Opua: rain and progress
Opua: rain and progress
Yesterday I undid many, many difficult to reach nuts on obstinate bolts, above deck and below. When I thought I had removed them all, the mainsheet traveler bridge remained solidly in place, so I concluded, correctly, that it was epoxied as well as bolted.
I usually wake frequently during the night. Every time I did so last night my mind resumed considering alternate plans for removing the bridge. Plan one was not subtle. I would try with a hammer and chisel, if I had one on GANNET—I don’t and used a big screw driver instead—to separate the main part of the bridge from wood supports to which it had been bolted and which themselves had been bolted through the sides of the cockpit. If that didn’t work, there was going to be a lot of slow and unpleasant hand sawing. Fortunately, it did. Whacking things with a hammer is not often good advice, but sometimes it works, particularly if you don’t need to preserve what you are whacking, and generally it is satisfying.
With the ends loose, I still had the center support tube which passed through the cockpit sole to disengage. In it I found four small screws that I had overlooked yesterday and a plastic collar that gave way to a Dremel tool whose cord just barely reached. A fitting riveted below deck proved unremovable, but finally I was able to push the tube down into the cabin rather than pull it up into the cockpit.
In this photo the removed bridge is at an angle, the center tube and one of the side support blocks beneath it.
At the moment it is raining and I’m through for the day.
Sunday, September 20, 2015