The Next Chapter

This blog is a copy and paste from our new blog, The Pen Maker's Journey Don't forget to follow over there as this one won't be around for more than a few weeks.

Ok so here's the bigger change...

The Pen Makers Boat mk2 is on its way!

This time it's gonna be bigger, by 10 foot and better, well we do flippin hope so. 

Gone will be the days of turning pens under the pram cover in freezing temperatures; gone will be the scrabbling around in the engine hole trying to retrieve dropped oil filters. But sadly also gone will be our two foot draught, our lovely iroko floor throughout the whole boat and our solid American oak fit-out, also our hand cut marquetry detailing on the cabinetry, the whole of system (well most of) dimensions, the never skips a beat beta engine, and one thing I've always liked, our 'see the tunnel lamp from the back deck right through the boat' layout. There will be sacrifices.

So as well as our travels there'll be a fair bit of boat build stuff going on here over the next few months - and probably few years whilst we learn to change a spray foamed hull into a home.

Now any blog messages containing "you don't want to do it like that..." or "what you want is..." will be [sumirally​] ignored cos I'm always right. Apparently.

OOooh how exciting!

With driving up to boat builders and driving down to engine builders we've been doing less cruising than we have for several years and spending most of our spare time getting Lois Jane ready for sale towards the end of the year. A fair bit of outside work needs doing and a bit of inside fettling to get it somewhere back to the IWA show boat it was in Birmingham 2000.

More to follow for cruising, LJ fettling and details (lots of which seem to change on a daily basis) of 70 foot Tug Boat, temporary build name TAPATAHI - Maori word for Simplicity, our build ethos.