January 2, 2018
The weather, both wet and near freezing, has put the kibosh on further fiberglass/epoxy work and painting. Lacking the comfort of a building to house Joule in, and requisite heat that would naturally accompany any proper structure, I spent the day in the shop. I dedicated the time today to fabricating the teak deck pads for the hardware, as well as their backing plates. My goal through this weather pattern is to knock out as many of the smaller, miscellaneous items that I can, so that post-finish paint brightwork and hardware installation will suffer as few delays as possible.
I began by creating the deck pads for the original coach roof cleats. The original deck pads were rectangular pyramids with a truncated top - trapezoids. I chose a slightly different design for the new deck pads: rectangular, to match the foot print of the cleats, but with simple 1/4" round overs along the top perimeter and the corners. After I fabricated the pads, shaped to final dimensions with 40, 80, and 150-grit paper, I marked and drilled for the fasteners.
My next two items to create deck pads for were the mainsheet cam cleat and standup block. For these two pieces of hardware, I chose to replicate their respective base plates - a diamond for the standup block and a circle for the mainsheet cam cleat.
With the deck pads shaped and sanded, I marked and drilled for their eventual fasteners.
I created a deck pad for the aft (poop deck) cleat, and then switched gears to fabricate the backing plates for all hardware that I worked on today: motor mount bracket, coach roof cleats, aft deck cleat, mainsheet standup block, and the mainsheet cam cleat. I used a 1/4" thick G-10 fiberglass board for this purpose, something that I have had hanging around the shop going back to Westsail 32 hull #667. There are two additional backing plates required (for the winch bases), and that will complete this part of Joule's restoration.
Total Time Today: 4 hrs
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