| Bolero
Project |
Thursday, July 31, 2008 A few final details: I lowered the forward two pads on the trailer and applied three coats of bottom paint to those areas, the final areas to be so addressed. I installed the tiller--a piece that originally came with the boat, made of ash. I cleaned it up as well as possible and applied 6 coats of varnish, and reinstalled it with a new bronze bolt. |
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One problem with oarlock sockets is that their bases are open. In this case, this was an issue because the cockpit is non self-bailing, and with a cockpit cover not necessarily planned to cover beyond the gunwales, it seemed the sockets might allow water into the boat despite being covered. To prevent this, I'd originally thought of installing a sealed fiberglass tube directly beneath the open socket, epoxied to the deck above. However, the fastener placement and other factors precluded this notion. Instead, I settled on something straightforward: I installed 1/2" diameter self-sealing hex bolts (they have a little silicone gasket beneath the head) and secured them from beneath with wing nuts. This would prevent water from entering when the oarlocks were not needed, but would be easy to remove when necessary. |
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One final task on my list was to shorten the wire portion of the old backstay setup. The new adjusting arrangement would be completely above deck for a variety of reasons that we need not go into here, and for a further variety of reasons we had long ago decided to reuse the old backstay deck fitting rather than reconfigure the entire structural arrangement for some different approach. In any event, I shortened the above-deck portion of the wire to leave about 6" exposed above deck. The old arrangement used basic Nicropress terminals, and I reinstalled it in kind after appropriating the requisite tool for the job. |
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Finally, I collected an assortment of gear, both new and old, that I'd need to prepare along with the boat for her eventual shipment to the west coast. With shipment scheduled for mid-September, I elected not to begin the final preparations at this particular juncture. One particular item of appropriate yacht jewelry had not yet arrived at the shop as of this writing. Further information shall follow when appropriate. With that, I'd scratched off all the items remaining on my list, and I deemed the project complete. Later, I'll detail the final preparations for Bolero's journey west, but for now it was time to move on to other projects. |
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