INVESTIGATOR 563

$1500 to appease #%>£% bureaucratic requirements. We live in strange times. I love watching Grand Designs UK. We visited my wife's relos on the Yorkshire Moors a few years back and they had done a massive rebuild of a sandstone barn into a residence. The govt. bs he had to endure much like the tv show houses was painful to hear about.

I believe providing sound engineer principles are followed councils should stick to collecting garbage and mowing parks. I think it's why I like boats so much. They are one of the few things that officialdom has not got their hooks into yet, from a construction point of view anyway . Give them time.

..sorry Ian if that touches the fringe of politics..rant over

In NSW 20sqm and .9 from boundaries lets you not have to get Council OK - and pay money. Its basically the system to approve carports

With the woodwork out of the way, I tacked the list of small jobs that I had compiled. I replaced the halyards with Spectra, installed a depth sounder, fibre glassed and flow coated in a few places, removed and inspected the chain plates for corrosion (all good), and did many other minor jobs which came up as I went along. All that was left to do was to go sailing for a shakedown cruise.

The centreboard was fine, the outboard worked fine, the boat went off and on the trailer without mishap and only a few small things showed up. A couple of the cam-cleats will need servicing (or replacing) and the outboard bracket needs to be lowered a little, but that was about all. There were only light winds on the day but enough to try things out. I even managed to catch dinner when we did some fishing at lunch time.

Thanks for those dimensions and ideas, they are a good guide to work around in looking for a trailer boat shed.