Congrats on your retirement, Ashley……….But not too impressed with the pressy, although your workmates would have had the best intentions!

No need to remind you of the frustration I had with my Sov of the Seas!

It was great fun for the first two or three months……….Then life became a bore, when the planking started!

I didn`t like the bamboo planking material and being only 1mm thick, they left no scope for sanding to perfection

Although, the hull had two planking layers

I would keep it unopened and simply admire the contents?

Bob

Don't worry about the planking Ashley, all the gaps will be concealed once the hardboard goes on over the top!

Actually, If you don't feel like starting it yet then don't. Retiring is like getting off a train. You head off out of the station into the great wide world and pastures new but the train with your former colleagues just carries on without you and the further down the line it gets the less they will remember you.

In three months time most of them will barely recall that they gave you a Victory kit and none of them will be interested in whether you have built it or not. In a year to eighteen months they will barely recall who you were. Cruel but true; but you are no longer on the train and thus irrelevant to their day to day concerns.

I still meet up with former colleagues but they either got off at the same station as I did or one just up the line. We rarely talk about our former work environment, just about what we are doing now and of course our respective ailments! Our old workplace might as well be on another continent and those who inhabit it mysterious foreigners.

So just do what you want to do, you don't owe any obligations to them now, you've left it all behind, even it if doesn't quite feel like it yet!

Colin

Hello Ashley

Before you jump off the bridge you should know that not everyone has such jaundiced views on retirement.

I think that your friends clubbing together to buy you the gift was a nice gesture and shows that you were appreciated not only as a work colleague (which normally warrants a gold watch) but as a friend, its true that they might not appreciate the difference between a static or sailing kit but that really doesn't matter, What does matter is that they thought enough about you to spend quite a chunk of cash on a gift that would actually mean something to you.

When I finished a particularly difficult construction project in Liverpool the labourers clubbed together to buy me a kit of the USS Constitution, I had no idea that they even knew about my hobby or cared enough to buy the gift. It didn't matter that it was a static plastic kit as the gesture itself meant far more than the gift.

To use Colin's analogy of a rail journey I can attest that, being in the construction industry, I have been on and got off more 'trains' than most people and yet I still find former friends and workmates popping up at some out of the way station and greeting me with warmth or waving at me from the main line as they speed past on the way to their next project.

Winter is an excellent time to build a plank on frame and when complete you will always have a reminder of your 'busy' days and now you have the halcyon days of retirement to look forward to, take it from me that being at home with your loved ones will be the happiest days of your life.

Paul

ps why cant you sail it?

pps now you have had a lump sum……any chance of a tenner?

Ashley, for a builder of your experience and innovative ideas, plank on frame should be a doddle, you may even be able to add some of your particular flair to it As a relative new comer to the world of model boating, I decided to build a kit – a Billing Nordkap – for my first foray into the mysteries of plank on frame, and was so encouraged by my effort that the next model using this technique was scratch built.. This was also a great success, and I have found that the use of POF has opened up new possibilities in hull construction. If I could do it, so can you.

Congratulations on your retirement, now all you need to do is enjoy it.

Peter.

Ashley,

bite the bullet – kick the cannon ball – hoist the main etc etc

Build it as a motorised sailing model, small motor inside, simple rudder control (enlarge rudder by the way) and add a copper pipe to underside filled with lead for ballast. I managed it with a Bounty kit and produced that Pirate ship – what can you do? I fully expect smoke and noise and stuff.

Go on, you know you want to.

Kimmo.

PS see you at LMEX?

Ash,

here look and fill your boots _ **LINK** Victory POF and stuff.

Kim