Wine Rack

Of course this project was my favourite. It was undertaken in the spring of 2007 and holds 6 bottles,

 I realized that the 3 inch bit sold ay Lee Valley Tools was an almost perfect fit for a standard 750 ml wine bottle. After taking the measurements of the starboard forward locker space (behind the settee) I made two patterns for the upper and lower boards. I used an empty bottle to get the proper fit - I had to enlarge the holes slightly with a drum sander in the drill press.

The bottom board is 2 inch teak and the top board is one inch mahogany. There are two mahogany 'end' boards, not shown. I assembled the rack inside the compartment - it's a tight fit.

With the boards spaced as such, I am still able to lift each bottle straight up far enough to clear the top board. This is of course necessary to get the bottles in and out..

Cheers!

Companionway Door

The original companionway door was plywood and was starting to delaminate on the bottom edge.

I reused the teak louvre from the original door and used a router to recessthe louvre and rabbet the sides of the back of the door. I stained the door with teak stain and coated it with gloss Helmsman UV resistant varnish (great stuff).  

We had an awful time with things flying about the interior of the boat. There were remains of plastic tracks where sliders might have existed before. 

I bought one full sheet of 1/4 inch teak plywood ($100 CDN) to make up the panels and routed 3/4 inch mahogany to make up the sliders. You can see my simple jig in the photo above. After dry fitting and adjusting the panels, I installed the tracks top and bottom using wood screws. Clearly, you have to install the bottom track, slide the top track over the panel, then screw in the top track. 

"Allow sufficient time for this step." Ha!

It was much easier installing the starboard sliders (above) as everything was straight and only two doors were required.  The port side required four doors because of the angle. The aft door port side was 13 inches on one end and ten inches on the other(!). I trimmed heights with a block plane until everything fit, being careful not to make the aft end of the aft port side door so short that the top came out of the track when it was moved forward. 

Allow sufficient time for this step,too." Ha!

I then simply took a 1 inch hole saw and cut the finger holes in each panel. In the end, I made up the finger rings on my lathe & drill press, but for two bucks each at The Chandlery, I should have bought 'em.

This was a pretty simple one. I needed a place to hang the dinghy motor, but there was no convenient vertical member in the stern rail. Two pieces of 3/4 inch mahogany left over from the sliding door project were pressed into service. 

I simply measured the centre to centre distance of the two horizontal tubes, clamped the mahogany pieces together and drilled two tube-sized holes centred on the join using a drill press. Voilà! Four 1 1/2 inch brass bolts from Home Depot and some Helmsman varnish were used to complete the job.

Doesn't look too bad when the motor is stowed, either. Using a nut driver, I can remove and stow the whole thing in five minutes.

You can't sail without Bach, Handel and Mozart. It was pretty easy to replace the old cassette player with a CD player. The CD player came with a wiring harness that clearly showed what each wire was for. The original cassette player had a label on the back showing what each wire is for. I reused the steel car antenna I found stuffed in beside the chain plate knee. It works fine.

It was hard to find a CD player that was thin / small enough to clear the chainplate anchor knee. Koss makes one, though.

Carpe Diem was built in 1985 and a lot of the running rigging was 'tired'. Somebody told me that the difference between a good ship and a shipwreck was the rigging. 

I put on a new main sheet and a new boom vang the first year. I replaced the lifelines the second year ($300 CDN) and bought new upper and lower shrouds this year ($400 CDN). (One shroud had 5 broken strands.) I got a new forestay ($100 CDN) in 2004 to go with the new Harken Unit 0 furler. Since then I have been replacing all the halyards, which were completely stiff with age.