There was no wind on the weekend of July 15th. And when I say no wind, I mean none. Of course that doesn’t mean that we didn’t head down to the boat anyway. Skipping a weekend would be crazy talk!
So what do we do when there isn’t any wind? Take care of some boat chores of course. First up was to fix an issue with the support under the cabin sole that we had recently discovered. The supporting piece that holds up the sole hatch had sunk down approximately 1/2″, sinking the sole in that general area with it (but only a fraction of an inch). You can see Jeff’s pinkie finger under the trim piece.
The bulkhead wasn’t affected, but we suspected it was the source of a very loud creaking sound when we walked over that area, and we wanted to fix it before it got worse.
After getting some advice from the Bristol Sailboats Facebook page (including from a fellow Bristol 29.9 owner who had made the same repair), we got to work. Jeff used a lever to raise it and inserted some temporary shims to hold it in place so he could drill some new screw holes. It sounds like a quick and easy job, but of course it’s a boat. Our drill was about an inch too long to fit into the available space, so we borrowed one from the club “garage” which gave us about half an inch to spare.
After Jeff drilled pilot holes he successfully drilled in the first screw. Then while he was inserting the second screw the 40 year old wood cracked. Damn. Well that ended up being all for naught. After pondering what to do, we decided to insert plastic shims which we will epoxy into place at a later date. With that job finally done, we next turned our attention to the v-berth.
Adventures on the Club 