And another thing… because they’re lifting the ship about ten feet higher in her dock so they can host parties beneath her hull they’re chucking out her stone ballast to make her lighter and therefore better able to hold her shape – something she’d not struggle with at all were she afloat rather than suspended from some arty-farty display designer’s dream but that’s a whole new world of controversy...
Those chunks of masonry were lugged in there in the 1820s by the hard working men of the Dumbarton shipyard where Cutty Sark was built, for goodness sake. Great lumps of stone that crossed the oceans with the old girl and are as much a part of her fabric as her keel – and the musos talk of conservation!
At least it’s a good job she can be mended though. I mean, imagine if there’d been a proper fire and parts of the ship had been destroyed forever. Such tragic loss would constitute history in the making and history is something you just can’t go around destroying willy-nilly once it’s been made.
And then, in another stroke of luck, the Hapless Lottery Failure chucked twenty-three million at their rebuild project – thirteen to start with and another ten once the ‘expert’s’ invoices landed. They called it a ‘top up’. What was wrong with your maths first time around, Hapless Lottery Failures?
Not wishing to appear cynical here, but could it be that their award had less to do with salvaging an incinerated sailing ship than salvaging their reputation amongst the disgusted, British public for funding useless, politically-correct, do-good rubbish?
Their image could certainly do with a major un-tarnishing campaign and what better way than bringing an icon back from the brink of destruction? Pity they didn’t think of that in 2001. Perhaps they’ve hired a ‘learning officer’ since.
But despite being passionate about Cutty Sark, I couldn’t even get into full-rant mode over that because, you see, at least the commercial guys have it dead right and are clearly winning the day. What a venue she’ll be when complete and, most importantly, she’ll be able to pay her way for the enjoyment of generations to come much as we envisaged for K7 by turning her into a living exhibit rather than a pile of scrap on a plinth.
There you go – ahead of our time, we were.
So it wasn’t until I went down the local on Saturday evening that I finally found a topic worth a damn good bluster.
Football.
Right then – someone tell me… because in the village where I live about the only topic of conversation involves hoards of men running after a ball so I asked what I thought were perfectly reasonable questions only to be offered no sense at all.
Why, oh why, do they play it in the winter, for goodness sake?
Why, when it’s dark, cold and usually wet do these multi-million pound ball-chasing clubs pursue their sport such that they have to switch on all the lights, turn the heating up to avoid losing their fan-base to hypothermia then send their heroes out to churn up grass that won’t grow back before April because they’re buggering about in the depths of winter?
Surely it would be preferable to run after a ball in July when the evenings are light, wearing short pants is more appropriate and they can go-green by not burning a megawatt a minute trying to see through the rain and hail.
The grass would heal itself immediately the players headed for the night club blondes, the fans could make a delightful, summer’s day of their ball-chasing fetish and there’d be substantially less chance of being blasted off the pitch by freezing weather.
“It’s too hot,” one ball-chasist told me.
Not in England, as a rule, and what do they do about that in Spain, Italy, Brazil?
I’m assuredly informed that we have to play in the snow because someone called Fifi is in charge and what Fifi wants Fifi gets.
Ok then – here’s another. Why, when inclusiveness has become the new watchword and political-correctness has run riot, do politicians and public alike worship a game that positively glorifies tribal behaviour? I mean, our local ball-chasing fans despise their rivals who live only ten miles down the road because they wear different coloured shirts yet only last week I found them all cheering Outer Mongolia to win against The People’s Republic of Kazakhstan, or somewhere like that.
How does that work?
And why, when British soccer is feted as something wonderful, do all our star players sod off home so they can thrash us on behalf of some other country every time there’s a world cup or whatever to fight over?
They’re idolised too but most of them only chase a ball for a living because they’re too stupid to do a proper job. There’s not a week goes by without one of them making the papers for punching, raping or squashing an innocent member of the public whilst drunk in charge of a Range-Rover.
“Ah, but look at how much money they make,” I’m often told.
Yes – about the same as my local drugs-baron who also drives a Ferrari but only the lowliest life forms seem to admire him and at least he’s clever enough to hold down a difficult job even if his intelligence is somewhat misapplied.
And that’s another thing – the fans sit in the pub proudly showing off their forty-quid nylon shirts in the latest team colours, brag about the seat they’ve just purchased with their season-ticket then assure their mates that none of the company will miss a single game because they’ve just renewed their Sky Sports subscription.
Having completed the formalities they then moan for the remainder of the evening about how much money this player or that is making, or what he cost to bring over from his goat farm in Novosibirsk to play for Tottenarse United. Next they huddle close and discuss the recent hostile takeover of this club or that by some colourless nobody who made his money selling fresh underwear to endowment mortgagees.
His peers all seem to own oil pipelines or insurance companies – they control billions of pounds and pull the levers on some of the heaviest corporate machinery on the planet with sponsors to match yet they seem unable to organise a phone call to Fifi to say, “Listen, you idiot, we’re not chasing a ball until the weather improves and our grass starts growing again!”
Rant over - ahhh, that feels better.
Now then, tin bashing.
We’re nearing the end of our dry build – that being our systematic reconstruction of each part of the boat without the benefit of rivets or glue. Only skin-pins have held her together thus far and only small sections have ever been assembled at once.
First the frame was stuck back together by our mates at PDS Engineering allowing us to repair the cockpit outriggers, seat formers and flap-trays. Next we rebuilt the cockpit rails and foredeck, rapidly followed by the nose and spar fairings. This gave us a more or less complete front end above the frame so then we stripped her down again and rolled her first onto one side then the other to repair the flutes and make new side skins.
K7’s original floors have been heat treated to make them soft and therefore easily repaired and the final conserveering battle – the air intake assembly – is now being re-clothed with a shiny, new outer skin.
We spent a few nights sorting the right-hand side then continued right over the top.
As usual there’s still a heap of work before the assembly will stay together with an Orpheus trying to suck it inside out. The real challenge with it is to stay within weight constraints. History has demonstrated how a couple of bags of sand lashed to the outer casing made the difference between the boat performing and her uselessly slurping gallons of water. She really is that that sensitive so we have to think carefully about every modification we make.
We’ve had to add a fair number of our own widgets to the intakes to allow much of the original to continue doing its job but at a guess I’d say it’s probably about eighty-percent original by weight. And more importantly, it’s technically perfect from a historical point of view.
Put simply, we now have almost all of our boat except the sponsons but they’re a new build from delicious, sparkling material and we’re well on with making the necessary tooling so we anticipate no great difficulties there.
Bluebird K7 exists once again, albeit in kit form.