Summertime progress

Progress is good these days. Last weekend (the 19th) I went down for a work day.

First item was to sand, prep, and prime the repaired areas around the backstay chainplate and the old flagpole base. I put one a coat of Pre-Kote in the morning and was able to sand and re-coat by late afternoon.

I also test-fitted the mooring bitt and its 1/4" pre-fab fiberglass base. The plan is to epoxy the base to the poop deck and then through-bolt the bitt through base and deck. I'm somewhat tempted to put the bitt off-center and out of the way somewhere, for two reasons: one, so that there is a nice place to sit on the poop deck, and two, so that it doesn't straddle the chainplate knee below. The center seems best for appearance, but since the stern roller won't be centered either (the backstay dominates the center) perhaps it's best to offset the bitt to the starboard side near the deck pipe. That's a decision to make.
My friend Michele finished up the leather chafe covers for the chain-to-rode splices on both the bow and stern rodes.













I did some fairing on and around the main bulkhead, and then reinforced the chainplate mounting area on both sides with two layers of 24 oz. woven roving. I'll also add tabbing strips of 4" West biax tape along the bulkhead. This is the most stressed area, with the primary (upper) shrouds and their tension load attaching to these chainplates. The mast compression load (which I've calculated will max out at about 4000 lbf in an extreme load) comes in about 3 feet away on the main beam.