Today, the weatherman says we’ll have a heat wave so we
decided to get to work on the boat early and stop before we start to bake
around 11 and to go back late in the afternoon, when the worst of the heat is
over. We’ll do “office work” in between.
We took an appointment with Chantal, the owner of the yard,
to raise the boat and re-block it on the 22nd, because it’s so heavy
it sinks into the loose gravel. We’ll
grab the occasion to get the dagger board out from under the boat, to prepare it
to get sand blasted. Since we don’t have
the original drawings of the boat, that date’s a Damocles sword over our head: we have no idea how the board is setup in
there and nor do we know how to disassemble it.
So this morning after tea we got ourselves to the boat to scratch our…
heads. Our doubts are mostly centered on
the pivot axis of the board. Do we need
to take it out after they lift the boat or should we get it out now, maybe just
loosen it? That board is a dagger, not a
keel so it doesn’t have any ballast in it but still, at 7 foot long, it weighs
in at around 400lbs; Better be careful
so it doesn’t fall on its side when they raise the boat.
Well
it was once again much simpler than anticipated. First we took weight off the axis by using a car
jack under the board, (more specifically
Lucie’s Hyundai Accent car jack. Don’t
worry Lucie, it’s rated at 3000lbs).
Then after unscrewing entirely what I thought might be the axis but was
in fact the board brake, we finally realized that the big cylinder which we had
access to from both sides was actually the axis. Moreover, it came out almost by itself with
the gentlest of hammer hits. That is one
pin: It’s got to have 4 inches in
diameter and weight 20lbs.
The board is now free to drop under the boat.
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