Door frames

New Morning has not been totally neglected since my last post I have been pottering about doing odd maintenance jobs but recently I became motivated to finish off the heads door frames. Since this involved making up four arch section pieces of architrave to suit the original doors I had been putting off starting the job, however I decided that it was time to get on and get them finished. I started by making the four arch sections these are made from six pieces dowelled and glued together before being cut to shape with a jig saw and sanding.

After glueing

Sections cut and dowelled

The straight sections were then cut and secured to the bulkhead with wood screws then once the arch sections had been fitted the screw holes were plugged and the whole lot sanded.

Forward side of forward door

Unfortunately I could not get far enough back in the forward cabin to get the whole door in frame, the architrave is wider on this side of the door so as to form the stops. Above the door can be seen the cover strips, I cut from the laminate used to cover the bulkhead, these are to cover the joins in the laminate infill piece after I had reinstated the original arch top doors. I was going to continue the architrave up to the head lining but I thought that this might look somewhat heavy by the time the wood had been dyed and varnished in any case I had lots of suitable laminate offcuts. I then gave the timber two coats of Colron deep mahogany wood dye followed by three coats of varnish to complete the forward door frame. It has turned out a bit darker than I was hoping for but there is a bit of a mixture of colours in the original timber trim anyway.

Aft side forward door

Forward side of forward door

I have now moved on to the aft door most of the parts have been made and temporarily fitted but I still have the liner in the bulkhead opening to fit at the base of the door and also some laminate to cut and fit to complete the bulkhead, I have just enough of the laminate that came with the boat to complete the job.

Aft face of the forward door

As can be seen from the above photograph there is still a gap under the door to be filled and the laminate to fit to the bulkhead.

 

About time I wrote something

 Over the past few months I have not done an awful lot on New Morning mostly cleaning and maintenance work the usual general stuff not really a lot to write about. However I have done a couple of bits and pieces which I will include in one post. 

I managed some sailing this year with a couple of trips across the Thames estuary, the first in July to the Colne and the Blackwater and in September to the Roach and then up the Crouch to Fambridge otherwise it has been a case of pottering in the Swale. The first job I carried out was as a result of the trip to the Colne, and after spending the night at anchor and then raising and stowing the said anchor I decided that the 35lb CQR anchor was going, I had already thought seriously about it on previous trips it was extremely awkward too  deploy and recover especially through the gap between the forestay and the pulpit so after this trip I decided that it had definitely got to go, After some research looking at selection charts I decided that a 22lb Delta would be adequate which was duly obtained from Cactus Marine who had a special offer on them.

New Delta anchor

The anchor was duly shackled on and duly tested on the trip to the Roach where I spent a couple of nights at anchor, including one night with a friends boat rafted up alongside, without any problems. I also found that it was much easier to handle as well as being 13lbs lighter the shank is much shorter. When I bought New Morning she came with two anchors, a 35lb and a 25lb CQR, the 25lb would probably have been OK for most of my anchoring but the pivot was too heavily worn to be of any further use which left me with the 35lb anchor 

The next job was a couple of pieces of woodwork, the first being a fiddle rail around the shelf over the steering gear compartment in the aft cabin. I used some 'L' section pieces of teak from the old cockpit gratings on my last boat I had to plug some old screw holes and butt three pieces together for the long side but I think that it all adds to the history as well as doing my bit for the environment

New fiddle rail

The butt joints can be seen especially as the grain doesn't match so I cut them at 45 degrees to make a feature of them. This has also covered an unsightly join between the laminate top and the moulding which had a rounded top edge.

The other piece was to make up a covering strip to hide the join between two pieces of laminate on the forward saloon bulkhead.

Join between laminate panels

I had run out of suitable pieces of the original trim that came with the boat but I came across an offcut of merenti which I had used for the heads door frames, it is not quite the right section but when coloured with Colron wood dye it matches the original trim quite well.

New covering strip

Reasonable match too adjacent vertical trim

The final job is to install an electric bilge pump in the engine space I have used a Whale Supersub Smart 650 auto. The pump is in position and has been wired to a control panel but is waiting for the installation of a skin fitting for the discharge.

Control panel installed adjacent to electrical switch panel

Pump in the engine space

This photograph is a reminder that I still have to do something with that horrible chocolate block connector for the engine wiring loom perhaps one of those multi pin plug and socket units.

Spinnaker Pole

It has been quite some time since I last posted so I thought that I had better do something about it, up to this week I haven't done a great deal what with the pandemic, yes I know we are all using that excuse, and the cold wet weather. Last week I finished scraping the bottom and got the antifouling on ready for relaunching on the following Monday which all went well the rest of this week has been spent putting things back together, filling water tanks etc. Next week I am aiming to service the engine and put the sails back on.

During the last lockdown there wasn't a lot I could do but I did have a look at the spinnaker pole which had been sitting at home since I bought New Morning. I knew that the sliding bolts in the pole ends were seized so I thought that I would use the time to try and sort them out. The ends were each retained with three self tapping screws which proved reasonably easy to remove given that they were stainless into aluminium. When I removed the ends I found that the bolts were fitted into a plastic sleeve and were seized solid in fact the only way to remove them was to completely butcher the sleeves I am not sure if it was a build up of crud or the plastic sleeves had soaked up water and swelled which some plastics particularly nylon are are prone to. I started looking around for a pair of new pole ends these needed to have a 40mm diameter spigot to fit into the hollow aluminium pole but this size seemed to be unavailable yes I could have bought a larger pair and turned them down to fit. Of course the next problem was the price they were for a boat after all, £48 each was about the best that I could find time for a plan 'B' especially as I usually sail single handed so don't get that much use out of the spinnaker although I have been known to pole out the genoa on my previous boat. I decided to make some new plastic sleeves and went to my favourite engineering plastics supplier  at www.directplastics.co.uk and purchased a length of 30mm diameter Acetal rod 500mm long. This material is ideal for this application as it is not known for swelling when wet it is also easy to machine the swarf coming away easily, with some plastics it can wind itself tightly round the bar as it turns it also provides a good bearing surface. I have used this company on several occasions they have a reasonable minimum order policy and the price was reasonable £10.48 inc VAT. Delrin would also have been suitable having similar properties but it is a little more expensive.

Spinnaker pole end striped

I turned up two new sleeves the bolts are 3/8" diameter so I drilled them out to 25/64" as drilling plastics can sometimes end up with a slightly under size hole.

Replacement sleeve

The sleeves are retained with a couple of self tapping screws through the flange the holes can just be seen in the above photograph.

Two pole ends complete ready to fit back into the pole

Once the ends were complete the reassembly of the pole was straightforward it is now back in its brackets on the boat one of those satisfying jobs completed with minimal expenditure.