Keel Fitting

We had taken off the keel as part of the required modifications to extend its profile and hopefully gain more lift to help with the boat's performance to windward. The keel attachment is very precise - it has a moulding on top of it which fits precisely in the keel box in the hull with the two primary keel bolts extending from the steel structure through the moulding and then into the boat. We were using the boat hoist and the challenge was to align the keel and the keel box precisely to allow the M16 bolts to fit through their respective holes.

This proved really difficult because there were no mouldings inside the keel box to help guide the keel into place and the keel box was not tight on the keel moulding until the bolts were in place. Communication was difficult because of the noise of the boat hoist's engine so outside it was extremely hard to hear Andy's shouted instructions from inside the boat.

After some to-ing and fro-ing, the keel was finally in place and we could tighten up the bolts and insert the 2 secondary transverse bolts which prevent the keel box from opening under the load.

The last step in the keel fitting process was to set the tension at the architect's specified value for which I needed a torque wrench. Queue a trip to Ernie's in deepest, darkest Trinity and back in the boatyard, I could tighten the bolts up to the required 200 Nm. This required some effort and I was very glad of the lever provided by the torque wrench to enable me to tighten up the bolts until I got the re-assuring metallic twang from the wrench telling me I'd made it to 200 Nm.

Painting by numbers

The Classe Mini rules require that Mini Skippy's number is also painted in a bright colour on the deck. The paint was starting to peel away on the orange numbers and so I wanted to repaint these and I had chosen red instead of orange this time.

I had a bit of a conundrum however because the numbers needed to be non-slip and the standard non-slip paint, Interdeck, doesn't come in red. Luckily, International produce a non-slip additive for their paints and I planned to use this with my chosen red Toplac.

A paint job is all about preparation and so I removed all the flaking paint and gave the deck the deck a light sand however this wasn't easy because the original non-slip was chewing up my sander very quickly. I also thought that if I left some of the original non-slip texture, that would make for a better non-slip surface later.

I taped around the numbers and started painting my Toplac and knew something was wrong. The paint was pulling back from some areas on the numbers as if I had put wax down. I waited for my first coat to dry and thought that maybe the second coat would behave better. But it wasn't to be and the same effect happened.

Not only this but when the paint did dry, the surface wasn't really non-slip despite me adding twice the amount of non-slip additive as directed. There was nothing for it but to sand through completely and start again.

But having seen how the Toplac finish dried with the non-slip additive, I needed something a bit more toothy. After much googling, I found the product I needed, Nautix Grip, a transparent grippy 2-pack finish. Since you can't put 2-pack over single-pack paint, I needed to also find a 2-pack red marine paint. I hadn't made it up, such paint does exist but not really in Jersey and not on my favourite online paint website, "Boatpaint.co.uk" either but I did need to go to France so I planned to buy what I needed when I was over.

And the reason I needed to go to France was because I had an order to pick up from Idbmarine. When we brought the mast down back in March, I had inspected the rigging and noticed a broken strand in one of my shrouds and abrasions to my running backstays. To avoid a catastrophic failure of the rigging, I definitely wanted to replace these cables and so I had ordered them through Idbmarine and now to get them before Idbmarine went on holiday for August, I had to go and pick them up.

I left for France as soon as I had my vaccination certificate and drove down to Concarneau to pick up my cables. This also gave me a great opportunity to stop off in Port La Foret to do some paint shopping - the last time I had visited the Big Ship chandlery had been in the middle of winter and the Port was deserted. This time, it was the start of August and there were people everywhere. Luckily I found a parking spot and even more luckily, I found the paint I needed!

Back in Jersey, I was eager to test out my new paint but I was also keen to do it properly. I needed to be able to draw the numbers again and I didn't have a stencil but I did have an inspiration from arts & crafts as a kid - I used baking paper as tracing paper and before I had completely lost the outline of the old numbers, I traced round them and after sanding back and re-painting the deck white, I traced the numbers back onto the deck.

Taping wasn't easy because of the curves for the 9 and the 6. But I did my best. I was really pleased with how the red paint came out, even though the edges were slightly untidy and since it's 2-pack it should be a lot more durable than the Toplac anyway.

Then came the moment of truth, painting the Nautix Grip. Mixing it I was scared because it looked much more sand coloured than transparent but once I'd rolled it out, it looked alright and where I hadn't put too much on, it dried clear. I was really impressed with how grippy the paint was and again, as a 2-pack product it should be very durable!!

Running Rigging

Since I had taken most of the ropes off the boat before it went into the shed to avoid them getting completely covered in fibreglass dust, it was now time to put them all back. Since many of them had been showing signs of wear and had fluffy covers, I had decided to replace them and had ordered new ropes from Inorope.

Unpacking the parcel was like Christmas but putting all the new ropes on was a job I had underestimated. I thought it would be quick but with all the fittings I had also taken off the boat, there was a lot of work to do to put everything back in its place.

Including changing my constrictors - since the bowspirit braces are some of the most heavily loaded ropes on the boat, I had decided to order 10mm rope for them instead of the 8mm which I had before. This meant that I had to change some parts of the constrictors since the sleeves are designed for the diameter of the rope. This job alone took me an afternoon because the metal cone which holds the constrictor sleeve in place was jammed so tight into the housing that it needed some fairly ungentle persuasion with a hammer and a screwdriver to come out.

Mast cable and rigging

Last on my list of things to complete was re-rigging the mast and I had also decided to take the opportunity to replace the mount for my wind instrument and also to replace the cables running up inside the mast to my wind instrument, nav lights and VHF/AIS antenna.

I started work at the masthead because work up top is far far easier when you're not swinging off a halyard! I quickly realised that my new wind instrument mount wasn't going to fit without an adaptor plate - but fresh out of the shed, I was confident that with a bit of cutting, sanding and drilling, I'd be able to customise one. So that was the first job.

Next came the mount for my new VHF antenna - I had chosen a short coil antenna because with the movement of the boat, the whippy ones, are extremely true to their name and very likely to take out either the windex or the wind instrument. This mount needed to be riveted to the mast so this was a skill I was going to have to learn. I had bought a rivet gun and rivets so in theory I was ready. Although since the bracket was square and the mast profile is radiused, I first tried to bend the bracket to fit the mast profile.

Before I could finally fit the adapter plate and the new antenna, I needed to run the new mast cable. First step was easy, pulling the old cable out with a mousing line. And here I learnt an interesting Mini trick: since there is no cable ducting inside the mast (to save weight), the cable is run inside the cover of a double-braided rope to keep it together and to save it from chafe.

Now I had the old cable out, I wanted to use the cover to run my new cable inside to I had to pull the old cables out from the cover. This was far harder than I thought because the cables had been taped together and the tape was sticking to the cover and generating huge amounts of friction. Eventually with enough blood and sweat, I managed to pull all the cable out.

The next step was to put my new cables inside the cover. Since the sticky tape had caused me such an issue with the old cable, I decided to try taping my new cables together with self-amalgamating tape on the basis that it wouldn't stick to the rope. However, my first problem was that since I was running an extra cable this time, my cable bundle didn't fit inside the old cover. After some head-scratching, I remembered that some of Mini Skippy's mooring lines were braided cover and luckily the cable bundle fit this time. But the struggle wasn't over because I still had to thread the cables all the way through the 11m of cover.

With the cable run through the mast (note to self: make sure the cable passes in front of the spreader bars to keep it away from the halyards), I could now run the cable through the wind instrument mount before re-attaching the masthead unit to the mast. Next job was to make my electrical connections for the wind instrument, the nav light and the VHF antenna.

My next unexpected hiccup came with the wind instrument connector because it has 7 pins but there are only 3 wires. First I had to use my multimeter (in diode mode) to check resistance values across the male pins of the wind instrument itself. I managed to work out that the only pins connected to anything were the three pins across the centre. However, I didn't know which pin was which between, positive, negative and data. I reasoned that I could change the connections at the bottom and there was a ground diagram on the connector for the middle pin so I connected the shield in the middle and the other two cables to the pins on each side. This turned out to be wrong because I had switched the white and the shield but I adjusted for this at the bottom and all was well.

Last thing at the masthead was to install my Windex to give me a visual indicator of the wind direction from the cockpit. I connected the Windex up only to realise that I hadn't left enough space for it to turn around without hitting the VHF antenna so I had to make another fibreglass bracket.

Since we were going to use the South Pier crane to step the mast (and the crane has a nasty box hanging off it where the chain is stored), I decided to take off my wind instrument and Windex and to climb the mast later to mount them

Re-launching

My future co-skipper, Tom was on hand to help with the launch. We were ready and keen to go but the wind was too strong and gusty and so we re-scheduled for a few nights later when it would be calmer.

There was one big challenge left which was to tow the boat from the boatyard to the South Pier crane. I had my towing licence and I now had a van with a tow bar so it was time to put the skills to the test. Mini Skippy sits high on the trailer but her rudders extend down so they are really the bits at risk. Since we had picked an evening, South Pier was not crowded but I had to breathe in a lot as we passed between the cars parked on the quay and the boats blocked up outside South Pier shipyard. Then since we had driven forwards along the quay, I had to turn around and reverse the boat towards the crane. There was space and Tom's guidance was precious in helping to get the van and the trailer where we needed them to be.

With the boat in the right place, it was time to strop up and put her in the water in front of a beautiful sunset.