As many of you are aware, we are building a 38 foot schooner. She's an epoxy ply construction with timber masts and a junk rig, built to the last design worked on by Maurice Griffiths GM, editor of Yachting Monthly and a lifelong coastal sailor on the east coast of England.
I came to know Maurice through my friend Ken Long, who owned a boat Maurice designed. I met Maurice again when I bought my own boat, Sigurd Syr, an Eventide 27.3 built by Phil Sheath, Maurice's plans agent. Through those connections I became secretary of the Eventide Owners Association, which led to many conversations in Maurice's bungalow in West Mersea about what I wanted in a perfect boat.
She had to be easy to handle, kindly and safe, more of a floating armchair than a boat you had to fight. Maurice had a bad leg from an accident on one of his own boats, so we agreed she should be manageable from the safety of the cockpit, with a working rig that could be reduced quickly and repaired easily. A junk rig removes a lot of the stress a traditional rig puts through the hull, and cuts down on-deck handling, so a junk rig schooner it was. Multi-chine plywood construction with modern epoxy, rather than the older resins prone to waxing and blushing, kept the build achievable on our budget.
So now we had a hull, upside down in a workshop barely big enough for it, and we needed it the right way up so we could fit out the inside and fit the deck. With no budget for fancy lifting gear, everything had to be done simply, cheaply, and safely.
Building the Caterpillar
Our first thought was a lorry-chassis trolley, but height was a problem: we needed to get out of the workshop doors, build the trolley under the boat, and jack the hull with 12-tonne bottle jacks. So we came up with the caterpillar: two 6-metre steel girders drilled to take five axles each, with two small solid wheels per axle rated at 1,600kg, giving each caterpillar a 16,000kg capacity. These could be pushed individually under the boat, then joined by cross members and long timbers laid across the top.
The axles were turned on a CNC machine, and the wheels are double bearinged for a snug fit. Once the caterpillar was together under the hull, we jacked the strong back with six 12-tonne bottle jacks until it was just clear of the floor, then shimmed the hull in place. A test with a single jack moved the hull 25mm; if it would move that much, it would move out of the workshop.
Designing a Turning Frame
Once the hull was out into the sunshine, we needed to turn it over. I didn't want the hull dragged onto its side, and I wanted a method that turned it slowly with some element of control. Crane operators talk about "choking" or "strangling" a load, putting a lot of pressure on one point and dragging the hull the right way up, which wasn't something I fancied.
People have been turning heavy items with frames for a very long time, and we looked at plenty of options: square frames with the corners knocked off, lever-and-packing systems, nothing that filled me with confidence. Then a conversation with my friend Lara about taking her young nephew to see hamsters gave me the idea: build a hamster wheel around the hull, so it turned on the wheel and not on the hull or the ground. We built only the part that would touch the floor, protecting the hull itself.
The quarter wheels were built from 18mm off-cut ply, glued and screwed together in laminations to make two C-frames roughly four inches thick. These were hung onto the hull using the holes for the ballast keel, connected with 2x4 timber to spread the load.
The bottom of each C-frame had a clamp that swept under the boat, allowing the hull to be toppled over onto the frame and then turned upright.
Once built, the frames were numbered and put into storage until they were needed.
Building a Roadway
The next problem was the ground outside. We'd seen engine cranes sink into tarmac before, and the standing outside the workshop wasn't much better, so we needed the caterpillar's small wheels to stay on the surface rather than sink into it. We batted around plenty of ideas over a drink at the local pub, including ripping up the hard standing for a new concrete pad, until I remembered watching two men move a steam engine on oiled steel plates. That gave us the idea for a roadway of 4mm steel plates running from inside the workshop out across to the grass on the other side of the drive, levelled off with a bed of damp sand, a trick borrowed from watching a documentary about laying foundations in Dubai.
The First Move
With the roadway down and the hull supported on the caterpillars, the plan was to pull her out of the workshop for the first time using the winch on the front of the Range Rover through a two-part purchase. I wasn't at all convinced it would work.
We moved her two inches on the first day, just to prove to myself she would indeed move.
Once the winch wire was rigged properly, it was time to see if we could move her all the way out. Slowly, and I mean very slowly, we winched her out into the sunshine. Then there she was, outside, and I wasn't entirely sure how I felt about it: a couple of old boys and a small winch had moved a 38 foot hull without injuring anyone. The main thing we learned was to keep plenty of bottle jacks on hand; we ran six, each rated at 12 tonnes.
Read on for how we tackled turning her the right way up in Moving The Hull Part 2.
