[C38] Bedding Shrouds and leaks

[Les]

On Fri, 2008-05-09 at 00:15 -0400, Charles wrote:
> By the way, I highly recommend Spartite.  My mast and collar had taken
> a 
> beating over the years with perhaps a too zealous application of mast 
> shims.  Spartite solved this problem and I no longer get any water 
> coming in the cabin from the mast.  Even better, mast stress on the
> deck 
> is evenly distributed which can never happen with shims.

I'll second that.  We had water on every wet day coming into Jace.  No
delamination or other problems, but the mess on 
the cushions at the forward port settee on the dinette were miserable.
Spar-tite fixed it.  And our clay dam is still inplace as well.  We had
it done when the mast was pulled and painted.  We replaced all the
standing rigging at that time as well.

Someone asked about another location for leaks that caused drops near or
at their chain plates.  On JACE the windows were leaking, and the
stanchions were leaking.  We redid the windows (thank you Catalina
Direct) and rebedded the stanchions with all new hardware.  The leaks
ceased.  Last week at the boat we noticed some new drops.  Checking it
looks like either the toe rail (I'll need help with that), or the tracks
for the fairleads.  That I can do myself, so sometime in the next week
or two, I'll take that off and fix it.

My current project is to add solar panels.  I have two 65 watt Kyocera
panels which measuer about 30x25.  I am rigging a support across the
center of the dodger (still cloth) which will hold a 1" stainless rail
onto which I will clamp the solar panels.  This will add about 25lbs or
so to the dodger, but should be well within limits.  The wind loading
would not seem to be too great as a 2" stainless pipe stand with 1"
cross bar is one of the options for most solar installations for panels
up to 60" x 24", so mine should present less than 1/4 that in wind
loading because they will be shielded by the dodger and mast.  Time will
tell.

I like Max's rigid vang, and that may be one of our next purchases.

Regards,
Les H
JACE