Maintenance etc update

After weeks of gales Arctic Smoke was finally lifted out of the water on 18th February for her winter maintenance and improvements:

• Log annode
• Depth annode
• Bow chain plate
• Stern chain plates
• Side chain plates
• Self steering gear
• Rudder stuffing box
• Propshaft stuffing box
• Lightning conductor
• Sacrificial annode
• Keel bolts?
• Galley through hull fitting?
• Hull clean
• Earthing strip for HF radio? Perhaps can combine with earth to keel?
• Service sea cocks

Not sure how many of these will actually get done however a start has been made on the chain plates and fitting the self steering gear (a second hand Aries rig). Last Thursday I took the day off and removed the stern ladder and drilled the new holes required to fit the Aries. 

Thanks to Kiwi Chris and Howard work on the chain plates has been progressing over the last few weeks. Chris sourced the bronze plate - he needed to replace his too - and advised on the fabrication. Now have side plates shaped, drilled and quenched, so almost ready for fitting. The quenching is where HOward comes in. Made use of his workshop facilities including a homemade "oven" for holding the plates whilst we heated them with a blow torch. 

The stern plate needs bending and drilling and the bow plate - well until I manage to remove the existing stainless steel one that is embedded in fibreglass I'm not sure  where the holes will be needed.

Chainplates under construction:

Existing bow plate:

Also started playing with my new boat toy - a Yellowbrick tracker. Have set up a separate page on this blog to display Arctic Smoke's latest position. As of today the data is purely test data and the tracker is not on the boat but at home as can be seen!

Unfortunately the verometal antifouling has come off in patches and will need touching up. Also because I wasn't there when the boat was lifted out I'm not sure how bad the growth was nor therefore how effective the anti-fouling was.