The effort of continuing the hardware installation was front and center today, and would include installation of the winch bases, final install of the mainsheet traveler, and prepping the fastener holes for the cabin top cam cleats. I got started by water-washing the amine blush from the skim coat applied Friday evening to the deck fastener holes for the winch bases. I then mounted the winch base with the two coaming fasteners, followed by marking the pre-drill location of the deck fastener. I removed the winch base, center punched the mark for the drill bit, and then progressed through a number of sizes of drill bits until the final pre-drill in order to tap for 1/4"-20 machine screws. After clearing the detritus from pre-drilling and tapping, I again mounted the winch bases with the two coaming machine screws. Next, I went below and counter-sunk the deck fastener hole to receive the tapered head machine screw from the underside of the deck. After securing this fastener from below, I completed the install of the starboard winch base by adding a washer and nut from up on deck - tightened down. I repeated this process with the port winch base.

Next task would be laying out the cabin top cam cleats. I grabbed a small piece of cardboard with a 90-degree angle on it, the base of the cam cleat, some tape and pencil, and headed onboard Biscuit. The aft end of the cabin top jin track more or less defined an approximate location for the cam cleat, but I wanted the option for the captain to run this line to the winch, so I played with some locations until I was happy. I applied the cardboard template and mounted the cam cleat base to it, and then transferred pencil marks where the fastener holes would be located. After punching holes through the pencil marks with a 1/8" inch drill bit, I then flipped the template and located the port side. The pencil marks for the fasteners were captured onto a layer of protective tape. Next up was over-drilling for the fasteners holes to remove the balsa core and fill that void with thickened epoxy - I used West System thickened with 404 high-density filler. I applied a couple peel ply patches and moved on.

Last up on the docket today was the final install of the mainsheet traveler. In previous sessions I had fabricated the mainsheet traveler track base from teak, and then mounted it and the traveler track. Now I wanted to get the three components installed and secured onto the track: two end-stops and the standup block-cam cleat unit. The end-stops required me to remove the mounted sheave and located two fastener holes to port and two to starboard, pre-drill these through the aluminum track and tap for #10-24 machine screws. I tackled the port end-stop first. I removed the sheave and taped the hardware assembly to not lose a screw (or worse), slid the end-stop onto the track that had been covered by a length of tape, and transferred two marks to the tape. On these marks, I center punched to start the drilling, and progressed up through progressively larger diameter drill bits until it was time to tap the holes. After tapping the holes, I cleaned out the waste material, applied some Loctite to the threads and secured the end-stop to the traveler track, on the outboard port side. I remounted the sheave and moved onto the traveler system itself. The traveler system consists of a standup block and two cam cleats, one on either side of the standup block. It was now time to mount the traveler, currently captured on a short piece of t-track with taped ends to avoid it falling off and spilling all of its ballbearings. I carefully remove the tape from one of the ends, pressed the short piece of track tight against Biscuit's traveler t-track, and transferred the traveler onto its new track. I taped the traveler off to avoid it accidentally moving on me. I then repeated the same process for the port end-stop to the starboard end-stop. This completed the mainsheet traveler installation.

I cleaned up the decks and headed put, now with a hand on fire! Just after arriving to the shop, I managed to get double-tapped by an assassin wasp on my left hand. Painful as I type this....

Total Hrs: 4