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Hello Sailor

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Hello Sailor

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Boatbuilders. Monitoring of your boat to your phone without monthly fees. Marine electrical.

01/11/2026

A little light reading. Airshipwreck, I found this book in the maritime section of a second hand book shop yesterday. This amazing photo is one I’ve seen a lot, they’re repairing the fabric of the Graf Zeppelin mid South Atlantic during a passenger flight.

She’s not made of wood, and she’s not in water, but she’s definitely a ship from the 1920s

01/11/2026

This rather hectic and unattractive video, is the kind of thing we make to remind ourselves what was happening later in a project.

The boat is a 1931 fishing boat with quite a bad leak, from an area that hasn’t been looked at in 20 years.

I didn’t want to take the ballast out to find it until she was safely on the slipway, just incase a plank burst. That would be disappointing.

Once she was being hauled up there were a few minutes while her hull was still in the water to look for the leak, hence the hecticness. In the end the video wasn’t necessary, the leak is pretty obvious from the outside and it is from the rotten futtock that I’m pointing at.

31/10/2026

We’ve been busy! Work has started on Leason, a Danish trawler built in 1931. She’s been in the yard for about 20 years. Back then her keel was replaced with two huge baulks of Purpleheart, the planking all replaced in 2” Iroko and new decks and coachroof built.

She has since had a few sinkings, a change of owner, many boatbuilder liveaboards in need of a temporary home during projects, and a bit of work done here and there. Most importantly, she survived the fire at the yard and it’s now time to repair the many problems she has acquired over the intervening years.

We started a few weeks ago, after the Hello Sailor we fitted last year sent the owner an alert, telling him that the emergency bilge pump had gone off. The first job was to find out where the enormous amount of water was coming from! A few days later we brought her up the slip..

10/05/2026

Claverton pumping station. Every time we open a lock, rather a lot of water disappears out to sea. This amazing waterwheel powered beam engine, pumps it up from the river and back in to the pound we’re currently moored in. Over the past 20 years we’ve probably spent more time in this long pound than anywhere else, but this is the first time I’ve ever seen inside the pumping station!

10/05/2026

Our family’s history of making marine instruments goes back rather a long way. This is a quadrant made by our great, great, great, great, great, great grandfather Thomas Swann around 1740. My dad, brother and myself have all been building marine computers and electronics for decades, but we still haven’t managed to find a Thomas Swann instrument at auction. My brother is determined though and I suspect he’ll succeed in the end!

09/05/2026

Goodwood Members Meeting 83. My brother, pictured as one of the scruffy blokes behind me in the selfie, has helped run Goodwood Revival and Festival of Speed for a long time, but at this he doesn’t have to work, so we actually get to see him, and he gets to look at pretty old cars going round and round.

07/05/2026

The second boat I ever built professionally, Annabel for Star Yachts, is back in the shed right now, for a bit of a spruce up and an update of the electronics. She and her beautiful little tender Verity won the classic boat awards and were an amazing thing to have been a part of. It’s good to see her and her lovely owner again!

06/05/2026

Crossing a salty sea at 12000ft, when Velvia 50 film still existed. Those sunglasses didn’t work and Egg ended up with snow blindness, which looked pretty painful.

05/05/2026

Bath deep lock. Unnerving as it fills from underneath, so it feels quite a lot like the boat is going to be sucked into the Maelstrom. We did once actually sail past the Maelstrom off the coast of Norway, not in this boat obviously, and my friend wasn’t so keen to go into it. I know why now.

04/05/2026

Oh we don’t really have room for that. Yeah you do! Here’s my double bass on the wall, above a tiny little doorway that leads to the fore cabin. In the narrowboat it lived next to the companionway steps, somehow. The piano was in the bedroom. It went in through the side hatch. Somehow.

Address

Unit 2, Westfield Court, Barns Ground
Clevedon
BS216FQ

Opening Hours

Monday	9am - 5pm
Tuesday	9am - 5pm
Wednesday	9am - 5pm
Thursday	9am - 5pm
Friday	9am - 5pm

Telephone

+447929986935

Website

http://hello-sailor.co.uk/

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