Two important projects complete (no, not the painting).

Another cold weekend.  Temperatures were in the mid-forties on Saturday with rain coming in during the afternoon.  Although Sunday called for a high in the upper 40’s and sunny, a strong cold wind put the wind chill in the upper 30’s and was most unwelcome.  Winter was warmer than spring has been, and once again we were not able to get any painting done.  With less than three weeks to go, it’s starting to get down to the wire.  However, the forecast for this weekend is starting to look promising, so maybe – just maybe – we can finally start putting the barrier coat on soon.  In the meantime there were plenty of other tasks to accomplish, with one job even more important than painting.

After attaching the backing blocks a few weeks ago, we were finally ready to install four new bronze thruhulls and seacocks from Defender. Although I was grumpy about the painting (or lack thereof), Jeff reminded me that without the thruhulls and seacocks, we weren’t going in the water at all.  Well, technically we could go in the water, but if we splashed Pegu Club without them she would quickly sink.

This was a project that didn’t require hours of research because we had previously installed one new thruhull and seacock on Little Bristol.  We had put our time in last year, so we simply needed to review the steps.

The thruhulls all had to be made shorter so the seacocks could be attached without bottoming out, so we spent the morning measuring the backing blocks and hull, converting fractions and triple checking our math, then carefully marking the thruhull before cutting it.  A few hours later we were ready to install them.

Copious amounts of Sikaflex 291 were placed on the mushroom head of the thruhull and the underside of the seacock, and then I went outside to insert the thruhull and clean up the excess Sikaflex while Jeff dealt with the seacock and inserted the bronze hardware.  Soon enough we were crossing this important project off of the list.  We feel confident that everything went off without a hitch, but we won’t be 100% certain until we confirm that water isn’t pouring in when Pegu Club splashes.  At least they keep her in the slings when she launches until we give the thumbs up!

This really was an excellent upgrade for Pegu Club.  Her previous thruhulls and seacocks were original, they didn’t have backing blocks on them to spread the load, and several of the seacocks were frozen.  We wouldn’t have been able to close them in an emergency, relying solely on a wooden plug.  Not good.  These brand new thruhulls and seacocks will last longer than we will.  Each one has a 1/2″ backing block, and they open and close with ease.  Much better.

The other important project that we took care of this weekend was to install the last chainplate.  If you recall, we were able to install 6 out of 7 chainplates a few weekends ago but were thwarted on the last one because we needed to remove some wet core.  We made quick work in installing the 7th chainplate, and now we have new chainplates to go with the new thruhulls.  We may end up replacing the 8th and final chainplate in the future, but it’s a combination chainplate/anchor roller so it’s going to have to be custom made and will likely be pricy.  My guess is it will cost at least as much as the other seven chainplates combined.  It looks like it’s in great shape so we’re holding off for now.  Like the thruhulls and seacocks, these are items that will likely outlive us and we feel much more comfortable knowing that we’ve replaced them.

It wasn’t all important work this weekend.  We also took care of some fun items.  The third time was a charm for our bathroom sink.  The first one was too small and the second one was too big.  Like Goldilocks, the third sink was just right.  After we insert the drain and hook up the hoses, we’ll have two working sinks on Pegu Club.  Such luxury!

We also installed the potholders on our Origo and put the remaining LED bulbs into our interior and mast fixtures.  Unfortunately, reversing the polarity on the bulkhead lights didn’t solve the problem of our non-working bulbs.  We think it had to do with the hi-low switch on the lamps, so we returned the bulbs to Defender and ordered up two new LED fixtures from Marinebeam.  This probably works out for the best, however, because we were able to get light fixtures with red/white bulbs so now we’ll have some interior red lights for when we’re sailing at night.

Last but not least, we dug deep at the end of a long day on Sunday and patterned our future cockpit cushions (which I’ll write about later).  All in all we made the best of yet another weekend where we were unable to paint.  Two more weekends to go!