Wednesday, June 14, 2017

LAW 132: Tesla's Revenge, a work in progress

We've 'been thinking lately about bespoke vs bought. Surrounding ourselves with beautiful, functional and other work made by people we know has always been important to us. Be it handmade clothes, art, furnishings, handmade ceramics, oh man are we suckers for beautifully made serving or dinner ware, we cherish the things that have been made for us by others, as well as what we have made ourselves.

So, we decided to use wood as our primary construction material, aiming for a pergola look.
Installing the cross members!


 I love my Nick Corso pitcher, we use it every day!

I love collecting and using hand made ceramic kitchen ware
Beautiful, handmade, great pouring pitcher.

So, knowing the maker is important to us. It is even more important to be a maker. What's the fun  buying something that a whole bunch other people have? Cookie cutters. are, after all, for cookies. Not for our goodies, not for our art, not for the food we eat. So why should we have a boat that looks like every other one on the water? That has been a topic of conversation lately. Actually it is a thread that has run through our entire life together.

It is getting hot now, time to wrap it up for the day, the carpenter is sitting down on the job.
Almost the last cross member, its getting late and real hot!

Face it, we're Aquarians, artists, iconoclasts, old hippies, if you will. It makes more sense to us to build, rather than buy. Or, in the case of Tesla's Revenge, seriously modify.

On the two hottest days to date we erected the frame of the pergola style hard top over our existing cockpit. Creating in essence another room here on TR. Talk about buckets of sweat!

Don't be afraid of drilling into your boat hull, it's only fiberglass, what can go wrong?
I love watching men work! Don especially!
By the end of day two we have 90% of the frame up, and most important, shade! It has been nearly impossible to use the cockpit, without shade the light is absolutely blinding,

We chose to use wood as a building material, trying hard to mimic the angles and curves of the original boat design
Stern, cockpit view

The addition of a 6' bamboo blind on either side of the cockpit gives us pretty much 24/7 use of this space, which to date has been pretty much a collection of whatever we didn't really have room for in the boat proper.
Bamboo blinds, a fast, inexpensive fix provides much needed shade for the cockpit.
Aah, shade! Glorious

Not done yet, but getting there.

Have to say that we are pretty unhappy with our GAS ONE dual fuel, butane/propane stove.  Butane can be hard to find, and expensive, plus it looses efficiency at temperatures below 50 degrees. So the possibility of switching from butane to propane was appealing. Except, something the manufacturer does not disclose, the pressure valve for the propane is not up to a 20# tank in hot weather. We've had two break down in the last month.
Chef's salads, those artfully composed, delicious combonations of greens, freash and pickled veggies, meat, in this case Serrano ham, and cheeses
Salad, yummy! Just because i haven't share food photos lately

We're looking into counter top(RV) technology propane. I'll let  you know.

More later,
gail

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