The 4 yard skip arrived early this morning and had I less work to do I would have started to clean things up. However, time did not allow and I had to work on my paying job. Which is going very well at the moment and I find myself getting really engrossed in the work and have to remind myself that I’m only getting paid to do 7 1/2 hours a day and not 9 or 10! Maybe I’ll start earlier tomorrow and knock off while it is still light and clean up the easy bit. I could even remember to take lunch break and do some then.

So that’s the skip bit of the title. Now for the thoughts.

Not very surprisingly I’ve been thinking about the damage to Naiad and I’m still not convinced that it is all due to the hyphae that I discovered. The damage does seem to be in two distinct modes. The area around the holes through the hull, the damage is quite severe but away from the holes only the inner veneer is damaged, the majority of the middle veneer seems untouched. All of the damaged wood is soft and can be removed with the fingers but comes away like sawdust. The middle veneer seems to be untouched in most places and sounds hard when tapped with a spike and does not allow the point to penetrate. In the areas where the wood is now fibrous the middle veneer sounds soft when tapped with the spike and the point penetrates the wood although not as far as all the way through the 2.5 mm layer.

The odd thing about the all the damage is that apart from the white mycelium, there is no sign of any fungal growth, nothing at all, so I really doubt that the damage is caused by fungus. The other oddity is that it is only on the turn of the bilge and in the centre of the boat where she is widest. If Naiad had been stored on her starboard side leaning up against a wall so that water could lie in the turn of the bilge but only in the widest parts of the boat then I could see this damage occurring. The damage does not extend past the stringer in the bilge to which the thwart upright was fixed, nor the upper stringer upon which the thwart itself was fixed, but there again, the damaged wood is bone dry and the wood that comes away powdery like sawdust so I doubt that it was water induced.

Who knows! I could send sample somewhere and let some experts decide but I really don’t want to spend the money that I’m going to need to fit Naiad out with just the basics. Have you seen the price of cranse and gammon irons, tabernacles, port lights and spider bands to say nothing of mast, gaff and boom fittings? Horrendous!

And all that probably doesn’t come to the cost of a new suit of sails!

Still, I have a number of months to go before I get to that part of the fitting out.