Monday 5 December 2016

Build Update 6

Ok, so it's Friday 2nd December and we go to Piper to inspect our up and coming pride and joy. It's a busy weekend, after Piper we're off to see some friends in Morpeth (the desolate North East) and then over to Carsphairn ( between Ayr and Dumfries) to see my eldest son James. Anyway, here's the stuff that matters:


As you can see, the steelwork is pretty much finished, they were hoping to complete the welding on Friday. There are the portholes to cut, the stainless steel bollards and railings to fit, a final check that all is well and the insulation, lining and internal bulkhead fitting will start.



Oh yes, the rudder will need to be fitted too.



View of the stern.



View from the wheelhouse, yes, we got to stand on the boat!!



And a view along the starboard side.

So, very exciting times indeed, the second stage payment is being made, ouch!

We also went along to see the upholsterer to sort out fabrics for windows and for cabin and wheelhouse seating, there's not a lot else to choose now.

Looks like our next visit will be towards the end of January when the lining / bulkhead work should be nearly done. We've been told that the fit out will then move quite quickly as they will be making units along side the lining works so they'll be ready to install.

Friday 25 November 2016

Build Update 5

As you can see, taking shape nicely! The front of the cabin and our bedroom window have appeared.


We go to see Piper next Friday (2nd December) so expect a bunch of photo's and some more detailed information.

Friday 18 November 2016

Notes on Equipment for the Fit-Out

Ok, sorry for the delay, I've done pretty much nothing over the holiday period and leave the update of this page until the day before I return to work.

One of the fun parts has been choosing the kit and finalising our requirements for the fit out, there's a surprising amount that has to be thought about.

The specification 'pinned page' details how we varied from the standard 'off the shelf' design in specification terms, but this does not cover everything.

Obviously we've been thinking long and hard about what we want and how we want our boat to look, but our attendance at the Piper event at Henley (last year now) really started to focus the mind, especially as the start of the build was now imminent.

We were looking forward to the show, mainly because we hadn't seen the inside of a boat for over a year and we wanted to see as much as possible in terms of finish and layout to help us with our own selection, there were 2 49M 2 cabin barges there (the same as us) and a whole host of others, so there was a lot to look at, and look we did, several times and our minds kept changing over many things, it's a pleasant sort of nightmare.

The whole process starts with the big things, particularly anything that could affect the steel work, in our case it was the position of the port holes that would be affected.

I'll try and run through from bow to stern.

Not too much in our bedroom cabin, just didn't want any open shelves, wanted some big drawers, Penny specifically needs somewhere to put the morning 'wake up' cuppa and didn't want the waterfall edging nearby as placing the cup on this may lead to spillage.

Also not too much in the main bathroom (or our en-suite) we've gone for vinyl panels rather than tiles, I worry about flexible grout not being flexible enough, from memory I think the panels are some sort of blue. The flooring throughout here, our cabin, in fact the whole of the 'downstairs' will be wooden.
We've also gone for the lower half of the cabin in light oak and the upper half (and the ceiling) in the cream panels. Again this applies to the whole of the 'downstairs' areas.

In the saloon / galley area, after a lot of mind changing, we decided to go for free standing seating over fixed. This did mean that the position of the access trapdoor to the tanks will have to be slightly re-positioned so that our leather corner couch will not obstruct it, (this area doubles as the wine cellar so no obstruction here is pretty important!). We're just having a low level TV unit & cupboards along the forward bulkhead, and we've made sure we're getting power, HDMI cables and ethernet to and from all the places that we need. I've already bought internet router with external aerials, free sat receiver and DVD player and set them all up at home to test, so we'll hopefully be ok.

The thing we struggled most with was the cooker, Penny wants a tall, pull-out larder cupboard, no problem with this, but it quickly became obvious to us that the whole design of the galley area was dependent on our choice of cooker. It took a while, but we eventually filtered the choice down to a hob with a built under double oven, a bit of a compromise this as the 'built under' gives a smaller oven than a 'freestanding' but we think it will look much better. We finally selected a Belling 5 burner hob and a Belling double oven. This made the rest pretty easy, we looked at the remaining available space, Penny got her way and we're going to have an integrated slimline dishwasher, a single cupboard under the sink and plenty of drawers. At the forward end is the washer dryer (a black Friday purchase from John Lewis!). We have to supply the dishwasher and the washer dryer as they are not marine items. We had some fun selecting work surface, again opting not to have waterfall edge on the galley work surface. And one final thing, Penny had noticed on other boats like ours that the work surface was set back a couple of inches, a quick discussion with Simon Piper soon had this moved forward, thus increasing our work surface area, the sacrifice being the rounded corners on the tall units at either end.

Nothing much to decide with the day toilet, a very small space. We would have liked some drawers in the seat part of the dinette, but this is not possible due to the only spot for a radiator being in the way. I did however discuss the second cabin wall with Simon, I wasn't too happy with the 2 that had gone before us, I want it to be even more open, so Simon is going to try a sort of sectioned sliding wall, we'll see how that turns out.

We chose fabric for the dinette upholstery and for all of the 'downstairs' roman blinds which are for the port holes. We're leaving the bathroom ports until post launch.

In the wheelhouse it's going to be mainly light oak, although the doors and window frames will be sapele, I hope that works out. Originally we wanted to have the 'Tek Deck' flooring inside the wheelhouse, but it seems there have been some on previous boats so we've chose a wooden flooring for our wheelhouse. The upholstery for the seating (which converts to a double bed) is a denim colour with a knee roll in an attempt to make it as comfortable as possible (we see ourselves spending a lot of time up here!) we are having the same material in the guest cabin / dinette to try to keep things simple.

The thing that's caused us the most anguish in this area is the windows, in particular the window coverings. The side doors will have internal blinds (between the double glazing) operated by a magnet from the outside, we would have liked these in the rear doors as well, but in our indecision over the windows we were too late and they were ordered without before we decided what we wanted. So, I think we're going to get some 'poppered' covers for the rear doors and the 2 angular windows at the front sides and we are arranging for a motorised venetian style blind for the front window (operated with a remote control), an idea stolen from another barge at the Piper Henley event. The windows behind the seats are probably going to be manual versions of the front window blind, but we're still a bit uncertain, we're arranging this ourselves post launch and have someone coming to measure and quote on the 24th March.

I think that's pretty much it, there's probably a few tiny details that have been overlooked, all we have to do now is hope it all works out and looks great!


Build Update 4

The state of the steelwork as of this morning (18th November 2016):


Looking really good.

We're off to Piper Boats in a couple of weeks time, so we'll take a few more detailed pictures then.

Thursday 10 November 2016

Build Update 3

Not much to say, I think today's picture says it all:


Definitely some significant progress, not sure it will float yet though!

Saturday 5 November 2016

Note:

Just a note, I think I'm pretty much up to where I want to be with the blog now, so I'll continue to update you with news of build progress and anything else that occurs with our boating future.

Also, any comments or thoughts would be most welcome.

Thursday 3 November 2016

Build Update 2

Wuth many thanks to David Steel (his boat is looking much more finished on the left in the bottom picture) here are two pictures taken yesterday:





As you can see, it's a lot further on than last week, we seem to have the whole of the bottom.

In case anyone is wondering, the two big box things in the middle are tanks. The rear one is the fuel tank and the front one is the 'black' tank. What is this (black) I hear you ask? For those that don't know, it's where all the toilet waste ends up. Needs to be big, there will be two loo's on board.

Sunday 30 October 2016

Build Update 1

Some of you follow my posts on facebook, so will already be aware of progess, but for those who don't, or can't:

Here is the steel on the cutting machine:


And here are the cut parts being assembled into a boat:


We're told that the steelwork will be finished and ready to head for fitting out at the end of November, and oh yes, the next stage payment will be due at that time.

We've just learnt that the Dutch Barge Association UK Rally next year (2017) is to be in the Docks at Chatham on the late May Bank Holiday weekend. They have a food festival and all sorts of stuff going on, so, we've booked into our first rally. At the same time, as we're in the area, I think we'll go take a look up the Medway, we will have trouble with air draft at some point, but we'll go do what we can. Here's a link to this years: Chatham Maritime Festival

More build updates as and when.

First Piper Meeting

It's the 14th of October, we are off to Biddulph for our first meeting with Piper to try to finalise all of our ideas and get them into writing (changes to spec, CAD drawings etc) it's all really exciting. Designing the galley layout, choosing appliances, flooring, colours, worktops, all sorts of things.

This takes about 3 hours, I chat about the more 'techy' stuff and Penny helps out with galley. flooring, worktops etc.

When we arrived, there was a truck in the yard with a pile of steel plate on it. During our meeting with Simon & Andrea the steel was removed from the truck and placed in the yard:


This is 'Deep Thought'

There are two boats in the fabrication unit at the moment, we need to wait until Piper do 'the shuffle' (finished boat out of fit-out, finished steel into fit-out and us into fabrication) We're told this will be in a week or so.

Sunday 23 October 2016

Off to Henley

Here we go, first Deep Thought Post:

(Bear with me guys, I'm writing the first few posts retrospectively to get started and up to date).

A year has passed since we paid our deposit, not sure whether it has passed quickly, every time I think about 'Deep Thought' it seems to be dragging oh so slowly.

The next Piper 'Event' at Henley comes about in September 2016, we made sure that we could attend this one, we hadn't seen any barges for a while and needed to refresh our memories, see what others were doing with their boats and start to finalise in our minds exactly what we wanted 'Deep Thought' to be like.

We drive the 30 minutes to Henley on the Saturday morning, and there are, as advertised, barges:


We look at many of them, particularly the 2 49M twin cabin versions, but many more, looking to finalise how we want 'Deep Thought' to be. We ask questions of Piper and many of the owners.

We have lunch, a really nice spread, during which, Nick from Piper comes over to introduce himself to us, going on to explain that he's looking to order our steel, this leads to confirming some of the changes we have come up with since the original specification against which our deposit was paid, oh, and when we need to pay them more money!!

We look at more detail throughout the afternoon, changing our minds and back again with some things, we feel a bit more under pressure to get it right!!

We go for walk along to Henley & back, have nibbles & drinks on 'Merlot' one of the very new barges, then go to the evening barbecue, feeling privileged as it's for Piper staff & owners, and it seems near owners! There is plenty of wine, but I am driving. Next year we'll be here on 'Deep Thought'