Winter Projects - What are your plans?

[martinriches]

New alternator
Replace battery's and more of them
New anchor and chain that doesn't jam in the gipsy
Build an anchor locker
Replace exhaust manifold gasket and find oil leak
Engine start and stop on the upper helm
Repack stuffing box.

Now I am retired I might actually get it all done.Hopefully I can get the boat ready for early spring,it was August this year before we were seaworthy and most of the season had gone.

Martin

 

[prv]

Hmm, from memory and in random order, here are a few things I know need doing. There will be others, and they probably won't all get done.

• Install and wire power sockets in anchor locker (for anchor light and dinghy inflator) and cockpit (for spotlight).
• Rewire anchor windlass controls, including wireless remote and backup wired one. Possibly including removing the old deck buttons and glassing the holes.
• Fill / glass numerous holes around the cockpit, mostly old screw-holes but one that's a jagged break and one 3" diameter cutout (currently has a square of old chopping board sikaflexed over it )
• Fill another 3" hole, in the heads compartment moulding. Re-seal various panel joints in there where the silicone / sikaflex has failed.
• Refit the inside of the cockpit locker, involving re-routing (and probably partly renewing) various large hoses and then ply-lining.
• There's a mess of fuel and water hoses in the engine bay which are loosely tied in place as one bundle and could really do with sorting out and individually securing.
• Secure the calorifier overflow bottle at the same time, and complete the wiring for its overflow alarm.
• I'd like a drip-tray under the fuel filters, and a dedicated spanner stowed nearby.
• Service the engine, obviously.
• Fit additional anchor alarm speaker in my cabin - it went off this summer and my crew heard it but I didn't. (We hadn't actually dragged, just hadn't adjusted the alarm distance to suit the circumstances.)
• Make up new reefing pendants using Dyneema or similar so they can be smaller for reduced friction, but with a polyester cover for the end we handle.
• Do something to the mainsheet jammer to make it easier to get the line into the jaws.
• Fit a catch to hold the forepeak door open (trick is to find a type that doesn't take chunks out of ankles when the door is closed)
• Move the fluxgate compass out of the beer locker (many beer tins are steel!)
• Maybe design and build a new saloon table, but I suspect there won't be time.
• Fit an LED strip under the galley locker - at the moment we're hanging a battery lantern from the curtain rail to cook after dark!
• Time permitting (and I hope it will), build and install the combined lighting / speaker boxes in the saloon (and lighting-only ones in the forepeak and galley). JFM's LEDs kindly donated for this have been waiting patiently in my shed for too long.
• Cut a slot in the half-bulkhead next to the chart table, and line with milled hardwood to make a handhold.
• Ideally I'd like a handrail along the deckhead in the saloon, but this is a fair way down the list.
• New red LEDs in the compass.
• Fit a blind on the forehatch.
• Rewire shore power to get the consumer unit out of the cockpit locker.
• Decent latch on the anchor locker
• Bigger cables from battery to engine (think there's a little too much volt drop on the existing ones)
• Replace the laminate on the sole boards at aft end of the cabin.
• Better latching / sealing arrangements for the aft cabin hatch (we took the top of a wave through it off Barfleur, despite being allegedly closed, and it landed in my bunk )
• Box in the log and depth transducers, so that the log one can be pulled without major mopping up afterwards and so that heavy items (beer ) can be stowed in the locker without damaging them.

Boat comes out in a few weeks; I'd like to be back in around Easter (probably use the Easter break for last-minute finishing off and then be in the next week). Wonder how much will be done by then?

Pete