14th June 2008

Phew! Back again and apologies for the break... The plast few weeks have doubly hectic culminating last Tuesday in the birth of our second daughter, Emily.
Things kicked off a week behind the medically predicted schedule while I was enjoying a pint with John-Tidy. We normally imbibe a beer or three on a Monday evening and as nothing appeared to be happening in the birthing dept. and with induction scheduled for a week hence, I’d been given a pass-out for the evening safe in the knowledge that the local taxi firm unfailingly provides transport week-in, week-out, almost before I’m off the phone.
Not this time… We’d not quite made last orders at John’s local when Rachel’s frantic call arrived. I placed another to the taxi firm but they told me with much regret that on this occasion they didn’t have a car available ’til midnight. So as John raided his biscuit tin to put up a food parcel for me, Rachel called the in-laws for transport and babysitting support.
The midnight-midwife was a man-hater, she seemed to hate most things as far as I could tell, so following an inspection that indicated little chance of immediate action, we trailed home again where I dozed intermittently, fully clothed, from three am until eight at which point the process accelerated once more so back to the hospital we trooped.
The new midwife was an angel and Rachel was quickly connected by hose to the hospital’s supply of nitrous-oxide / oxygen mix. I took a few slurps for a laugh but after so many hallucinatory trips on high-pressure nitrogen to the bottom of the sea it’s a bit tame. Still, if you get the chance to try inert-gas-narcosis give it a go, it’s fun, and completely harmless as long as you get the gas mix right.
Next on the menu came diamorphine and that really got the job done. The empty hypodermic had hardly clattered into the tray before Rachel complained indignantly that our two sheepdogs had made an unscheduled arrival and that the smaller of the pair, Poppy, was, “Sitting there looking sanctimonious.”
Apparently our chickens made a brief appearance too and pecked about the polished, sterile floor but I didn’t see them.
I offered to trial the diamorph’ on a purely scientific basis  but the staff thought it unnecessary (guess they’d heard that one before) so I laid out a waterproof birthing mattress I’d discovered down the back of some chairs and had a snooze instead. The midwife woke me presently to ask if I wanted a cuppa.
Things didn’t really get going until around six that evening after which all sorts of girning and straining climaxed at a quarter to seven in an explosion of giblets onto the sterile, green sheet.
The hospital staff seem to enjoy playing wicked pranks on me when it comes to cutting the cord. Last time they asked me if I’d like to do it but I said no, I’d leave it to the professionals, especially as there was already a man wielding a very sharp pair of scissors in the appropriate vicinity. So I was surprised to say the least when they stretched a length… (What on Earth does the baby want with two metres of pipe? Does it sneak out in the night and raid the fridge?) …of what can best be described as high-pressure silicone-rubber hose before my eyes then handed me a cutting implement that had to be the bastard child of a pair of scissors and a spoon.
“Go on then, Daddy,” they encouraged, so I leaned between doctor and midwife and cut the pipe. Both perpetrators were instantly splattered with blood to the point where I thought a firing squad had got them while I escaped unscathed – served them right.
This time they just gave me a blunt scissor-spoon thingamabob and left me to hack ineffectually at what seemed an even tougher length of hose whilst instead of stretching the pipe where I could aim effectively the midwife pinned it amongst the gore with her bloodied fingers at great personal risk. It parted eventually to my great relief and as the nursing staff pointed out, Rachel and Emily became, ‘two people’.
I remember a friend of mine telling me that at the birth of his first he’d burst into floods of tears and that I’d undoubtedly do the same when my time came but this is twice now and I’ve never felt less like crying in my life. Newborn babies are, in my opinion, gruesome, grey, smelly, space-aliens that take days to metamorphose into tiny humans – but when they do they’re wonderful miracles of nature.
I’ll leave you to decide which one hasn’t quite metamorphosed…

And, as usual – tech-spec’ for the ladies.
Name              Emily Blossom Elder-Smith.
Weight            8lb 8oz (ouch!)
Time / date     18:44, 10th June 2008 (In birthing room number 7 for the Bluebird anoraks)
Process           Natural birth using Entonox, diamorph’ and much groaning.
Sitrep              Mother and daughter doing well, father skint and knackered.

Tech-spec’ for the boys… watch this space.

Needless to say, not much has happened with the big blue boat.
Only kidding, we’ve been at it in a ‘business as usual’ sort of way throughout and as you’d expect things are moving apace. We’re well into what we hope is our final major challenge on the boat and the job is progressing nicely. The air intake assembly is our ultimate, conserveering hurdle and a monstrous task for three main reasons.
Firstly, if it was ever built to a drawing then it’s not the one we have. The inlets have all been ‘grown’ to varying extents at each station. Sometimes at the top, sometimes at the bottom and occasionally at the sides but each deviates from what was specified to such an extent that you can put your fingers through the gaps so it can’t be crash damage.
It’s well known that the inlet’s performance was marginal to begin with and almost a lost cause where the Orpheus was concerned but it now looks like Ken and Lew got a bit of a panic on right back in the beginning and made some last minute mod’s to up the duct volume.
The second problem is that there’s just so damn much of it. It’s outrageously complicated and so full of fiddly, little doublers, aerodynamic widgets and bits added after it broke in 66 that repairing it is the kind of thing that wakes you, screaming, in the middle of the night.
And the third problem is that it’s absolutely mashed to buggery!
Take, for example, the transverse formers. We’ve showed you how we mended the first one but there are lots of them and although the damage diminishes the further aft you go so the problem of mending them increases in magnitude because they’re progressively bigger pieces. Shifting even a small stretch from the middle of a wide section of material can be exceedingly difficult and where you have to work to within a thickness of material – in this case 2mm – it’s nigh-on impossible at times.

Then there’s the endless welding and grinding to repair things like torn out bolt fixings or stretched rivet holes. It can take half a day to save a piece of material you can hold in the palm of your hand and this is why it’s impossible to put a finish date on the project. Then each salvaged fragment presents us with a choice. We either accept that it fitted once upon a time and rework everything until it goes back or we bin it and create our own interpretation. We’ve not binned anything yet…
As an example some of the mod’s made in 1966 to beef up the air intakes are as good as any. Part of the plan back then was to add heavy doublers to the intake lips and though they stayed with the crumpled mess we salvaged back in 2001 they’re not quite as they were.

Rob took ’em off almost blowing the entire BBP budget on drill bits after discovering the hard way that they’re made of some weird, springy alloy and fixed with stainless steel rivets. Then Mark Evans popped over last week and cut them into two halves much as we had to do with the first intake former because it was the only way to deal with them. Now presented with a problem broken into manageable portions Doddy whipped out his hammers and worked a spot of magic.


It’s like seeing a ghost – how can this exist in 2008 when history saw it destroyed in 1967?
The chill comes from the fact that it’s not a new part, it’s the real deal; brought back to life by our love of the old machine. By the time we’re done the inlets will be perfectly capable of directing a fresh rush of air into Bluebird’s new engine but it took three skilled men (well, Doddy and a couple of ‘intermediates’) a good many hours to bring it to this point and it’s still far from finished.
By leaving these parts to last we’ve ensured that our skill-set is about as good as it’s going to get and we’re now sufficiently confident to chant a new mantra.
We’ve augmented the gospel according to the grand poobah of museology, our mate Mr Knapp, and his teachings that, ‘reality dictates’, by adding, ‘it’ll fix’ when appraising any part of the boat.
With this in mind we’re now revisiting work we did weeks or months ago to see whether we can improve upon anything or graft in another spoonful of history here and there.
We honestly thought we’d gone as far as we could with this bit of scrap.

It’s the right-hand cockpit rail and having picked it clean of deck formers and clues about where those craftsmen of 1955 made their welds we consigned it to the conservation dept. for Louise to clean with her scalpel blades and glass-bristle-brushes prior to placing it on display in the museum.
But part of it just won’t go away.
You see, it includes a near-intact piece of the cockpit opening that we absolutely had to save, so having decided we could do this, John weighed it up carefully like a gem cutter studying a priceless diamond then fired up his panel saw and cut off the useable section.

Doesn’t look like much until you see it in context…

…so now we’re back into the realm of spooky shapes returning from the past. It also belongs to a part of the boat that follows the drawings too – what a pleasant change. The cockpit opening is a very sensible twenty-one inches wide by forty long so all we have to do is bash the wrecked bit back to size then graft it into the new section we made last year. There’s a substantial piece of the opposite side we can use too if this goes according to plan. Time will tell.