Friday 6 April 2018

Bit of an all sorts week

The Easter weekend weather was typical Easter weekend cold wet and miserable so I went down to the boatyard and got on with some internal work the first job was to install some electrical connection boxes for the mast wiring, I am not keen on the usual 'watertight plugs and sockets' so I intend to use Scanstrut cable glands and connect the cables internally I fitted two boxes one for the wind instrument cables and one for the steaming/deck light cables I also fitted a connector for the VHF aerial cable the plug for this will pass through the Scanstrut gland.
 


Scanstrut deck gland


VHF aerial connection and connection boxes

The larger connection box is for the wind instrument cable the smaller one for the steaming/deck light cable with the VHF aerial connector to the right, I do hope that the wind instruments work after all this, the cables will eventually be concealed above the head lining.

I spent some time sorting out some hardwood trim for the heads locker and the wet locker which I cut to length and then varnished over three days. In between I have been sanding back the gelcoat which I had previously applied to the heads locker moulding as it is a bit of an arduous task as I have been doing it by hand although this has the advantage that I can do it wet, dry sanding would spread the horrible dust all over the place even if using a sander with a dust collector this, is going to be a bit of an as and when job I usually do a bit waiting for the kettle to boil etc.

By Wednesday it had been over a week since I put the first coat of Toplac on the various areas of the topsides that I had repaired and so before the second coat could be applied I had to give it all a light sanding and I finally got the second coat applied today. Wednesday also saw me applying two coats of rust converter to the keel hopefully I can apply the underwater primer next week weather permitting I finished up the day by fitting the hardwood trim to the wet locker just have the concealed LED strip light to fit at the top as per the port side.


Wet locker

Today I finally managed to get the second coat of Toplac onto the repaired areas of the topsides and with a bit of time to spare I masked up and applied a coat of primer/undercoat to the lower of the two boot stripes the masking up takes much more time than the actual painting as it entails going right round the boat twice.


Second coat on the transom and boot stripe masked and primed

Some time ago I bought some new port and starboard navigation lights and a stern light, unfortunately the new port and starboard lights do not have a watertight cable entry, I think that they are intended to be fitted directly to a deckhouse with the cables connected internally anyhow I have been thinking of a way to fit them to the pulpit, the originals were equipped with cable glands and dropped onto brackets bolted to a stainless steel plate which in turn was bolted to the pulpit.


Navigation light mounting on the pulpit

I have formulated a cunning plan, as Baldrick would call it, which is to bolt the new lights to the original plates thus.




Rear of mounting plate

The next move will be to fit a watertight enclosure to the rear of the plate unfortunately I could not find a circular one which would fit through the hole in the mounting on the pulpit so after some thought I decided to make one. I obtained a piece of 90mm round HDPE bar from a firm called Direct Plastics, I have used them before and they will supply reasonably small amounts the minimum for round bar seems to be 250mm long, and turned up two round enclosures to which I will fit a cable gland these will then be bolted and sealed to the reverse side of the mounting plate.


Enclosures one to the left showing recess for cable connections in the reverse side

The new LED stern light will be fitted at the top of the transom as I assume that the original was however the angle of the transom would leave the light pointing upwards so I have turned up an angled pad, again from the 90mm HDPE bar, which will make a level mount.


New stern light


Mounting pad for stern light

It looks like another wet day tomorrow so this weekends homework will be to finish off the navigation lights so that they can be fitted next week weather permitting.





  


















 

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