One of the things I have done to get ready for our planned August departure date is to put a year planner on the wall with planned dates for completion of various bits of work. The Aries was supposed to have been fitted by a weekend in February.
Well, as you can see from the picture below, it has finally been done - at the end of March.
It has truly been one of the more frustrating things I have ever had to do on Sarah G. Every step of the way seemed to be dogged with problems. First, we lost the two horizontal aluminium tubes that are used to clamp the whole assembly across the aft deck. I had to buy a set of clamps off Helen Franklin-Bell as well which I achieved last November. Then, after a lot of exploration we found some predrilled holes in the after end of the lazarette but the new teak toerail covered up where they emerged on top.
Each step seemed to include the purchase of more expensive tools and also a lot of bending over the stern at awkward angles and lots of backache.
The highlight of the purchases were a set of extra long wood drills thanks to Amazon Marketplace.
I used the smallest of the drills to push up from below and all of them seemed to come up in sensible places except the last - the outside starboard one which seemed to be in an odd place. Last weekend proved that it was in completely the wrong place but the one thing I had forgotten to bring with me as the long drill set which put the kibosh on finishing that bit of work for yet another weekend.
We were supposed to be in Liverpool for my friend's wedding but could not make it as an upgrade to a critical system has to happen for work so I took the opportunity to rush down and try to finish things from last weekend.
The most trying bit of work was still to come though. I had managed to get one of the clamps on the cockpit coaming bolted in place but the other had proved too tight to get the bolt with penny washer up from the inside of the cockpit locker.
Describing this is very difficult. There is a bulkhead that separates the lazarette from the aft cockpit locker and it rises up into the cockpit coaming. As the outside of the coaming slopes inward the internal space becomes very small. Now, given that no boat is entirely symmetrical, the port side left just enough room for an 8mm bolt with penny washer to slide up, the starboard side was another matter entirely. This is compounded by the fact that there has been a sort of shelf moulded into the inner aft side of the coaming to catch any bolts that a careless owner might drop rather then let them fall into the locker where they can be easily retrieved!
The eventual technique I used was to use seizing wire fed down from above and wound round the bold about a third of the way down the thread. I then pulled it up and using the long groove (I now understand why the previous owner did this!) along with a pair of needle nose plier to work the penny washer over the end of the bolt without dropping either the bolt or the washer. Needless to say, I left a couple of spare bolts on that shelf.
Eventually, I worked out how to use our little tool for retrieving junk from the bilges to recover the bolts from this ever so useful shelf.
There came a final point where I had both bolts up and started to feed the clamps onto them. This showed up my next problem. I had been forced to leave some of the windings of seizing wire on the bolts which acted as an unofficial lock washer. The lock washer bit was a good thing, extra milimeter or so of bolt was not and I barely had enough length to get up through the top part of the clamp to do up. You can guess that I kept dropping them back in accompanied by much shouting and swearing.
Next, I worked the horizontal tubes in, moved the boat back on the pontoon, undid the main halyard and tied the vane to it as I had visions of hiring a diver to recover the thing from the seabed. Of course, the tubes were not in the right place and I was left with more swearing and a vision of having to drill even more holes in my boat.
After a coffee and a look at the situation, it occurred to me that the tubes were splayed out slightly and that they were really too long as well. I pushed them in a bit after some nervewracking loosening of bolts and things improved. Then I thought I could bodge it anyway but removing the outer clamp on one side and repositioning it to what seemed to look right. The starboard clamp did look different relative to the port one and with a bit of jiggling and banging it did work in the end and the holes even worked properly though the whole structure is under considerable tension. We now have a big piece of combined cast and extruded aluminium hanging off our stern and we look like a pukka blue water cruiser.
The next stage is to work out how to use the thing!
