Weathered The Storm (and more boat work)

The storm blew through last night.  Lots of rain and wind into the high 30’s but no damage at least around here.  Today was partly cloudy with occasional rain so we couldn’t finish the exterior varnishing, but I have the dorade boxes and some wood frame screens up in the workshop where I can varnish those without threat of rain.

Two other projects:

1. Lisa gave us a couple hard drives with movies and we spent some time downloading them to our drive so we have some “rainy day” entertainment.

2. Winch maintenance.  All the winches need some work, but the big cockpit winches haven’t been overhauled down to the gears in a few years.  It’s very time consuming, detail work, but cleaning out all the old grease and crud helps the winches last longer and work better.  We got the starboard one done.  Tomorrow the port side and maybe a couple others.  Depends on the weather which is supposed to be cloudy with some rain all weekend

The gears were pretty cruddy. I did the rough clean with a toothbrush in mineral spirits and then Ann used polish for the detail clean.

The trick is remembering where all the little gears, bearings and shafts go back together. I lay them on a towel on the deck in the same configuration as they come off.

Here's the brains of the operation. No, not me - the thing in my hand. This has four pawls with little tiny springs that engage the gears and let the winch operate at two different speeds. The trick is not to let the little springs fly out over the side when you're disassembling the thing.

One thought on “Weathered The Storm (and more boat work)

  1. Very important to keep the gears in your wench, er winch, working properly. I have heard that they will pop their springs once in awhile. 🙂

    Glad to hear the storm went through OK. Don’t want any scratches on your new paint work.

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