Kaimusailing

#4 beam was now complete, painted, and ready to drop into place. Unfortunately the old beam was in the way and had to be removed and brought forward for use as a temporary support for the crossdeck at #1 beam. The new lumber for #1 beam was residing quietly on sawhorses right in the way.
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This was a day of heavy construction. The neatly stacked and clamped pile of new lumber was unclamped and unstacked, brought to the dock and restacked and reclamped. The new #4 beam was repositioned slightly to allow the old beam to be removed from that area. The main halyard was used to hoist these beams by leading it through a snatch block positioned at the boom right over the center of the beam. It was quite easy to move these heavy beams once they were hoisted off the deck. They could easily be rotated and the boom was free to swing from side to side. The snatch block had a snap shackle attachment to the boom, and that was easily unclipped to allow the heavy old beam to swing forward at least as far as the mast. The spreaders prevented the main halyard from swinging further forward. The staysail halyard, which is forward of the mast was tied onto the beam and slack was taken up. The bitter end of the staysail halyard was brought to one of the jib winches. The snatch block was put on the inner forestay and the hoist was led through it to bring the old beam forward. At the inner forestay, the beam could be rotated and placed in position across the deck as a temporary support for the forward crossdeck.
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The new beam was dropped into place, but here logic became a taskmaster. The beam was exactly the same size as the brackets it had to fit, but because of tiny differences between the old beam and the new beam, it illogically didn't drop all the way in. Jumping on it didn't work. I slept on it (not the beam) and remembered the porta-power and its many uses. Using dynema of about a ton breaking strength and the porta power, the beam could be forced down into the “custom” brackets.
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The picture is of the porta power in action. The threads of dynema are secured down below to the big beam bolts that run right into the hull. The porta power is meanwhile pushing the beam down and the bracket right below it can't go anywhere, it has rubber shock absorbers underneath it.
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Putting the caps on the beam brackets, which completes this custom beam mount that completely encircles the beam, proved to be difficult due to the brackets deforming as the beam dropped in, and needing heavy duty pressure to line up the bolts for the bracket caps. New aircraft bolts were used to replace the old bolts that had begun to corrode. The bolts have an anticorrosion coating that seems good for about 5 years in the marine environment. It is impossible to get stainless bolts of this grade, which is necessary to compensate for a flaw in the beam strap design.
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When the beam brackets were secured to the beam, the big mounting bolts that come straight up out of the hull could be tightened. The bolts on the outboard ends of the beam tightened up OK, but the inboard bolts still had a gap when they were nearly tight. This gap is caused by the hulls canting inward due to the downward pressure of the mast and sail rig. I'm sure the other old beams that haven't yet been replaced are sagging a bit. It looks like the rig will have to be slacked to allow the beam bolts to be fully tight. We need the running backstays to be available to hold the rig in place while the permanent shrouds are loosened. Because the tails of the running backstays are being used to hold the aft crossdeck and motor box in position, the crossdeck and motor box have to be bolted to the new beam #4, then the running backstays can be retrieved to hold the rig while the shrouds are slacked, then the remaining bolts on #4 beam can be tightened fully.
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The cross deck and engine box were jacked up using the porta power mounted on top of beam #4 and pushing up on fittings mounted on the back of the engine box. When it was halfway up, the mainsail halyard was used to hold it in position while the porta power was reconfigured to hoist it further. The porta power only has a range of about 5-6 inches and the hoist distance was more like 10 inches. Measuring the bolt hole positions on the old beam and the crossdeck frame showed how high to hoist the crossdeck.