Boat Work Is Just About Done.

Quite a bit has gone on this weekend. Katrina had her homecoming, I found the Suzuki manual for Charlie and took a picture of the wiring diagram and emailed it to him. Next was replacing the boom gooseneck casting (Dwyer Mast sent a replacement one that was the right size) and reworking the sails.


I had to remove quite a bit of the Dacron repair tape and put in new pieces, then sew a zig-zag pattern over the new tapes to return the sail to its original strength. Then I removed the piston hanks (clips used to connect the jib sail to the front cable stay).

This is a view of the new Wichard snaps that I installed to replace the piston hanks, because the hanks require both hands to install the jib sail, whereas, the Wichard snaps can be put on and taken off with one hand (need the other hand to keep from falling overboard).


Other work has been to take the front fence apart and pull the center post out of the 'socket' I had made years ago. Now, I have 16 feet of gate opening, instead of the 8 feet I had to play with when we put the boat in the back yard. While I was working on the fence, the girls emptied out all of the stuff that was inside the boat. I hope to get the interior vacuumed out and the cushions put back inside, then I will need to work on the tongue extension for the trailer. I took tomorrow off because I have a doctor's appointment and then I'll be able to get some of the final work on the boat done.

UPDATE: Instead of cranking out another post, I'll just update this one. I went to see the doctor, she still isn't too sure why I'm aching all the time and all of my joints keep popping and cracking. When I was asked; "On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate the level of pain"? I told her it's about a 2, maybe a 3. She said; "That's pretty low to complain about". When I mentioned my 1-to-10 scale involves experiencing the installation of a steel plate and 5 screws in my left forearm, she began to realize that I just might understand the pain level of child birth...

The Doc thinks the pain might be related to the work I've been doing on the sailboat (yeah, great!), so more pills were prescribed, and an appointment was made to see her again in 3 weeks...

As for the boat, I spent the day making up the tongue extension out of the rectangular tubing Charlie brought over. It took some doing but I got the thing set up where I can hook it up and release it by myself. Now the tongue can be lengthened at the boat ramp so we don't have to back the Magnum down the ramp until its under water just so we can get enough depth to launch the sailboat.

This close-up shows the 2-inch trailer mounts I used to make a quick-release hitch system to extend the trailer tongue. I hope we get a little practice setting this thing up before we take it out to the boat ramp.