So we got this incredible machine, the Seatiger 555 windless, from Bacon in Annapolis and…it’s totally awesome and all…but the fact is our boat wasn’t built to accommodate this device.
It’s very important for the proper function of any windless for the chain to drop straight down the throat of the hawse pipe. On Cetacea the hawse pipe is a good 10cm away from the bowsprit, the only real spot for mounting the windless. So we had to build a mount.
Before Dena retired from Krohne, one of the engineers there (thanks, Steve!) manipulated a big chunk of aluminum into a base for the 555.
We wanted to make it to where the load of the windless was equally distributed between the mount and the most solid part of the bowsprit. The center.
We lined everything up, measured about ten times between us, then drilled oversized holes in the bowsprit…
…Filled the holes with epoxy.
Then we went sailing!
A winter’s worth of the city of sin trailed abaft of us all the way to Gloucester.
We had a last minute weather change and figured we could pick up a mooring and finish the install on the windless from the protection of Gloucester harbor as opposed to our first anchorage being in Hull. What we thought was going to be a four hour broad reach to the downtown moorings turned out to be a six hour beat all the way there. Cetacea was slow but the sailing was…Fucking sailing, yay!
Once we picked up that mooring and got the boat stowed, we broke out the lags, the hammer-drill and the epoxy and installed our new windless.
Spit-Spat…Just like that. We have a working system!
Dranks!!!