills'!

We had Jonzo helping make patterns for cabin sides, Robin, Phil, Ian and my brother in law Steve in the sanding gang. Grendel making window fittings and carving bespoke bits and pieces on demand.

If I have forgotten to mention someone by name I do apologise as my head is in such a whirl still. Please, please accepts my apologies and heart felt thanks for all of your hard work and friendship.

To close, for the minute at least, thanks to Ian and the staff at Martham Boats for allowing all of us to work in the sheds, it is very much appreciated indeed!

Timbo

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I have got to throw my thoughts of the weekend on this thread.

I had never worked on a wooden boat before RT, come to that i'd not worked on many boats of any kind until last year when Lulu and I got our first one.

As most of the team on the weekend know, I have had the odd hand in restoring and owning Vintage Aircraft and have been a plumber in a past life.

The biggest thing I found that drove me on during the weekend, was not the skills that I could bring with my past experience, but the solidarity that the team encouraged each other with.

Not knowing what needed doing or how to position the new stuff being installed, I had to rely on Dave (JA) for guidance, (BTW, that is my 8 mm spanner) he knows stuff that I can only dream of, (Cheers Dave), between us I think we got it all to fit and hopefully work.

I will always remember 2 things from this weekend:

1. (After looking at, frowning a lot, then   re-designing the layout of the Fuel tank, heating system, ducting, calorifier and water pump, water system flow and returns)  at this point I will Quote Dave, a-la Morecambe and Wise,  'We have all the right parts but not necessarily for this boat', Dave your a star, we got it all to fit in !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  

2. If a bunch of people have a single focus and a goal to help another in need, you produce an incredible bunch of friends.

It was a real and true privilege to work with you all and I learned a great deal, thanks to each and every one who was there and to all the NBN members for their words and messages of encouragement and congratulations, we just need to do it again SOON, it must be possible to arrange (but that's for the Doug's of this world to arrange).

In closing, this is my thought 'Never in the course of boating hardship has so much been given by so few for one dream'  and it will live with me forever.

 

Thank You

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On 13/05/2018 at 08:24, BroadAmbition said:

Timbo - Coz I'm feeling proper left out, would you be good enough to let me know about 'R.T's berthing rope requirements?

Thank you, sir, you are a gentleman, better still a Yorkshireman! Never worry we'll get you 'roped in' too. After all, there's Uncle Albert's Tot Collection (single malts & Pusser's Rum) that will need some attention when we get back under 'that' bridge for what I'm calling 'Uncle Albert's Coming Out Party'!

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13 minutes ago, Timbo said:

 After all, there's Uncle Albert's Tot Collection (single malts & Pusser's Rum) that will need some attention when we get back under 'that' bridge for what I'm calling 'Uncle Albert's Coming Out Party'!

I hope there will be plenty of notice for that one, and perhaps even some "Sea trials" on Hickling.

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Better late than never but all sorts of things to catch up with here..

First off, it was great to meet some new faces who had taken time out to come and get involved, along with the old rouges lol. Pauline and Sam really did a wonderful job with keeping the troops fed and watered and Mike kindly had bought the food and combined it was really warming to see a group of people come together and help another's project through this Forum.

I took some photos, I took some video and here is a little idea of what we were all doing.  I think we achieved far more in a short time than any one had expected. Tim was there with his good sense of humour, though at times it did go a bit off and down to the level of Grif's jokes.

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Anything can happen in the next half hour wasn’t thunderbirds it was stingray. Ok Troy!!!!!

 

and another claim to fame I met both Gerry and Sylvia Anderson when I was a child. I also went to school with the daughter of the guy who designed Dr who’s car and the cars for U.F.O.

I also years later had Ed Straker of UFO fame removed from my reserved seat on a train . Oh the lives we lead . Lol 

Gerry Sales the car designs guy was a hugely tall man and very nice to a tiny gawky teenage boy. 

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Oooops My mistake!!! I shall have to hand in my lifetimes membership of the Supercar, Fireball XL5, and Stingray supporters club. Dammit, just three more membership points and I could have won a life-size model of FAB 1 entirely constructed from washing up liquid bottles.

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I'm desperately trying to forget Terrahawks...Oh, that was bad! BUT... I have really, really been enjoying the latest, brand new series of THUNDERBIRDS! Yes you heard me...new series of Thunderbirds. Three altogether...possibly four series available on Amazon Prime and ITV!

They are superbly done! A mixture of the traditional model making skills of the original Thunderbirds series for landscapes and the various machines and Thunderbird vehicles but with the characters are rendered in 3D digital animation...wait for it...they have kept the original puppet look of the characters...and there's more...even Sylvia Anderson herself voiced Lady Penelope's Aunt in a guest appearance...still more...Parker is voiced by the original voice artist.

For Thunderbird fans...it is the best of both worlds. I cheered when 'The Mole' appeared in the first series which remade some of the original stories! FAB stuff!
 

 

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A mixture of the traditional model making skills of the original Thunderbirds series

What, are you trying to say; the original Thunderbird's was some kind of puppet show or something?

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