Change of Plans

After much measuring and re-measuring we've decided that it would be impossible to fit a full gas cooker into Crocus. So it was back to the drawing board and the new plans are this ...

Removing the cooker from the cabin means that we can now have a cool box and extra storage in its place. Once the decision was made we were back online to find a two-burner hob and grill which will go in the locker where the original one had been. We found a very good price for a Plastimo Neptune 2500 and so we immediately placed an order and it arrived very promptly ...

Filling

The hull has a few places where some filling is required.

Crocus must have been moored alongside for quite a while and without fenders to protect her because she has some damage ...

which needed sorting ...



Once the hull is painted it will be as good as new!

Gas Locker

The interior design for Crocus is such that the gas bottle locker has to be moved from the foredeck and will be re-housed in an aft locker. In order to give us six foot berths we need to have trotter boxes and the port side was blocked by the gas locker.

The hatch cover of the locker ...

and the gas bottle locker itself ...


Locker now removed ...

Gas vent before and after ...


The hole in the hull has been plugged and filled and the hole in the foredeck will be repaired and finished when the decks are covered.

Plan View

The weather is warming up and so the cover came off for us to do a detailed measuring prior to doing a drawing of the plan view. One thing it showed up was that Crocus is only 20ft long and not 21ft as we'd originally understood her to be.

Still Scraping!

I know it's a while since I've posted anything on here but it doesn't mean that nothing has been happening.

Every time that the weather has permitted it Mike has been out scraping away at all the layers of paint on her hull. It's a slow job but he's getting there!

We noticed a problem when we first saw Crocus ...

It would appear that she had been left with her roof up and it had been slowly pushing the hull outwards so that the doors didn't meet to shut.

Since we've had her in Cornwall we've kept the roof down and the doors seemed to be better. Mike had an idea for bringing them in the last little bit and he fitted a bottlescrew and wire across inside the cabin ...

He's been very slowly tightening it over the weeks. What a difference ...

Exciting News!

A while ago we contacted Hoseasons and asked if their archives held old brochures from the 1950's in which Crocus could possibly have been entered for hire. At the time they were very busy preparing next year's brochure but today we received the fantastic news that she had been found as Crocus in 1953 ...

and then as Tally-Ho in 1957 ...

It was great to see her as she was in her hey-day and it proves that we're right in deciding to keep her as Crocus because that was obviously her original name.

Thank you Barry at Hoseasons for all your help.

Plans!

We've been away on holiday but hopefully work will be starting again soon.

In the meantime Mike has been busy drawing up the plans for inside Crocus ...

She is very tiny so there's not much room for the cooker and loo but we think we can just about fit them in. We've trawled the internet for small cookers and found this one which is a caravan cooker ...
As we won't be going to sea in Crocus it is not necessary to have a marine one which would be all-singing, all-dancing and mega money! When we bought her she just had a two burner and grill camping stove which was located in a locker in the well ...

It has now been removed ...

and with the new cooker going in the cabin, the locker can hopefully house a cool-box.