My new catamaran

Our daily routine certainly wasn't followed today - we woke at 8:15, more than two hours after school-day reveille. We shall have to do better tomorrow.

Rose cut Claude's hair this evening. As usual, she left it till the last minute. I made some Eccles cakes this afternoon - the first time I have tried them; they turned out OK but were time-consuming to make. They won't sit in the tin for long, I think.

I'm making netting for the front of my new 26 ft catamaran, to go between the forward main beam and the forward netting beam - a slow job. I make a foot or so every day so it should be done in about a week. It's supposed to have a trampoline forward and netting aft, but I have no suitable material for trampolines. I did use some fish net but it was too weak and soon broke, even when used 4-ply, so I am making the new net from #7 rope (3.5 mm diameter) and that should be strong enough to walk on. Aft, there may be a small net next to the aft netting beam, to make it safer to go there, but the whole space will not be covered as the yuloh (large sculling oar to Chinese design) takes up a fair amount of space when in action. I also have to fix my self-steering device somewhere aft of the aft main beam.

This cat has four beams, really solid constructions meant to take heavy stresses. They are lashed on with rope, more reliable than metal fixings and lashings allow some flexing of the whole structure. I finished building the cat about three months ago, and with a team of six men and some boys we took it to the river one hull at a time, assembled it on the clay bank of a fishpond and pushed it in at high tide. The fishpond has an entrance from the river, navigable at high tide. Sanny made a stand for it in the river near the bank so that it can be out of the water most of the time, to prevent barnacles growing - a pest in this area. It can be taken off or put on the stand at high spring tides (that's at night in this part of the world at this time of year.)

Since taking it out to sea the first time, I have made some alterations. The yuloh was not sufficiently bent so I introduce a new bend in it - sawed it, planed a new bevel, bolted it together again with epoxy and wrapped it with fibreglass tape in epoxy. This makes a strong join. Then I changed the clews on the reefing positions for the mainsail - the first ones had insufficient patches and began to tear the leech of the sail. I used nylon webbing and stainless steel D-rings, which are easy to make and quite effective. I made the sails myself from nylon canvas - not an ideal material as it is too light and it stretches, but they work fairly well. It's hard to find a suitable cloth here.

I had Sanny spread a thin layer of grease on one hull below the water line, I want to see if this makes it easier to clean.