Day 258

Because the weather has been great, we are continuing with getting as much outside work done as possible. A lot of attachments need to be added to the cockpit area!

Gena drilling the tops of winch mounts

The other day I cut all of the pieces for the winch mounts and Gena took that on today. First a templte for the winches was made, then the holes drilled.

The nuts were then welded on in place. All four primary winches have the same hole pattern and bolt size, lucky as they were purchased over ebay.

You can't see it well in the photo, but Gena is using the drill press. The reason it it sitting there in the grass is beacuse when drilling stainless, nothing beats pouring a trickle of water over the bit to keep it cool! They last much longer that way, especially when drilling 3/8" and 1/2" SS.

The reason these are angled so much is because the angle the sheets must go down to the pulleys. If the angle is too much, the sheets ( ropes ) would ride off the bottom of the winch.

They look pretty nice once mounted. I was worried they would ruin the smooth lines of the cockpit.

Gena was happy how they all fit nicely. The spacing betwee each must allow for yet more hardware, ie. cleats.

Also, they should be strong. No holes were cut in the coaming, thus keeping it's origional strength. Likely a drain hole will need to be added inside the coaming, but not before we spray some red oxide primer in the first!

My job today was to continue with the transom steps. The lowers are stainless (left) and will have some sort of wood on them. They will mount into the corners as shown on day 257.

I realised that these would be impossible to finish ( ie. polish ) once welded in place so I decided to leave the polishing for a rainy day and get on with the handrails for the pilot house roof.

The nuts were welded on the same way as the ones on the cabin top. This finished the day.

Below is a side photo of the winch mounts. Pretty cool huh?

Day 258:
7 hours - mounted winch mounts, hand rails, made steps for swim platform