We're still at the 'collecting materials' stage of the build but there has been some progress in the right direction.

Back in December a Windpilot Pacific self-steering system came up for sale locally for a reasonable price. At the time I wasn't really fully committed to building the boat - the project had moved from 'like to do' to 'probably will do' but that didn't feel like enough commitment to drop £1,500 on something that wouldn't be needed until right at the end of the project anyway. As I had only just started looking to things like the wind vane and there was one for sale within 10 miles of my house, I assumed that these things must come up for sale pretty regularly so there was no issue with simply waiting for another one to be available later on in the build. That wind vane sold pretty quickly and looking around over the next few weeks I couldn't find any more for sale, and from old listings it became obvious that £1.5k was actually a pretty good price. Fast-forward to the end of January and the project status has now moved to 'will do' and lo and behold, another Pacific comes up locally on Facebook Marketplace for £1,000. Needless to say, I am now the proud owner of a Windpilot Pacific. It's an older (pre-1998) model but it does seem to be in very good condition for it's age which is reassuring.

Separately, my supplier of lead has been in touch saying that he has 83kg of lead that he needs to get rid of, so in total I now have 164kg of lead (approximately, not taking into account impurities) which should be sufficient to make the keel bulbs. I just need to build the bulb plug and find a way of melting it all down now.