May to August 2002

7th May 2002

Still chugging along merrily over here, one or two developments to report. I spent a day discussing likely scenarios with Julian Happien-Smith the other day. Julian in a very clever engineer who has been appointed by the Coroner to work out why Donald crashed his boat. Julian is an independent crash survivability expert. His area of specialisation is in what he calls compatibility which if I understand it correctly means that you should be able to drive your Bentley over the top of one of those shopping trolley sized Smart cars and everyone gets hurt (or not as the case may be) to exactly the same degree. Sounds like he has his work cut out for him there! that aside, his new job is to explain in engineering speak exactly why what happened; happened, if you know what I mean.

We've discussed every theory that we could think of, dismissed loads of possibilities, ruled out a few theories and more or less settled on the strongest probabilities. There are some further tests to be done but just about everything that can be learned has been learned. It goes without saying that Julian's work is confidential at this time. He's working on behalf of the Coroner so I'm not about to cause mayhem by splashing it all over here.

Watch this space.

	Now where does this bit go
Ahy up Mr Herriot
	Fill this prescription and call me in the morning

Had the second of what will most likely be a series of meetings with Rolls-Royce plc last week. This time they'd brought their legal team and a fantastically knowledgable retired Orpheus engineer. He'd worked on the engine to develop it during service which meant that if one broke he had to work out how to make a stronger one next time. He very eloquently explained that the engine we're currently working with is a whole can of unknown quantities and unless someone strips it down and declares it fighting fit, there's just too much risk involved for Rolls-Royce the company in running it in a public place.

Seems like a bit of a let down on the face of it but Roger James was turn the situation onto an extremely positive outlook for K7 running again. It has been proposed that;

'subject to board approval',

Rolls Royce will help us to obtain a Japanese Orpheus 800 series which is more or less identical to the 700 series. They will select one with a good maintenance history and a few hours left on it's components. They will set it up for ground running in our particular aplication with a derated output for safety reasons, produce the paperwork and train a team to operate, maintain and store the engine correctly. How's that for commitment?

14th August 2002

OK, so it's been a while, I know it's been quiet here in Bluebird Land but don't think that nothing has happened.

There's lots to report so it'll probably come out a bit disjointed. There's loads of stuff been happening with the effort to get K7 back on the water and it's all very positivethe details will have to wait

Novie has wrapped up his heroic running job with a total that comes in a touch over 2 grand, a magnificent solo effort. It doesn't look like huge sum considering the size of the job but it's amazing how many little jobs can be made painless with a couple of thousand quid.

Novie, ever mindful of the spirit of things then had the clever idea of donating a few quid to the local church in order to help them pay for a footpath to Donald's graveside. Apparently there are so many people trampling over the grass that there almost isn't any grass so the Bluebird Project sent them a donation.

Bob Senior in Seattle also produced an amazing solo effort, raising slightly under 500 quid with his badges.

Originally, we'd set out to acquire K7's original launching cradle but that plan has altered a bit. More of that to come.

Also, we took our boat, Predator, for her first sea trial yesterday. She came back from Coniston last May in a very sorry state. Her steering was a mess, the engine had minor unservicabilities everywhere and there was damage all over. She's now rebuilt and the plan is to to get her back on the lake later in the year so that we can lift some more pieces of the wreck. There are still lots of bits to retrieve, we only lifted the bits that we needed in order to work out where Donald got to. Now we need it all so that we can put back as much as possible.

One particularly gratifying exercise that we carried out was to have a more thorough survey done on the boat prior to starting work. This was done over a year since the first one was completed and this one was far more in depth. It proves once and for all that Bluebird's structure is solid and that we can use an even greater percentage of the original hull (over 80% at the last estimate) in the rebuilt boat.

Certain individuals have suggested that there was little material to work with but could not support this claim with any data or evidence. It just demonstrates that they don't know what they are talking about. We'll post some x-ray images as soon as they are available. More to come.

	Novie finishes run and yes those are hours, minutes and seconds not days, hours and minutes
And hands over the cheque to Bill and Gina WELL DONE YOU OLD ANORAK

Still working on getting the boat back to Coniston to collect more wreckage, of course, that's the bit we like best, being divers. Sitting in meetings and writing reports is not exactly what we had in mind at the outset of this project but you have to take the bad with the good. We had a bit of good news from Rolls-Royce Plc. They have been batting the BluebirdProject idea about for some time now and those with whom we've been meeting have been very positive about the whole thing but Rolls-Royce's lawyer kept saying to me "Subject to board approval" bla bla bla! which seems to be legal speak for "yes we all think it's a brill idea but we need to see whether the big cheeses like it" Cutting a long story short, the big cheeses took a look at our mad scheme and gave it the nod so we're no longer "subject to board approval" we're now subject to starting work, just one more giant leap in the right direction.

Seeing as the rudder and fin have been this weeks topic of conversation, here are a few shots of said items, taken today. See what you can learn from them.

Finally, a competition, here's a pic of a little spout type arrangement poking out of the left hand side rear flank of the boat just above the deck. Whoever tells me what on earth it's for can add an extra stripe to the sleeve of their anorak. It's just connected to a piece of pipe on the inside that disappears into the void under the engine.

All those who sponsored Novie were promised a letter of thanks from the project and it hasn't been overlooked. Problems are these, I only got the list last week and Novie has printed them out in such a way that I have to type every one back in to the computer. he couldn't give them to me as a nice little database so that I could mail merge them or something easy that so I'm getting through about a dozen a day if I'm lucky! You'll get yours eventually.

	Rudder Linkage
Stabilising fin
	Rudder
Spout type arrangement poking out of the left hand side rear flank of the boat Answers on the back of a £20 note or e mail to Bill

21st August 2002

Still progressing nicely, the report writing is being hampered by having to go to work but it's getting there. Andy G was kind enough to produce a neat little diagram for us this week. It shows all the important bits of our big blue boat. It's no good rattling on about sponsons, planing wedges and water baffles to accountants and lawyers so now they've got a practical picture complete with labels to help them out.

Predator has been out for a few more trials this week prior to going back on the lake, also our old pal Graeme "Captain" Connacher has been using much of the survey kit out on Ullswater so that we can iron out the bugs. That way we'll hopefully not show ourselves up when we go back for the rest of K7. In the process of sorting the sonar, we discovered a few previously unseen images so we've posted them.

After the last dive on May 28th last year when we lifted the Skipper, Gina made us promise that we wouldn't go back to the bottom of the lake. Can't really go back on that or I'll end up in bother so there'll be a new crew dropping over the side this time and some new faces on the site.