With launch day close, so much to do! Building our Wooden Sailing Boat (Ep 108)

We're getting closer to being in the water and that means we need to start seriously painting the hull. And that includes our bronze bits here, our gudgeons and pintles. Now everyone's going to cry and the reason I'm talking about this now is as a disclaimer that I'm sorry, they are beautiful bits of bronze but I'm about to paint them in grey paint and you'll never see them again. So just take a moment to marvel and say goodbye. We used copper roves as you remember a few episodes ago to bring all these together. It's really beautiful and it looks great. We thought about keeping it for on show at the Wooden Boat Festival but it'll just add more stress to us at launch time so we're going to paint them unfortunately. They've been good. Yeah, sorry. Now let's see. I need a higher winch handle. Okay team, the winch is dry fitted now. The next phase, now that the winch is dry fitted, is to get the deck switches in and do some electrical work underneath. These are just foot switches we've got. So they're relatively simple. You can use them with your hands in your pockets if you're cold and also watch the anchor while you're doing it. To complement them we obviously have bronze covers because we can't help ourselves. They're very pretty. I just got to work out the best position to put these two switches. We have two up and down and I just need to work out where the up and the down should go relative to sitting, standing, talking, doing everything. So I think I'm just going to have a fiddle. I know you guys are all going to be on the edge of your seat watching this thinking no left, right, up, down and I don't have If here to help me so usually I'd bounce ideas off her but she's away at work. I'm just going to have to commit. I think I'm in line. One, two. Vertically down so that you can kind of stand here and that's just up, down. The other important thing is you have to be able to disengage the winch at the same time so you don't have a handle in the way. Anchors there, press. You can also sit here, hold on to something and go up or down and then as you go down I guess you can then let it go and release it I suppose. Do you want to be further back? I mean you want to be able to spray the anchor to the chain so you want to be able to hose down the chain as you pull it up. The fore stay is going to be here and a sail so you don't want that in the way. Chain's going to be running here. You can go further forward but what's the point of that is you just get pokey and that's not as safe I guess. You want to be fairly safe. Actually I'm dictated by the deck beams anyway. You can't even go that much further down with that one or that one further there for that one. I think from memory this is the front of the deck beam so whatever that is is as far forward as it can go. Click, click. Vertically in line is a bit weird. I kind of like staggering them. Important starboard. Come along, flip it open, press the button Oh this is too hard. I don't think I can do this. Might have to wait for it. I think I'm gonna have to leave that. Wait for it to come. I don't think I can make that decision yet unfortunately. Yep I'm gonna wait. Okay I think we're ready to bed down our Muir VCR 220. This is an anchor windlass with bronze finish. It's very pretty. It's already beginning to tarnish quite a bit actually. It was very shiny when we first got it but it's starting to go where we want. Starting to weather and become a part of the boat. It's located quite close to the bowsprit. The reason for that is the fall of the chain so that as the chain falls into the chain locker it can sort of hopefully direct itself and we don't have to go down there and flake the anchor chain. Yeah so kind of bed this fairing block in. This is huon pine onto the celery top deck and also the deck switches which are bronze finish as well. So this is quite a moment because the next phase will be wiring it up and seeing if it works. So yeah I'll grab some glue and start gooping. Okay time to goop these babies on. Goopy, goopy, goopy. A few lines of defense for water to get in. That's all you're doing essentially of this glue is creating dams to stop water tracking in. One for the motor, one for the chain. Now I'll just put that there so that dribbles straight on the deck. Should hit the tape. This is the hard bit actually getting the winch lined up, windlass lined up with the holes and not getting glue on the keyway. It's a little bit easier than I expected. It's good. Nice. So in a minute I'll go down and tighten up the nuts but while I'm here I'm just going to fasten these bronze foot pedals in. They also have quite a few fastenings. Actually how is that? In our trick with this glue we've learnt the best way is to just let the glue cure and come back and cut it away later. Otherwise it's just too messy. The glue just sort of peels off with the tape once it's cured the next day. So I'm just going to do that. So these are our deck switches. The bronze finish polished. They're beautiful so they'll tarnish. We're having a little bit of a problem working out which one is up and which one is down. So should the front switch be up like bring the anchor up or should the front switch be lower the chain down. Let us know in the comments. We can always swap these around but for now down is front the forward one and up is the back one. Hopefully these holes all line up again. Yep. Oh we can definitely swap them out for bronze screws. Ironically these are the screws supplied but we will be ordering a lot of bronze screws around the boat and one day going around and changing a few because there's a lot of um yeah there's a lot of screws we don't like the color of. I'll just put the cap on that one. Let that cure. Do this aft one. Okay that's it. Doesn't need to make a massive mess. That's watertight so and you can open both things. Nice. Beautiful. Let that cure and come back to that another day. One more watertight item. Let's go glue up some more stuff. Oh just tight. I might just run down and tighten up those nuts. So I've made a backing plate for this end of the winch to take a bit of the load. Just spread it a little bit between everything. You probably can't see it but it is it's a nice plate. A bit of stainless from an old keel actually. This came off a boat we wrecked for the lead. A bit of steel. On there you little nut. Nice. So now I'll tighten these up a little bit. Nobody likes me using an adjustable but um it's okay. It's gonna be all right. I'm just sucking the glue down a bit for now. Well if someone doesn't want me using the adjustable they can go downstairs and get the socket set for me. That'd be nice. So the back end obviously takes a lot of load from the chain and the motors back here. That's why I put this keeper plate here. I don't reckon this would rip out of the deck. Like it'd be pretty phenomenal if it did. Yeah camera woman it's too heavy. Let's move to the next project. I'll do my finger click. Okay beautiful. So when the anchor comes down here into the anchor box there's a big motor that goes on here which I can try and slide on now maybe but it's quite heavy. It's not a very graceful thing to do. It's really thick. I've got to match the key way up. Uh oh. Okay so I want to go like I'm gonna go I think I went that way. So I'm going to turn this around to here. I'm gonna try that first. It's just incredibly heavy. First phase. Second phase is where's those terminals? There. Now back. Got it. Third phase is. That's my cell phone. I can't move. Everything's cramped up. Oh Mike's in the anchor locker. Well that's good. I mean this was a pretty crazy you can like a pretty crazy circumstance as far as Mike's going. Cool. Nice job team. Nice. So that's the first step. Okay that's one thing. Now we have two more to go. Just leave leave you there. I've got to film the camera lady where she was stuck filming the whole time. So this is I don't think anyone can appreciate where you are. Look you're really just rammed in a little hole there. But it proves the point that there's enough room for two people here.