29th July

Ticking along.  Been fiddling with the mast.  Bought some conduit  and cut all 7 meters length with a hacksaw blade held in my hand to split the tube and slide up the inside of the mast.

Was a bit of a mission but managed to push all the bits through. Conduit was in 3m lengths so 2 lenghts and a bit.  I dont want the wiring inside the mast to flop about so fitted 16mm diameter tube on the internal  aluminum T.  It is just wide enough to fit the VHF coax and a 3 core cable for the tricolour and anchor light. (common negative).  Bought a Navipro Led Tricolour and Anchor light.  Was expensive but very light in weight and low consumption. 1.2 watts so easy on the battery.

It is required by the Atlantic Challenge to have the mast foam filled.  I made a template and dug out my hot wire foam cutter.

It worked well and cut lots of 50mm thick sections to push down the inside of the mast.  Each piece displaces 250ml (I measured) so 4 bits gives 1kg of buoyancy.  The problem is that I can only push these tightly fitting foam pieces down for 2 meters to the forestay fitting as there are a bunch of pop rivets in the area.  

This gives about 10kg buoyancy in the top 2 meters of the mast and I can push up about another 20kg of buoyancy of looser fitting foam from the bottom.  That should give the whole mast positive foam  buoyancy.  I will weight the mast when finished to check.

Foam has been pushed in and the wires fed through the conduit.  Next job is to make the VHF antennae and Windex mount.  I tested the VHF antennae  (an old one I had) and the SWR was 1.2 on channel 16 and 1.6 on AIS frequency (around 162MHZ) with 50 ohms impedance.  That is good for those that understand that stuff.  I was listening to marina traffic from my home on the other side of the island with the antennae on a table outside my workshop.

A little bird told me my sails are on Faial.  Fingers crossed.

 25 th July

A few hours in the workshop.  Sails missing so taking a guess for the masthead halyard block hoist.  Not too complicated as not going for a boom topping lift halyard.  Too many strings from the top of the mast are a pain in the ass.  A topping lift could be a spare main halyard in a push though.

Going to try make one of these new fangled boom kicking strap support lift gismos.   (Im getting old but the new wipper snappers have some good ideas)

The last of the holes drilled through the deck for the handrails.  Need to buy  8 longer bolts for the center line fixings as they go through  2 layers of deck ply along the centreline.

Next job is to remove all the work I have done and epoxy seal all the through holes drilled to seal the ply edges and can then finally fix it all into position.

Launch date is finalized !!!!!  It will be on the First.  ....... (opportunity)

 24th July

Done some work on the mast but waiting for the sails to arrive to do the masthead.  All prepared for hoisting and setting up sheeting points and deck cleats for halyards and reefing lines etc.  Sails going on a mystery tour of the Atlantic according to the tracking.  GLS seems to mix up the Atlantic Islands and my sails are sitting in Madeira as apposed to the Azores.

Hand rails and mooring cleats going on.  Still in slow boat building mode but had a great days fishing. Another 10 meals in the freezer and a very happy cat.

19 th July

Font went funny  but so what.  Back from France after too much wine and treats in the food department.  The French are kings when it comes to eating.  

Mast and boom  arrived at shipping agent here in the Azores a few days before my return and they delivered to my home after paying the bill!!  Transport cost was more than the cost of the mast and boom!!!!!  That is one of the pleasures of living in the middle of the Atlantic.

The wrapped up sausage

Package getting peeled

All packaging cleaned off.

Trimet did a very good job of packaging with lots of protection and took ages to remove but...

The mast top got squished by poor transport handling.  Not Trimets fault.  I organized the transport and they did a good job of protection  packing.  I think even God has forgotten where the damage occurred.  How many trucks? Port handling in docks and containers and local warehouses. Mast has already travelled  close to 4000km to get here.  Anyway not a big deal.  Only the top 20cm and managed to straighten it out to almost perfect.  

Mrs Nuts still in France so still in slow boat building mode but started doing mast stuff.

Bolted mast step into position.  Was a lot of prep as the mast maker had made the step from the Setka deck plans and made it at the angle of the deck.  (my fault for bad communication) I had made a mast support pad which was horizontal so had to modify the stainless base to be horizontal.  Lots of cutting, grinding, drilling, passivating and polishing.  Also started making lower shroud and inner forestay attachment points as well as gennaker hallyard mounting for the mast.

Just a picture of the galley cooker with a chopped up aluminum pot as a fiddle fixed in place to hold the kettle in place.  Also have a cooking pot the same diameter.  Just need to find a frying pan to fit for those suicidal Mahi Mahi.  Still need to fabricate some clamps to the left for holding food / coffee mugs etc.

 8th July

Yes! Im still alive.  Taken some time off from Nuts.  Catching up on other jobs and filling the freezer with fish.  Had nice weather here in the Azores so spent some time on the sea and home and fishing boat maintenance. Off to France tomorrow for a family reunion and some nice boulangerie experiences.

I did a few small jobs on Nuts though.  

Made a bunch of hand rails.  Using up my precious teak.  All ready for mounting when back from France.  Also did a bit more electrical work inside (nothing worth a picture) and cooker got its fiddle. 

Hopefully can start work on the rig and deck fittings when I get back home towards the end of next week.

Next update in 10 days or so.

 27th June

Slow news day.

Registration mounted on  transom.  You can see a small strip on the top STBD side which is a stainless steel engraved strip with the hull identification number glued and screwed into position.  There is also a secret engraved aluminum strip glued and hidden inside the boat. Will be hard to find.

Boarding ladder will be fitted on stbd  side and trolling motor mounting will be on port side.  I have made stabilizing fins for transom mounting but going to do sea trials before fitting. I if I am happy without I wont fit extra stuff on the transom even though transom has been reinforced in the mounting location positions.

Every day Nuts is covered in plastic to go to sleep.  Even though Nuts is inside my workshop the roof is filled with spiders and they SHIT.  They leave little brown bomb splats which are a pain to clean off.

Big box free shipping on Prime from Germany.  200L of polystyrene balls.  Going to be used for "navigation table" base (watch this space)  as well as body fender in rough weather and adds an extra 200kg buoyancy which can be shoved wherever it is needed.  Got to pick my friend Jeff 's brain. (It is all his fault I ordered this!)  Should have close to 1000kg closed cell buoyancy built into the hull so if the shit hits the fan might get a bit wet but shouldnt sink.

Also spliced up 2 tempory  6mm Chineema shrouds with Brummel loops on each end to hold up the mast  in position to measure the lengths for the stainless crimping when the mast arrives. I plan to have a fixed forestay without a bottlescrew so will need  take some carefull measurment.   I will prepare all the rigging in the next days.  Also got a lot of mast bits to cut and weld but going to wait for when it arrives.  

The more work I do the longer the work list gets!!

 22nd June

Not been very good with updates.  There has been progress but slower than normal with not much to see.  

At least Mrs Nuts still has one good working hand but I must open the bottle!!

Mast was wrapped

Then put in a big mobile box

No idea where it is at the moment but hopefully getting closer to Lisbon to catch the ship to the Azores.  Ordered the mast from Trimet in Poland and must say a big thanks to Piotr for his good coms and service.

Been doing electrics

Using different tools for a change (no sandpaper thank God)  but working in difficult to reach places to run wires.  A good thing is I had made provision for running wires during construction so not a huge deal.  Still had to drill some holes though.

VHF, switch panel and battery Ampere Hour Meter in this picture. AIS mounted just above.  Still have to run coax for antennas. Going to have a mast top ant. and one on the transom.  Still have not decided which to use for AIS or VHF radio.  Of course can always swap antenna over.  Hope to tweak AIS antenna for good SWR on its frequency as it is on the top of the marine range. (I have an SWR analyser so can check the impedance and swr for the given frequency)

The interior 12v lights are installed.  Only two. One in the "forepeak" and one above the galley.  LED from Amazon.

Galley / saloon light.  Plenty bright enough and draws very little current.

Compass light also connected.  The consumption was 0.7A with one light on inside, the vhf on, the AIS connected but not transmitting and the compass light on.  The VHF on standby was the most thirsty.

Ordered registration number stickers to be mounted on the transom and been experimenting with engraving stainless steel to make the hull identification plate to be mounted on the transom as well as on aluminum to engrave and hide somewhere inside.

Next job is to tidy up wires and run a few more.  Still got to run wiring for solar panels (2X25W) 

 and connect to controller (Victron MPPT). Also going to run a connection for a tiller pilot to use when not on the Atlantic Challenge).  

All these small jobs take forever to do with nothing to show.  I will try to update more often even if not much to see.  Getting closer to launch now.  Narwal promised to post sails 1st July.  I hope to get mast up in July and can then finalize deck fittings and go for a splash.