For starters, here is the galley counter with a sample of some of the nuts and bolts (old and new) needed to reinstall the hardware inside and outside the boat. This does not include anything needed for the mast, boom or spreaders, that’s all in another building. I have a list of 62 things that had to be rebedded on the decks and cabintop. Most are through bolted with backing plates or big washers. All of those items have more than one fastener – the jib tracks have 39 (if I recall correctly) each. Keeping track of all that hardware was a monumental task. When it looked old we’d run down to Tacoma Screw and buy replacements, but we reused all we could.
Everything that was portable came home to get polished. I had a little corner workstation in the wood shop next to some wire wheels. Literally there were buckets and buckets of hardware moving back and forth between home and LaConner.
These stanchion bases became the ultimate pain in the ass for this project. For what unknown and horrible reason, the folks who built this boat thought they should not only mount to the decks, but also into the bulwarks. What that means is that every time the deck height changes, the pads they sit on need to be remade. We did this in Port Townsend 20 years ago and it was a minor problem. This time it was just a complete time suck. The guys doing the decks didn’t keep track of the holes through the deck and redrilled about 60% of them in the wrong place. That meant we had about 25 new holes in the NEW decks that were wrong. We had to refill those, then measure for pads (every one is completely different based on the thickness of not only the new deck, but also the old decks underneath at that exact spot).
The pads were painted to match the new gelcoat. Each one was mounted to the decks with sealant (this is before cleanup, it looks much nicer after).
But with the bolts through the bulwarks, it requires massive boat yoga to get into the cabinets and put your hands 4″ up into a space about 3″ deep with a wrench to get the two nuts onto the bolts. I did this 20 years ago, but just don’t bend like I used to. Our helper Bree was a total champ and became the queen of wriggling into tiny spaces.
Once the deck hardware was reinstalled on the house, we could put the headliner back up. That meant a few hundred screws in the trim pieces, then rewiring all the lighting and fans.
Of course all those trim pieces had been home for some varnish in my studio.
Reinstalling the chainplates sounds pretty simple. Eight bolts each, eight holes in the fiberglass knee, a backing plate and eight nuts on the other side. But every single one of them had just one or two holes that weren’t 100% exactly perfect, and when you have stainless steel and fiberglass, there’s nothing that’s going to give when you need a little wiggle to compensate for a hole that’s not quite straight enough. And of course one of them is in a closet I don’t fit into. What ideally sounds like an afternoon’s work becomes a couple of days.
When the headliner came down from the forward cabin it was apparent the 40 year old Chinese plywood was not going back up again. It all came home to use as patterns for some new wood and new vinyl. That hasn’t been reinstalled yet, we had to wait for the stanchion bases. It’ll go back up this next week.
Here are the decks with most of the hardware on (except the stanchion bases and deck fills). The portlight trim rings went to the Port Townsend Foundry to get the massive patina off. She taught me that ketchup does as good of a job as I want, so the inside ones will get cleaned up as I have time this winter. We chose not to put teak trim pieces around the tracks – I was so tired of the jib sheet getting stuck in the lower one!
The mast and boom are still in the workshop getting hardware reinstalled on them. I’m just about done with the boom, and Rob continues on the mast. He’s done all the wiring, and we’ve hired a local rigging shop to bring in their fancy rivet gun and rivet all the hardware back on. We bought new instruments at the boat show and have a new radar and all new lights and a new strongtrack. Tuesday the yard will come fetch the mast and bring it back to finish prepping for reinstall onto the boat.
So how did this three month refit end up taking 11 months? Well, last time we rifit her we planned four months and it took 14. And this time we’re 20 years older and about 50% slower. Rob has built new handrails, samson post and bowsprit from scratch with no drawings. The guys who did the decks promised to help with all of it, then took another job and we were lucky they made time to paint the mast. We had some unexpected rework on the decks. And at some point we decided not to let all this hard work go to waste in the Salish Sea, and we’re taking her offshore again, so that added some more tasks – mostly to the rigging section. Once we get her afloat again we’ll post our last refit blog and start planning our Encore Cruise!
