Petestack Blog

Some things have gone wrong! I’ve got perplexing new deck leaks (discovered on Saturday) from things already fixed, and nearly took my finger off with the trolley jack removing the trailer wheels to get the tires replaced when I thought to concentrate my single-day weekend effort on that instead…

It’s maybe not what you think when I was simply pulling an unloaded jack out from a chocked-up trailer and am no way stupid enough to go poking about the weighted jack, but I still somehow managed to trap and half-crush my finger where you see the plywood here and will never make that mistake again:

So I spied some people coming down the street, yelled for help, and was thankful to see Donna and Robert drop their bags and come running even if I subsequently worked out how to free myself (close the valve and pump the jack carefully back up far enough to escape). After which I had deep grooves in my finger for an hour or two and tingling for quite a bit longer, but count myself fortunate to be left with barely a mark now. And I did get the wheels off and trailer chocked securely, which unfinished job was oddly concerning me almost as much as ‘am I going to lose my finger?’ or ‘can I leave the boat like that to get the jack cut off?’ at the time:

The moral is of course to collapse the jack before removing it even under conditions of zero load, but hindsight’s a wonderful thing!

In other news, I’d already finished and fitted the pilot berth filler pieces trialled in my previous post, and am at least pleased with those:

Couldn’t throw myself at Fly quite as planned this May Day holiday weekend after hurting my shoulder on Thursday night (more likely playing manhunt with S1 at Outward Bound than jumping/sliding down the Allt na h-Uamha — aka Laggan gorge — with them!), but one of the less physical things I’ve got done is fitting a stay to the chart table lid. A tricky job with its one and only position defined by needing to hold the lid as high as possible without lifting too far and sit far enough from the hinged edge to clear that corner gusset thing when telescoped into itself, but it’s turned out OK. Had to plug and redrill the pivot hole after drilling it too low first time even after testing with scrap plywood and a Gorilla Tape hinge, then drill the screw holes in the lid from the outside because there was no way I was getting them accurately marked and drilled from the inside, but it works. You might look and think why that position and that angle, but there’s simply no choice when it telescopes rather than folds!

Then, starting to get back on track with less discomfort today, you see the more awkward inner sides of the pilot berth fronts epoxy coated:

I’d got the pilot berth bases back in last Monday evening with Twig, but have been tweaking the fit by cutting teak filler pieces to cover some visible gaps, so will need to unscrew them once more to trim and glue these in. The port one’s needing more obvious treatment at front side and top (yes, I’ve cut a ‘horizontal’ piece as well as the vertical wedges you see):

Whereas the gap on the starboard one’s only the depth of the 12mm ply front, so I haven’t even tried to push my delicate filler wedge right in with the base in place!

We also fitted the new mast base last Monday evening. We got this lined up and holes drilled and tapped perfectly with a line strung along the boat and some measurements, then it settled slightly off as it was tightened down. Both perplexing and annoying (off-centre countersinks in the casting?) when it’s probably the thing I’d have liked to be perfect above all others, but I’ll just have to get over it when we’d done everything right and it’s still within reasonable tolerance: