East Hampshire Boat Jumble....

Good weekend, as it was the local boat jumble....  always worth a browse and I had a shopping list...

 
These events are always a bit hit and miss - usually they're good for blocks, fastenings and stuff, and every now and again you get lucky on electrics ... Either way - I was looking for clevis pins, split pins, penny washers, a replacement lens for the masthead tricolour, cam cleats (with or without fairleads), and a fairlead for the bow of the boat...

 The tricolour was always going to be an outside chance and so it proved, but I got lucky with the cam cleats - two for a tenner and brand new (which must be half the new price). I also got a couple of split pins for the spreaders to replace the existing ones, and I also got a handy little deck organiser (only a fiver and looks brand new) which I plan to use as part of my plan to lead the main halyard and topping lift back to the cockpit - not my boat, but this is the idea..

Double block and eye bolt (bought at the Netley jumble) in blue, with the organiser (in red) to lead the halyards outside of my grab rails and back to the cabin roof at the cockpit - where the two cam cleats will be provide the fixing point....  more pictures later,

Spotted these in various places on the web and providing food for thought.....

These are the cockpit lockers on a Hurley 20 called "Big Easy" - three things came to mind - a handy place for battery storage, and also a manual bilge pump, but also I like the removable locker floors - at the moment mine are open so stuff can roll under the cockpit floor......  brilliant...

 

This is the cabin of Hurley 20 "Lydia" - I like that surround which provides secure storage, but also the anchor point for a second shelf...   hmmmmm....

In the meanwhile Sparrow's fine - I emptied her of boom with cover and mainsail, jib, and also cabin cushions this weekend to store in the garage at home - it's no drier there than in the boat (being unheated) but it means I can get a good go at the cabin without messing stuff up....  only had time to do that and empty a bucket of rain water from the bilges (we've had a lot of rain, and a lot of wind, and I think it's blowing in via the cockpit lockers...) before heading for home...

Itching to get started on some of these projects.. time to start work!!

Ashore... and first jobs done....

...and with the weather we're having this week thank goodness for that....

So having dropped the mast on Saturday I then had to leave early to do some other stuff, so Sunday was my lift out...  when I drove down to the club in the morning there was a rainbow so the omens were clearly good, but they didn't last long, and the first of the short sharp showers that were to dog the rest of the day soon swept through, and it was windy...

Cadged a lift on the club rib out to Sparrow to save having to dip the tender, where I rigged a mooring rope to my mooring  while I had a go at removing my pick up buoy and chain...  I try to take this home rather than leave it floating in the harbour all winter....  to be honest I wasn't hopeful as I've had to hacksaw the shackle off most years, but this year despite being really rusty it came off a treat - in fact I think it'll be mostly good for next year.....

Having done that, I then sat for a while watching the world go by, but not wanting to be caught the wrong side of the bridge as the tide continued to rise I powered up the donk and motored over to the slipway side of the bridge - it took four attempts to pick up a spare mooring as by this time the wind was well up...  (in fact the guy manning the club rib said he saw a waterspout towards the bottom of the harbour this one had struck earlier [clicky])

Spent the time tidying up the rigging and straightening up, then raided the ships stores for Pringles and Coke while I waited some more (takes about 20-25 minutes per boat), was soon joined by my lift out crew (a new idea this year is to put 2 or 3 extra crew with a boat hook on each boat as it is lifted out) and sat for a chat - turned out one of them was the very same club member who I had sailed with on the day I went out to Bar Beacon [clicky]

Either way we then got called over, motored gently into slings (need to put some sling markers on this winter), no issues and soon enough we were on the gravel in the car park and I packed up and legged it home...

Long'ish day (started at 9, finished at 3) and enough was definitely enough - delighted with my winter spot however, I've got water and power about 5 yards to the left of the picture below, and the bar is just behind me to the left...

Came down next morning and pressure washed the hull, ran out of time, came back after work to finish off the last bits (scraping off a good crop of barnacles between, and just on front of, the hulls). She is to all intents and purposes ready for the next coat of anti-foul next season....  wheww.....knackered!

Last of all a few of the job list for the winter - see page above for the full list...

Items 3, 4 and 19 in the job list in one picture - the fitting is bashed but sound - the nose GRP looks worse than it is,
being watertight but damaged - if I was to hazard a guess I'd say that at some time in a previous ownership
a mooring chain has jumped off the roller, and rested between rail and bow roller grinding away over a period of time......

Job no. 18 - when the mast came down I'm going to guess the cap shroud below the spreader caught on the
mast crutch causing the rivets to shear - they are original - the ones on the other side were replaced this year as part
of the re-rig - the damage is minimal, I'll just drill out old and replace with new.

...dropping the mast.....

A-frame in use on my old boat "Papillon" - looking towards the 
stern - line from the top of the frame to the top of the mast is the 
jib halyard - you can just see the mainsheet, which leads from the top 
of the frame to the stem fitting behind me....

With many thanks to Giblets (actual name Pete, but he'll always be Giblets ) skipper of the good ship Boobalena, and his crew Mike, on Saturday despite rain and general inclemency, we dropped the masts on the aforesaid Boobalena (a Leisure 17) and Sparrow...   no one fell overboard (apart from a padlock on Sparrow - my fault for leaving it on the cabin roof..), no one was hurt, more importantly the masts are good.

So what did we learn??

The mast on a Leisure 17 is small enough not to need an A frame [clicky] - which happily we figured out before the exercise, thus saving us some time. All we did was undo the lowers (which run forward), slacken off the uppers, tied the jib halyard to the main sheet (which was 3:1), and tied that off to the nose fitting. We then cranked on some pressure with the main sheet, undid the now looser forestay, and while I straddled the mast facing backwards to stop it swinging side to side, Pete let out main sheet, and as the mast lowered Mike guided it into the mast crutch at the back of the cockpit*...  jobs a good'un.....

So over to Sparrow to repeat - the differences being the mast is bigger so we did need the A frame, and I have roller furler foil, and my mast is a tabernacle type foot. Other than that it was largely the same - I used the jib halyard to the upper edge of the frame, with my main sheet providing the motive power to the lower edge. The A frame was tied off to the forward lower chain plates (the stays from which were now disconnected) - we then loosened off the aft lowers and the uppers, and I also loosened off the backstay so I could crank on enough down haul to the get the forestay undone. I then had to loosen this off quite a lot to get the lower bolt out of the mast foot/tabernacle (I also had to loosen off the top bolt), but out she came, and after that the same people took the same roles, and the mast was safely in the crutch...  we had to lift the mast slightly when we were two thirds down to move the mast crutch forward, but largely it went OK. I think the starboard upper must caught on top of the crutch or been squeezed by the crutch, at some point, as I lost a few pop rivets on the spreader, but no serious damage done (and a quick fix this winter)...

I then had to leave while Giblets took Booby under the brdige for her lift out, as my lift out was on Sunday..  which will be the next log update...

* ..and if a sentence that includes the phrases "straddle", "swinging" and "crutch" doesn't get me some extra page views I don't know what will....