Kismet on Lake Victoria

We were fortunate that we were able to meet with Peter from the Trailer Sailer Place forum while in Paynesville. Peter and crew motored out to meet us and took some pictures (unbeknownst to us) while we were sailing.

That slack near the foot of the main sail, I found later to be caused by the way the main halyard cheek block (pulley at the top of the mast) had been riveted on. Two of the four rivets are within a few millimetres of the sail track preventing the bolt rope from sliding up further. To Be Fixed...

(Later edit: I am now sure it's NOT the rivets - just the bolt rope getting stuck in the mast track. I've purchased some McLube dry silicone spray. I'll clean the slot then lube it - and the main next time it's up.)
(Later, later edit: The McLube fixed the main going all the way up the slot.)

Preliminary checkout and To Do List

Once home and the family and I had checked out the boat, I tarped it up (I had measured the tarpaulin size previously) and waited for the weekend.

On the weekend, Don, a Jarcat guru conveniently living 30 minutes away from me, had a look at the Jarcat. With his help and over the next few weeks I compiled the To Do list:

1. Remove the tiller and discard it. It's way too low and can't steer without hitting either the outboard motor or my knees. It's also built like an afterthought.
2. Remove all the rudder gear and remount the rudders 25mm higher for port and 50mm higher  for starboard. This will either be by moving the Pintle mounts on the transom or moving the gudgeons lower on the rudder boxes.
3. Remove the pintles from the transom, align, seal and remount. They are not aligned correctly. To compensate for this, the top pintle mount has been left "loose" - not OK.
4. Seal the rudder box insides. Apparently they should have been fibreglassed during assembly but the cracks where wood joins wood are clearly visible. I will have to dribble thickened epoxy into the joins. (I have already bought Bote-cote epoxy and a sample pack of Aqua-cote paint).
5. Modify the transom so the motor can tilt. After test fitting the motor we found that it could only tilt when put "hard over".
6. Rework the rudder cross arm height to ensure that the motor in its tilted position clears the rudder cross arm.
7. Remove all tracks from the boat and epoxy the fasteners in. They are only sealed with a tiny bit of silicone currently. The front "Tacktrack" has the job of holding the front mast stay -so it's important it doesn't fail. The Jib tracks and main traveller aren't quite as critical but they should be properly installed.
8. Seal front and rear docking cleats and anchor cleat with Sikaflex 291. Currently they are sparingly sealed with silicone and feel weak. I won't epoxy these in as I may well change them for 6" Stainless Steel if I don't think the current 5 1/2" nylon cleats are strong enough.
9. Cut the rearmost trailer roller mounting down. They extend 150mm below the trailer at the moment. I reckon I have put a gouge in a few places (driveways) going to and fro getting the boat ready.
10. Fit Jib blocks and cam cleats. I'll have second Jib blocks near the cabin as per Don's setup.
11. Once the rudders are back on, build a whole new tiller setup.
12. Extend the chainplates (they hold the mast backstays to the boat). They appear to be the right length but there is only one 3/16" bolt holding them inside the hulls. I think the length below the deck was lost to a slightly higher combing above deck. I will drill the hole out to 6mm and add an extension piece of SS (using that bolt) and more epoxied hardwood to hold it in place. Then another 6mm bolt through the hull. I will tension the join to the main chainplate 6mm bolt when fitting the extension SS.

There's more - and more detail - but that's about the crux of it.