| Kaholee Refit,
Phase 3 | Tuesday, May 20 (and days preceding) The past week or so saw much progress towards the scheduled launching date of Thursday, May 22. Since the last update, in between other jobs, boat deliveries, and related tasks, Allen and I took care of myriad smaller items--from installing wooden blinds in the cabin, to a latch on the gimbaled stove to, varnish and paint work, and too many small punch list items to list. |
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We took some pre-made components of a radar pole, solar panel bracket, and related items to a nearby machine shop, where they welded the bracket in place and performed a few related tasks. Final installation of this would have to wait till the boat was transported over the road, as the pole would be too high for travel. Still, depending on the status of other, more critical pre-launch tasks, I hoped to get a preliminary installation underway tomorrow before the launching--we'll see. More on the radar/solar panel mount later. |
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In the final few days, the most critical task became reassembling, wiring, and rigging the mast, which was still in a bare-spare state after Allen painted it the other week. |
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I installed the new Strong Track one day, and on the same day installed much of the old hardware that had been removed earlier before painting. I had several bits of hardware on order, which arrived Tuesday, which still required installation as of this writing. I also installed new hardware for spreader flag halyards and a pigstick halyard; still ahead lay installation of blocks for lazy jacks, mast winches, and halyard cleats, among other things. |
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I installed new wiring for the masthead combination tricolor/strobe/anchor light (3 positive feeds and one negative), as well as the combination steaming/foredeck light, which I located just above the spreaders (2 positive feeds and one negative). In addition, I installed the masthead connector for the Raymarine wind instruments, and ran its cable down the mast. To secure the wires within the mast against slapping, I installed heavy-duty 21" cable ties every so often around the wire bundles as I pulled them through; the cable ties would hold the wires in place and the long tails would, in theory, prevent movement or slapping of the wires. Eventually, these wires would have to go belowdecks and connect to the pre-installed junctions in the cabin. For now, I left abundant extra in the wires and tied it up for transport. |
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One of the more interesting fabrications we had made up at a local machine shop was a custom bracket for the composite propane tank. We planned to install the tank off the stern pulpit, and after several consultations with the shop had a slick aluminum bracket made that incorporated a curved base to help secure the tank, plus a side bracket for installation of the regulator and related connections. With both a cook stove and cabin heater running off the LPG system, the output needed to be split into two runs. Final installation of the bracket and connections of the pre-installed LPG hoses are pending, in part because I accidentally damaged a special low-pressure regulator for the Dickinson cabin heater and had to call in a rush replacement, hopefully due on Wednesday before launching. I bought some u-brackets to use to secure the aluminum bracket to the pulpit: more on this later. |
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In a final flurry of last-minute ordering, errands-running, list prioritizing, gear loading, and other preparations, we neared the inexorable launch date. Next update: post-launch. In the meantime, you can check on Kaholee's whereabouts (now and in the future) on this SPOT link: http://share.findmespot.com/shared/faces/viewspots.jsp?&glId=0E5CZDMBfW3Me0MYuUilBGWLEEsJNWlS9 Please note that the position information on this page disappears if not updated by the user (Allen) every 24 hours. Do not ever be concerned if no position or new information should appear. |
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