Cold again

The freezing weather returned last weekend so nothing much got done on the homework front, the original plan had been to start painting the front panel for the wet locker but it was much too cold for that although by Tuesday it had warmed up sufficiently to get it sanded and the first coat of primer/undercoat.

Monday was a non starter it was freezing cold so I went shopping for the colloidal silica so that I could carry on with various bits of filling and fairing once the weather improved I finished up the day by cleaning up the repairs to the heads internal and then arranged some timber to support the mast so that I could take the weight off the pulpit in order that I could unbolt the after end and install the cable for the navigation lights. Wednesday dawned warm enough for epoxy to cure so the first job was to unbolt the after end of the pulpit on removing the bolts it was evident that the opening for the cable was well out of line with the opening into the pulpit and also there was quite a bit of spring back in the pulpit so I decided to fill all the holes and start again from scratch, there was also some stress cracking in the gelcoat which I opened out with the tungsten carbide scraper before filling with thickened epoxy. Once this was done I went round and did all the filling around the heads internal moulding there were a number of redundant holes which I could find no use for so they all got filled with thickened epoxy. Taking advantage of the fine weather I sanded back various bits of filling below the waterline including the infilling of the old heads discharge valve and the old paddle wheel log openings these were filled quite some time ago but I had not got around to finishing them off.

I started off today by sanding back the filling to the pulpit bolt holes, cable opening and the stress crack repairs, the misalignment of the cable opening and the amount of spring back in the pulpit can be seen from the photograph below the infilled hole on the right hand end is the old cable opening

Port side 

After sanding I allowed the pulpit to fall into its natural position and then marked the holes for drilling I used a countersink drill to take the sharp edges off the holes hopefully this should stop any further stress cracking. Once all the holes were drilled I then used my original draw wires to pull in some 1.5mm tinned two core flex for the navigation lights the starboard cable went easily but on the port side the draw wire parted company with the new cable and it took quite some time to fiddle the draw wire back up the pulpit tube however I eventually triumphed and the pulpit was re secured, this job ended up taking a good part of the day. Because of the anchor well in the fore deck the pulpit bolts are difficult to reach it entails laying on one's back half in the cable locker and reaching up the side if the said well also the gap on the port side is much narrower than the starboard side, the anchor well is not central in the fore deck.

One further epoxy job was to re fix a handle on the garden shears it was easier to do it on the boat than take all the epoxy stuff home plus I also would have a use for any surplus epoxy, this was used to fill various redundant holes in the aft cabin bulkhead which I presume were for the old electrical installation these have a habit of growing over the years each addition seems to require its own dedicated hole to be drilled in a bulkhead.

I finished up the day by fitting the port side locker front panels in the fore cabin the GRP will eventually be lined with carpet but this is a future rainy day job as the main aim now is to get the boat in the water as soon as possible.

Port side fore cabin