Some more maintenance..

After a long winter of recuperation now the spring of 2012 is here - despite the iffy weather - I have made a start on a few of the winter maintenance jobs to get finished before re-commissioning.

One of these was to sort out the guardwire stanction bases that remain filled with water and have been rotting out the wooden pads:-

I unbolted a couple of the worse looking ones and let the soggy but sound hardwood pad dry out, primed it and bedded the stanction base back on using Sikaflex. Whilst the base was off I filed a drain groove in its underside to discourage it from filling with water.

The wooden pads are tapered to make the steel stanctions stand vertically upright regardless of the boat's sheer and the camber of the deck.  However the whole design is not the strongest; the inboard pair of bolts are about 4" long and pass right through the boat's inwale (beam shelf) which is strong, but the outer pair are brought up under the deck between the planking and inwale. There is a tendancy for the deck to be 'peeled' up by any inward load on the guardrails and the bond has been strained here and there letting water in - not good.  We like the security of the guard wires but will have to give some thought to a better arrangement for securing the stanctions....?

Coming up in the next post or two will be another couple of 'improvements' I have been working on before Enfys is commissioned for the 2012 season:- A proper vented, draining gas bottle locker, that is long overdue and was a survey recommendation, and a different way of switching the engine starting and boat supply batteries on and off.