Final weekend before launch

Yesterday and today were our final two full days of work before the launch on Wednesday. That meant not only did we have to get all hull work finished but we had to check things like fenders and mooring ropes. We will have eight cylinder fenders and two tear drop fenders to protect the hull. On the stern deck there is space for 6 cylinder fenders. Temporarily we will lash the extra two behind, but we will look for extra wire frame sometime in the future.

We also managed to fit the block to heighten the windlass. The windlass has been an ongoing saga. First, we tried to get the old windlass to work (with no avail). Then we bought a new one. But it didn't fit where the old one was. So... we build a wood block for it to rest on... but that was not high enough so this week I bought some plastic blocks as spacers to raise the wood block.

Then we talked to Costas from Raymarine who sold us the windlass and he advised that the plastic blocks would create stress points in the wood which would eventually damage the wood and was therefore not a good idea. As a result Tim and I decided it was not a good idea to raise it on spacers.

So we epoxied it in with the wood block direct to the deck - it will be a little lower than we hoped for, but should work fine. Having epoxy glued it in place on Saturday then on Sunday we coated it with epoxy and then with gelcoat.  Gelcoating to epoxy takes better than gelcoating to wood. We need another coat of gelcoat, sand it down and then we can mount the windlass permanently.

Mark joined us for the weekend. He has been a tremendous help with the refit. Yesterday and today he was sanding the deck ready for painting next weekend.

He has also learnt how to whip ropes and how to do a reef knot. Tim leant him a book about yachtmaster so he is now keen to learn the ropes.

There were a couple of jobs we had been putting off. But today we could not provarocate any longer so had to do them.

The first job was checking the stern gland. The Arabs say 'nobody is perfect... except God' and we have found the one imperfection from the Camper and Nicholson design of the boat. And that is the hanging locker in the stern cabin. It's through the floor of this locker that you access the stern gland.

The bottom of the door is approx 40cm off the floor, which means you have to lean your stomach on this and fall headlong into the locker to get at the stern gland. Now... if the hanging locker had only gone down to the floor or near the floor this would be a trivial job!

Anyhow, what we had to do was check and adjust the stern gland. That has to be done upside down with a spanner and vernier guage. The vernier guage is because it's very important that both of the nuts are equal.

The other 'put off' job was retouching the grey paint on the port side of the hull. The masking tape for the black strip had not worked and so I hand painted/retouched the grey where the black had bled under the tape. A painful detail oriented task that I had kept putting off.