Back on the rail…

Posted on October 28, 2013 by bernard

I finally had a nice working weekend and with the help of Bob and Derrick, I was able to start some serious work on the railing. The goal is to remove the existing teak railing:

Original toe rail

and put an all aluminum toe rail instead.

The first step was to remove all the wood plugs:

Now the screw is showing under the plug (removed)

and unscrew the rail. The mid-point fairlead is shown here:

Opening a notch to check the fairlead

After removing the whole teak, it was time to do some clean-up, drill some bigger holes, clean everything with acetone and denatured alcohol, put some tape to close the holes and fill the holes with thickened epoxy. All went quite well but we realized that some holes are very hard to reach and we wont be able to screw the to rail…

Thanks again to Bob and Derrick for your help and many thanks to Dianna for loaning Bob to Med Viking!

Long Beach boat show

Posted on October 25, 2013 by bernard

Today, I attended the Strictly Sail Long Beach boat show. I had limited time but I found a nice boom preventer at the Garhauer booth:

A nice preventer

The preventer I bought is the same as the one shown above but in stainless steel. The preventer will be useful for the long downwind runs on the way to Hawaii.

Pacific Offshore Academy II

Posted on October 21, 2013 by bernard

Last Saturday, I attended the second Pacific Offshore Academy.Obviously the BART (Bay Area Transit Authority) was on strike so I had to rent a car to go from the airport to the Richmond Yacht Club were the seminar was held. This ended up to be a less stressful and economical (rent was $13 / day + a lot of taxes) way to go. Because the only flight I could take landed at 8AM, I had plenty of free time before the start of the seminar at 1PM. I had time to visit the Golden State Model Railroad Museum which is close to the Yacht Club.

Subjects were varied and interesting:

Emergency gear
Electric/Power Consumption
Rig Inspection and integrity
Sail Selection
Inspection Considerations

I also got to meet the chief inspector (Sylvia Seaberg) and our “private” inspector Rowena. Apparently the inspectors cannot be bribed so I have to keep working on my safety list!

One of the highlight was to check Tiki Blue owned by Gary Troxel. Gary is the Commodore of RYC. Tiki Blue is a Beneteau 423 that has been in multiple Pacific Cups. The 423 is almost identical to the 411 so it was a good example to follow.

Back at home at 9:45 PM!