Just get some scales for however many wheels the trailer has put them under each wheel with K7 on it “A la F1 weigh bridge” , bingo there’s your point loads , give them to the Ruskin Retards and see what they say .
It's not so much the point loads under the wheels - though they are pretty huge and ultimately she'll have to be put up on stands to keep the weight off the tyres so all that equipment has to be calculated and constructed. But the main problem is understanding what we can get away with when using trolley jacks and skates. If you look at the launch and recovery dolly the forward axle is roughly under the main spar and therefore only three feet forward of the boat's centre so the dolly turns around its mid-point for all practical purposes except that the turntable at the back has woeful authority so the turning circle is akin to that of the old Queen Mary. Add in that the access door is not much wider than the workshop door and the width of the wing is even smaller than the length of the workshop and that the boat must be turned through 90 degrees the second it's through the door and you see the problem. We've tried to get a better look at what's involved but with no cooperation it will just have to wait.
I don't understand why they can't simply give you the figures you're after. It'd save a lot of trouble, and would mean they would have K7 on display a lot quicker. They're rather quick to release documents when it suits them (The 2006 Deed of Gift for example), yet can't send you something which is vital in speeding up the return of the boat to it's "Spiritual Home". I don't know if I'm reading this situation wrong; but that seems to be extremely self-defeating, and rather unprofessional.
No - you haven't read that wrong, it's extremely unprofessional but in all likelihood they don't have the figures anyway. The statement on the website was no more than a huffy counter to the fact that we now have all the photographic evidence we need plus the knowledge of the issues with the floor so we can pretty much work it out from here.
And remember also that the 2006 DoG wasn't trotted out to further the cause, it was used to try and turn people against us when the museum knew they'd signed a new one, albeit not worth the very expensive paper it's written on.
Unbelievably there are still one or two who to this day don't understand that DoG and think that somehow the Campbells gave the museum all of
K7 but to do that was both legally and technically impossible. It would be like trying to gift your house to an as-yet unborn child. They couldn't give all of
K7 away for the very simple reason that half of it didn't exist at the time and there was no guarantee that it ever would.
Even their accounts state that they own no more than 'the wreck of
K7' though our lawyers are yet to follow that trail all the way back to be sure.
Then there's the fact that BBP were
never signatories to the DoG and it bound us to nothing, why is that so difficult to understand? Yet some just can't seem to grasp it.
Then there's the way the museum insisted on things being done - at absolutely no cost to them, which meant that we were on our own in terms of fundraising and donations of whatever and we explained very early in the exercise that this would make us joint owners at the end if we didn't donate our parts, which we haven't. But that was OK so long as we were spannering away over here and not costing them anything. Nor did they mind us making big promises about a running boat in the future so long as we kept going without it costing them a penny.
So, when it comes to the 2006 DoG, in the first instance that was an agreement between the Campbells and the museum that basically said, we'll give you our scrap if you display it and the BBP will replace the missing bits. They both signed up to that and in so doing it committed the museum to working with BBP (though that wasn't expressly stated) to meet
their obligation.
The bald fact of the matter is that it isn't the BBP that's failed in any way with regards to the terms of the 2006 DoG, it's the museum. They signed to say they'd put the boat on display then forced huge delays on proceedings instead of working as hard as possible to overcome the difficulties.
We built a team, set up a workshop, courted sponsors, built a brand then worked damned hard for fifteen years whilst being open and honest about our intentions to build a running boat and display it in Coniston when not out on the water.
The museum, meanwhile built a museum wing, which had been in gestation for years anyway as an additional art gallery and they don't even seem to know what it cost or when it was opened between the lot of them!
If you read the BEWG statement on their website it was opened in 2008 at a cost of 700k then if you read the paragraph above, which is a statement from the trustees themselves, it cost 800k and was opened in 2010. Hamming up the cost to make their efforts seem greater whilst not knowing within two years when they opened their own wing just makes them look stupid and it's been there for months so clearly they never bother to check their own website either.
Have a look for yourself but be quick because now we've flagged it it won't be there for long - have screen captured it for posterity.
http://www.ruskinmuseum.com/content/con ... events.php
In point of fact the cost was around 650k with almost half of that coming from the foot & mouth fund. Lovely building, let's not deny it but what it took to put it there is hardly comparable in terms of effort expended and to now be palms outstretched saying give us everything then go home is simply an outrage.
They'll have to work much harder than that.
