Giles and Paula's Great Retirement Adventure
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Up at Sparrow's and got a 2nd coat of primer on early doors. Then managed do 2 coats of antifoul, weather was complicit. Will lift her off the blocks tomorrow morning and touch up the bits that I could not get to (where the blocks and jacks are holding her upright), then back into the water in time to catch a flight to Hamburg (for Bremen) on Thursday.
I am very pleased, but ache like crap from groveling around in gravel for 2 days
And the 2Messy decal has been removed, will try and get UKIYO decal applied before she gets put back in the water.
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I may have mentioned. UKIYO has a rubbish manual windscreen wiper. To drive, I need one hand on the steering wheel and one on the throttle, that leaves me with nothing spare to dick around with a wiper blade. And of course, the more spray on the windscreen, the worse the conditions, the more I need 2 hands to drive the boat...
So I'm fitting an electric wiper. I've never fitted one before and there are a lot of unknowns and variables. So, I rigged up a ply windscreen and did a test install in the garden, I had a 12volt lawnmower battery lying around, so that provided me with the DC. I'm glad I did, there were a number of issues to resolve, which would have been another level of pain, doing it on the boat.
Not least of which is that I installed the motor upside down, took me ages, and a lot of cursing (of the Dutch), to work out why the blade was parking on the left when it should have been parking on the right
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Because I am a ham-fisted twat, I bust one of the zipper pulls on the new rear deck awning. I then realised, that if I replaced all the pulls, the irritating metal to metal noises we get from the zips, when the awning catches the wind, would disappear, so zipper pull upgrades being made.
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Those zipper pulls look awesome!
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I really like our zipper pulls, and decided to add similar pulls to the shock-cord tensioners, that will help us a lot getting the shock cord on and off the lacing mushrooms, especially when only one hand is free...
Production line is in full swing
"OK face up to it - you're useless but generally pretty honest and straightforward . . . it's a rare combination of qualities that I have come to admire in you" - Geo 2011
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The boat will go faster with all those additional knots!
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Long story short, Paula and I tried to pull the starboard rudder off the transom last Thursday. Rapid, unscheduled disassembly as American space PR people call it......
Damage to transom, rudder and rudder mount, and water coming into the engine room. Not in volume, but enough to be thankful for bilge pumps
Had her pulled out on Friday, first lift out of the day which I was very thankful for....
Today, Matt (a fishing mate) and I removed the rudder assembly to give the glass fibre guys access to the damage and the rudder assembly put in the car, so I can go from engineering firm to engineering firm trying to find someone who can unbend stainless steel, preferably in a hurry.
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Double ouch.
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Old school light engineering company 5 miles from here, has the rudder assembly and say that fixing the bracket is easy, a little unsure about the rudder stock itself. Will disassemble and let me know. I'm taking that as a moderate win.
Meeting glass fibre guy at the boat at noon to look at work required to transom. He does all the work for David and Alex Thomson and was recommended by them, so names dropped
I'm taking that as a win.Feeling a lot more positive thatn I was at 07:00 this morning....
"OK face up to it - you're useless but generally pretty honest and straightforward . . . it's a rare combination of qualities that I have come to admire in you" - Geo 2011
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We need to cut a section out of the transom, the fibreglass layers have delaminated from the high density foam inboard and outboard (the hull construction from out to in is gelcoat/fibreglass/high density foam/fibreglass . Only a small area, but we need it cut out and rebuilt, otherwise the repair is structurally suspect. It's not an overly massive job, but does require time between process for stuff to cure etc. So we are looking at 2 weeks.........
I've heard from the machine shop, the bracket is an easy fix (just needs a shit ton of pressure and some straight edges), but the bend in the rudder stock (the bit that connects the rudder to the boat) is potentially problematical. They will try to straighten, but in the process may make it worse. So, I told them to go ahead, and if it is unsuccessful, we tum a new rudder stock and weld it to the rudder....
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@Giles If everyone took care of their shit like you do, there would be much less of a need for newly built boats.
