Monday, April 8, 2013

Fiddling About

April is usually a really nice time of year to get boat things done, but this year has proven to be a cold spring. I woke up Saturday morning to 19 degrees F with the wind gusting to 30.  Not really conducive to working outside and certainly no good for epoxying scarf joints.  I had planned on going to Ragged for some spring skiing but a friend on ski patrol called and told me that the skiing was definitely not spring like.  So it ended up being a bit of a wasted weekend on all fronts, but I did manage to get a few things done on Sunday.

Raw hatch fitted.  Not pretty yet, but functional.
I spent more time than I had wanted getting the grabrails drilled and fitted; the bolt pattern was not even and because I wanted to use the original holes in the cabin liner (and the interior grabrails), I had to carefully measure and tap each hole and double check for proper fit.  Some were spaced 12", some 11", some 11.5", couldn't the builders have been a little more careful? In any event, I got the job done but forgot my camera. I still need to order 12 - 1/4" x 5" bolts, nuts, and washers to completely finish the job (The original bolts are serviceable, but a bit beat up, so I'm replacing).  Once complete, I'll bed the whole thing down with butyl tape that I ordered from Compass Marine.

I also worked on fully mounting the aluminum slide track and fitting the companionway hatch.  This proved to be a bit tricky because the track on the hatch doesn't allow for much tolerance; 1/16" off in either direction and the hatch will either bind or derail.  Mounting the hatch itself proved to be a bit of a puzzle as well.  Because of glassed-in stops on the hatch itself, you can't simply slide it onto one end of the track.  I finally figured out that you have to actually un-mount one of the aluminum slides, get the hatch on the other side, and then slip the unmounted track into the hatch track before screwing down.  Difficult to explain but I managed to get it done without too many choice words that I'm not supposed to say in front of the kids.


1 comment:

  1. Damn! I haven't been keeping up with the blog... The deck looks beautiful.

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