Orange is the New White
Some things are arriving in the mail and others we are making. This weekend we can share a little of both. Our storm jib arrived from Voyager Sails. I like orange, but in this case, it is a requirement that storm jibs are safety orange, so we didn’t even have a choice. It is a svelte 40 square feet, the maximum allowed for Spadefoot. We’ll make a short pennant out of dyneema to attach the tack to the bow fitting. Keeping the sail off the deck A) makes the jib lead angle correct for the jib tracks and B) allows waves to wash under the sail and presumably if we needed a storm jib there would be big waves. With luck we’ll never see this sail again, but it is a requirement to have onboard for Pacific Cup.
Next up is our super hi-tech dodger. It’s not completely finished, but you get the idea. Of course, this time I naturally picked safety orange, because, why not? The dodger is made of two layers of foam camping mats bought at Academy Sports for $10/each, two battens, and the orange sunbrella. Just something simple to keep water from washing down into the companionway.
The final exciting project for the weekend was completing the companionway cover. We find this is a great way to keep water and even moisture from getting down below while making it easy to go in and out of the boat without having to remove hatchboards. Likely we’ll have the bottom hatchboard in most of the time, but it will be easy to flip this cover up onto the companionway hatch and step over the bottom hatch board.
This fat OLD man, and I do mean OLD, thinks you may have a screw loose taking Shearwater all the way to Hawaii, but he does think its neat and wishes you and Chris all the luck in the world. Go get some hardware.
Bee
Hi, when you screwed your snaps into the fiberglass did you use a bedding compound?
Hi Chuck. A couple of things. Spadefoot is carbon and foam, so if we were to put screws into the deck, we would need to drill with an oversize bit, fill with epoxy, and then drill again, before putting the screw in, but in this case the screws for the snaps for the dodger are going into the wooden companionway slider. The snaps for the companionway flap are just stuck on as the flap is never under a load.
That’s interesting. Is it to keep out moisture?
Do you have to drill with an oversize bit and fill in for all hardware like stanchion bases, hand rails, etc?
Chuck, yes. Everything is drilled, filled, and the thru-bolted with backing plates on the top and bottom. I don’t think there are actually any screws into the deck. Everything is thru-bolted.