Kaimusailing

The stormy weekend didn’t stop, Monday morning saw 40 knots of cold northern wind blowing across the North River into the boatyard. The day continued blustery, overcast, and bits of rain now and then. There was no motivation to fight the weather and work on the boat.
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The next day I decided to start installing one of the new hatches, over the starboard twin bunk, the cook’s bunk. The compartment was getting fouled with mildew from condensation. I removed the bedding and memory foam mattress and scrubbed the space clean. With the compartment cleared out I could begin the modifications to the hatch coaming. The new hatch was about a half inch larger all the way around. I expected to make a lot of sawdust and wood chips, so having a cleared out space below the coaming would make clean up that much easier.
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I tried to use a router to hack out a 1/2“ X 1“ rabbet in the inside edge of the hatch. This produced a lot of sawdust. There was no way to rout all the way to the corner of the coaming. I began to see the router made a lot of noise and sawdust, but was not the tool for the job. I tried the multitool with halfmoon blade and it was too slow, even with a brand new blade. Then I tried the angle grinder with the chain saw wheel on it. It was too dull and burned the wood. It was exactly the right diameter for the rounded corners though. I found the new 36 grit 4“ flap discs from Harbor Freight. They were the exact diameter of the corner also. These discs just ate up the wood. It took all day to find the right tool for the job.
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The rabbet was almost perfect, but the inside corner of the ledge it formed could not be shaped exactly square with the flap disc. The multitool cut that square corner quickly and I was able to drop the new hatch into the coaming. I would have to add some wood to the outside of the coaming to make it thick enough for the flange of the hatch.
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The forecast had turned to rain again, but I would be away on a shopping trip to Sailor’s Exchange in St. Augustine, so I put all the tools under cover.
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We left early in the morning and ran into a traffic jam going through Jacksonville on I-95. We still got into St. Augustine early enough for breakfast at a local diner. At Sailor’s Exchange we
browsed through the store. Although there is a huge inventory of used boat parts, there were no wind vane self steerers or endless furlers. I bought a very nice single block and Ron the woodworker bought about $500 worth of teak wood. We had time to hike around the town, a tourist trap. Along the way we looked out in the harbor and there was Peace, Ann and Neville Clements catamaran which they had sold, moored. It looked beautiful with its steeply raked masts. I was surprised to see it. It made sense that the new owners would take it further south, from Oriental, probably further south than St. Augustine.
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The rain that was forecast was still holding off. It would come from the North as we drove North and our exposure to the rain would be minimal. It only lasted about 15 minutes and when we got to the boatyard it had already passed over.
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The new hatch wasn’t yet bedded down, but I didn’t expect it to leak at all, but it did. It must have been a real gully washer to force water up over the coaming. There was no gasket or butyl bedding to stop it. That will come later. I took a snapshot of the hatch, in position but unbedded.
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I then began working on the other new hatch over the port forward twin bunk. This time I started work with the 36 grit flap disc and used it to form the corners, then grind out the rabbets. The whole job took about 2 hours including squaring off the bottom corner of the rabbet with the multitool and halfmoon blade.