CS-20 MK1 # 36: "Gavia" Restoration

[Andy B]

I'm happy to report that I got all my painting done and hardware back on the boat and enjoyed a great time sailing on our vacation last week.

 

My next project is the thwart, with the mizzen mast coming through it.  Last fall I re-glued the mizzen mast base and that is holding up well.  The thwart is a little loose, however, you can hear it creak when you tack and the mast moves.

 

My thwart is not like the design shown on @Alan Stewart's video of the CS-15 construction.  Mine is a solid piece of wood fastened on the lateral edges to stringers (not the boat stringers) along the edge of the seats.  It's fastened by hardware, four bolts on each edge and four screws into the top of the centerboard trunk.  Some of the bolts have nuts on the bottom side of the thwart, some don't (likely hence the movement of the thwart).

 

My question is whether it's good enough to just install new bolts, as opposed to trying to sand down the edge surfaces to use epoxy.  My hunch is to at least try the bolts first, since it is easier and has apparently worked for two decades, but I'd love other opinions.

[Don Silsbe]

For now, I’d just screw it down with screws and nylock nuts.  Let’s discuss it at the MI messabout.  I suggest maybe a new thwart with a new attachment method.  You could take the opportunity to consider using other configurations for your control lines.

[Andy B]

Here's a small weekend project that I attempted:  supports for boat cover battens.

As background, now that the deck is painted, the boat is certainly sail-able.  My attention is now to make trailering and storage as easy and safe as possible.  

I use a generic cover for my boat.  I don't trailer with it on.  It's not a great fit but it works.  A problem, however, is water pooling on the cover in spots.  I've seen battens going across the boat that arch up and make enough of a curve that water runs off the cover.  The battens fit into slots screwed into the coaming or elsewhere on the boat.  However, both my eyes and my back didn't want six more things screwed into the coaming.  So I thought up the idea of a bracket that would fit over the coaming and hold the bracket.  

Below is my attempt.  They sort of work--what I didn't account for is the angle of the coaming twists the batten.  I cut the battens on an angle but they still twist, wanting to lift the bracket up off the coaming and shoot it off onto the driveway.  It's better when the weight of the cover is on it.

So far it's okay--what might be simpler and better is just raising the masts and letting the cover drape down from there.

[Andy B]

[Hirilonde]

This may sound silly, but if you punch a hole in your cover at the low poit where the puddle forms, it will drain into the boat, and then out through the Elvstrom bailer.  UV is the enemy, a fresh water rinse during rains doesn't hurt.

[Andy B]

13 hours ago, Hirilonde said:

This may sound silly, but if you punch a hole in your cover at the low poit where the puddle forms, it will drain into the boat, and then out through the Elvstrom bailer.  UV is the enemy, a fresh water rinse during rains doesn't hurt.

Interesting, I never thought of that.  In my current setup there's a few things on the floor of the boat that I woul dneed to find a different place for to keep dry, and of course there's the problem of the bailer is only on one side of the centerboard, so there'd be a pool of water on that side.  But I could flip my whole thinking around--go concave instead of convex, with the low point above the drain.