Team Seacats

My rivet gun has died. It has been with me for over three years and set rivets from Cleveland, OH to Key Largo, FL and countless destinations in-between including Virginia Beach, VA, Myrtle Beach, SC, Lake Lanier, GA, Lake Norman, NC, Lakes Hartwell and Keowee, SC, Lake Eustis, FL, Tybee Island, GA, Hollywood, FL, Pensacola and Destin, FL….It has been in service on my Nacra 5.2, Nacra 6.0NA, Nacra F18, and in heavy duress on this I20. As you can see, we have quite a history together and it’s sad to see it go. It did go out in a blaze of glory – setting in excess of 40 stainless steel rivets just in the last several weeks. With the finish line is sight, it dropped just shy of completion when the jaws broke while installing the last Harken pivoting mount…what shall we do with the ol’ gal?

Originally uploaded by Team Seacats.

Looks like we have finalized our t-shirt design for this year!

Two things today just couldn’t stand the pressure. Travis Phillips helped me again this evening to disassemble the rubber snubbers in the rudder system. These snubbers form the pivot between the two rudder arms and the solid tiller bar that connects them. The snubbers on this boat had only about 3/16″ of the rubber material exposed between the aluminum fittings. This results in a lot of extra stress on the rubber – and these have been known to break. Travis found that one of them had cracked nearly in two – it was about to break clean. Good thing we were replacing them! With things apart, we took the aluminum tiller bar into the shop and sawed about 1/2″ off each end so more of the snubber would be exposed in the joint. Then we reassembled the system with new rubber pieces and realigned the rudders (I was erroneous in thinking I didn’t have to do this the other day!). Realigning these canted hulls and rudders when nothing is square was difficult. After several frustrating attempts of measuring, we tipped the boat up stern high and sighted down the hulls aligning the rudders by eye. Then we measured – and lo and behold it was right.

As I indicated yesterday, I tried to tighten up the rivet pin in the cleat swivel this morning at work in a hydraulic press. I lowered the piston on the pin and applied a slight pressure and upon inspection, I didn’t change much. I put it back in and applied a little more pressure and the whole thing flattened like a pancake! It’s mangled and won’t even move so I put in an order for a new replacement from SailMax.biz.

Originally uploaded by Team Seacats.

Tonight I mounted the swivel mount for the halyard cleat on the main beam. I managed to reuse some old holes in the beam that were in good shape (only a slight amount of corrosion). There was a spinlock in this place that was used on a combo tack line / halyard setup but it was near the end of it’s effective life span. These Harken cleats aren’t as sexy but they are very robust and reliable. Like the holes for the swivel mount, I was also able to recycle one other hole on the beam for the eyestrap after some careful manipulation of the shape of the eyestrap. I only had to add one hole for this entire thing (extra holes are bad juju). I still have to mount the tack line swivel sometime soon. I have another swivel mount but it has become a little loose on the swivel. I believe I can tighten up the swivel pivot by putting it in a heavy duty press tomorrow and save $40.

I also finally got the spinnaker bridles sorted out. I’ve tried twice to get the correct length but they keep coming in too long. I took the last pair I received and cut them shorter than needed so I could re-crimp in the thimble and use some high-strength line to adjust the spinnaker pole height on the beach. I don’t have a set of crimpers myself so I borrowed some questionable equipment to make the crimp. I didn’t feel too confident in it so I gave it a test load and one came apart with a “BANG” – that won’t work! So I elected to “punt” and cut the wires a little shorter removing the crimp I just made from both wires. I took them down the road to Mainsail Marine where local boat working expert, Bill Hendrix who is a great catsailor himself, put in a couple of double crimps that look like they’re supposed to. I mounted the pole and set it just below the height it was originally – it looks great.

Originally uploaded by Team Seacats.

Not a whole lot to report this morning. I finished up the port installation on the starboard hull, made plans for mounting the spinnaker tack cleat and the spinnaker halyard cleat (I have to revive a loose Harken swivel first), and sent off a list of new lines we need to be ordered. We have a new spinnaker sheet (3/8″ Samson Apex), a new spinnaker halyard, and tack line (both 1/4″ Excel Racing w/ Dyneema core) on the way. Because we are still running the older design bail for the spinnaker hoist, we elected to not strip the cover from the front of the spinnaker halyard because chafing of the exposed core could become an issue. We could do that later if we address the spinnaker hoist mechanics.

It looks like we might have some rain this evening so it will give me a chance to eye-splice the jib sheet tail and the jib uphaul and/or finalize the Team Seacats T-shirt design so we can send them off to be made.