While it’s been a while since I last reported on Fly progress here, things have still been happening and I’ve been saving up photos for a report. I’d planned to keep all the mast step rebuild pics for a complete account of that, but have decided just to publish anyway because I wanted to get something out. So what you see here might also include progress with the galley, water tank and seacock renovation, but it’s mostly about the not-quite-finished mast step (which should never sink into the deck again).
This mast step has been a recurring problem. When I bought Fly nearly 20 years ago, she was fitted with the wrong mast base, which turned out to be a keel-step fitting for a larger (?) section. So I replaced that with the right plate, which subsequently bent and dished into the deck. So I repaired what voids I could find and fitted another (presumably setting it on the visible bed of epoxy and microfibres as part of the cure), which went the same way. While it was probably stable enough where it sat and wasn’t going to dish any further, it was both ugly and still causing concern, so this time we set about eliminating voids and suspect material on a more comprehensive basis before starting to rebuild the whole thing solidly:
And that’s basically how it stands now, with the plinth nearly ready for flattening/levelling and stripping/repainting, but needing one more epoxy day first. But this is autumn in Lochaber, with Lochaber autumn weather, so sporadic work on the mast step is necessarily interspersed with other ‘inside’ jobs like working on the galley (note the newly-refitted sink etc.), water tank (inspection hatch and skin fittings done), seacock renovation (these things were both solid green and practically welded together with crud!) and chart table refitting (sorry, no photos just now, but that’s also looking good):
Should hopefully have more to report soon with wood cut today to make galley shelf edges, chart table support block, helmsman’s foot rests etc. and orders looming for new heads and electrics switch panels, so watch this space?