Changed out the leaf springs on my trailer for a pair of 500 pounders. This has made the ride much smoother.

Fabricated some aluminum fenders to replace the broken sheet metal ones. I slipped them into a batch of metalwork I made to be powder coated, so I should get them back soon.

Rigged up a pulley system under my sunroom so I could touch up the paint on the hull that I scraped off going across the sandbar at Ocracoke Island last year. I also got around to getting the boat registered so I can use a motor! I hand painted the letters which was a lot more difficult than it seems.

It’s been too cold lately to varnish in the garage, so I set up the mast in the spare bedroom. I put on five coats of Helmsman spar urethane, probably not as good as real spar varnish but I’ll give it a try this season. I can’t imagine it’ll be a problem for a garage kept boat. The fiberglassed section is a little noticeable, but not too bad.

A few times I’ve buried the rail while trying to bail out water in a blow, so I thought a diaphragm pump might be a more sedate way of keeping my feet dry. I’m thinking I’ll have a pipe go to each side of the boat where the water collects, a diverter valve in the middle so I can select which side to pump, and a check valve on the ends of the tubes to keep water from draining back in. Pumping the water into the centerboard case seems like a tidy way to do it. I’d like the pump to be centrally located so I can work it on either tack, but this option looks like it’ll take up too much floor space and the plumbing might be awkward.

Back here on the sternsheets looks pretty convenient, although the handle would need to be lowered to accommodate the sleeping platform. Looks like there’d be a lot of awkward plumbing for this option too.

Underneath the main thwart with the handle just sticking through is high on the list. It’ll be mostly tucked away and the plumbing runs will be short.

I think I’m leaning towards something like this. The handle should be a little easier to work and it’s still out of the way. Next I need to figure out what plumbing parts I need. The threads on the pump aren’t NPT and I have no idea what standard they are other than 1-7/16″ – 6, so I might see if I can 3d print some custom adapters. Failing that I could machine some.

Got the area around the new hatch painted and the hatch installed with butyl tape. The #10 screws on the sides fasten to the new stiffeners I added underneath and on the ends are machine screws through the 1/4″ plywood sternsheets. This will really improve access and keep the bilge water out. I faired the front well enough you’d never know there used to be a hatch there.

I epoxied an oak peg onto the top of the mast when I was experimenting with my topsail, but it ended up not working very well. It was too hard to slip a loop of line on the topmast around it, and using it to route a halyard didn’t work either. Plus it also tended to mess with the set of the jib halyard turning block.

I chiseled off most of the peg and sanded the rest smooth. I need to figure out something for the topmast halyard, there might be just enough room for another beehole in the middle.

The boom jaws have been gouging the mast a bit so I sanded back the varnish and will epoxy some left over 6oz fiberglass around once it warms up. I knew keeping the scraps from fiberglassing the hull would come in useful someday!

I jigsawed a hole for a 14.75″ x 10.6″ Seaflo access hatch and stripped back the paint. I had to cut through the central stiffener and unfortunately the 1/4″ plywood is a little too flexible for my liking. It might be ok once the hatch is bolted in place, but I’m going to add a .75″ x 1.5″ stiffener on either side of the hole.

You know that box of wood scraps we all have that are probably really not worth saving? I found my 6.5″ diameter discs from when I cut the holes for the original inspection hatches! I beveled the edges a bit as a “weld prep” and epoxied it in place with thickened epoxy. Packing tape kept everything flush. I also epoxied the two new stiffeners along either side of the hole.

While I was epoxying I added some drain holes to the motor well. I used a large Forstner bit and intersected the floor of the well a bit. Then I filled the holes with thickened epoxy and drilled again with a smaller bit. The holes came out right at floor level, so they should drain nicely.

I tested the glue bond on the piece I cut out for the access hatch and was very pleased to find it took about 5 decent whacks with a 3 pound mini maul before breaking off. This was purely a mechanical bond since both pieces were encapsulated with 3 coats of neat epoxy before later being joined with thickened epoxy. A chemical bond is stronger but it really makes no difference since the plywood failed along the entire joint.

All rigged! I hope I can get out on the water soon.

My original snotter was a little too complex for its own good. It was all one piece and cow hitched around the mast, which was good for minimizing the number of lines needed but it was super awkward to rig and unrig. So I decided I’d make something with a toggle to make it easier, and a separate snotter line that stays attached to the sprit. I’ll cut the tail off once I’m sure this version is working, and I might add another seizing below the loop and a third above.

Here you can see the snotter running from the heel of the sprit up to the low friction ring on the toggle arrangement and back down the mast to the mast parter where it turns aft to a cleat on the centerboard case. I’ve also addd a long line to the main’s peak which runs down the sprit to a cleat near the heel. I originally had the cleat on the other side of the leather, but it was too high to be convenient.

Here’s the snotter running through a beehole in the mast partner back to a cleat on the centerboard case. I got rid of the mechanical advantage I had last year, but this still seems to work ok. It’s pretty close to the limit friction wise though so I’ll have to try it out on the water to make sure. The other cleat is for a boom downhaul which I haven’t fully decided how to run yet.

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.