It occurred to me that my project might not be fresh in your minds so here's a recap:
Hearts Of Oak"Hearts of Oak" is a Morecambe Bay Prawner, or Nobby as they were colloquially known.
Seen in the picture above with the white/grey hull racing alongside "Rose" during her 100th birthday celebrations off Peel Island in 2012. She was the last boat built in Ulverston - the town I happen to live in - and is now maintained and operated by a trust.
I decided, on a whim, to build a scale model of her. She's had a long and varied history including stints as a pilot boat and air sea rescue boat but I chose to model her as she was in 2012 for ease of research - i.e. I was allowed to clamber all over her with a camera and tape measure.
I suppose that she's really a semi-scale model. She's built on a GRP hull made by Mike Mayhew of Waverley Models. The hull is authentically of type and close enough in shape not to matter unless you're a pedant. She's fitted with a 540 electric motor with belt driven reduction to a single, offset prop. The rudder is worked below decks by a fiendish closed loop system of My Mayhew's devising which allows for a working tiller on the counter stern. The model is fitted with three Hitec sail winches in the forecabin. One for the mainsheet and one each for port and starboard foresail sheets. All the sheets work from hidden, closed loop systems below decks with the working parts coming up through the decks via cunningly concealed fairleads. There are three winches as I wanted her to look scale - not to have jib booms and the like.
Yesterday evening, under cover of taking my wife for a swim in the lake, I took Hearts of Oak to Coniston and motored her around for a bit. There's a little video of her
HERE and below are some photos so you can see how she stands right now.