StrandedMariner's Tub...

[Wynand N]

After stranded for more than 14 years in China, Strandedmariner commissioned me to build him a boat to escape. It is a Dix 43 CC and her name Waratah.

The first lines of the loft were drawn on 17 January and the first frames went on the building frame on the 26 January. However, progress was slow because I was plagued by having 4 hour power cuts daily for about 2 weeks - national emergency at the time.

The hull is now complete with the keel fitted, rudder/skeg just await arrival of machined SS parts before getting fitted. First deck frames are under construction and the hull already welded 50% on the inside.

I am extremely proud to say that this hull is my best by far - actually, nowhere on this hull was a plate (including radius chine) forced into position with dock & wedge, chainblocks (amateur way), pinch bars etc. All plate were fitted by using hands only.

Note; all the side hull plates are 3.0 meter in length and the bow plates 1.8x3.0 meter to eliminate some vertical joints in my pursuit of perfection and fairness of plating.

Below are some photos of Waratah, and one with all the conspirators together - starting from left;

Tall bearded fellow - Pieter, Boilermaker assistant, tea boy, girl Friday
Red Cap - Joseph, general helper
Thumb up - Fanie, grinder man and general helper
Center with red shirt - yours truly
Springbok jersey - Rudie, our CO2 welder
Far right - Tony, boilermaker and pal

[charmc]

Originally Posted by Wynand N

I am extremely proud to say that this hull is my best by far - actually, nowhere on this hull was a plate (including radius chine) forced into position with dock & wedge, chainblocks (amateur way), pinch bars etc. All plate were fitted by using hands only.

Wynand,

Justifiable pride. Great work; she looks terrific so far. Keep up the photos as work progresses.

BTW, keep the plans. You could sell a duplicate hull just as pictured to a movie company planning a remake of Hunt for Red October.

[Landlubber]

Great work so far mate, always a pleasure to see someone proud of their work, and rightly so.

Today most people want a quick fix, any method as long as it is quick and cheap.

Building a new steel yacht is neither quick, nor cheap, it is very skilled work (doing it correctly) and most rewarding for everyone to see.

Yeah, please keep up the progress pics, very interesting project. I used to own a beautiful 40' steel yacht from a Halvorsen design, Freya. The best sail boat I ever owned, and the couple who bought her from me still have her after 15 years.

[westlawn5554X]

sleek ... cant comment more beside good solid work... great to see the creation of a Dix series... envy.....

[StrandedMariner]

Originally Posted by charmc

Wynand,

Justifiable pride. Great work; she looks terrific so far. Keep up the photos as work progresses.

BTW, keep the plans. You could sell a duplicate hull just as pictured to a movie company planning a remake of Hunt for Red October.

I must admit there are some similarities
However I intend to keep 'Waratah' afloat once she is ready.

[charmc]

Cool as the hull looks upside down, I'm sure you'll prefer the mast pointing up when she's finished.

[StrandedMariner]

Originally Posted by charmc

Cool as the hull looks upside down, I'm sure you'll prefer the mast pointing up when she's finished.

I am sure she will look a lot better that way

Cheers,
Andreas

[Pericles]

Stranded Mariner has chosen the right team for this build. All should feel justifiably proud of such good workmanship. Charlie, I thought Los Angeles class as soon as I saw it.

Regards to all,

Perry

[StrandedMariner]

Thanks Perry!

I think my project could not be in better hands, and if all works out fine the hull will be turned this week, and does not look like a sub anymore. But I agree it looks pretty cool.

Cheers,
Andreas

[Pericles]

Andreas,

How do you get away with your blog? It's very amusing and some of the links are just, wow, dangerous to know. I love 'em. The Sea of Phlegm blog today is shocking.

Thousands of pet cats in Beijing are being abandoned by their owners and sent to die in secretive government pounds as China mounts an aggressive drive to clean up the capital in preparation for the Olympic Games.

Hundreds of cats a day are being rounded and crammed into cages so small they cannot even turn around.

Then they are trucked to what animal welfare groups describe as death camps on the edges of the city.

The cull comes in the wake of a government campaign warning of the diseases cats carry and ordering residents to help clear the streets of them.


cat prison

Doomed: Terrified cats crammed tightly into cages are hauled off to a meat market in Guangzhou

Cat owners, terrified by the disease warning, are dumping their pets in the streets to be picked up by special collection teams.

Paranoia is so intense that six stray cats -including two pregnant females - were beaten to death with sticks by teachers at a Beijing kindergarten, who feared they might pass illnesses to the children.

China's leaders are convinced that animals pose a serious urban health risk and may have contributed to the outbreak of SARS - a deadly respiratory virus - in 2003.

But the crackdown on cats is seen by animal campaigners as just one of a number of extreme measures being taken by communist leaders to ensure that its capital appears clean, green and welcoming during the Olympics.


cat prison

Secretive: The compound at Da Niu Fang which is patrolled by security guards

Polluting factories in and around the city are being ordered to shut down or relocate during the Games to ease Beijing's choking smog and drivers are allowed out on to the roads only three times a week.

Fares on the city's underground network have been cut to just two yuan (14p) for any journey - a six-fold reduction on some routes - to keep people off buses, and beggars and street sleepers are being moved to out-of-town camps or given train fares back to their home provinces.

Meanwhile, taxi drivers have been made to attend lessons in how to greet passengers politely in English and a city-wide courtesy campaign has been launched to teach Beijing's notoriously dour and grumpy citizens how to smile and be pleasant to foreigners.

The cull of Beijing's estimated 500,000 cat population is certain to provoke international outrage as it comes just over a year after the Chinese were criticised for rounding up and killing stray dogs across the country.


cat prison

Refuge: Campaigner Hu Yuan, 80, with some of the 250 cats she has taken in at her Beijing home

Animal welfare groups in China are already protesting, but their members fear punishment from the authorities.

Officials say people can adopt animals from the 12 cat pounds set up around the city, but welfare groups say they are almost impossible to get inside and believe few cats survive.

One cat lovers' group negotiated the release of 30 pets from one of the compounds in Shahe, north-west Beijing, but said they were in such a pitiful condition that half of them died within days of their release.

"These cats are being left to die. It is very inhumane," said the group's founder Yan Qi, who runs a sanctuary for cats.

cat prison

A rescued pet showing clear signs of disease

"People don't want to keep cats in Beijing any more so they abandon them or send them to the compounds.

"When we went inside, we saw about 70 cats being kept in cages stacked one on top of the other in two tiny rooms.

"Disease spreads quickly among them and they die slowly in agony and distress. The government won't even do the cats the kindness of giving them lethal injections when they become sick. They just wait for them to die.

"It is the abandoned pets that suffer the most and die the soonest. They relied so much on their owners that they can't cope with the new environment.

"Most refuse to eat or drink and get sick more quickly than the feral cats."

Ms Yan's group has now been denied access to the pounds. "We do not believe any of the cats that go in there survive," she said. "They are like death camps."

Ms Yan said there was another reason for people abandoning their cats - the 200 yuan (£14) fee they face if they want to have their pets neutered and tagged.

"We have tried to negotiate with the government to stop the round-ups and to introduce cut-price neutering services so that people can afford to keep their pets but they won't listen to us," she said.

"They are not thinking about the cats. They just want to get results in the quickest way possible, by clearing as many cats from the city as they can."

Retired doctor Hu Yuan, 80, runs one of the few remaining refuges for abandoned pets in her ramshackle home in the ancient Long Tou Jing area of Beijing.

She shares her tiny home with 250 abandoned cats and has taken in 70 over the past 12 months alone.

She pays for neutering and food from her pension and donations. She said: "If I don't take them in, the government will kill them.

"People believe what the government tells them and that is why they are abandoning more and more family pets."

She said the problem could be traced back to former president Jiang Zemin for the crackdown.

"He didn't like dogs so he decided to have dogs killed. But there was a bad reaction from the foreign media and they were pressured to stop.

"Now they have stopped killing dogs but the new victims are cats. It is all connected to the Olympics."

Cats are regularly dumped on her doorstep late at night by owners frightened by the government campaign.

"The situation is very bad now," said Ms Hu. "When women get pregnant, the doctor will ask them if they have a cat in the house.

"If they reply Yes, they tell them, 'You must get rid of it, it will be bad for the baby'.

"I keep all the cats in my house and 100 of them sleep in my bedroom at night. I am too frightened to let them out. If they go outside, they will be taken away and killed.

"The government is not telling people the truth. Look at me. I live with them 24 hours a day, seven days a week and I am very healthy."

The round-up has been particularly intense in areas around Olympic venues and in streets and alleys surrounding five-star hotels where guests will stay during the summer games.

Despite the health warnings, the round-up of cats has led to a surge in the number of restaurants in the capital serving cat meat, according to Ms Hu.

She said hundreds of cats were also being sent to Guangzhou in southern China, an area infamous for restaurants that serve meat from cats and dogs and exotic animals such as snakes and tigers.

It was in July last year that district officials were instructed to begin an intense round-up of cats as part of Beijing's pre-Olympics clean-up. Now notices have been put up urging residents to hand in cats.

Welfare groups estimate that tens of thousands have been collected in the past few months.

The Mail on Sunday went to the cat pound in Shahe on the north-western fringes of Beijing but we were repeatedly refused admission.

"No one can come in without official papers," staff shouted from behind padlocked steel gates.

At another, larger compound in Da Niu Fang village, the sound of cats wailing could be clearly heard coming from a cluster of tin-roofed sheds, but workers denied they were holding any cats.

"There are no cats here, go away. No one is allowed inside unless you have official permission," a security guard said.

The killing of the six stray cats at the kindergarten - where staff at a Beijing cigarette factory leave their children - is the most striking illustration of the city-wide fear of cats.

A teacher at the nursery said: "We did it out of love for the children. We were worried the cats might harm them. These six cats had been hanging around the kindergarten looking for food.

"So three male teachers put out plates of tuna in cages for bait, trapped the cats and then beat them to death with sticks.

"We were very worried the children might try to stroke them and that the cats might scratch them or pass on diseases. We had to get rid of the cats and this was the only way to do it."

Christie Yang of the charity Animals Asia, which liaises with the Beijing animal welfare groups, said: "We are seriously concerned.

"We understand that with the Olympic Games the Beijing government is eager to show the world the city in a good light.

"But capturing and dealing with cats in such an inhumane way will seriously tarnish the image of Beijing and the Games."

• Names of the animal campaigners have been changed as the people we interviewed are concerned about officials' reaction to our story.


Photographs are on site.



Perry

[StrandedMariner]

Hello Perry,

I chose my blog domain at the same time as my best mate here in Shanghai, who posts under the name MyLaowai (http://mylaowai.wordpress.com.)

We thought we chose a domain which is already firmly banned in China, otherwise it would have been after our first posts. And I won't do that to any unsuspecting operator of a blogging site

There are a lot of very disturbing things happening in China at times. It's part of the growing pains of a country and society that simply grows too fast to keep up. And as for the cats, they are not treating them a lot different than many of their own people, let alone their ethnic minorities in Tibet and East Turkestan.
Add to that the fact that our western politicians often turn a blind eye for the sake of business. But it is not my intention to elaborate on that on this board. That's what blogs are for. Let's stick to boatbuilding

Cheers and best regards,
Andreas

[yipster]

looking good and thanks for posting, when she gets turned and before the deck and mast goes up please can we see some more pics

[StrandedMariner]

There will be pics, for sure. Actually the turning takes place today. To say that I am not nervous, would be a lie.

[Wynand N]

and she did went over today.
She was turned over using only chain block tackle as no crane could get into the building. The flimsy roof trusses meant we could not lift from them and all seven chain blocks were attached to the upright columns. When the hull was on its side on the floor, we cleared the bottom of the roof truss by 85mm . Was a really close call....

Turning over time from the first pull of chain to upright - 1.5 hours.

Grinding of hull still need final sanding down.

[yipster]

proficiat and great pics that are a pleasure to look at, lotsa things left to be stuffed in tho, thanks guy's