Fog and Rain Slowing Me Down

The fog this morning was so thick I could cut it with a rigging knife.  It had also left things so humid that the boat was completely soaked in water droplets.  The deck was so wet that even when I toweled off a section to work on a new rivulet of water would run through the cleaned area within a few minutes.  This pretty much stopped me from working on the stanchions first thing.

Instead I spend some time replacing the dodger clips.  I'm not sure why anyone would install chintzy plastic clips for something like a dodger, but alas, there they were in all their cracked and faded glory.  I bought a bag of 25 twist lock clips from Sailrite which are all stainless and much higher quality.  The hole pattern is ever-so-slightly different than my originals, but close enough to work.

I ran into a few holes that had been stripped out over the years of over-tightening.  These will be drilled out over sized and then filled with thickened epoxy.  After a good drying time I'll re-drill them and install the clips.

Last night was the first good rain Ravat has seen without a tarp cover.  My makeshift cockpit drains did their job well.  Unfortunately, the many holes in the cabin where grab rails pass through let water in.  To address that issue I lightly countersunk the interior side of the holes and filled with thickened epoxy.  That will stop the rain from coming in while I'm doing other things.  The grab rails can't go back on until the panels are back up, and that will be a while yet.

I did manage to get another set of stanchions mounted on deck before the storms kicked back in.  I have also packaged up my original life lines and prepared them to be sent to Rigging Only in Massachusetts.  After researching life lines on various forums I kept seeing this company's name popping up both with favorable pricing and excellent quality.

My original lines were 1/4" plastic coated.  I will be replacing them with 3/16" uncoated 1x19 316 stainless lines and machine swaged fittings.  This is in keeping with current safety best practices.  They also look very cool.  I'll be anxious to get them back, as I'll no doubt have all of the stanchions ready by then.

My final act of boat-buildery for the day was some work on the stanchion backing plates I've built out of 1/4" fiberglass board.  This stuff is almost ipossible to cut, but will do the job very nicely.  I needed to make the non-gate stanchion plates 1/2" narrower to fit properly.  I also needed to adjust the shape of the gate stanchion plates to ensure they'd go in level.  I then pre-drilled the holes, and now all should be ready to mount as soon as I have the over sized bolts they'll require.  That's an upgrade I feel very good about.

The weather continues to look promising for the weekend, so I remain optimistic that I'll be able to get the barrier coat applied soon.  She's going to look incredible!  And once that barrier coat goes on I will reward myself by installing the new Ravat graphics on the stern.