Sunday, September 30, 2007

The Rains have come

With a rain front moving in we hastily placed a tarp over the boat. It was the first of many to come so we shifted our efforts to building a suitable shelter.

We had the frame for a portable "garage" shelter given to us after a windstorm had blown it across the boat yard and damaged some of the support legs for it.
The upper pipe frame was in good shape so we thought we'd attach it to some pipe brackets at the top of free-standing 4x4's anchored in concrete pier blocks. The idea looked good on paper but was impossible to execute. We did not have enough hands to line up all the posts with the frame as we tried to fit the frame into the pipe brackets over the boat. We'd get two posts lined up and the frame in the brackets and then move on to two others, then repeat the process with the rest. The frame started to twist, someone yelled "Timber!", and the whole think came crashing down domino style as the posts leaned and twisted sideways and gravity took over. The posts on the ground and the frame a twisted mess atop the boat.
Several days later we attempted "Plan B": Line up the 4x4's on the ground, screw in cross braces and a top plate, then raise them and lean them against the boat. Do the same for the back wall, then assemble the frame on the ground and carry it over the bow and place it in the brackets. Once that was done we put a post at the bow and cross braced the whole structure and pulled two large tarps over the whole thing. This provided us with a shelter with suitable head room to continue to work on the project over the winter.