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Okay so we finished up in the dark --- at least it was cool! Miranda came out of her boat shed today after an seven month rehab. Tomorrow we rig her in the yard and Saturday she splashes in Lake Hartwell.
There are still lots of little things left to do -- like remove the tape on the bootstripe where I did some touch up work and the bottom paint under the aft poppet.
Our welder did a fabulous job turning the trailer into a real sailboat trailer. She spent two days at the house welding with the boat in place to insure the proper placement of the supports. The trailer has new tires and will get new bearings before we head up to MA next week.
Keep your fingers crossed for nice weather this weekend. We have to haul Ariel (our SS23) first and then launch Miranda as we only have access to one slip. Rigging the Typhoon should be a lot simpler than stepping Ariel's mast (a 3 hour production).
When we went to rig her in the yard today, the lower and upper shrouds are at least 1 1/2" too short. The cabin top was raised about 4" to what is supposed to be the original height (there is no longer a moat around the cabin top). The PO must have replaced his standing rigging to accomodate the lower mast position.
Anyone ever swaged their own fittings at West Marine before? We were thinking of cutting the uppers to make them lowers and replacing the lowers. Rigging shops just don't exist in NE Georgia so using a local guy just isn't an option.
Any thoughts?
Bly
P.S. The only saving grace (having seen all of the horrible, glaring, disasterous flaws in my deck job in the bright sunshine) of the day was my husband saying how great the boat looked. Every once in a while he says just the right thing!
Why not use Sta-Lok or Norseman terminals to make up your new wires? These are excellent, and are not hard to do. If you follow the directions, the terminal is just as strong or stronger than a professionally swaged terminal, and I'd say would be far, far superior to self-swaged fittings from West Marine. There is only about one tricky part to the process--that of ensuring that the wire strands are properly arranged around the cone. But it's not that challenging. Installing mechanical terminals is an excellent skill to add to your repetoire.
Here are a couple links to my descriptions of assembling Sta-Loks and Norseman terminals:
