Mast Repairs for Sea Puppy Part 5 tuning the rig

I got up early and started tightening up and tuning the upper and lower shrouds.. There is no adjustment on the roller furling unit. It is a fixed length. I set the uppers and lowers at the same poundage that I had her tuned to with the stock forstay and found that I was pulling the mast into a curve forward at the top of the mast.. This is a very bad thing. I also had massive aft rake compared to the just a very lot of rake sea puppy usually has. I spent most of the morning messing with it with no good results. Miriam showed up late in the afternoon while I was working on it and gave a hand also. Finally I started manufacturing new connecting plates for attaching the roller furling unit to the chain plate at the bow. A good drill for the holes and a roto zip with a metal cutting blade did a good job of creating the new plates.. lol at least they did after I got my measurements right.  here is a picture of the installed furler with the new plates we made showing.

So by 9 pm sea puppy had new plates and still wasn’t tightened up.. again the next morning I got up and started tuning.. I still thought I had to much rake but when I put the boom on and bent on the mainsail… it actually was holding the boom higher I beleive than it was before.. which would tell me that I have less rake than previous… She seems solid and the mast is bending the right direction at the top. I don’t have as much pre-bend as with the stock forstay but there is an inch or two of it. I will definately put the baby stay back on..

So by about 2 pm all the lines are re-run

and I have tested the roller furler and run the main up and down… it is very hot…. I planned on just quiting for the day… but around then Patty called and arranged to meet me in an hour at the marina to go get a bite to eat. So I decided tostart installing the VHF radio while I waited. Did I say it was hot? I was dripping wet… I could have thrown my shirt at a wall and it would have stuck with a wet splat!.. I’m still amazed I didn’t just pass out with heat exhaustion.

Ok radio… I had gone and gotten a 5/8ths inch drill earlier in the day when I went to pick up Breck and bring him back to the marina to get his RV. It really sucks drilling 5/8th inch holes in your boat.. However I had bought a through hull fitting (PL 258 double ended barrel fitting about 1 and 5/8ths inches long.) that I installed just in front of and to starboard of the mast. It has two locking nuts on it one for above deck and the other for under the deck.. I also bedded it in 3M 4200 for water proofing. The picture above with all the lines around the mast also shows this connector just forward of the mast. The PL 259 fitting on the coax going to the antenna on the mast screws onto this and then a patch cable screws on underneath and runs to the radio where it uses a PL-259 fitting to screw onto the back of the VHF radio. To run the patch cable up in the space between the ceiling and the deck I had to fish a leader line from the access pannel in the roof of the head compartent to the access panel around the compression post. This took a while to get and then pulling the cable with the PL259 plug on the end of it was a bear…. PL 259 plugs are big and the space in there has a couple places that are just a little smaller than the plug. However gritting and a little brute force will solve most such problems.. and sometimes the parts still work afterward. 🙂 they did this time… Next I surface mounted the radio that Billy had given me.. It is an older model “Standard Horizon Eclipse +” Marine VHF unit. After getting it mounted and everything connected I was able to do a radio check with someone in Ocean Isle more than 15 miles away. HURRRAYYYYY… Thanks go out to Billy Karl and Mike for the help, parts and radio.. 🙂 Oh the radio is a Standard Horizon Eclipse+ GX1250S It seems to have excelent reviews in the low end radios for signal strength and reception. Also Standard Hoizon Technical Support was very nice when I called in looking for a manual. Within 5 minutes of calling I had the manual for that model in my email. Thanks guys.
Actually a full list of people I owe thanks to for help and advice through out the whole mast taking down, working on and putting back up process are

Richard Truet, Breck Caine, Miriam, Billy Karl, Mike, Elizibeth for dockside cheering from under the umbrella and Judy for trying to help me move the roller furling off the trailer even though I got someone else to help do it before she got there. If you helped and your name isn’t here just smack me when you see me.. 🙂 I blame it on heat exhaustion messing with my memory. Realy I wouldn’t forget you!! 🙂