Seating, railing & an afternoon in the dinghy

Having headed up to London for the night for another week of the welding course, it was time to head back to the boat to crack on again.

We've been due some high tides for a while and this week didn't disappoint - the yard flooded for a couple of days which meant my wellies got a good workout.

We also had rain predicted for a few days so I cracked on with some indoor jobs. First up - reinforcing the wheelhouse table. We've had it temporarily held with g-clamps since the Channel Islands to see if it's positioning was right - it was, so time to bolt it in and add a couple of lower supports to lock it in. Verdict from crew - it works. Good.

Next - fiddles in the galley. We needed to fit some to stop things sliding around at sea so after a visit to our favourite hardwood supplier, they were screwed and glued in and just need final trimming and finishing.

The sun eventually came out so I got on with fitting our Garmin external instruments. We've gone with an secondary autopilot and wind speed / depth and the pod was made up from a sheet of spare 0.6mm stainless I had sitting around.

Another outside job was fitting the stainless railings to our back deck boxes. Annoyingly, we waited 6 weeks for them to arrive, only to find the 900mm railings were actually 950mm - doesn't seem like a big deal, but meant we had to fit an iroko piece below them to extend the seat top. Ah well, they look great and make the seats very comfortable.

 

We also needed to fit a connecting piece between our pulpit and the railings around the rest of the boat. A bit of 14mm multibraid and some stainless fittings later, and all done.

 

After all that work, I figured it was about time we took the dinghy out for a run so on a sunny Saturday afternoon, I plugged it all in, primed the fuel and.... nothing. The o-ring had perished in the fuel connection so after rowing to the ramp then walking to the chandlery (and spending another £13), the outboard fired up and we spent an afternoon tearing around.

So that's it for this week. The new circuit breaker for the SSB has been installed, as has a securing bit for the cooker to stop it swinging in rough weather. I've done a big clean up of the boat and put a few things on ebay, all the bits have arrived for the aft helm steering and once the new ring is soldered onto the backstay aerial, we'll have that connected as well. The next two weekends I'm off to do my Day Skipper course so progress will slow a bit, but by the end of October, we're still on track to have the boat ready to go, apart from a repaint and re-rig (which will happen next April / May).

29 weeks to go....