April 4, 2025

Miss Helen 15

Friday

With two good and complete maintenance coats on all the brightwork on deck, I deemed the work complete and removed all the masking tape to finish the job.

I left the new starboard forward deadlight lens taped for the moment, as I wanted a couple additional coats of varnish on the new trim to ensure the bungs had sufficient coverage.  Later, I lightly sanded the trim and applied another coat.  I planned to get a coat on each day over the weekend, which would bring things up to snuff.

The next project on the agenda was to install an anchor roller to fit a 25# CQR anchor I was giving the owner.  With the roller assembly now on hand, I did a visual test fit to check how it might work in the space at the stem, and to look for interferences.  Clearance was tight with the bow chock, hawsepipe, and center bow pulpit mount, along with the stem chainplate, but it looked like things would work out or, if needed, I could remove or relocate the bow chock to allow the roller to move a bit as needed.

The roller would require a support block to make up the difference between deck height and rail height–approximately 2-1/4″–regardless of final placement, so next I made up a teak blank for the job.  From a longer rough-cut teak board of about 6″ width, I cut a piece slightly over 36″ long and planed it just smooth on both sides, leaving me with a 1″ thickness.  I cut this into three pieces and laminated them together with epoxy to form a blank of appropriate size.  I left this to cure over the weekend.

Total time billed on this job today: 4.5 hours