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.