November 16, 2016
Acadia 39
Wednesday
I started the day by sanding the first fresh coat of varnish, this time with 320 grit paper. Afterwards, I vacuumed and solvent washed to prepare for another coat late in the day.
Meanwhile, I turned to the cockpit instruments. With a third matching instrument display now on hand to replace the old round and obsolete instrument I’d removed from the port side, I drilled a 3-3/8″ hole in the blank cover plate I’d made and painted earlier, matching the two others that I’d pre-drilled. Then, I installed the plates and instruments, using sealant on the backing plates (the instruments had built-in gaskets) and securing the instruments from behind with wooden blocks and the instruments’ supplied screws.
New two-speed self-tailing winches arrived to replace the pair I’d removed from the cabin top earlier. The new winches were the smallest size available with two speeds and self-tailing capacity, but of course the bolt pattern was different from that of the old winches (I expected this). For now, I held off on further installation steps as I didn’t want to create drill spoils and dust while in the middle of a varnish project. These winches came with a plastic top cap and a little note from the manufacturer explaining that there’d been a temporary shortage of the normal stainless caps at the time of production, but with instructions how to request shipment of the proper caps at no cost, which I did at once.
After final preparations, I applied another coat of varnish to all the exterior brightwork.
Total time billed on this job today: 6 hours
0600 Weather Observation:
50°, rain. Forecast for the day: rain and clouds, 50s