During the week I finished repairing and filling the gaps between layers in the laminate around the lip of the engine room hatch. That greatly strengthened the structure, but the lip was still wavy. I was getting burned out, and the thought of hours of filling and sanding to fair the hatch edges was more than I could bear. I finally came up with a way to avoid it: Let gravity do the work! The plan was to set the hatch vertically on one edge, create a little dam around the top edge with masking tape, and pour in liquid resin thickened with just enough filler to keep it from seeping under the tape. The theory was that it would self-level. It actually worked, resulting in a perfectly straight edge that will require minimum sanding to fair it! I was able to get two sides done before I ran out of filler.
Saturday morning I was up at 4 am to get to another marine
swapmeet in
Sausalito. I had to stop at
Napa on the way to off-load the anchors and chain I wanted to add to the sales inventory I had previously loaded into the truck from home during the week. I arrived in
Napa before sun-up and was treated to a lovely sunrise.
My good luck continued.... While digging around the bottom of
Circadian's chain locker I discovered a ratcheting windlass handle, much to my delight. The reason for my excitement was that I needed one to operate the new windlass manually in case of electrical failure and they haven't been made in decades. They are extremely rare as a consequence. After repeatedly checking
ebay, I finally found only one, and they wanted $140 for it!
I also found some spare rigging fittings, among which were exactly the right pieces to replace the ones that had been lost in shipment! They were used, but appeared to be fine. It was only 7 am and I was already a happy boy!
I arrived at the swapmeet about 8:45 and there was already a good crowd. My good luck continued: right across from my spot were the guys from the Beta Marine dealer (They're with the yellow truck in the photo.), so I could conveniently walk over and get the supplies I needed to change the oil, filters, impeller, etc. on Circadian's' 50 hp Beta diesel.
I also was able to get a very large stainless steel shackle that I'd been having trouble finding from the guy next to me. He's one of two professional swapmeeters I see at every swap meet. His prices are high and he's a real bull shitter who'll say almost anything to make a sale. But, any port in a storm, as they say. While the shackle was no bargain, it was a reasonable price. I sold a few items, mostly minor, and as usual, what you do sell is not what you expected would go. By 11:30 the crowd was starting to thin, and I figured I had sold everything I was going to sell. I packed up, grabbed a sandwich from the concession benefiting the Spaulding Boat Works and then walked across the street to have a quick look at the shop at Spaulding. It's rarely open to the public, so I took advantage of the opportunity. They are a non-profit that is keeping wooden boat building alive through a school and the restoration of classic wooden boats. Lin and Larry Pardey donated the wooden molds for all the custom bronze castings for Taliesin to them.
I had a long drive ahead of me, I'd been up since oh-dark-thirty and still had to unload and put away a truck load of gear at home, so I hit the road about 1:30. I was home by late afternoon. I unloaded the truck, had something to eat and made an early night of it.
Getting up just before six on Sunday seemed like sleeping in after having been up so early the day before. I was off to Napa again to get the windlass installed and if there was time, use my newly-discovered rigging fittings to finish staying the mast.
While I didn't make the sunrise this time, it was a beautiful warm day in Napa. Installing the windlass turned out to be tricky and difficult. There were six bolts that secured the windlass, three of which came up from below and were shorter than the other three because they screwed into custom T fittings that secured the chain remover and the swiveling hawse pipe cover. Their length had to be just right because they could only go so far into these T fittings and they needed to be tight. I knew I had to 'dry fit' everything first to work out the bugs before final assembly with the sealant. Five of the six bolts could be persuaded to fit; but not the sixth. I also noticed that the bottom plate of the windlass was not lying flat on the base, but tilted at a slight angle. These problems were especially irritating because I had been careful to trial fit the windlass to the new platform before bonding it onto the deck. Once mounted on deck, however, with everything now having to go through 4 inches of solid material, it didn't take much of an angular error in the holes to cause significant misalignments. It took a couple of hours of trial and error, re-drilling bolt holes and the 2-inch motor shaft hole, to get everything to fit properly. I also had to fine tune the bolt lengths with washers from below. I carefully marked each bolt with its location, orientation, and number of washers in preparation for final assembly. I was hot and tired, so I decided to break for lunch before tackling the final assembly. I had brought a Trader Joe's salad and a beer, so it would be a short break.
All my previous travails and precautions paid off as the final assembly, while messy with caulking everywhere, came off without a problem. I cleaned the caulking from the windlass and myself with rags and paint thinner (which I discovered in an aft locker-MORE LUCK!), and went below to mount the motor and finish the wiring.
Mounting the motor was tricky and painful. It required the simultaneous alignment of keys to slots in the motor shaft and three set screws on the motor with three dimples in the
motorshaft housing. Doing all this required getting both the horizontal rotation and vertical alignment precisely correct simultaneously by holding and
maneuvering the 30-lb motor overhead while doing contortions in the narrow end of the v-berth. I finally got it done, but I was hurting! By comparison, the remaining wiring was pretty
straightforward, with one exception. The cable terminals on the motor did not have their polarity labelled. The installation instructions covered this oversight by explaining that if the motor ran but the windlass did not turn, the polarity was wrong and the cables needed to be switched. With my chances being 50-50, of course I had to switch the cables. But that did the trick. The new windlass was fully operationa!
By the time I had the wiring secured, it was getting late in the afternoon and, because something in that salad apparently disagreed with me, I was feeling drained in more ways than one. I test fit the hardwood hawse pipe and marked a few places where I needed to saw some more cutouts. Finally, I cleaned up the worst of the mess, buttoned up and headed home. I was exhausted, but happy to have achieved a major milestone. I also found a second ratcheting winch handle while doing the installation. More good luck! It was
definitely time to buy a lottery ticket!
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