Hello all. Here are a couple of pictures of my Vacationer at present; have 2 coats of undercoat/primer on the hull now and have received my custom made stainless steel rudder gudgeons and pintles (just dry fitted in the photo). Also have my other ss pieces - chain plates, goose neck fittings. I can see a light at the end of the boatramp!!!
Cheers
Great to see the progress! If the temperature here would get above 45 F, I could get back to work too!
Dave
Looking good. I love those rudder fittings. Beats my 1 1/4" eyebolts =)
Summer's coming fast - when are you planning your launch?
Thanks guys, yes it's good to see some movement in the process! The ss fittings were made up by a local firm; I drew up my own versions of the plan drawings and I'm happy to have made the $500 investment to know I will have a rudder that won't fall off - (well, too easily anyway!) and a goose neck that is good and solid.
I have also made up wooden bowsies (not sure if that's the right term) to support and tension my shrouds as in some vacationer and weekender versions I've seen. Has anyone got any comments on using these highly romanticised 'pulleys' which well designed things called turnbuckles were invented to replace?
Cheers and hope the fire is roaring Dave!!
The pieces you're trying to name are called deadeyes and they were cast aside, in favor of turnbuckles (then called rigging screws) in a matter of minutes. Normally, changes to the industry happen slowly, taking decades to gain acceptance, but turnbuckles worked so much better and offered so much less windage, that they swept through the yachting world over night and even won over the hard core diehards, which never seem to want to change.
A few have used shrouds here, which need to be tensioned often for safety and good performance. A turnbuckle setup needs to be tuned maybe once a year, possibly less often. Deadeyes look cool, but that's about it.
When I set my weekender up at the landing, I always have to loosen the shrouds or I can't hook the forestay without a coffin hoist. Because of that I always have to loosen the deadeyes after a sail also. Maybe I am doing something wrong. I have heard of guys that don't fiddle with tensioning the shrouds, but then how do they get good tension on the forestay? I would love to leave my shrouds alone when setting up. What am I missing? I have sailed my weekender in wind enough to spread my eyebolts on the mast, but the deadeyes held firm.Â
I have seen turnbuckles loosen up to where they weren't doing anything. If I were to use them, I would make sure to lock them down tight. Anyway, deadeyes do have their issues. It takes a fair amount of muscle or flab ( I have both) to tension them, they need maintenance like any wood part, and it doesn't hurt to replace the lacing every year. You should understand that all this is coming from a guy that made all the rope stropped blocks out of wood for his boat also, so consider the source.
Al
Deadeyes with natural fiber ropes could not hold a candle to a rigging screw of the time, but how are things today? We have ropes that stretch less than a decent steel wire, and other modern inventions. Windage might still be an issue, but for some, worth it for the salty looks. How would a modern deadeye setup look like? And how would it perform?
I have deadeyes AND turnbuckles! Salty look, but easy to tension properly
Though spectra line does have much less then other line types, it's still not less stretchy then standard 7x19 rigging wire (the stretchiest). If you step down from spectra line you can triple and quadruple (or much more) the stretch factor.