Miss Moneypenny has a nose job

© 2008 - Miss Moneypenny J and K All rights reserved.

Miss Moneypenny has a blunt nose. It's a sad fact, but true. It cuts off her lines and makes her look squat and not very graceful. It is also incredibly difficult to get off the bow, and as we hope to avoid mooring stern to in the Med due to the impossibility of getting our boat to steer in reverse, we plan on getting off the bow a lot.
With this in mind, we needed to make some changes.
First of all, we cut off the front section of steel tubing. Then we routed out two lovely bits of wood so they would fit neatly over the existing steel stanchions left. We clamped this in place with bolts and then added a middle strut to add support and ensure the two sides didnt collapse to meet each other. Amazingly, the whole thing only took about 4 hours- including a trip back to B and Q as we broke the router!
We think it looks lovely and a job well done- saved us a few hundred pounds, which is what we had been quoted to get someone else to do it for us. We'll see if it's successful or not in a few years!

The old bow- see how difficult it would be to get on and off.
No turning back now- we've already cut bits off!
We did the port side first, then measured up the starboard side to match and stained the wood with Ronseal teak woodstain. See how the wooden rail sits nicely over the existing steel bar.
The gap is not big, but the general idea is to step over it rather than through it. Our ladder hooks in nicely, although we may have to move our anchor!