Pathfinder build, progress report September 2022.
Good morning builders and sailors, I hope you are all well – weekend progress report incoming.
After a highly productive week last time it turned into a much slower one this time and mainly due to heavy, thundery rain showers and lots of wind at times – the mast has stayed under cover all week. One of my main problems here is that the valley is open to the south east and during a wet and windy one rain is driven in under the back of the shelter so it’s even been difficult to work at the transom.
A nice surprise on Monday morning though was a thump on the porch floor when the postie dropped off a box containing 4 pieces of expensive Bronze….the rudder fittings. That meant that I was mainly able to work in the workshop and in between showers to work out the fitting of the rudder and steering gear.
As you can see I had to make some small hardwood spacer blocks to take the transom fittings because the transom doubler board prevented the top pintle from sitting flush on the transom. I also had to cast a pair of epoxy pads on the rudder cheek tops to pad out the top rudder gudgeon and that’s been on and off a few times because somehow I managed to fit it on the cock slightly. It all fits now….even had the rudder blade in as there’s only just enough space for it at the back there….asked my partner to sit and ‘steer’ to see where the tiller ends up. I might make a longer and nicer laminated tiller over the winter with a different shape…..winter project though.
This might be the last progress post for a couple of weeks as we’re about to take a break and then i’m due in court !. Days are getting distinctly shorter now and it looks like being wet and windy for the next couple of weeks so when I am working on the boat it will mostly be small areas of detail until I can get the mast out again.
The link below is to this week’s cruising post which iv’e added because I’m spending some time thinking about setting up the Pathfinder for similar independent 10 day cruises.
https://dirtywetdog.co.uk/2022/09/05/ten-days/
This week’s pictures.
Dirty Wet Dog, the great adventure. 