Projects

The difference between sailing on other people's boats and owning one's own is, of course, maintenance. Project #1 was replacing the trailer tires, which were dry-rotted, and a couple of nuts and bolts. Overall, the trailer was in decent shape.

Project #2 was replacing the self-bailers and filling the area around them (originally plywood, replaced with foam by a previous owner) with epoxy to be sure water can't get into the foam flotation between the hull and interior. That took quite awhile, since I was working in the winter, with little daylight in the evenings and temperatures often on the cool side for working with epoxy. I had very little previous experience with epoxy work (filled in some carpenter-ant damage on the house with epoxy putty), so it was a Learning Experience. Got a few cracks from trying to do too much at once (note: never do epoxy work when you have dinner reservations), but did not set the boat on fire or anything. The cracking problem means that I suspect the starboard bailer is not as watertight as I would like it to be, and may need additional work.

Project #3 was getting the spinnaker rigged--it had not been used by the last couple owners, and the boat came with a too-short halyard and no sheets or pole lines. This was a little bit complicated as it entailed learning to splice, but I now have a new halyard and sheets (now it's the sheets that are too short) and a topping lift, and a new halyard cleat, and a number.

Project #4 turned out to be getting the forestay replaced, after an incident involving a dock on my first solo sail. This episode also made it clear that the outboard needed work--it worked fine when I bought the boat, but I let it sit too long over the winter, I guess (although I did use stabilizer). Subsequent solo sails have been less memorable.

Project #5 was replacing the spreader brackets, which, like the forestay, I got done professionally (and got some help with the rig tuning at the same time). I went to look over the mast before our first regatta (one of those very organized and prepared types of things you can do when you forgot to put the wind indicator on the last time you stepped the mast) and discovered that one had cracked and the other didn't look too great either.

The outboard has been an ongoing project. I wound up getting this done professionally, out of sheer wimpiness (I was afraid to take off the choke knob, a prerequisite to getting at most of the working parts). The thing was completely out of service all summer while I was making up my mind about this. It worked briefly (although with a tendency to stall at low speeds) and then I managed to do something to the starter. I have now spent more money on repairing the thing than it's worth, so I am disinclined to take it back to the shop. Fortunately, with all this practice, I am now reasonably competent at docking under sail.

The boat was home for the winter from early December until early March. I am thinking about moving the working-on-boat season to August, though, when the weather is better, the days are longer, and there's more OPB sailing available (and not much wind anyway). Projects this year included refinishing all the wood (using Waterlox; previous finish was teak oil, and it looks like there was varnish on some of it at some point), rebedding the deck hardware, and trying to dry out the foam in the transom, which is definitely damp (that's where the thought of moving this to August comes from, mostly--I don't know if there's been a net gain or not, though I have gotten some water out of the boat). I also replaced the base of the mainsheet cleat and final block, which was toast. I attempted to fix up the turning blocks on the boom for the outhaul and reefing line (can't replace them without drilling more holes in the boom), and replaced the outhaul. I also got a new main halyard. Which is to say, I have not yet replaced the sheets and the boom vang (although I probably will replace the jib sheet, which is really too short).

Brought the boat home again for a couple of weeks after the first weekend of series racing--I wasn't real satisfied with the job I did on the bow fitting, and the starboard bailer seems to get water under it somehow. Plus I broke the bail where the boom vang attaches to the boom. Discovered when I went to replace that that the nearest available part had a slightly different hole spacing than the original, but with some help from Jon and his drill press, extra holes were added. Not sure how far I trust the thing, but the boat has a boom vang again. Replaced the rivets for the mainsheet blocks on the boom in case they were also about to go, and the ones for the gooseneck fitting because the boom was sounding like one of those rainsticks by this point. Also replaced a block of wood which had broken off the trailer. And did a bunch of gelcoat work of varying quality. Decided against totally removing the starboard bailer to see what's going on there, because I remember what that fiberglass is like under there (cracked it trying to get the original one off). Removed all screws and drilled a hole next to it, let it drain for a week and a half, replaced screws with new epoxy, stuck some more 4200 around it inside and out. Hope that'll help. Shot some epoxy in the screw holes under the mast base, as the area was looking a little depressed. It came out the centerboard trunk. Fortunately, the centerboard still seems to work.

The big project for 2006 was repairing a nasty gash in Fearless's port side caused by a close encounter with the corner of the rigging dock. It's actually not done yet, but it's watertight and not as rough as all that.

In 2007, Fearless got a new rubrail, with some help from my friend Wolf since that is definitely not a one-person job. I believe 72 rivets were involved, fortunately aluminum. The job took a long time, because I wanted to let the old holes dry out before I sealed them, and it was quite a wet year.