March 28, 2010

Another beautiful day in Napa. I sanded and faired the new windlass mount into the deck. I had built a tool to hold the sandpaper in a round shape for sanding the fillets that worked well. It was just a short length of half inch pvc pipe screwed to the edge of a short piece of 1 by 3 lumber, but it did the job. With the sanding out of the way, I mixed up some more microballoons/epoxy filler and completed what I hope will be the final filling needed. While the epoxy cured I started in on the wiring for the windlass. I cut a hole in the deck for the footswitch, mounted it, the solenoid and the big manual switch and started running cable and wiring things together. While grubbing around in the engine room I also did some futile wrestling with the stuck seacocks for the cockpit drains. By the end of the day, I was tired but not exhausted. I'm beginning to feel like I'm entering the second half of the initial phase of the restoration... a good feeling!