I saw an Ad in Practical Boat Owner in the Kits and Hulls section - “Golden Cowrie hull ..... “ I had been considering starting to build a slightly larger version from scratch. I phoned the number and a few days later I was on my motorbike for the long journey to Porth Madog in North Wales. The hull was unfinished, cosmetically poor due to bad adhesion of filler which had been applied all over the rough-cast hull, had a poor deck and cockpit both of which had been built with insufficient structural support and which were showing signs of rot, but the structural integrity of the hull seemed good and above all what would obviously be a long term project had potential.

This shows the hull in Porth Madog in August 1988

For about the price of the materials to build the hull alone to this stage, here was a mostly completed hull with many extras.

After giving my enthusiasm a few days cooling off period I telephoned the yard and agreed to buy the boat. I had of course taken on a project far more involved than I could appreciate at the time, but at least it was not my first. My experience with the first “Ramprasad” had taught me that any project of this sort is likely to take much longer than you expect.

The deck in Porth Madog is showing early signs of degradation -only a little of the fibreglass sheathing remains around the hatch leaving the bare plywood exposed to the elements - I eventually reuse the wooden companionway hatch, garage and runners.

In the first four years very little was done. The hull in Porth Madog awaited my attention. I had a letter from the yard saying that they wanted to develop the area where my boat was standing and suggesting that I moved it closer to home where I might more easily attend to its needs. This was of course a very sensible suggestion especially since during this period my work commitments in Sussex had become more involved - rather than less so as I had previously envisaged. I enquired at the Sussex Yacht Club to see if it would be possible to move the boat to the club car park for completion ashore there but was told that there was no room; but I decided to apply to join the club anyway. In the mean time I arranged space ashore at Littlehampton marina and booked a boat transporter low loader lorry for the road trip South.

We had a police escort for the windy roads of Wales and then followed a mainly motorway route in England making one overnight stop at the M5 services since the “Wide Load” regulations forbade us from travelling at night. At Littlehampton the crane lifted the boat off the following morning without incident and here at least I was within easy daily travelling distance from home.

During the time here the rotten oversized cockpit finally collapsed and I found it worryingly easy to detach the remains from the rest of the deck and dispose of it. The Perkins 4107 engine was seized and I had it lifted out for a strip and rebuild by Graham Page. This then gave me access to the keel void under the engine bed which had been filled with cast iron sash window weights as ballast but not yet secured. These I removed to clean the void, then plastered the inside of the keel, then refilled it with ballast and then cemented it in. I had at least made a solid start towards the completion of this vessel.

In Spring 1991 I made further enquiries at SYC to see if it would be possible to bring the boat even closer to home. My patience was rewarded with an affirmative answer this time but Roger Bunker was perhaps less pleased to see the arrival of my project in Shoreham than I was. The rotten deck gave way under the featherlight step of Mike Roberts (Assistant Bosun) as he was securing the strops for the crane and I understood later that many members didn’t think that this project would ever be completed.

The aforementioned deck now demanded my attention. I had decided after consultation with the designer that I would rebuild it in ferrocement. I took a few months off work and got cracking with stripping the old rotten deck off. This was remarkably easy.

This photo shows Adrian giving me a hand (and looking pretty vicious with a hammer!) with most of the old deck removed.

What was more difficult was cutting into the ferrocement beam shelf and then pulverising the cement mortar to expose the steel to which I would weld the new web steel deck beams and tie in the mesh deck reinforcement. 

This picture shows the deck steel before the mesh was applied. The transverse deck-beams (and hatch upstands) are from 8mm mild steel rod with spacers welded in place, and the fore-and-aft "stringers" are of 6mm Rebar tied to the deck-beams.

I had a busy summer towards the end of which I hired a cement mixer for a couple of week-ends and got a lot of friends round to help with plastering the deck.

This shows the deck steel with 4 layers of 1/2" hexagonal chicken wire applied top and bottom and tied in place - viewed from below deck looking forward - note the strips of plywood tied in place at the bottom of the deck beams in order to give an edge to which the plastering team can work.

This operation was critical and the first time we had unsuitably hot dry weather but appropriate precautions were made and the result is a good strong robust deck which is inevitably heavier than the old deck.

This shows the deck around the cockpit hole - plastered, and the mainhatch sliders in position in the bottom left of the picture.

The outside of the boat hadn’t changed much. Apart from my comings and goings and a couple of busy Saturdays with a cement mixer, there was nothing to convince the outside casual observer that any progress was being made. For the next year I had to attend to the needs of my employment and so less progress was made during this time than during the first six months in Shoreham. However I made two ferrocement water tanks,

This picture shows the starboard water tank steel in place (before application of the mesh). The location of these tanks was prompted partly by the fact that they filled with rainwater and stayed full well before this work took place! On one day when Adrian was helping me with welding the deck-beams, his son George (aged about 3) fell into one of these tanks and got soaked! 

then did considerable cement pulverising and re-plastering to strengthen the floor members which included extra steelwork for the mast support floor member. A coat of white paint to the underside of the deck did wonders to the light levels in the working environment. The 12 bronze framed windows had been badly fitted with steel screws and so they all had to be removed and refitted in a waterproof fashion with bronze screws, and while I was at it I replaced the glass for perspex. I got the engine back from the engineers in Littlehampton and had it lifted back into the boat. I had various modifications and improvements to do to it having had the basic core of the engine completely refurbished.

This shows the Perkins 4107 with some of the modifications made - the cooling system is complete - the original dynamo is still in place - the instrument panel at the top of the photo has only the engine oil pressure gauge connected and the temperature gauge not yet connected