16 Oak and teeth (a minor hobbit character)

The front thwart - the mast support - is in place, and there really is nothing like oak. It looks so good. Of course, it needs sanding, not least to get rid of the pencil marks and gluey fingerprints, but I’m sorely tempted to leave it plain and unvarnished when the boat’s finished.

Two steps forward and one back this morning again: the air temperature has slumped in the last couple of days down to about 12 degrees C in the day and about 5 by night. This is a full 10 degrees colder than we had last week. So when I grasped the lovely new mast support thwart this morning the glue joints broke - the epoxy was still plastic and squishy after 18 hours. It takes three hours to start to harden at above 15 degrees - below that it takes forever. Still, I was able to remodel the supports for the thwart, and it looks a bit more elegant than it did last night. The weather hasn’t warmed up yet, so it’s going to stay clamped up until the sun returns.

The last couple of days have been dominated by the toothache - I haven’t had one for years and years, but it’s been an absolute stinker, and today I went into Norwich and had a wisdom tooth pulled by my South African dentist, Albertus Joubert (really). Now I feel like a spring lamb; well, a spring old goat anyway; a pretty knackered spring old goat, but I hope for many good nights’ sleep from now on. A demain, mes enfants.