asdf38
Hope all is well.
I did find/buy a rudder mounted pintle that will work, from west marine;
SEA SURE Rudder Fittings at West Marine
Product # 11019809
It is wider than the rudder but I should be able to shim it up easily enough.
For the lower existing gudgeon I turned up a shim out of delron. I have a hobby metal lathe in the basement, so no big deal for me.
For the upper gudgeon, two things;
1) I removed the existing one from the boat last fall and drilled out the hole, 1/16'th larger than original. This changed the hole from being oval shaped back to round. I then turned up a delron shim to make up the difference. The rudder has been mounted on the boat and all looks good.
2) My brother in-law has a milling machine so I got my hands on a block of bronze; he is in the process of milling me a new gudgeon to replace the upper one. I will then use the existing/original gudgeon as part of install of the third set. I suspect I won't get to this until the fall; launch date is 3 weekends away.
I plan on placing the 3'rd set as high up as possible, just below the teak block that makes up the rudder head.
pm sent about your gudgeon problems.
As to other projects, I am just about ready to launch, before I do I am re-installing hardware after fixing my deck rot/deck repainting. Including new winches
to replace the original jib and mail sail halyard winches, which were always too small for my liking. As well I am installing a bilge pump and have a final coat of anti-fouling to add to the boat after dealing with my blister issue, some pics just because I can
My L bracket to install my bilge pump. It will be bolted to another L bracket epoxied to the sub bilge floor(bad terminology I know), directly behind the battery. I struggled to come up with a way to "bolt down" the bilge pump to the bilge floor, given I can't reach it by hand. Or with a tool in hand, it is too deep. The L bracket in the pic above is coated in 4 layers of epoxy before painting so it should be water proof and it allows me to remove the pump if needed.
Some blister repair photo's
The hull sealed with epoxy after moisture readings looked good.
The final coat of Interlux 2000
First coat of anti-fouling.
Some deck painting pics;
The deck painting was a great experience, far from perfect but good enough. If/when I do it again I will be working with the boat tarped/sheltered from the sun. The paint, Interlux brightsides, is great but it doesn't like direct sun exposure. I took my cockpit locker hatches home over the winter. The wet wood core was replaced and then the hatches were re-painted. The paint flowed much better in my basement, without sun exposure, good enough that it looks sprayed on. The deck on the boat has an orange peel look to it, live and learn... It looks great when walking around the deck, crawling on all fours it looks more amateur than professional.
Having missed last season, luanch date can't come soon enough. I really like working on boats but not as much as I like sailing them.
John