Since I'm hoping to steam the rubbing strakes this coming Saturday, I needed to put the kiln dried Sapele timber into water for a couple of days to absorb as much water as possible. The chap from whom I bought the timber mentioned that some of the ship wrights to whom he supplies Oak timber for restoration projects put the Oak into the river for this purpose. The trouble is that the river is a mile away and the timber I have is now over 6m long and not easy to transport. So, not having a river at the bottom of the garden I have to improvise. I put the two strakes into the same plastic flat tubing that I used for the steaming, tied off one end and filled it with water. The problem is that the plastic is easy to cut and the not sharp but not rounded corners of the strakes make holes in the tube no matter how careful I try to be. If I were going to be doing this on a regular basis I'd get two sections of rigid water pipe that builders use for water drainage, join them together and put end caps on each end and use this as a soaker, but I hope this will be the last steaming that I'm going to do so I'll use what I've got.

It was also shopping day today so not much else apart from more varnishing was carried out.

Here are the rubbing strakes soaking in a makeshift river. As you can see from the photo there are one or two leaks but the wood ought to soak up enough water to make the steaming easier. I'll just keep it topped up twice a day.