Bow Eye and Centerboard Installation

After a day or so I finally stopped staring at the horrible boot stripe I laid down.  I could see it in my sleep:  the seeping dark blue running along the pure white, like blood on snow.  Yeah, that's dramatic, but at least that one's on me.  The next little bit of trouble I put at the foot of CLC.

Let's start with the bow eye.  I planned to use the bow eye right after it cured to haul onto the trailer after the flip and work on it there.  That meant I had to install this essentially upside down.  Nowhere in the manual does it say where to put this essential piece of hardware.  Why?  I'm not sure*.  From the photo, it appears just above the top white stripe, but that really could be anywhere depending on the depth of the paint.  Still troubled by this lack of clarity, off I went to find a bow eye.

 

The Marine Store, as mentioned, is more barren than a desert these days.  (I think the desert has more paint, but I can't be entirely sure.)  So the bow eye selection wasn't great.  There were small ones with about 1,500 lb capacity and big ones for 10,000 pounds and a couple in the middle.  More simply, CLC sells two types of bow eyes on its site: one for smaller boats and one for bigger boats.  The bigger one simply says to use something with 1.5" between the legs.  The prices are fair but I didn't have time to order and wait for it so I paid about double what CLC was charging for a 3,500 lb version with 3/8 legs and 1.5 inches between them.  I also picked up a bolt which would serve as the centerboard pivot.  On my way home, I stopped by the Big Box Store and cleaned them out of socket extensions.  I wasn't sure how many I needed so I bought a 24" and two 12" ones.  I figured four feet would be long enough.  To cut the bolt, I picked up a Dremel knock off, ensuring it had metal cutters.

 

Alas, like many others have said, the manual isn't exactly specific about where the bow eye goes, or how long of an extension you really need.  After some heavy research and queries, I decided to put the center of the bow eye 31.5" from the top of the breasthook using a "flexible ruler," which is what was suggested by the PocketShip forum.  Not having a measurement here is a serious issue, guys, especially for us kit builders and sailing kit orderers who are receiving pre-made shrouds to connect this stuff up.  I am fully expecting this to not be in the right spot, but there's nothing I can do about it.  So, in went the drill.

Then I had to crawl underneath the boat to get to the inspection port to saw away enough flotation to reach the bow eye.  This wasn't easy.  At one point, I considered cutting into the wall and just epoxying it back together.  Finally, I removed enough of a path to see and reach the legs, awkward as it was.  I also confirmed I could reach it with just the 24" extension.  In hindsight, I would've installed this when the bow was open.  There's no reason to install it so late in the process, so anyone thinking of building a PocketShip, do it before you close up the top unless you like being in cramped, dark quarters cursing life.

You can see the box cutter and handsaw I had to use to get to the bow eye.

 

 

After I confirmed I could reach it with my hands and a deep socket extension, I pulled the bow eye out, put some frog tape on the inside of the bow, and refilled the holes with thickened epoxy.  That cured overnight and then was re-drilled for the final installation. I was mostly accurate and just had to tweak the holes a bit to get a refit.  I removed the frog tape and it was time.  I found the 5200 and alternated filling the hole, putting some on the bow eye, filling the hole, etc.  I'm not sure how much 5200 I wound up using, but let's just say it was a lot. 

 

 

 The end product came out OK.  Time will tell if this can 1) be used to winch the boat, and 2) is in the right spot. 

 

The last bit of work I had to do before the flip was install the centerboard.  I remember building this in my cold basement that first spring and really looking forward to get this into the boat.  Of course, I ran into a problem.

As many times as I told myself not to, I'd painted over the epoxy circles on the keel which represented where the pivot goes, so I had to find these again.  I could see it from the top and so tried to get everything measured and aligned but it still seemed off.

Then I had an idea to drill a hole in a piece of clear plastic, put that in the slot, and mark off on the plastic and the trunk where the center was.  While it would've been better to remember NOT to paint over important things, this worked.

 

I then drilled out a small hole using one of my smallest bits to see where on the circle it hit.  I was just a little bit off but still within the epoxy, I drilled out the full width.  A (risky) test fit of the bolt with the centerboard in place was in order.  This also fit.  Maybe this wouldn't be too bad?

 

 

The Dremel knock off kit came with 31 metal cutters.  I used 30 of them.  I was sweating, swearing; it wasn't pretty.  But the bolt got cut and set aside.

Now, I had to run the centerboard pendant.  This is the line that raises and lowers the centerboard from the cockpit.  I bought this line years ago and stored it with the other lines, carefully labeled exactly for this moment.  Good job, younger self!

 

The manual says installing this could be tricky and so it was.  I didn't have any cable or wire hangers or whatever else would've made this easier.  I just taped some 12g wire to one end and started from the footwell opening, pushing it through and around, but I couldn't get this to reach a height where I could grab it.  

After awhile, I realized I could just go the other way.  So I lowered it into the trunk and made a little pushing tool out of scrap wood and frog tape bundled on the end.  Basically, the tool was long enough to reach the bottom of the centerboard trunk as I was sitting on the hull, and I could "walk" the line over to the inspection ports of the centerboard trunk.  Once it reached there, I could remove the ports and, using my hands, I could feed the line into the cockpit much more easily.  This worked a lot better. 

 

After this got fed into the cockpit, I knotted it up a few times so it wouldn't pull back out and hopped back onto the hull, emboldened.  However, my emboldened-ness would be short lived as I could not get the board to accept the knot without jamming.  What was I doing wrong?

Apparently, I didn't notice I had to drill out a top hole first.  So, that pushed everything back a day as I had to drill this out, fill it, and re-drill it.  I rescheduled my boat flipping party for another day and sadly drilled yet another hold in my centerboard.  This all happened fairly late which meant everything would be later the next day.

And indeed the next day arrived. This time, I fished the line through the top of the newly-epoxyd hole in the centerboard and into the second hole just fine.  I tied a knot and... the knot wouldn't fit in the hole.  This happened the other day, too, but I thought I could figure out how to make it fit.  Not so.  I tried many, many many different ways of abusing my line to no avail (burned the end, crimped it, used pliers).  This would knot sit in the hole.

The manual makes this look easy, even elegant. I can only think they used a thinner line and not the 1/4" called for on the line list, had a more pliable line, and/or had a bigger hole to work with.

That pretty much set up my options: drill out a larger hole which would require yet another delay; fish a different, thinner line which I didn't have; or -- like any good boatbuilder -- reach for the epoxy.  So, epoxy it was.

I mixed up some epoxy, dipped the last inch of line in it, folded the line over itself (which is all that would fit) stuffed it in the hole, and filled the hole with thickened epoxy with the line in it.  The next day, I cleaned this up and pulled on it with a lot of force.  It wasn't going anywhere.  More importantly, the centerboard dropped cleanly into the slot, and I was done with this phase of the build.

Three months after restarting the project, she was finally ready to flip.

* I have thought a lot about this question as this omission really stands out in an otherwise decent manual.  It is just pages from, for example, "exactly 28 inches" for the centerboard pendant.  My guess is that Geoff Kerr, who built PocketShip #1, simply eyeballed a good spot for the bow eye and then the bobstay was cut later. Unfortunately, from that day forward, the bobstay has been cut to the original spec despite wherever the bow eye might be on our garage boats.  It hasn't been addressed in 12 years so chances are low it'll be fixed any time soon.

Prep School

There isn't much to do when it's cold outside, so I find myself not doing much at all. I've spent some time reading, working, watching movies, and acing Candy Crush, but little in the way of boatbuilding.

Some might recognize the Yeti.

Oh, yeah, there was New Year's Day, too, which for us this year meant Monsters University, some champagne, St. Germain, and a fireplace. Cozy!

New Year's celebration.

I should also report a casualty. After many years of fine service and much abuse, Sprout leaped off the bedroom table and split his asparagus open. I then promptly raided him for beer money.

RIP, Sprout!

Every now and then, I was able to steal away and run a layer of epoxy down, and it's slow going -- but what's the rush? It's not like I can take these pieces and screw them onto the boat. Not until May, at least. We had our usual winter Winnipeg bagpipe competition cancelled this year, and there's no Chieftains in town, so it's tough to even pull out the bagpipes (that's me third from the right on stage).

That meant figuring out how to epoxy 8' pieces of wood in a 10' basement shop. I "borrowed" three TV dinner stands, layered on some plastic, and behold - a long table. That plus the workbench allowed me to work on two sets at a time. Since some of these pieces laid in the garage for 6 months, they got a little sanding and a wipedown as prep. Good practice, anyway. More annoying was sanding off the "Joubert" stickers and the little nubs that attached them to the kit. However, once epoxy'd, most of these won't get sanded much at all since they will face, essentially, the inside of a sealed box.
 

Cockpit sides and decking ready for epoxy. No 'glass here.

Sides and decking done. Nice tone to the wood. I briefly considered leaving the cockpit bright (about 4 seconds), but no way I can keep that much volume in good enough shape. The "tall" half will be sanded to 120 as that will be painted towards the end. This serves as the inside of the cockpit locker.

Foredeck 'glassed and sanded plus unsanded cockpit sides and seatback decking. The foredeck only got a quality sanding where it would sit aft of bulkhead 1 (about 2/3 aft) since that's the only area visible in the cabin. The seatbacks are uniform in color. That's the shadow of the would be router table darkening the right side.

The centerboard isn't quite done as I laid down a layer of 9 oz 'glass on the leading edge and feathered that in. Something to point out here is that one edge of the 9 oz glass is rather thick. I'm not sure if it's just my roll, but I decided to take no chances with the centerboard and trimmed back the thick area. I lost about 1/2" of width but it was a much easier exercise to feather it down and epoxy. I'm reminded of my efforts with laying 9 oz 'glass at the keelson joint between bulkheads 7, 8, and the transom. It was a bear to get that to feather smooth. When trimmed, it was really easy.

Laid down 9 oz strip here over 2 overlapping 6 oz strips. The edges got feathered down smooth.

Epoxy'd the 9 oz glass down. Looks good. I'm not done sanding here. This was just a quick rub with low grit but will eventually get sanded to 400.

I like to think that I'm preparing for the thaw now that I've 'glassed the underside of the foredeck and cockpit decks. At a minimum, it will take about 2 weeks to finish these, so better to spend 2 weeks when it's below zero outside than 2 weeks stalling boat progress. This extra fiberglass schedule isn't called for in the manual, but what the hey. I need to epoxy them, anyway, and I'll feel a lot better when some slobbo jumps onto the boat from the dock. The cockpit deck will get the usual 3 coats and then it will all be sanded down. Given that the hull sides took about 4 hours each... sigh.

Cockpit decking gets 'glassed. This is the underside - facing the interior of the cabin. The wide part is highly visible in the cabin (it is the area that strides across the centerboard trunk) so had to be ready for prime time.

I plan to head to the Big Box store tomorrow (or maybe even a Big Boy Lumberyard) to source wood for the Macgregor rudder. Let's imagine a rudder that's in rough shape. Now make it rougher. No, rougher. Yes, now you're closer. That's what the rudder is today. Don't believe me?

I'm not sure how this actually steered anything.

The photo doesn't do it justice, as this is only half of the full rudder. The other half looks worse. I contemplated just filling the gaps but my wife (whose boat this is) wants a brand new rudder. I got the, "if you can do it for your boat why can't you do it for mine" thing. New rudder it is!

Centerboard Shaping

Although the high today was 40 degrees higher than last week's, it's still just over freezing. I briefly entertained the idea of cranking up the heat to warm the garage, but it would just go towards the utility company's holiday party as the nighttime temps will be in the teens. It was back to the basement shop then, which hadn't seen a spring cleaning since the spring 1994. The first thing I had to do was clean the place up, including the spillover area of the family room. This took quite a bit of time but it's nice to work in a clean space again.

Neighbor got a coffee bean roaster for Christmas. We were beneficiaries.

Rudder, tiller, and boom gallows sit ready for next steps.

Decking behind the couch got moved elsewhere so we can see things now.

Suffice to say, this did NOT look like this a couple hours earlier.

I was ready (and so was the room) for the centerboard. This is one of those things I was sort of looking forward to, sort of not. Sort of not because I knew this would be a winter project when I put it aside after the lead pour. Sort of not because I've never shaped a board before and was afraid I'd muck it up. Sort of because a centerboard is so lovingly a part of sailing I would not be building a sailboat if there weren't a centerboard. Like everything else, it needed quite a bit of prep work: getting all the edges cleaned up, filling in yet more thickened epoxy for the leading and trailing edges, and fixing the table saw disaster from what seems like a really long time ago.

Table saw trough needed filler. Couple divots filled in from lead pour, too.

Filler applied and allowed to dry.

Finally, it was ready to shape. Of course, just when I was about to begin, I ran out of 60 grit paper for my random orbital.

Just getting started. Right about here I ran out of 60 grit. Note the 4" curve.

One of the benefits of cleaning is that I found a lot of partly used sandpaper. I figured that'd be better than nothing. It was better than nothing, but not much better than nothing. After a trip to the Big Box store - and I impressed myself with my control because I walked out of there with exactly one set of 60 grit paper and another set of 40 for my belt sander - I was back in the shop again. This was enough to tide me over until my Amazon order comes in. I did check with the lumberyard to see if they'd be able to order 16' clear pine. Some flunky said they could but the lumberyard master was not available. I tucked that bit of information away with all the other random assorted crap I need to follow up on whenever I remember it.

When I got home, I geared up, started Pandora (Tricia Yearwood station) and sanded away. I haven't seen a lot of detail on this process on other blogs, but it was a good four hours worth of sanding. Okoume marine plywood is really good plywood. It's tough to sand, though, but when sanded it's even, without any voids, visible glue, or any of the usual bad things that come out of plywood. I've worked with Baltic Birch before and that stuff is pretty good, but not as good as this. Of course, that meant it took twice the amount of time I thought it would.

Good progress. Each "side" took about an hour.

When I got tired of using the random orbital, I used the belt sander. Slowly, the plywood gave way. Each layer became a mark I could use for the next. Pretty quickly, there was a good rhythm between me, the sander, and Tricia Yearwood. It wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be, and in fact quite pleasant to see the shape come to life.

This sat in my garage behind a pile of scrap wood for the better part of six months. To see this rescued from a veritable trash bin and now formed on my table was a bit of a thrill. As I was shaping, I could imagine this slicing through Lake Superior while on a reach; or, the top bit of it tucked into its trunk as I settled in for the night. This is one of those parts that really needs loving care, something I may have forgotten during my obsession with the wiring a few weeks back. A bad connection with a cabin light, and a $4 light strip doesn't work. A poor job of my centerboard and I'll be drifting in circles, or worse.

Still, there was so much work to do. A surprisingly large void showed itself around the bend. I can see how this happened: for this to sit level, I would've had to prop the other, awkward end up. As it was, epoxy flowed away from this corner the way I let it sit, hence the void.

Epoxy voids from the original pour. This is partly due to the haphazard way the rabbet got filled. Any time I had extra epoxy, I dumped it in here. There was bound to be some mucking up.

Filler epoxy applied and allowed to dry.

More voids to fill in. Expected some but maybe not this much.

About 85% done. Stopped to fill in the voids to sand later.

One of the trickiest bits is to ensure there's a foil shape to the centerboard. The leading edge (the long, flat edge) gets a "bullet" shape and some 'glass wrapped around it. The trailing edge (the curve) gets a really fine taper to 1/16". I left mine about 1/4" but will take it down the rest of the way as I get the voids at the same time.

"Bullet" leading edge gets 'glass wrapped around it.

Top view of the leading edge.

Hopefully, I'll have time to finish the shaping and get to the 'glassing. I plan to paint this white, figuring any little bit helps fight moisture. After that, I'm not sure what to start next (ideas in the comments appreciated). I'd really like to do the tabernacle and/or the companionway, but both make me nervous as I'd rather have the boat ready to ensure I get the right sizes and angles. We'll see.

Cheek to Cheek

Today will be mostly pictures as I'm tired. Why? Here's my oven clock:

As in, the morning. That's what happens when you decide to "sand a little bit" at 12:30am. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

A couple days ago, I glued up the two rudder cheeks on one side of the rudder and set up the clamps. The next day, I glued up the other side. A 1/4" strip of scrap sat the rudder up so it would cure evenly. That's pretty much how it sat until tonight. With a relatively busy weekend, this was the first time I was able to get back into the shop. One of the events was the spring gathering of the Minnesota Sailing Alliance, a loose knit group of sailors, skippers, and captains who meet about once a week and sail. It was nice to see some folks I hadn't seen since the sailing season ended so very long ago.

At the event, while I was deep into my tall mug of Summit, one guy came rushing over to shake my hand and ask if I was the "boat builder". I said, sure, I'm building a boat. Turns out he says he's got a 30' sailboat 3/4 done in Michigan - a 3-masted schooner that he plans to show to corporations who then will give him $7 million to build a 140' tall ship. When I suggested that a 140' sailboat will require masts maybe, I don't know, 100' tall, he just shrugged and asked if I'd help him build it. I don't doubt people's skills, but I'm fairly skeptical by nature. That said, I didn't crush his dream - who am I to do that? - so I just said when he got the contract, give me a call. I'll be waiting! I should add that the 30' boat he's working on is "from pictures he took of another boat".

Cheeks clamped.

Back to reality -- sanding soon morphed into chamfering. I did the 45' chamfer on the rudder cheeks after the glue up cured. The manual makes this look easy. Zip, done! Not exactly. Most chamfering bits have a bearing on the bottom so that it can run along an even surface and carve out the pattern. No real issues there (though even the slightest wave in the cuts will cause waves in the chamfering pattern.)

Added 45' chamfer to the cheeks. Mostly came out OK. This view of the tiller slot made me go back and sand it some more.

The problem arises where the rudder cheek meets the main part of the rudder. The bearing in this area cannot simply glide but in fact will gouge a trench exactly where you don't want it to. I adjusted the router to cut a little higher, just off the surface of the main rudder body so that the bearing rode against the cheek, and then hand sanded to match the profile of the rest of the cheeks. This took awhile to get right, especially as I plan to keep the rudder cheeks bright and couldn't really see an easy way to do this without risking damage to a highly visible and important part of the boat. I'm wondering if other people had this issue, as I don't remember anything complicated in any blog on this topic? It could be because it would've been much easier to do the chamfering before the glue up. Simply choose the 2 top cheeks on either side, chamfer, and done.

Re-application of epoxy to fill voids and tear out. This, to date, is the saddest moment of the build so far.

The sanding and chamfering, too, exposed some voids in the glue up and areas where I had some tear out. That meant mixing up a little thickened epoxy for some fairing. That was more painful to do than I expected - actually putting epoxy back onto a clean area that I spent the better part of an hour sanding. If there was any good news on that, I was able to collect a little more epoxy for the rabbet trench in the centerboard. This little trench - about 3/8" wide and 1/4" inch - runs halfway around the centerboard. By volume, it's roughly between Lake Superior and the Gulf of Mexico. It takes a LOT of epoxy to fill as I've been at it for about week, moving extra epoxy into this canyon in a never-ending effort to fill the void. I'm sure there's a keen metaphor there; I'm already having bad dreams about dumping epoxy into a bottomless well.

The rabbet trench gets thickened epoxy. The trench has much more volume than expected. It gobbles up epoxy like crazy.

While I had some epoxy to play with, I put a layer of epoxy down on the rudder wing/step. I didn't see this called out in the manual. I guess that's because it will get the full fiberglass treatment. But I don't see anything wrong with putting a layer down for a little strength as this will be a highly stressed component.

The rudder step gets a coat of epoxy.

It was also a good opportunity to check the tapers in the blocking. They came out nice - the rudder has an obvious taper and should work as expected in the water with minimal drag. The extra work to get this right was worth it. I was happy to see no voids and clean lines.

Rudder bottom with taper from leading to trailing edge (right to left).

Taper along the top. Trailing edge here, just below where the back of the tiller exits the tiller slot.

Meanwhile, the keel sits in the living room waiting for a nice day for a lead pour. Given it's snowing as I type this, that might not be for awhile, though a FB friend recently announced it'll be 74 degrees next week. I didn't realize she was a part-time meteorologist but I'm hopeful. She's at least a bit smarter than that damn groundhog.

The keel assembly sits waiting for a nice day. Fiberglass box, too.

The Runaround

The belly of the beast.

A few random things over the last couple days, nothing individually exciting, but not exactly boring, either. I called some tire shops in a last ditch effort to salvage some wheel weights and on the fifth call, someone said yes. All it takes is one, as they say. I hiked over there to a shady part of town (hence, the name of the tire shop will be Shady Tires) where a burly dude walked me to the back of the house and pointed to a metal drum with a very fancy "lead" sign painted on it. He asked what I was going to use it for and I said a sailboat. He said, that's pretty heavy for sailboat. Point, Shady Tire man. If I were indeed planning on putting a 30 gallon steel drum with 300 pounds of lead in the water with a sail on it, I suppose it wouldn't work very well as a sailboat. Good thing life jackets are on sale at the new West Marine.

Before anyone could change their mind, I asked if he would help me load it into the car. This car, by the way, is really a car. It's not even a very big car and at one time was considered a semi-luxury car. It's definitely not a truck or even a minivan. So into the passenger seat goes the barrel full of lead. I got into the driver's seat and said I'll bring the barrel back and drove away, dumb with luck.

Very fancy lettering for a lead barrel, no?

I got home and immediately began sorting the wheel weights. After five minutes, I was thinking eBay wasn't so bad. This is nasty, nasty business. I paused and wanted to really be sure what I was doing, so I went to my bookshelf and pulled down that particular volume of the Encylopedia Brittanica and turned to "identifying wheel weights". Oh, wait, that's what I would've done in 1984. Actually, what I would've been doing in 1984 was trying to hack my way into a blue box to make free long distance calls from one county in New Jersey to another. It definitely wouldn't be building a sailboat.

Who knew smelting could be so popular? There's a TON of information on smelting lead for bullets (or "boolits" as they say) including the pros and cons of different smelters, what happens if you get zinc in the mix, and how to use sand to extract the alloys. Google told me that melting lead is srs bsns in parts of the U.S. for making fishing weights and bullet casings. If one were to draw a Venn diagram and overlap those two populations, suffice to say it's the same family from West Virginia. I'm hiding behind these guys during the coming dystopia.

Best I can figure, my guesses were correct. As a quick primer on which wheel weights are lead and which aren't: if it has raised lettering and has any of the following on it, it's lead: AL followed by anything, P, MICRO, or MC. Anything else is likely not lead, especially those labeled Fe or Z for steel and zinc, respectively. Yes, I realize Fe is actually short for iron but I didn't make up the labeling standard. The small stickies can be lead or not lead and require further testing, which is generally by cutting into it with scissors or something similar. If you can make a dent in it, it's lead.

AL-MC is OK. FE is not, so says Jim Bob from WV.

My barrel didn't turn out to be quite 300 pounds, though. I managed to extract about 120 in wheel weights which when melted down will likely yield about 100 pounds of lead. That plus my eBay cache plus Chris' bucket will yield plenty for the keel pour but alas not enough for the ballast. After this week, if I'm able to do the lead pour, I might just be ready to pay someone a buck a pound for pure lead ingots.

With that sorted out (did you see what I did there?) I turned my attention to some boatbuilding. My wife was working late so I had a little extra time. I gouged a small notch for the boom on the boom gallows and sanded it down to 220 then put on a layer of epoxy. Oh. My. It looks awesome. The pictures don't do it justice. Another layer of epoxy tomorrow and then I can varnish it. It doesn't have any holes for the struts or the tie downs but I'll do that later when I'm sure the measurements are right. The recess is about 1/4" smaller than the pattern but I didn't want to cut into the white. I think the manual has a small veneer in place there and I've seen people do leather but I figured this was the least complicated way out, plus looks the most natural. I do want to research the leather option because this little groove is destined to take quite a beating.

Made the recess with the new belt sander.

Sanded to 220 then first epoxy layer. Looks awesome.

I also managed to get the roundover done on the centerboard trunk, made the little bit of timber between the keel nose block and centerboard trunk, attached the lead containment plywood to the centerboard, and glued down the aft part of the keel. I was going to do the rest of the glue up for the keel structure but it got to be about 12:30 and if I started I was looking at a 2:00 bed time. I actually have a ton of work to do tomorrow so need to be rested; the glue up can wait a little bit since once that's done it'll be the pour and that needs good weather. Did I mention it snowed today? We didn't get the 12 inches (yes, 12 inches) expected but it's pretty miserable outside. Perfect for some spars and perhaps the tiller or rudder or any of the various other mini-projects that this build requires. But I'm really itching to start some stitching.

Once again, little bits of timber taking way too long to make. I knicked off the top 1/3 (flush with the point) to be sure I got enough lead volume in here. For anyone keeping score, this angle is 55 deg.

Roundover on centerboard trunk. This is HIGHLY visible in the cabin and in fact is the spot right up on the floorboards. This has to look good or else I'll stare at it and weep every time I'm about to go to sleep.

Screws on the lead backer.

Part of the reason I didn't finish the glue up is I wouldn't have enough clamps for it.

Update several months later: Notice a mistake. The keel blocking runs up to the edge of the keel board. This should be 1/2" from the top to allow for the cap.