Little jobs roundup, 2017-09

Here’s a roundup of small jobs done on Tammy Norie in late August and early September.

When comparing Tammy Norie and Emmelène, I suggested we drop Tammy’s mast and lift the mast stub. When we went to remove the retaining bolt, it snapped!

https://flic.kr/p/WTVrFA

I cut a new bolt from stainless steel studding.

I suspect the wear on the bolt was the main cause of the clonking sound that’s been gradually building up when Tammy is in rough water. This also gave us a good chance to look at the rather inadequate mast foot bracket.

This is due for an upgrade later when I improve the mast step.

My engine starter cord snapped at an inconvenient moment on the way in to Portsmouth Harbor. I’d only just replaced it. This time I noticed that the cord was slightly melted. Moral: don’t use melty synthetic string for your engine starter. Use cord specifically designed for the job.

Replaced the incandescent bulb in my trusty utility lamp with a domestic halogen-replacement LED that I just happened to have knocking around. Half the power and a great deal brighter — possibly too bright.

Replaced the coaxial connectors on my log and depth instrument. They were being to corrode and the log was unreliable. I had to dismantle the instrument and desolder the old connectors from the circuit board. I bought a pack of 10 replacement connectors from eBay so that should keep me going. NASA Marine were very helpful.

I am finding my new Iroda SolderPro 70 butane soldering iron very useful.

While I was doing that I fixed another problem with the instrument: it’s too bright at night. I couldn’t find a way to do this electronically, but I discovered that the backlight and the display are physically separate. I cut a piece of paper to slip between them and the display is much less dazzling.

The charts in my Solent chart pack were getting dog-eared, so I’ve edged them all with Scotch Magic tape, which is nearly invisible and takes pencil marks.

The bow light hack finally failed after two years. The LED replacement bulb fell apart somewhere inside so that the terminals no longer connect. This is probably because it was not designed to be shaken about on the bow of a small boat. I ordered a couple of made-for-purpose replacements, one of which is now in the bow. The other is a spare for either bow or stern.

My mast lift is now a spare halyard. The mast lift is a loop holds the forward part of the sail bundle when the sail is reefed or lowered. Practical Junk Rig (fig. 3.49) has it as a single line from the mast head.

Practical Junk Rig figure 3.49

I’ve repurposed the enormously long “burgee halyard” that came with Tammy as a spare halyard in it’s place. I’ve felt the need ever since my halyard came off in the Waddenzee. Thanks to Chris Edwards for this idea. (The arrangement below is temporary until I make a new soft shackle.)

I may re-rig it a shown in Practical Junk Rig figure 3.50b, using the spare halyard on one side, allowing me to reef upwards!

Practical Junk Rig figure 3.50b

I found and installed a pair of calibrated quick links for the series drogue. It’s surprisingly hard to find shackles that are rated for load, but these beauties are good for at least 12500N each, more than the weight of the boat, and more than the greatest expected load on the drogue. (The drogue still doesn’t exist, in case you’re looking for it.)

I whipped some rope ends!

I rewired my switch panel using some new terminal blocks and rules: each piece of equipment goes to its own terminal, then switches are wired to terminals using colour-coded jumpers. Much neater, and a model for how I’ll do things when I remake the panel.

Expect more small jobs next month.

Raking the mast

The idea of raking Tammy Norie’s mast forward first came up when I compared Tammy to Fantail several years ago. As far as I can make out, raking Tammy’s mast will have three advantages:

1. It will help the sail stay out in very light winds — particularly useful when becalmed.
2. It will cause me to rebuild Tammy’s mast step, which is a known weak point.
3. It will shift the centre of effort of the sail forward, improving the balance of the boat and reducing weather helm.

I believe I can achieve about 5° forward rake by moving the mast step aft, pivoting the mast within the cone that forms the partners.

arctan(10cm/118cm) = 4.8° I believe.

This should being the centre of effort of the sail (shown below) forward by about 3.5m × 10cm/118cm = 30cm.

Because nobody has done this on a Coromandel and the future sail plan is unclear, I’ve come up with a scheme to make the rake adjustable.

Firstly, here’s s picture of the existing step. I hope you can see why this is inadequate. It’s been replaced on every other Coromandel I’ve seen!

Here’s a drawing of the mast step that will make raking possible. I’m afraid I’m writing blog articles on my phone recently and so I don’t have my nice diagram software. You will have to make do with a photo of my pencil drawing.

This is basically a rectangular box made of aluminium angle, into which the mast is wedged using hard rubber chocks, and further secured with a retaining pin (to stop the mast wandering or jumping out).

The box is screwed to the laminated wood block that’s already glassed into Tammy’s hull, using large coach screws (hex heads and wood threads).

The mast base can be chocked and pinned at various positions in the box, allowing various angles of rake. Of course this means adjusting the blocks in the mast cone, so it’s not something to do at sea. I tried that (accidentally) once.

To allow for this I need to enlarge the hole in the berth that the mast passes through, making it into a round-ended slot.

The box could be strengthened in various ways, but I already have 6mm gauge aluminium angle — double the gauge of the mast itself — so it ought to be fine.

Incidentally, the reason that the angle turns inwards is that it’s very hard to get tool access to this area of the boat. I don’t think I will be able to make pilot holes for the coach screws except through the slot for the mast. Having the screws inside also makes them possible to inspect through that same slot.

I hope this will all become a lot clearer when I start doing the work and have some photographs.

In the meantime, is be very interested in criticism or ideas for improvement.

Sister Rings

When I first rigged up the Hebridean wind vane self-steering, I used some hard anodized aluminium rings instead of blocks to run the tiller control lines. These rings are mechanically simple and very slippery, and they’ve done a great job. A couple of years ago I started to think about where else I could apply them.

Tammy Norie has “sister blocks” in the main sheet to evenly distribute load across battens. These are simply two blocks attached back-to-back.

There’s nothing wrong with this, and Tammy’s are in good condition, but I wondered if something simpler and lighter could be made from anodized rings. And here it is: the “sister rings”!

This is such a simple idea that I can’t believe someone hasn’t done it before. It’s just two rings joined together with a double eye splice. In this case, two 16mm Barton “high load eyes” joined with Dyneema.

This is a simple, lightweight, cheap, strong, and easy-to-make alternative to sister blocks, with comparable friction, unlike the traditional wooden euphroe.

To form the splice using single-braided line (such as Dyneema), form two eyes like this. Note that the long end passes through the short end (the opposite to what you might expect) and this involves passing one of the eyes through the braid.

Once you have the rings in place and have tightened the eyes, trim and tuck the ends inside the braid between the rings, fixing the eyes.

I use Selma fids for this kind of splicing.

I’m experimenting with using these rings to replace blocks in other parts of the rigging. It’s easy to carry rings and line and make up or repair things that you need on board, and that very much fits with my philosophy for Tammy Norie!