Back at it

Finally back to some boat bits.  A combination of oppressive humidity and out of town travel.  Although there was not much activity on the boat, I spent a lot of money for the boat.  More money than I have ever spent for the boat in one month.  The big culprit was two new Lewmar CST16 self tailing winches.  The boat originally came with 6 winches.  Two on the cabin top for halyards (old light weight Lewmars) Two for the Jib (SS Barient 16's) and two (really old Bronze)  set up further back in the cockpit for spinnaker trimming I think.  I decided to replace the most important (jib) sheet winches with new self tailing winches to make single handing easier.  The lightweight Lewmars I will reinstall on the cabin top for the halyards to reduce the weight up high and the backing plates are nice SS which can be seen inside the cabin.  The older Barients will move back to the Spinnaker mounts and the old Bronze will be retired.  The old Lewmars and Barients have all been serviced, cleaned and greased and function fine but are non tailing winches.  One of the older bronze winches may be re-purposed as a horizontal manual anchor rope gypsy on the foredeck.  The new winches on sale at Defender also came with two free Lewmar winch handles which was a nice bonus.

In addition I also purchased two double rope clutches (Lewmar), a new Hella Bora fan for the cabin,  a set of unfinished wood oars for the dingy and a new manual fuel gauge.  I have a short list now of things to purchase but they are all expensive items such as batteries (350), 3 halyards and a topping lift (600), depth speed instrument (450) 4 more turnbuckles (200) bottom paint (250), blocks, cars, etc (300) and all the other stuff I haven't thought of.  So I am trying to spread these purchases out over the next three months so I can get myself a tiller pilot for Christmas (450).

The two main winch pedestals are made of SS and need a lot of cleaning and polishing before I could reinstall them.  One of the bases also covers/protects the fuel vent.  I have installed another new one as the old one was destroyed on take put.  the new one I had modified because the threads were too short for the deck thickness.  Since I had removed all of the teak deck they also needed a 3/8" base to sit right on the deck.  This was all sorted out and drilled and cut.  This weekend I will drill, pot and tap the holes and mount them with the winches.  The two rear winch mounts are made of wood but also require a 3/8" base plate for mounting.  These I still have to make before the installation this weekend.  I would also like to drill, pot and tap for the cabin top winches and the line clutches and line organizers if I can source all the mounting screws and bolts before then.

The fuel gauge was something I had always planed on doing and before I finished the fuel tank installation and finalized the plumbing it was time to put it in.  The only issue was a baffle that ran half way through the tank that prevented the arm from swing through it's full 180 degree arc.  I offset the dial as far to one side as I could and then bent the arm down so it would clear.  This should give me an accurate reading when the tank is low on fuel and pretty close to accurate when it is full.  There is just over 5 gallons in there and it reads just over half full (9 gallon tank).