15 Miscellaneous jobs 2009

Adding a ladder to the bathing bridge

I had to remove the old ladder from the bathing bridge, since the wind rudder is in the way. The  new ladder needs to be a little bit to the side, so that it can be folded down without getting cought in the wind rudder.

I started to drill holes for the ladder, but noted that water came out and that the patch over the old holes prouted out…. I opened up, and found that the foam of the sandwich was full of water.Over the aluminium patches the oxide had mixed with water to a thick substance.

Now I plan to add a small hatch so that I can access the area inside the bridge and I can also make sure the bolts are set tightly so that no water can come in.

Here is the final result

Lightning protection

I am working to install a lighning protection according to this page (in Swedish). The principla is  to build a Faraday’s cage.

I have started to interconnest all the hardware on deck to a cable that runs below deck.

Here is one of the interconnect joints. I use normal wire clams.

A funny situation occured when I removed the front copboard (to mount the windlass). I then found that there were already holes made for cables from around 50cm behind the bulkhead and into the anchor chain box! They had never been used, but came in very handy now!

Next, I will run a wire round the boat under the berths and then interconnect the two loops. This should give me a good cage that will hopefully protect the electronics onboard (and me…)

Checking the steering

The steering is a known weak point on Maxi 95, so I opened up the steering post to have a look. However, there did not appear tol be any major issues! (one of the few places where things were better than they appeared…)

Supporting steel frame over the sprayhood

There is no real good support to hold on  to when going from the cockpit on deck and back again. I ordered a steel support to fix this.

Aft steel arc

Like all long distance sailors, I also wanted an arc in the aft of the boat. Mainly to serve as a platform for the solar panel, but also for antennas and lights. (The solar panel can be rotated and tilted to face the sun)

Extra cleats

Extra cleats are added in the front (for more lines) and middle (for spring lines)

A real lock!

The original lock in the door stops no thief, but my added lock may do it…

Installing an internal autopilot.

I bought a raymarine S1 kit, a ST6000 display unit (seen on the picture above) and a steering motor for mercruiser drives… All on ebay, new and  at a third of the price in Sweden.

New toilet and tank

One of the reasons for being delaied earlier this summer was that the toilet tank was leaking and that the toilet was not installed properly. I put in a new tank, 40l, which fits on the shelf above the batteries under the cockpit. The valve to the leaft goes to the evacuation pump.

I also had time to put in the electric pump,so I have eletric for convenience, with the manual pump as backup. Maybe not so pretty, but these Blake vacuum toilets are said to never get blocked…