Anchor windlass and further engine work

Over last weekend I painted the anchor windlass with some Hammerite special metals primer on the bare patches on the aluminium gear case followed up with two coats of smooth Hammerite white paint. On Monday morning I assembled the gipsy and clutch and fitted the new stainless steel cable stripper in place with plenty of Duralac past which hopefully will make it easier to remove in future also put Duralac paste on the pinch bolt. Then it was just a matter of lifting the windlass on board generously anointing with Sikaflex and bolting into position just leaving the bolts hand tight until the Sikaflex has cured so as not to squeeze it all out. In future the plan is to leave the clutch disengaged which hopefully will prevent it from jamming again.

Windlass clutch cone pinned in place

Windlass bolted in place

After that I put another coat of varnish on some locker lids and some of the fiddle rails to the berths which I had recently identified most of the locker lids are finished now just the four for the aft cabin to do these are a bit lower down the list at the moment as the aft cabin is a bit of a glory hole at the moment somewhere to dump stuff out of the way.

On Wednesday I finished varnishing the fiddle rails first and then tightened down the windlass bolts before running the engine wiring harness round the engine space and out into the saloon the plan was to put the engine panel above the chart table but looking at it again today I decided not to put it there as it would not leave much room for the navigation instruments, VHF radio etc further thoughts are required on that one. I cut out a plywood panel to fit above the chart table for the instruments I just need to work out the layout.

To finish off the day I started on the building up of the shaft log the first job was to prevent any epoxy coming into contact with the propeller shaft and glueing it up solid instead of using cling film I decided to use a piece of plastic waste pipe which i split down and wrapped around the shaft and pushed into the gap between the shaft and the log I kept cutting the plastic away until the pipe just fitted in the gap with the ends meeting. I took the precaution of greasing the shaft and giving the outside of the plastic pipe several coats of wax polish hopefully it will come out again easily, we will see on Monday morning.

Split plastic waste pipe in place

Started off today by coating the flange on the stern tube with plenty of wax together with the bolts that secure it  then mixed up some thickened epoxy and liberally applied it to the log then pressed the stern tube into place with the dummy bearing to hold it in alignment then wiped away the excess epoxy which had squeezed out. Just have to wait now until the epoxy has cured to see which bits are stuck together at least the shaft was still turning freely when I left this evening. 

Stern tube in place

My original thought was to replace the original stern gland with a PSS dripless shaft seal I used one on my other boat when I replaced the engine which has not so far caused any problems but after cleaning up the original gland I have decided to re-use it albeit with new packing thus saving the best part of 200 beer tokens.

While in epoxy mode I mixed up some more to fair up the opening for the engine raw water sea cock the gel goat was not as badly affected as that around the cockpit drain sea cocks. As the marelon sea cocks have a comparatively large diameter mating face I levelled up the upper face of the backing pad as this one had been secured with glass cloth around the edges which left an uneven surface.