Deck Fitting in Place

Old U-Bolt Fitting Removed

Holes Filled With Epoxy

New Holes Drilled

New Piece Below Deck

New Piece Above Deck

Ernesto in His Boat

I went to sleep last night with two of the computers doing maintenance work.  

On the Windows 7 machine I did a complete backup of all of the system and user files to one of the two Seagate external drives.  The size of that backup was 104.5 megabytes. Leaving 777 megabytes still free on the 1 terabyte Seagate drive.  (Each of the Seagates holds “only” 1 TB, not 2 TB as I reported earlier.  One Seagate is labeled “Movies and Music” and the other is “Data”.)  After the backup I produced a “system repair” disc.  I had produced one shortly after purchasing the machine but it would do no harm to have a second one.

On the Windows XP Acer I did a badly needed disc defragmentation.  That took hours to complete but I woke up this morning to find that all had gone well.  This was the first defragmentation that I had ever done on any of my computers.  I used the Windows utility for that task as well as for the backup on the other machine.

Today was a stunningly clear, crisp, and sunny day, which was perfect for performing Stage II of the installation of the deck fitting for the inner forestay.  Stage I was yesterday afternoon when I removed the old U-bolt fitting, cleaned out the holes, and filled them with International 2-part general purpose epoxy filler from a can that I had brought with me from Australia.  The filler hardened nicely overnight and I resumed the work at noon today.

I was betting that the Bosch cordless drill would be able to do the job, even though 4 large holes were to be drilled.  I put the fitting into position, traced one of the holes with a pencil, drilled  a tiny pilot hole, then went below to make sure that there would be no complications.  I then drilled a lightly larger hole then used the 3/8” drill for the final hole.   I fitted the piece on with the bolt through the deck then traced out the diagonal hole and repeated the drilling sequence.  With the piece in place with two bolts I then marked out the remaining 2 holes and drilled them concurrently.  I had to swap batteries but the drill did the job well.  That drill has been one of the most useful tools on this boat.  The deck, by the way, is 15 mm thick in that section.

The next bet was that I could figure out a way to hold the wrench on the bolt head topside while I tightened the nut below deck.  Fortunately the electric windlass forward of the fitting and the bollard cleat aft of the fitting were close enough to stop the circular travel of the wrench.  I placed the hammer on top of the wrench to keep it from jumping out of the head of the bolt and it all worked flawlessly. 

I had a new cartridge of 3M 5200 but was able to find a half-filled smaller tube of the sealant from La Paz that is squeezed out like toothpaste.  I could feel that the sealant was still pliable in the tube but it was hard as a rock around the outlet, so I snipped off a back corner of the tube and squeezed out all of the sealant that I needed. 

Tightening was a slow and methodical process of setting the wrench on one of the bolts, going back below to tighten tighten its nut a bit more, then returning to the deck and moving the wrench to the next bolt to repeat the process.  I must have gone round and round about 10 times until all the bolts were firmly tight.  A lot of 5200 was squeezed out in the process but I cleaned it up using a paint scraper then a cloth saturated with paint thinner to clean around the fitting.  I then cleaned the tools and my hands. 

While I was working I met the owner of the boat next to me, Ernesto.  He speaks very good English and we had a very good conversation.  He has visited Australia 2 or 3 times, stayed at the hotel on Hamilton Island, and scuba dived the Barrier Reef.  He's sailing to Buenos Aires tomorrow, so I met him just in time.  I commented on how good his boat looks and he amazed me when he said that it had been built in 1985.  I told him that he has maintained it very well.   He told me that the beautiful black mast was new, and so was the rigging because last year he had lost his mast.  I asked him to tell me about it.  Last year they were making the relatively short sail from Buenos Aires to Punta del Este in Uruguay.  They had a very bad night of strong winds and high seas.  Their headsail tore so  they had to swap it out and they had other problems.  I think that it was daylight when they got hit by a very large wave, and they heard a bang.  They looked all around, saw no problem, so they kept sailing.  A second big wave hit them and their mast went over.  With it went the headsail and a brand new mainsail, which they could not free from the mast rail.  They cut away the rigging and made for Mar del Plata.  Fortunately, insurance paid for most of the damage and the boat looks great with its new mast and rigging.  That something like that can happen in the River Plate estuary helps explain the anxiety that I had in making my way upwind from east of the Malvinas with my crippled rig.

I told Ernesto that I was hoping to visit Angra south of Rio and his response was “Take me with you.”  He's been there several times and told me that it is a wonderful cruising ground – not a lot of wind but islands everywhere.  He told me about going up the mouth of one of the rivers and enjoying complete solitude.  I asked him about marinas and he named two, one up-market and one that would be more to my liking.  He told me that all of the marinas there would be a safe place to leave the boat while I am visiting the USA. 

It's all starting to fall into place for me, thanks to the information and assistance that I've been getting from the friendly and helpful Argentinians that I've met.  I hope to purchase a Brazilian cruising guide in Buenos Aires. 

While I was preparing this blog Pato showed up.  I was surprised to see him because he's been sick, which explained the headache and weakness that I've been experiencing for the last two days.  His voice was still a bit croaky but he was talking about sailing tomorrow.  We removed my spray dodger and sail cover, and it looks like he'll be able to repair them before he goes overseas on April 10. 

Pato told me that the rigging team is fairly booked up but that they may be able to do the job in late April.  In a week I'll try to get a more precise estimate from them so that I can plan the touring with Brenda because I must be present during the re-rigging.

As he was leaving I thanked him for coming to the boat.  I appreciated it because I knew that he wasn't well.