Slotted screws: A Rant.

Back to the boat in yet more rain this morning. We’re easily looking at eight inches in the past three days. The shed is paying for itself.

Today I went back to getting the last of the ports out of the deck. I started with the two Beckson opening ports in and across from the head. I replaced the originals 15 years ago because they were toast. They came out quite easily that time. This time around the sealant had good grip on them. I destroyed my replacement starboard hatch in the removal process. The port side hatch came out much easier but that was mostly due to “learned technique” from wrestling with the starboard port. Didn’t really matter as I’m going to replace both of them again after the decks are painted. Dirty sock on clean feet or is it the other way around?

After getting those out I moved aft to the cockpit to remove a Beckson screw-in deck plate that the PO, affectionally know as Mr. Potato Head had brutally installed to provide ventilation to the quarter berth. Every time I see that job it reaffirms my strong desire to replace it with a Lewmar opening hatch.

After unscrewing the hazy clear port I started to unscrew the machine screws and nuts. In the original installation the port was installed with 5/16 “ x 18 S/S machine screws. That’s fine but they used slotted screw heads. I hate slotted screw heads. Really hate them. They should be banned. Outlawed.

I was thinking how much I hated them right about the time that the drill-driver slipped off the head and caused me to rake my finger across the flat-head slotted screw head. Yup, it hurt. And it opened up a 2” laceration that was pretty impressive.

Well, that stopped work for the afternoon. A piece of white (sterile?) box-o-rag, some ever present blue tape and I was able to keep from bleeding on the decks. It also reminded me that our house had nothing other than bandages suitable for a minor nick.

After a trip to the nearest, and that’s a very relative term, pharmacy I was back on the road.

Okay, end of rant.

A yard worker’s first-aid kit:

 

Less bleeding than I would have imagined:

Amazing what you can do with a paper towel and 3M fine-line tape:

Anyway, more pictures of me destroying perfectly good opening ports.

Unusable:

Usable but still going in the waste bin:

Also of note: The Annapolis to Newport Race got underway today and as of this post, the fleet is nearing our house near Smith Point Light. There are three “vintage” C&C’s of the same era and design as Ronin in the race. They are doing well and I hope they sail fast, collect lots of trophies and most importantly, have a safe race.

Working on OP's boats...

I know that I’ve tried to post at least once a week with progress on the refit but as usual other things get in the way.

After getting back from my great Interstate excursion I received an emergency request to assist with timing duties in a weekend endurance (horse) race near West Virginia in the Shenandoah Valley. I spent a Friday, Saturday and Sunday standing in the cold and wet ensuring that the horses coming into the checkpoint were pulsing down to 60 BPM. 

From there I ended up in Arlington for two days attending to some chores and catching up with one of my old bosses and her husband. Truthfully, I’ve enjoyed the days off from working on our boat.

However, that does not mean that I have not been working on boats. I have been. Other peoples (OP) boats...

I have two neighbors here in Reedville who have sailboats that either accidentally acquired holes in their hull or needed to have a couple of thru-hulls removed and glassed over. My friend, and the builder of our new home, Vincent has a Corsair F-24 trimaran designed by Ian Farrier that he sails every free moment he has. And I go along with him whenever possible. Flying along at 14 knots in light winds is quite the bit of fun!

Earlier this spring we had abnormally high winds and during a particularly windy day, his boat was blown of the jack-stands in his driveway while being readied for bottom paint. There was not damage to either of the floats but one jack-stand managed to put a 4” cracking the laminate near the rest of the main hull. Repair work was in order.

After having no luck finding a boatyard that could get to the repair within a reasonable amount of time, we decided to do the repair work ourselves. Over the past few days I have been working on that crack and another one found in the starboard float. Fortunately the damage was not too great and did not extend completely through the laminate. After grinding out the areas I worked up a schedule of 10-oz woven cloth for the punctured hull section and some biaxial cloth tape for the edge of the float. After applying the cloth using a slightly thickened mixture of West System and colloidal silica, I let it set up.  A quick check today when the rain stopped confirmed that the fix was strong and ready for grinding, sanding and finish fairing.

For another neighbor and friend, new to sailing, we removed the non-function head thru-hulls and glassed the holes over. Since the boat will be used for afternoon sails in the creek and out in the Wicomico River, it made no sense to provide for a head. Illegal one at that...

Nice Cape Dory Typhoon with head thru-hulls glassed over and ready for bottom paint: 

 

Fast Corsair waiting for more glasswork:

 

Truck stop connoisseur.

A fellow C&C 37 owner sent me an email asking if there was any progress since my last post at the end of March when the boat came out of the shed. Alas, there has been no work on Ronin since then. I’ve been off-line figuratively and literally for some time now.

After getting the hull set up on jack stands in the yard, I took a few days to prepare my KTM 400 EXC for shipment out to an establishment called 3 Step Hideaway in Southeast Utah where it will stay for the next year. My brother, several other friends of ours and I took our bikes out there last September and had a great time riding the area. It was such a great place to stay and ride from that it occurred to us that it made more sense to leave the bikes there and fly in and out rather than drive them out each time we wanted to do some off-road adventure riding.

My brother Pete's wife is a seriously competitive horse endurance racer and had been looking for a new addition to her stable of Arabians that was young, in good health and ready to be trained to run 100 mile races. She found a 4-year old gelding in San Antonio, Texas and bought him. Since my brother was on tap to drive down and pick the horse up and I enlisted to help him do some of the driving, we quickly realized that we should make a “slight” detour to drop the bikes off in Utah. And do a few days of riding at the same time.

Off we went, dragging a 3-horse trailer loaded with 4 KTM’s. I’ve been on the road for most of the time with the exception of 4 days at 3 Step Hideaway. It was a long (5,000+ miles), grueling trip and I got to sample some of the finest cuisine at some exceptional truck stops throughout the Midwest, West and South. And I have the gut to prove it...

Anyway, I got back into town last Friday and have been attending to the house and grounds that were going wild in my absence. No work on Ronin yet.

Today I ordered and will have delivered to the boatyard a 16’ wide, 14’ high and 45’ long galvanized steel and heavy duty fabric shed so that I can totally enclose the boat. This will be erected over the hull so that I will be able to continue working on the decks over the summer and fall. That should arrive around the end of April or early May. Although expensive it will make a big difference it getting things done on my current schedule. 

In the meantime, some travel snaps.

Pete on left, me center and old friend Jim from San Diego on right:

Campsite sunset in Canyonlands. With a glass of wine:

 Spring calf branding at the neighbors:

How bulls become steers...

The object of my sister-in-law’s desire: