I’ve been working along on all the stuff that needs to be fixed or improved, so this post will be a hodgepodge of random stuff.

Ross recommended making a bracket that bolts onto the centerboard and projects up through the centerboard trunk cap. Then a stainless rod attaches to that to allow you to raise and lower the centerboard. The bracket seemed like a lot of work, so I just drilled a hole and whittled out a section for the thickness of the rod. The hole is encased with thickened epoxy to provide a hard surface and the rod is bent in such a way that it lays flat along the cap when the board is in the up position.

Here’s how the rod sits when the board is up.

As I mentioned in my last post, the wiring on my trailer had quit working so I decided to permanently fix it. I bought 25′ of 7 strand 14ga trailer wire so I could run individual ground wires to the lights. I’m not going to use the trailer as a ground again, too much corrosion. The purple wire is the second brown wire to the brake lights, and the blue wire is the second ground. The red wire isn’t needed at all. I wired everything up with solder heat shrink fittings, which seem to work really well. These things have a little blob of low temperature solder in the middle that melts with a heat gun. After testing to make sure it was wired correctly, I wrapped everything in a few layers of electrical tape. Probably not as good as amalgamating tape, but I didn’t have any.

I originally built wooden rudder cheeks, but somehow they ended up too tight for the rudder. I was about to go on vacation and needed something, so I welded one up out of aluminum. I didn’t have time to paint it, so I’ve been sailing around with it bare for two years. I finally decided to have my buddy powder coat it the same green as the mast partner, but it outgassed quite a bit during the baking. Part of the problem was galvanic corrosion between the stainless gudgeon and pintles, so I cut some insulators out of a milk jug. Might not be necessary with the powder coating, but it can’t hurt.

The notch in my new mast partner ended up just a hair smaller than the original, so I needed to thin down my leather padding. I sharpened a little thumb plane razor sharp and it worked surprisingly well. Leather seems to have a grain to it since it would dig in one direction, but cut beautifully in the opposite. I took the leather down to about half its original thickness.

Added a small cleat to the sprit which will hold a line running through a bee hole from the peak of the sail. I figure this will make rigging easier, rather than trying to catch the peak in a notch on the end of the sprit.

Through a convoluted story, I ended up with this little outboard. It’s a Honda BF2A that looks to be in pretty good shape. It seems to make decent compression and everything turns freely. The only catch is that it’s missing about $300 in parts. It needs a carburetor, gas tank, air guide, and throttle linkage. I’m currently trying to decide if it’s worth fixing up, especially since I don’t know that it’ll run. I would really like to replace my British Seagull with this since it’s a 4 stroke, even though I don’t really run the Seagull enough to worry about the crazy oil ratio.

I’ve been working on the trailer while the boat was hanging in my shop. I built a platform to support the keel and keep the trailer from scraping the paint off when I launch. I also lowered the side bunks and moved them ahead a bit. After the platform was built, I took the wheels off to repack the bearings and change the dust covers for some Bearing Buddies.

I’m glad I did because I was greeted to a handful of rollers spilling out of the hub when I took the wheel off. This trailer is pretty old and I don’t think the bearings have ever been replaced. Anyway, I bought some new A-4 bearings, packed them, and got the wheels installed again.

Next I stapled some bunk carpet to the new platform. There’s a wooden block that supports the keel’s rocker up forward under the carpet. I added a jack too, so I don’t have to move the trailer with a dolly or the winch handle. The red bow stop is new as well, the previous one was a black rubber roller that left black marks on the bow. Hopefully this one doesn’t make my boat look like I ran over a scuba diver.

And finally I got the boat back on the trailer. I’ve bedded all the fittings that go on the deck which was a job. You don’t think it should take that long to bolt stuff down but it does. It didn’t help that I had to remake the backing plates because I put the originals somewhere for safe keeping… I still need to clean and paint the inside of the boat before I can put the inspection hatches in.

And of course no project would be complete without uncovering more problems than you started with. The trailer lights have quit working, even though they’re only a year old. They’re LED and I always unplug them before backing into the water, so I think there’s a corroded connection somewhere. I’m getting 1.5 volts measuring between the trailer ground and the plug. There’s a complete circuit but I guess there must be too much resistance somewhere for the lights to work. Anyway, I’m thinking about running a dedicated ground line to each light and changing the wire nuts to those heat shrink butt connectors. Either that or make some clamp on lights and remove them when going into the water. Whatever I do, I don’t want wiring the trailer to become a yearly thing!

When I built the boat I didn’t take the time to over drill fastener holes and then fill with thickened epoxy. So as I have been epoxying things I’ve started working on the holes. I also shortened the oarlock pads since the bolts didn’t actually land in the doubler underneath the deck. That was a measurement error on my part in the rush to get the boat ready for a vacation. Here’s how to enlarge an existing hole with a Forstner bit.

I’ve never been happy with the slot in the end of the sprit that catches a loop of line in the sail’s peak. So I filled it with a block of wood which I’ll smooth down and then drill a bee hole though. I’m planning to have a long length of line tied into the peak which will go through the bee hole and down the sprit to a cleat. That should make it easier to get the sail rigged.

The hard rubber rollers on my trailer have started chewing up the edges of the keel, so I hoisted the boat off the trailer with a chain fall so I could get under there to sand and epoxy. A strap around the main thwart almost perfectly balances the boat, and a line to the bow fitting keeps it from nosing down. I’ve also started painting the bare spots to build them up a bit before I paint everything else.

I’m hoping to have the boat done by the end of the month. Hopefully everything will go well and I’ll be sailing soon.

I got my aluminum mast partner back from the powder coater recently and dry fit it to the boat. I’m using four 1/2″ bolts to hold it on, so I drilled some 9/16″ holes in the bulkhead and sealed the wood with epoxy. Hopefully I can start painting and reinstall the fittings soon.

First of three rounds of epoxy to seal the bare wood and inside of the holes.

Testing the mast partner

I did have a bit of a disaster before I could dry fit it… I managed to get a bolt stuck in some left over powder coating down in the threaded hole. So I drilled it out with a left hand drill bit, picked out the threads, and then chased the threads with a tap.

Milling the bolt down flat so I can have a good starting point for the drill. You can use calipers to find the center point, but I usually just eyeball it. With a small diameter spotting drill you can get within .010″ without too much trouble.

Sometimes the stub of bolt will come out if you drill aggressively with a left hand bit.

All’s well that ends well.