A Little More Progress

Well the sun has been shining a bit between the rain showers and so I have had the pleasure of spending a few days down on BV.  The transition to beige canvas is progressing well.  We await the production of the new spray-hood to get the full effect but various covers have been finished and the attached photos shows the old spray-hood down with the new beige protective cover hiding it and some straps I have made to secure the bowsprit and the jockey pole.

The mast will be coming down in a couple of weeks and one of the planned jobs was to fit the track for the storm trysail.  The lowest section of track needs to be carefully curved around the other fittings on the mast.  The idea is that we will be able to bend on the trysail whilst being on our hands and knees on the deck.  We therefore want the new track to come down as far as possible on the mast so that it will be easy to reach.  It dawned on me that when the mast is down the halyards and other ropes around the base of the mast won't be in position thus making it difficult to accurately work out the route for the trysail track.  So, it was out with the drill and the rivet gun whilst everything was still in position.  After several hrs of very careful measuring and drilling the lower track has now been riveted into position.  We'll fit the remaining lengths of the track when the mast is down.  These sections will run straight so will be easy to fit; just one area where it passes close to the lower spreader bracket where we will need to check the clearances diligently to make sure that there is no possibility of a car snagging.

It was not all outdoor work.  Some varnish work below needed touching up and I had the joy of crawling around in the machinery room fitting a support bracket I had made to ensure a straight run for the holding tank breather pipe which was sagging slightly in the middle.  I have also secured the fuel and water tank breather pipes to the bracket so they are no longer sagging either.

We have found the logbooks on the market don't really record all of the details that we want and their layout tends to waste pages.  Therefore, for several years, we have used a logbook of our own design which we have had produced at a local stationers.  Nothing special, just lots of photocopied pages spiral bound with a cover.  We were on our last logbook and so another task we've completed was updating the templates slightly and then getting some more printed ready for our big adventure.

Little by little we are getting though or task list.  I will, however, be a lot happier in four weeks time when the mast is back up completely re-rigged and the myriad of other jobs we are going to complete when BV is out of the water are all finished.  It will be a busy time but she will be in really good condition for our summer holiday.