The week started with me having enough of all the bits in the forward cabin - basically, it had become our unofficial dumping ground, so I rather unceremoniously emptied everything into the salon. As luck would have it, the very next day typically would have been a cracker for a sail, so we set ourselves a one week goal to get everything installed / tweaked, and that with only 4.5 months 'til haul out, we'll sail whenever the weather allows.
Cue much running around and completing of jobs I've been putting off.
Up first was a visit to Chandlery Rob (don't worry Rob, nobody knows who you are), to have a good ol' gripe about the current state of chandlery prices, and to obtain some latches and locks for the cabin doors we recently fitted.
Next (and between rain showers) was cutting up all the remaining engine bay foam and fitting it in the engine bay. I coincided this with our monthly engine run up to keep things a little warmer, given how chilly it's been recently.
I also had some reservations about mounting the watermaker pump in one of the wheelhouse alcoves, so fitted some extra foam to the back of the access panels to keep things quiet.
The huge pile of wood from up forward needed cutting up next, so between rain we duly got it done, fitted and painted. Part of that was fitting a couple of book shelves to the aft cabin - many thanks to Ikea for providing all the parts.
The steering has always had a bit of slop in it, so I attacked a piece of bronze with a file and hacksaw, and bashed it in place with a club hammer (it ain't moving now). The great news is there's no more slop at the rudder / quadrant end (which means the aft helm will be perfectly precise). The not so great news is our internal steering still has a bit of slop but given the steering box costs £5k to rebuild, I can live with that. On that note, I also rather liberally coated the aft helm in a spray lubricant to make it spin easier. It must've sat for a while as it was rather gunged up but after an afternoon of elbow grease, we're making some good progress and I'll be connecting the steering cables tomorrow.
Here's the cables connected at the rudder stock end:
And lastly, we helped a friend take their 60t trawler for a brief motor to fuel up and back, and had a crack at the helm. Given the size, it was a case of turn the wheel and wait for the boat to respond, something akin to flying a 747 when you're used to Cessnas. Hey ho, was good fun and allowed us to get some profile shots of our boat to see how the aft deck boxes and helm look.
So that's it for this week. I'm back to London for the night to crack on with my welding course then with work so slow, back to crack on for another week of tweaking and maybe a test sail.
4.5 months 'til haul out....
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