10-26 Update

It’s been a busy week, but progress has been made. I suspected a few small leaks we had below were due to old sealant at the stanchion bases so decided to fix that issue. Of course, there was little uniformity about the sizes of the fasteners which held the stanchions to the rail. The biggest job was removing all the stanchions, drilling out the few odd sized machine screw holes, then filling same holes with West epoxy, and finally drilling and tapping these holes for the 3/8-16 SS helicoils (threaded inserts) for the new 3/8 SS machine screws I brought back with me from the States. The machine screws were available here in Trinidad, but very expensive; forget about the price of the helicoils. Anyone who has ever drilled and tapped a hole knows how exact the alignment has to be, in this case through the SS base plate of each stanchion. Working on deck in the 90-95 F degree heat didn’t help matters but everything worked out fine. Other projects: I removed the dodger to have the sun exposed vinyl replaced with Strataglass (Sean of Superb Canvas). After much deliberation, I made arrangements for the yard here (Peake Yacht Services) to do the bottom job. Their price was fair, I supply the paint and primer, and this will avoid the fiasco experienced last year at Power Boats where I ended up doing the job myself. After 30+ years of doing bottom work on our different boats, I figured I deserved a break. I took the MaxProp to Chris Maclaran’s shop here on campus to have it cleaned up; another beautiful job by his crew at a very good price. I wanted to double check the settings recommended for the MaxProp install, but have received confusing phone and email responses from PYI, Inc. I’ve heard similar stories from other cruisers and their MaxProps, so head’s up about that outfit. Hopefully, the settings advised will work out; if not, it’s an expensive haul-out to remedy. I had arranged with Mitchell, the welder at West Coast Fabricators, to fix our aft SS pulpit base which had developed a crack around its round base to the vertical tubing. To weld this, Mitchell needed the pulpit freed up to lift it up from the caprail. Here we go: empty the lazarette, figure out which nuts go to which machine screws on each stanchion base (3 per base), and working alone, get those damn nuts off which appeared not to have been touched since their installation when the boat was built. I must say, access was a bit easier than getting to those nuts at the base of the foot blocks, but I was on my back stretched out in the lazarette, reaching overhead with a headlamp on, but was able to put a vise grips on each nut so I could use a screwdriver up above. Fun and games; the pulpit’s ready for welding. On to the next project...