Fender cages and horseshoe

Today was a day of accidents and completion. Accidents? Well, we needed four more fender cages. We had bought them from Comar Marine and been advised it was a four handed job to fit them.

They were right. It was a horrid fiddle. We had a clip to join two cages... easy enough for two hands... and two clips to fix to the rails... difficult for even four hands.

The design for the clips to the rails is stupid. Fiddly in the extreme and needs an allen key to tighten the bolts, the nuts of which have to be held in place with a screwdriver rammed between the nut and the plastic, upside down.

In the process I dropped an allen key. The allen key that fitted! And allen keys being metal sink very fast. Fortunately we found that we did have an allen key fitting for the electric screwdriver. The electric screwdriver had a wrist strap. I was glad of that as I didn't want to drop that too!

The second thing to fit was the horseshoe lifebuoy. That was almost as fiddly, but in different ways. The nuts and bolts fit two from one side and two from the other. Why? Beats me!

And... of course the diameter of the railing was not quite the same as the diameter of the fixing. We persuaded it to fit. A bit of gentle persuasion, in the way of just tightening up to let the plastic bend around. Now we need to get King Malu in lettering on the horseshoe. Not necessary, but will make it look complete

Looks great from the back now, and Tim got the idea that we could  mount a triangular shaped davits off the brackets for the wind autohelm. Now that was a really great idea. They would be held in place while sailing by a couple of webbing straps and pushed out of the way when we entered a marina.

In the afternoon we stuck down the Treadmaster on the stern cabin roof. At last, that is now finished.