Phone call 8th December

With everyone likely to shut up shop in two weeks for Christmas we thought we’d best give Ricky a call over at Finesse. If Oleanna was going to be ready for a launch this side of Christmas we would need to be contacting Tuckeys to arrange transport.

Our new blinds had arrived, but hadn’t been checked to see if they would fit as yet. Keeping them wrapped up save having to dust them down!

The company doing the worktops had been to do templates last week when they said they would and were expected next Wednesday to fit them. At last I will have something to chop my veg on! The work tops we have gone for in the end are still a bit over budget, we will pay the difference.

After the worktops are fitted there will be a couple of days work for Kris to finish sockets, switches, fit the sink etc. All things that have had to wait for the worktops to be fitted. Then she will be ready to be craned into the canal next to the yard to check the ballast and systems out.

Craning can only happen when Jonathan Wilson is about and he is on holiday for a week, but his return is likely to be well timed for Oleanna to be ready to get a wet bottom.

There is one thing still missing though. Our second Lithium Battery, it still hasn’t arrived from the States! Ricky is trying to find out if it is possible to run a few cycles on one battery so that they can test the systems, or would that cause problems in the future. So this may well hold up the final stages of the build.

The red line has been repainted on the cabin side the cream line is still to be done. The temperatures haven’t helped over the last couple of weeks, but with the forecast getting better this should happen soon out of normal working hours.

Once Oleanna is in the water and ballast adjusted she will be left for a couple of days to settle. Weight distribution on land is very different to being afloat. Once she’s had some time then the snagging of cupboard doors etc can happen.

At some point with everything finished a surveyor will give her a look over and she will be given a Boat Safety Certificate, if everything meets with the regulations. We will also have a try out over in Sheffield before she’s handed over to us for launch.

So with all that still to happen we’d be cutting it very fine to launch her before Christmas.  A shame, but we don’t want to rush the last stage. So Oleanna will launch sometime in the first couple of weeks of January, if the battery turns up!