Part One - Part Two - Part Three - Part Four

Punkin’ Seed got a “flipping cradle” today.

Perhaps, it’s more of a reconstructive surgery rack.  In order to reach all the appropriate body cavities with less-than-nimble hands and wrists; I built a “rolling cage”  around the boat while in the upright position.  Then, with the help of my buddy, Jim, and some mechanical devices, up she went on her side.  The plan is, to be able to shift from side to side, top to bottom with the help of a shop crane and chain fall from the ceiling. 

And, when it’s time to reinsert the 75-pound aluminum slab of a centerboard (swing keel, actually) into this little girl, I’ll have a shelf mounted to the cage to allow for in-out fitting sessions.  I imagine there will be several try’s necessary.

And, the main surgical site on the other side is now at belt-level and can accommodate an aging lower back much better than kneeling in a slopey, narrow bilge.

It almost doesn’t seem “sporting” to have both sides of the problem reachable with just about any tool that may be useful.  This “incision site” will be smoothed, bushed, and sealed all the way to the top, for the first time.

The new centerboard trunk will have mating flanges and a captive pivot-pin arrangement to hold the board in place.  Who knows?  It just might work. Maybe even better than the standard approach.  Maybe.

I think she has a chance of recovering just fine.  We’ll see what a few weeks of work can produce.

OK.  Soo, let’s call this belt-and-suspenders, PLUS.  The previous guy hung a magnificent 75 pound, ¾” thick by two thirds of a fathom long aluminum plate swing keel in a really-old quarter ply on mahogany lumber frame.

I guess I know why some of the leaks were so persistent.  So, I brought in the demolition crew, and paid ‘em overtime for working on a weekend.  The old CB trunk got reduced to chunks.  The rest got treated to my new Japanese pull saw, and the ubiquitous angle grinder.

Then, Sam-the-structural-genius and I stood in the shop next to the shards, shattered bits, and residual frames; and we designed a sort of only-one-like-it-in-the-world replacement.  Of course, Sam is from the part of the world that figures honeycomb and precision machining come with the price of lunch.  So, when he left, I sort of worked with the stuff I could lay my hands on.

So, if quarter inch wasn’t, probably, good enough.  How about three-quarters?  And, let’s double that—just in case.  But here’s the genius-part.  Maybe.

This thing is (was?) like just about every centerboard trunk in the world.  It’s gonna’ leak at all the wrong places.  So, I dreamed up a way to not only allow for a thrust bearing and fastener-less pivot pin mount; and figured a way to assemble the trunk in two halves over the swing keel.  It SHOULD not only seal, but come apart to fix it when it don’t.

This is a shot of the bottom “gasketing surface”, with the boat on its side in the “custom rolling cradle.”

And, this one shows—sorta’—the mating flange and multiple stiffeners in the bottom.  It all has to be glassed.

That is, as soon as Chuck the Duck gets back from his pleasure cruise off to Army Hole, and sends me the ‘pox, that is…

Lots of stuff to still mess with, but I actually think I know how to do it.  Well, most of it.  OK.  Some of it.

Punkin’ Seed Progress Report

Well, it’s the second week of April, and the boys and girls down at NOAA weather insist that it won’t likely snow for a couple days yet.  Although, about 3 days ago, there was several inches of new white stuff on the tulips.  Probably my fault.

An honest mistake.  But, still I should own up to the blame, I suppose.  I had already put a boat in the water.  Talk about playing fast and loose with Ol’ Ma nature, huh?  The plan was to take advantage of some promising weather forecast (a pattern is emerging) to do some extended sea trials.  And, some trailer swapping.  Remember playing musical chairs in grade school?  Always one more kid than chairs.  The essence of trailer swapping.

With one boat in the water, I can “simply” lift the other swapee into the air, pull that trailer out, and shove the new trailer under.

Then, if that all works out OK, the plan is to take the now-new trailer down to the boat in the water and un-launch that boat.  Piece a’ cake.  Sometimes.  But, not so much, when the first trailer needs to have tires and wheels from a third trailer shifted to it, and those tires and wheels moved on in turn to the trailer that is down at the lake waiting to un-launch the boat in the water.  And, so forth. Just a good thing that I have an excellent scheduling department, and those guys have things well in hand.  Unless it snows, that is.

Actually a little snow in April never really hurt anybody.  Except, in this case the boat that was in the water also started to sink.  Well, she probably wouldn’t actually have sunk.  Just started filling up with ice and slush, that then moved from the cockpit under the cabin door and pushed the already-down-bow even lower.

That in itself, wouldn’t have been a real big problem, either.  If it hadn’t also rained real hard, then froze, and then gone back to snowing for a while, before the weather started getting unpleasant for real.  And, one of the things on the check-list for Roughneck, who is the boat undergoing sea trials in this tale of woe, is to install a bilge pump.  Yeah, that would have been a good thing.  And, a higher sill under the door from cockpit to cabin.  Another excellent idea.  Both ideas will get mention at the weekly department head meeting here at the boat shop.  Anyhow.

Things were not going all that well about then.  The “plan” had been to carefully load Roughneck onto what had been Old Salt’s trailer, adjusting things to fit.  Oh, those tires. 

I gave Old Salt away to a good home.  But, I didn’t want to give away her trailer too.  So, Roughneck’s trailer got selected to go to the same good home.  But, Roughneck’s old trailer had Strumpet’s trailer’s brand new trailer tires on its feet at the time.  Brand new, and actually too big for that trailer.  And, the problem was that dang snow.  I really didn’t plan to have a boat sinking during a snowstorm in April. 

So, I called Jim, and sounded even more pathetic than normal.  He agreed to go with me,  down to the lake, and see if between us we could get things straightened out.  I’d already been there earlier, but decided the chances of my going swimming, off those snow-covered docks, were a bigger consideration than the boat actually sinking right then and there.  But, as the day wore on, things began to look more like the second priority should become the first.  Or, something like that.

Ever do something in a hurry, with not everything quite thought out?  Oh.  Of course not.  Me neither.

Sooooooo, with all that going on, I guess it’s not a big surprise that Roughneck didn’t quite go on the trailer like a hand-in-glove.  In fact, she sailed right on by the winch support that is most of the time responsible for stopping things like that.  She rolled right on past the aft rollers and dropped rather unceremoniously onto the sharp parts and non-rolling support arms.  Not particularly pretty.

But, I suppose that didn’t actually matter, just then.  Seems that I had broken the trailer-side flat plug in the melee.  And,  while I knew right where the trailer license plate was.  That didn’t include anyplace I was going to lay my hands on within about 15 miles.  So, an hour-or-so quickly morphed into a couple-day evolution.  Sort of a crimp on progress.

Speaking of progress.  Well, this did in fact start out to be a report of progress on the current rather complete overhaul of Punkin’ Seed.  This picture shows one of the more-recent low points in that odyssey.

And, we really do, look a lot better than this right now.  But, perhaps I’ll tell you about that later.

Thanks for askin’ anyway…

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