There are so few Tartan 42 owners around, I believe only 30 to be specific, that we depend on each other heavily for the exchange of ideas, pictures, and troubleshooting. When we were setting up Kintala we emailed several owners to get the dimensions and photos of various mods they had installed, including our nav seat / storage locker. So when a fellow Tartan 42 owner contacted us for more details on our Cape Horn self steering installation, I was only too happy to comply. Since I had been asked about the install before, I decided to do a comprehensive post of the installation on our Boat Notebook tab in the nav bar above. It was something I had been intending to do, but never got around to it, and now I had the necessary motivation. The holidays got in the way, as did visits with friends, but yesterday seemed the right time to gather the information and do the post.
I confess to having slacked in the progress-photo-taking during the actual installation. We were working on several projects at the same time and progress slipped by without documentation. In addition, the area in which the underdeck components of the self steering are located is unbelievably tight. So tight, in fact, that my claustrophobia does not permit me to get in to take pictures of where Tim got wedged to do the work. I emptied out the lazarette, which is our access to the area under the cockpit where most of the components are located, and took what pictures I could get with my arms extended in the tiny space but without actually doing the kid's-head-stuck-in-the-railing thing. While taking the pictures I noticed that the control lines for the wind vane were chafing and one of them was worn nearly through. I had Tim check it out and, as he was preparing to climb out of the lazarette, he noticed that the wooden ledge that holds the removable bottom boards of the locker had cracked at the fiberglass and was falling down, probably due to the excessive amount of stuff we always have to stuff in there since it's our only storage area for things like lines, fenders, dinghy pumps, and the rest of the paraphernalia necessary to operate a cruising boat. Tools and hardware and spare bits of boards were procured from various recesses and the repair commenced. Once the ledge was repaired, he attempted to reinstall the bottom boards only to discover that somewhere along the way a previous owner discovered that the ledge was sagging (preventing the proper installation of the bottom boards), and rather than repair the ledge - you guessed it - they cut the boards. Now, with the ledge repaired, the boards were too short. More bits, pieces, and tools, and the board was extended to fit. On completion of the repair, it was also noticed the the water leak we've been trying to track down for months happened to be a loose hose clamp on the water heater (located at the bottom of this particular lazarette) so that was fixed as well.
It is the way of boat projects. One small project always leads to finding more that need taken care of. So Michael, thanks for your patience. In the next few days you should see the project post appear in the Boat Notebook area of the blog. Getting it done should be much easier since I'm not listening to the water pump run and wondering where the leak is. But I do need to figure out how to get that blasted song out of my head ♫♫♫
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