December 28, 2005

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rippin’ out

Well, wowee… really getting into ol’ Centey this week. Yesterday i gave the cabin the first of what i guess will be many cleanings/sortings. i emptied out each of the salon/gally/nav station lockers in turn, eventually filling a large black garbage back with junk. Everything that looked vaguely useful got sorted back into lockers; one for sandpaper, one for epoxy, misc. handtools, important papers, linens, cleaning supplies, dishes, etc.
i also used up two good Scotchbrite sponge pads giving the salon cabin a burly cleaning with Pine-Sol. With 90% of the mildew and random watermarks now gone, the interior really looks great! i even got into scrubbing the turn of the bilge and cabin sole; this will need more work, but at least i’ve gotten rid of the slimey remnants of the “moldy pond scum mat” i first saw floating above the floorboards when i first saw the boat last year. No fun to walk on!
Yesterday afternoon, Simba Paul and i tossed out all the bags of sails and spread them out on a nearby grassy field for an inspection. Lots of sails! There are two mains: a roachy, battened, slab-reefing main; and a slightly-hollowed-leech roller-reefing main. The latter looks like the original (and is dated as such). There are four jibs: a mitre-cut storm jib of about >100SqF; a just-lapping working jib; a fair-condition 120-130 jib; and lastly, a mammoth lightwweight 150. Rounding out the collection is a wire-luff hankless tallboy, and a whacking spinnaker. The last is a neat piece; mitre-cut head and cross-cut body and foot, done in alternating horizontal stripes of red and butter-yellow.
The hanks on all the sails are pretty much shot. The large main needs new leech tabling and a new clew ring. Three of the jibs should really have new fibre leechcords put in to replace the (rusting in places) wire ones. The larger jibs could also all go for ne corner rings. The spinnaker is pristine, except for one small tear in a clew reinforcing patch. Shape-wise, the stormjib and small main are the best-looking sails (probably the least used/abused). Otherwise, the sails are pretty baggy.
What do do with the sails depends much on whether i go with a furler or not. There’s plenty of decent-shape used furling sails around here, in at least good enough hsape to be saved by a re-cut. In the meantime, i have enough hank-on canvas to at least get out there!
Today i tore into the engine bay. i got all the front-mounted accesories off the engine, as well as all the external plumbing, wiring, fuel-lines, etc. i got the front engine-mounts apart… weird hard-mount contraptions, likely put in to get the gargantuan engine to sit low enough to fit. The proper rubber-mount rear mounts where too rusted to wrench on, but tyhen again, i think they’ll just break off once i start winching the engine around.
The silly electro-hydraulic transmission had some queer hardware attaching it to the shaft; of the two large bolts, i got one out and broke the head off the other. At any rate, it’s now loose enough to come apart.
i also cleaned out the aft stb. cockpit locker and the lazarette. These contain the three (dead) batteries; i’m debating whether to try to salvage any/all of the existing mains wiring, or just start over. i’ve already given up on the engine harness, gleefully clipping and cutting wirs and hoses wherever they baulk me. Most of the cabin wiring is in decent shape; i’ll trace it out and double-check it all, but in that dept. i’m not going to “fix what ain’t broke”.
Onward!