26th May

Several small things done in the last few days but nothing major.  Spent this morning on the sea catching trigger fish for the freezer.  Kept the 10 biggest caught in 1 hour and came home to watch F1.  The sea here is full of Atlantic Triggerfish at the moment but only keep what we eat.

Fitted locker doors to forepeak lkrs and galley lkr.  Made small stainless swivel catches to keep them closed.  Took a long time to cut, drill and polish but cost nothing.

First experiment with deck organizers.  Tested with rope pulled under load at an angle and it slides smoothly.  Just used a table saw, drill press and a router using 22mm wide annealed Pom which I cut from a big piece of round bar that I had.  A bit rough on the outsides  but routed holes very smooth.  12mm holes drilled and 9mm half round router bit used.  I left the ends square to drill mounting holes from the top for countersunk bolts but think I will round them off and drill from the bottom and tap a thread.  Delrin is great and strong with tapped threads and there will be no bolts from the top.  Maybe a bit of threaded rod with domed nuts on the inside to protect my head a bit.

Been messing around with a trimtab stock.  It will create drag and slow Nuts down a bit but if it works well I will be happy.  Im not keen to spend hours a day on the helm if I do not have to.  Far prefer to put my feet up and read a book with a nice cup of tea.

This is the start of the mid bearing construction.  It consists of 2 pieces of delrin bolted together with a 10.5mm hole drilled through on the join.  The idea is that I can remove the bearing (which is in two halves) from the shaft once the bellcrank is welded on the top.  The bearing at the moment is 30mm long and I will drill out a part of the length from the bottom (and maybe the top as well) to reduce the friction but needed it this size for strength of mounting.

The mounting on the top of the rudder also has a split delrin bearing with the possibility to remove it for replacement  or modification.  It is also 30mm thick but will be overdrilled from the bottom to leave maybe 10mm or less of bearing surface.  There will be very little force on this bearing surface so it might as well be tiny to reduce friction.  You see 4 holes on the foreward side of the bracket.  There are 6mm nuts welded on the underside of each hole.  These are potential fulcrum points for the bellcrank connection to the windvane.  The position of the fulcrum will determine the amount of feedback to the trimtab.  Lots of experimenting to do but hopefully keeping many options open.  All still very rough but a work in progress!